Issue 13-05-2022

Featured story

Body language: Ian Wright’s Thought for the Week

FREE 12 May 2022 | by Ian Wright

A Quaker friend and I were talking recently when he reminded me that our communion in coming together in Quaker Meeting for Worship is held by us all, in stillness and silence as we sit around. I had spoken to him about a visit I had made over Easter to...

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By the way: Jacquetta Megarry puts together a guidebook for Quaker walkers

12 May 2022 | by Jacquetta Megarry

‘Our goal was to create a route that includes key sites on Fox’s journey, which walkers could complete without cars.’ | Photo: Pendle Hill

It began with a phone call on 30 August 2019. Carole Nelson, indefatigable Quaker and owner of the Sleepy Elephant outdoor shop in Sedbergh, had somehow got hold of our number. Would we be interested in a publishing a guidebook to a route that celebrated the journey made by George Fox in 1652?...

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Working wonders: Neil Morgan says Friends should pay attention to Marilynne Robinson

12 May 2022 | by Marilynne Robinson

'She draws our attention to the numinous world of the very ordinary, and invites us to explore its depths.’ | Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Marilynne Robinson’s writing is the literary equivalent of Marmite or Bovril: you love it or you hate it. Robinson, a US writer and academic, came to notice with her first novel Housekeeping, (1980) and earned a Pulitzer Prize for her 2004 novel, Gilead, about an aging pastor’s letters to his...

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Travelling hopefully: Barrie Mahoney recounts a profound and personal Quaker journey

12 May 2022 | by Barrie Mahoney

‘Why do I need an intermediary in my relationship with God?’ | Photo: by Robert V Ruggiero on Unsplash

We celebrate our fifty-year anniversary next week! So it was over fifty years ago that I met my partner, lover and best friend, David, when we were both studying at teacher training college. Looking back over the years, I recall difficult times for gay men and women, and conclude that...

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Quakers lead musical protest against HSBC

FREE 12 May 2022 | by Rebecca Hardy

Shortly after AGM began, a flash mob of singers interrupted HSBC chairman Mark Tucker’s speech by singing a revised version of Abba hit ‘Money, Money, Money' | Photo: Friends at HSBC, courtesy Julia Bush

A Bristol Friend led a peaceful protest against the bank HSBC demanding that it stop fossil fuel investment. Quaker Jo Flanagan took part in the musical protest targeting the institute’s annual general meeting (AGM) on 29 April. Quaker Julia Bush told the Friend: ‘HSBC is the world’s sixth biggest...

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Peace

12 May 2022 | by Voirrey Faragher

'The peace lily in my bathroom has one white flower: it bows down like a white flag.'

The peace lily in my bathroom has one white flower:           it bows down like a white flag. We have not known peace,             do not know its contours, its colours, whether it is shaped like the earth, like the sky...

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Friends pledge $500,000 in slavery reparations

FREE 12 May 2022 | by Rebecca Hardy

A US Quaker Meeting has said that it plans to give $500,000 as reparations to black neighbours over the next decade.

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Quakers work to house more refugees

12 May 2022 | by Rebecca Hardy

Quakers have been asked if they can sponsor a seventeen-year-old boy from Ukraine. A trusteee of the Friend, Peter Kennedy from Aberdeen Meeting, put out the call in the Edinburgh Quaker newsletter Terrace Talk. He said: ‘I have been asked by a friend of mine, Debra Storr, to see if...

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Quakers discuss plans for George Fox’s 400th birthday

12 May 2022 | by Rebecca Hardy

Friends came together last month to share ideas on how Quakers can celebrate George Fox’s 400th birthday in 2024. The co-founder of Quakerism was born in July 1624 in Drayton-in-the-Clay in Leicestershire.

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Friends rally for ethical investment

12 May 2022 | by Rebecca Hardy

Quakers have said that the government is trying to silence the ethical investment movement with a controversial ‘anti-boycott bill’.

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Heart of the possible: David Brown is awakened

12 May 2022 | by David Brown

The experience of the divine is sometimes described as an awakening of the heart. Within Quaker history, one of the most touching descriptions of this is by Isaac Pennington, who says: ‘At last, after all my distresses, wanderings and sore travails, I met with some writings of this people called...

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Letters - 13 May 2022

12 May 2022 | by The Friend

Compassion I read Clive Ashwin’s article about compassion on 15 April. I agree that compassion is ‘an attitude of mind’ but suggest that it is not found in formal structures but in the daily round of relationships we engage in. During lockdown, there was a huge, informal, spontaneous coming together...

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