Culture Articles
Stone soup
Some of my favourite people are hysterical Jews. I suspect that Jesus Christ was one. So, here’s the story of stone soup, told to me by a hysterical Jew who is a friend of mine. There was a war on. The invading army was beleagured and almost defeated. Their...
The silent cry
The mystic, I believe, is not a special kind of person; but every person is a special kind of mystic. Some people often suspect that mysticism is for weirdoes. On the whole the conventional churches of every faith do not like it, for it takes its authority not from church...
Chrysalis
The background for the early memories of Jane Simmons, the teen heroine of Chrysalis, Sue Parritt’s latest book, is the ‘swinging sixties’. Sue, who became a member of Bournemouth Meeting in Hampshire in 1967 at the age of sixteen and has worshipped with Australian Friends since 1970, has a strong Quaker...
A meditation
When you are speaking, I am: Reading between your lines; Listening beneath your words; Interpreting...
Images of Christ: Strength in weakness
Elisabeth Frink never employed any help modelling her characteristically vigorous sculptures of men, dogs, birds and horses. When asked why she rarely worked with the female form, she replied: ‘I have focused on the male because to me he is a subtle combination of sensuality and strength with vulnerability.’
Interview: Sally Nicholls
‘Kids love death and killing! They like the edges,’ says Sally Nicholls, the award-winning children’s author who is now based in Oxford. Born into a Quaker family in Stockton-on-Tees, she has been a lifelong storyteller. Her life connects the wider world with Quakerism: after Great Ayton School she attended...
…ac ’roedd yno freuddwyd / …and there was a dream
…ac ’roedd yno freuddwyd ’Roedd yno freuddwyd, yn llechu rhwng plygiadau tawelwch y cyrddau; dyhead am gael adnabod Cyfeillion o bedwar ban, dyhead am gael cyfrannu, fel Cyfeillion, i fywyd ein darn tir. Am gael gwneud hynny pe mynnem yn ein hiaith ein hunain. Am gael adnabod ein gilydd mewn...
Song of the small birds
Splitting up the land came first, then splitting the coal for the warmth it brings. But splitting the blue air is the worst, ripping the breath from living things.
Interview: Gillian Allnutt
As a poet, teacher and editor, Gillian Allnutt has been a clear, singular voice in British poetry since her first collection, Spitting the Pips Out, appeared in 1981. She followed that debut with other remarkable collections, her role as one of four editors of the controversial New British Poetry anthology of 1988,...
Dust to Dust
When the dust has settled, and battle it is o’er, What say ye then o’ sons o’ men? What say o’ bloody war? The earth is torn and ravaged, young bodies lie around, The cannon’s roar is silenced, And sullied is the ground.