Issue 29-07-2022

Featured story

Anger management: Chris Rose’s Thought for the Week

FREE 28 Jul 2022 | by Chris Rose

In her recent article (‘Fire away’, 15 July) Moya asked ‘Has the spirit of early Friends entirely left us, or could it be rekindled?’ She recounted receiving an email from a local clerk signed ‘With love and rage’ and asked whether our respectable Society of Friends has lost contact with its â€...

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Top stories

French connection: Anne M Jones takes her sewing kit back to Calais

28 Jul 2022 | by Anne M Jones

‘The work is stunningly boring, but time vanishes in the company of cheery people.’ | Photo: by Pxhere

I began writing this piece a couple of months ago, and since then the environment for refugees and asylum seekers has become even more hostile. New legislation in the Nationality and Borders Act contains very concrete plans to deport some asylum seekers to Rwanda. The absence of clear planning around...

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Seeing Iris, part four: Jonathan Wooding has more on a profound Quakerly thinker

28 Jul 2022 | by Jonathan Wooding

‘Theology is political.’ | Photo: Ida Kar/National Portrait Gallery

In her 1987 novel, The Book and the Brotherhood, one of Iris Murdoch’s characters, Jenkin, finds himself playing the waiting game, anticipating change, though ‘in some way he could not yet determine’. He’s not ‘going over to God’ in any conventional way, no, but nevertheless something is dawning upon...

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In the name of love: John Mason resists labels

28 Jul 2022 | by John Mason

'Alice is simply doing what Love requires, acting because acting is possible and apparently needed. The label would never have occurred to her.' | Photo: by engin akyurt on Unsplash

‘Doing what Love requires’ and ‘Being led by the spirit’ are used to describe both an experience, and an assumption by an observer to account for observed behaviour. But when specific actions are described and labelled, the labels themselves can become imperatives, and can even be used as admonitions. Consider...

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Friends support airshow protest

FREE 28 Jul 2022 | by Rebecca Hardy

Farnborough protest, White Poppy Campaign

The Quaker Roots group supported protests at the Farnborough International Airshow last week. Friends joined activists at the Hampshire event, which the White Poppy for Peace Campaign called ‘an arms fair in all but name, providing multinational arms companies… with a means to display their products’.

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John Dee

28 Jul 2022 | by Bob Ward

John Dee performing before Elizabeth I. By Henry Gillard Glindoni (1852-1913)

What’s known as his ‘magic mirror’   is polished obsidian   that reflected his obsessive   probing the dark surface   for a glimpse of angels   harbouring divine secrets   drawn from all times past   and those even yet to come.

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Cotteridge Friends highlight food poverty

FREE 28 Jul 2022 | by Rebecca Hardy

Cotteridge Quakers have highlighted the ‘very urgent needs’ of foodbanks, saying that at their service there is ‘more food going out than coming in’.

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Quaker peace education pack wins major prize

28 Jul 2022 | by Rebecca Hardy

A peace education teaching pack, designed and produced by Britain Yearly Meeting, has been chosen by teachers for a major award.

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Candidates for prime minister judged on defence and climate

28 Jul 2022 | by Rebecca Hardy

As the Conservative leadership race heats up, Quakers have been sharing assessments on how the final two candidates – Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss – stand on defence and climate proposals.

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Friends resist reopening of Campsfield House

28 Jul 2022 | by Rebecca Hardy

Quakers in Oxfordshire are campaigning against the reopening of a notorious immigration detention centre.

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Listening as Quaker Practice, by James McCarthy

28 Jul 2022 | by Diana Lampen

This little Kindlers book is a gem. It explores listening in depth from a Quaker perspective and draws on many Friends’ experiences.

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Queer Holiness, by Charlie Bell

28 Jul 2022 | by David Wilson

Unlike many who hold forth on the topic of LGBT+ people and the church, Charlie Bell is eminently qualified to talk about it. He is a consultant psychiatrist and academic, and also a curate at a south London Anglican church.

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Letters - 29 July 2022

28 Jul 2022 | by The Friend

Reparations The concept of reparations seems to trigger some fierce responses among Friends. To an extent they mirror a wider national controversy over responsibility in the present for sins of the past. We weren’t personally involved in chattel slavery or the exploitation of empire; the British working class were...

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