Culture Articles
The Living Fountain: Remembrances of Quaker Christianity, by Benjamin Wood
Just look at these chapter headings: ‘The Problem of “Thin” Quakerism’, ‘The Romantic Quakerism of Rufus Jones’, ‘The Unquiet Presence of God’, ‘Recovering the Slow Jesus’, ‘Heaven: Walking the Road with Anne Conway’ – goodness! Who’s Anne Conway? I couldn’t wait, and frankly, now I can’t cope. I...
The worship of nature
The harp at Nature’s advent strung Has never ceased to play; The song the stars of morning sung Has never died away. And prayer is made, and praise is given, By all things near and far; The ocean looketh up to heaven, ...
Poem: Barcelona blues
The polar bears have flown to Barcelona for their summer break. Sit sipping sangria on the Ramblas, loll on promenades in hats and shades, tourists like the rest of us.
And This Shall Be My Dancing Day, by Jennifer Kavanagh
Jennifer Kavanagh’s publications on various aspects of Quaker spirituality will be well known to readers of the Friend. Her latest book is a novel, but it is nevertheless deeply imbued with Quaker sensibility – without ever explicitly mentioning Quakerism. It is an unusual, kind and uplifting book. It manages to...
Exploring Isaac Penington: Seventeenth-century Quaker mystic, teacher and activist, by Ruth Tod
Isaac Penington was one of Quakerism’s earliest, most articulate spokespeople, working deeply with images of the Inner Light and the seed. The son of a prominent Puritan, Penington spent his early adulthood carousing with the smart metropolitan set. Yet these fast times and high living didn’t lead to...
Words for the end of the day
Before sleep can sweep your face with its cloak, cradle in your heart the passing day: re-run all you did, with whom you spoke: what memories to take away, what lessons learnt? Those you love, go round them, each in turn, friends too and some you know less well, share,...
Friendless Childhoods Explain War, by Bob Johnson
Our friend Bob Johnson has produced something here that delights our sensitivities, and challenges our assumptions about international affairs. We expect Bob to be making connections, and we’ve certainly got that here. Reading though this short book made me stop, and stare, and think. In the end it made...
Prayer
Love letters to what I can’t imagine, letters that shape-change into loops and twists I didn’t mean to write, finding the best words and letting them go.
The Christian Quaker: George Keith and the Keithian Controversy, by Madeleine Ward
George Keith was an important early Quaker, but, as Madeleine Ward reminds us in this book, this fascinating Scot is little-known among modern Friends. Little-known and even worse understood: Ward implies that scholars have tended to get him wrong.
Fish tank
In an instant, every inch of existence lapsed. Small and infinite, my eyes gasped, sightless, nerves snipped, no sound passed through me. As if some greater one had tapped the glass, my being blinked. My self, more than my element, lacked notion, was a stillness beyond any sense of motion ...