Issue 20-01-2023
Featured story
Spoilt for choice? Dana Smith’s Thought for the week
During lockdown, when human background noise quieted, the birds seemed more present. As I watched them tear through the sky, I pondered the mystery that calls starlings to pirouette in perfect murmurations. Like Quakers, they seem pretty non-hierarchical, rotating the role of directional change. The gatherings allow them to evade...
Top stories
Intensive care: Barrie Mahoney from the chemotherapy treatment room
Maybe it’s time to put your affairs in order?’ is a form of words with which many patients with a terminal diagnosis are familiar. It is intended to give the broadest possible indication to the patient that they have limited time left. I have witnessed these words being said...
Fighting talk: Tony D’Souza has a personal take on the war in Ukraine
Wars, like football matches, are often lost rather than won. But how do you lose a war? As it turns out, there are a number of ways.
Sound effects: Amanda Moore’s signal to noise ratio
When I first came to Quakers, and tried to imagine what ‘the promptings and leadings of the spirit’ might be like, I wondered whether I should be listening for a deep, bellowing voice. Before long, though, I discovered that there are other ways of communicating. Now, as I try to...
Call for debate into ‘military space race’
Quakers are supporting calls for wider public discussion into military expansion into space.
Home to the harbour lights
Across the ink dark oily sludge, It could not be called water, Surely not, Muck that flowed slow As treacle from the dented Tin in our kitchen cupboard,
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Call to ‘defend democracy and human rights’
There is a pressing need to defend our human rights this year, Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has said, as more anti-democratic measures are in the pipeline. Writing on the Quakers in Britain website, Grace Da Costa says that significant legislation brought to parliament this year includes the Bill of Rights...
Friend’s 500-mile walk for rainforest
A Manchester Friend is walking 500 miles in the next twelve months to raise funds for a lawsuit to protect Malaysian people from environmental exploitation.
‘Ubuntu’ agenda for 2024 World Plenary
Tim Gee, general secretary of Friends Worldwide Committee for Consultation (FWCC), introduced ‘Ubuntu’, the 2024 World Plenary theme, to London Quakers earlier this month.
QCEA study tour a ‘major success’
Quaker Concern for European Affairs (QCEA) has said that its latest study tour ‘proved to be a major success with more than twenty participants from all over the world’.
Quaker Shaped Christianity: How the Jesus story and the Quaker way fit together, by Mark Russ
All Quaker-shaped human beings should read Mark Russ’s book, please. Its title is intended to appeal, it seems, to Christians who are not Quakers and want to know why Quakerism has to be a thing at all. But it also serves to remind Christianity-phobic Friends that the ‘forgetting of...
Eye - 20 January 2023
Time to play It made Eye’s day when the first paper creation crafted from these pages appeared in the mailbag last week! Joanna Parker told Eye: ‘The proportions of the paper house in the 23 & 30 December issue of the Friend reminded me of the Meeting house at North Walsham,...
Letters - 20 January 2023
Refugees from Ukraine Each county in Wales was asked to find somewhere for refugees from Ukraine early in 2022 when the Russian occupation stepped up, and we were fortunate in Bangor that a university hall of residence could be made available. An existing refugee support group on Ynys Môn / Anglesey,...