Culture Articles
Magical stories
The Tear Thief, The Greatest Gift and The Barefoot Book of Mother and Daughter Tales are three recent releases by Barefoot Books.
Meeting for Worship
I lug this great laundry basket to Meeting Filled with damp twisted bundles of problems, tasks and commitments, And I shake them out one by one and peg them on the invisible line.
Meanings
There he was, standing among them, and they were startled and frightened and thought they were seeing a ghost (Luke 24:36-7). The risen Christ was not a disembodied spirit, in Luke’s view: he had the flesh and bone of a physical man; he could be touched, he could eat...
The story of carols
The carols we love to sing, like Christmas itself, owe much to pre-Christmas midwinter rejoicings at having reached the shortest day – with the prospect of new growth and abundance to come. The many references, for example, in ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ to evergreens refer to the need to celebrate...
Words for the journey
On the face of it, if you want a verse for a corporate Christmas card, I’d be the last person to ask. The phrase ‘greetings card verse’ could sum up most things a serious working poet would want not to be. More than that, I’m a Quaker, and...
End of the roses, Quaker meeting
Her shadow on the carpet paler and paler, although no cloud has come over the sun; her hair thinner even than an hour ago when she was wheeled in. Although I did feel something coming over as I was arriving. It was the sky itself, a heavy silence, then this...
My life, my faith
Like many other Meetings, we wonder how we can get to know one another better. Every week after Meeting we drink tea together and talk. But there are lots of us and many things to attend to: meetings, rotas, you know the sort of thing. Then there is the important...
Making change happen
I approached this book with caution. I have read many books about ‘making change happen’ and been disappointed. Some consist of tortuously convoluted theories that fall to dust as soon as an attempt is made to apply them to the messiness of real-life struggles. Tim Gee’s Counterpower: Making...
Where does money come from?
Spiralling inequality, chaos in the financial world and the Occupy protests force us to engage with economics. Where Does Money Come From? - A Guide to the UK Monetary and Banking System is about money itself, a subject that has, surprisingly, received little attention and about which there is widespread...
Gerhard Richter: Panorama
Halfway round the Gerhard Richter exhibition at Tate Modern, I stop in my tracks and smile broadly at the wall. On it hang three massive paintings of an overcast sky, each flecked by a pale puff of cloud. Is this, I wonder, what the James Turrell skyscape in the refurbished...