Most of us are understandably wary of drawing boundaries around what counts as being a Quaker, as any boundary risks excluding someone. Yet the absence of any shared understanding…
Early in Meeting for Worship a Friend rises to announce a death. One of our number has lost a son-in-law. We are asked to hold the family in the Light. Soon thereafter our Friend…
Recently on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, I heard Larry Summers, one of several US politicians urging the British to stay in Europe. It was thoughtful and heartfelt and this…
If the object of the exercise is to ‘Let your life speak’, then perhaps Friends might care to look for a suitable role model as inspiration? I have always turned to Albert…
The Friend carried an evocative report in the issue of 7 April 1916 that conveyed some of the effects of the battle of Verdun, which had brought a stream of refugees from the…
Advice & queries number 5 urges us to ‘take time to learn about other people’s experience of the Light… As you learn from others, can you in turn give freely from what…
We are bombarded with what are supposed to be facts from both sides in the argument about whether Britain should leave the European Union (EU) or remain in it. It’s obvious that…
In his poem ‘Aubade’, Philip Larkin writes of ‘the dread of dying, and being dead’. The poem’s tone is bleak. Religion is dismissed as a trick ‘to pretend we never…
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