Issue 29-07-2022
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Anger management: Chris Rose’s Thought for the Week
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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French connection: Anne M Jones takes her sewing kit back to Calais
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...
Seeing Iris, part four: Jonathan Wooding has more on a profound Quakerly thinker
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...
In the name of love: John Mason resists labels
‘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...
Friends support airshow protest
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’.
John Dee
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
Cotteridge Quakers have highlighted the ‘very urgent needs’ of foodbanks, saying that at their service there is ‘more food going out than coming in’.
Quaker peace education pack wins major prize
A peace education teaching pack, designed and produced by Britain Yearly Meeting, has been chosen by teachers for a major award.
Candidates for prime minister judged on defence and climate
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.
Friends resist reopening of Campsfield House
Quakers in Oxfordshire are campaigning against the reopening of a notorious immigration detention centre.
Listening as Quaker Practice, by James McCarthy
This little Kindlers book is a gem. It explores listening in depth from a Quaker perspective and draws on many Friends’ experiences.
Queer Holiness, by Charlie Bell
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.
Letters - 29 July 2022
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...