Issue 01-07-2022
Featured story
Eye light: Dave Dight’s Thought for the Week
I’ve always been interested in nature, vision and visual art, especially the depiction of light. I named the elder of my two sons ‘Jan’, after Vermeer, whose treatment of light is masterly. Later, after hearing Quakers talk about ‘the Inner Light’, which I take to refer to brain-states, I...
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Getting hitched: James Priestman is taken for a ride
The number of Friends in the UK is declining. Information about the Quakers tends to be passed on by word of mouth or social media, which means that it tends to be communicated to people who are known to existing Quakers and therefore similar to them. By contrast, the early...
Icons: Martyn Kelly sees the bigger picture
The problem with religious icons is that, stripped from their context, they are rarely iconic. The stiff poses, unnatural perspective and ancient subject matter mean little in a modern secular society. But an Orthodox believer will stand in front of an icon and decode it immediately. Each one represents a...
Handshaking: Anna Levin misses the finishing touch
It’s a joy to be returning to Meeting in person after these Zoom years. In our family we use different words for it: ‘actual Meeting’, ‘real Meeting’, or ‘3D Meeting’. We’re greeted with humour as we all adjust to this new dimension: ‘Good Lord, you’ve got legs!’
The Difficult Conversation, by Journeymen Theatre
This play was commissioned by Quaker Concern Over Population, and visits a whole raft of pressing issues. Dave and Lynn Morris, the authors and performers, write: ‘This play is not able to provide answers to the complex environmental changes we are now seeing and the adaptations our children and grandchildren...
Brigflatts Meeting honours 1652 ‘great gathering’
Brigflatts Meeting held an open air Meeting for Worship (pictured) on Firbank Fell to honour the birth of Quakerism.
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Quakers oppose repeal of Human Rights Act
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has said that it will oppose new legislation to repeal the current Human Rights Act – on the grounds that it would weaken human rights for everyone in the UK.
‘This should concern us all,’ says AFSC
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has spoken out against the US supreme court’s overturning of the landmark Roe v Wade ruling which made abortion legal in the US in 1973. Saying that the new ruling ‘should concern us all’, the AFSC put out a statement declaring that it ‘unequivocally...
Quaker values for new cohousing in Cornwall
A Quaker specialist in community living is helping to set up a new cohousing project in Cornwall based on Quaker testimonies.
Quaker handshake new logo for peace charity
Quaker Henry Hodgkin is reflected in the new logo of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) (England and Scotland), a Christian movement for peace that he founded in 1914.
Counting the cost: Alison Mather on alcohol pricing
Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) for alcohol is designed to target the cost of high-strength, cheap products such as white cider. These are the choice of the most vulnerable drinkers, so MUP is a preventative measure.
Poem: Quaker Meeting
This is the time when we climb up God All of us on one rope, silent and looking up, Struggling through darkness to light…
Letters - 01 July 2022
Zoom Anthony Gimpel (17 June) was pleased to be back in his Meeting place, as I am sure everyone would prefer to be, but for some people it is not possible. While Zoom is not exactly the same, it is of great value for us. He felt that it did not...