Issue 24-and-31-12-2021
Featured story
Thought for the week: Elaine Bright is beyond doubt
When and how do we move on? Over dinner with friends recently I acknowledged that I didn’t believe in a god. I thought it over on the way home: when did I move on from that belief? As a child I was christened and confirmed. I attended church every...
Top stories
Word to the wise: Tony D’Souza hears voices at Christmas
I am an old man now. My beard is white and the strength of my youth is long gone. There was a time when I bounded up the broad stone stairs of the temple two steps at a time, but now I can barely manage it in ten minutes – even...
It’s a wonder-full life: Bernard Coote on an end and a beginning
The words will be sung worldwide. The story told in every language. A story of wonder. Wise men from the East followed a star, presented gifts to a baby, then disappeared and were never heard of again. The question asked in their story – Who will this child be? – has intrigued...
On message: Stephen Feltham on our need for angels
About sixty yards or so in front of the great statue of the Angel of the North there are some objects by a hedge: an assortment of little angels, love hearts, crucifixes, crosses, snowflakes, ribbons, and prayers. They are remembrances.
Another journey
A hellish trip, that drag through rocks as blank as faces in a coma, for two such undertravelled, simplish souls. Their pathways glinted over carcases of hills like ribs picked smooth by vultures where dogs as daft as donkeys brayed the slightest scrape.
Quaker found ‘not guilty’ for DLR action
A Quaker was among five people on trial this month for action on the DLR railway in April 2019.
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Report reveals ‘appalling treatment’ at Napier
A cross-party group of politicians is pressing the government to end its use of Napier Barracks in Kent to accommodate people seeking asylum. The call was made in a report published this month, for which Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN) made submissions.
Llandrindod Friends help fund community kitchen
Llandrindod Quakers have donated funds to help set up a community kitchen for local food enterprises.
Socks for Wandsworth Prison
The Quaker chaplain at Wandsworth Prison has reached the target of 14,000 pairs of socks to hand out to men jailed there.
Quakers appalled by Human Rights Act ‘overhaul’
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has announced that it is ‘appalled’ by government plans to weaken the Human Rights Act, saying that the proposals are unnecessary and will undermine all our rights.
A man for all seasons: Martyn Kelly shares his view
Quakers don’t keep ‘times or seasons’. Except that, in the run-up to Christmas, someone invariably reminds us during Meeting for Worship that Quakers don’t keep times or seasons. So we sort of do keep them, if only to express Quakerly contrariness.
The arts, says Quaker faith & practice, can be seen as a ‘manifestation of God’.
Joseph Jones, editor, the Friend I haven’t been able to settle to online Meeting for Worship. Fortunately, as Horace B Pointing noted, ‘The revelations of God are not all of one kind. Always the search in art, as in religion, is for the rhythms of relationships, for the unity,...
Letters - 24 & 31 December 2021
Charitable donations At Christmas time, we try to send donations to charities that are of special interest to us, but sometimes feel quite overwhelmed by the number of unsolicited appeals sent to us over the course of the year, via the Friend and other very worthy sources. In this connection...