Issue 24-03-2023
Featured story
Thought for the week: Gerard Guiton comes to Light
Some people imagine Quakerism as flickering to an end, like an old candle. Numbers are dropping and our membership is aging. Meetings are closing while others are riven by disputes. So, should we face ‘reality’ and let our Society die? Or try, somehow, to really renew it? If we opt...
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Classroom of peace: Jonathan Doering visits the Jewish-Christian-Muslim Conference
‘Where are the schools in which we learn how to wage peace?’ This question was posed repeatedly by Lionel Blue, the much-loved rabbi, spiritual leader, and broadcaster. Over fifty years ago, Blue made contact with Winfried Maechler, a pastor at the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Church in London. They soon made common...
Manchester Quakers hear about racism in the NHS
Friends in the north-west of England heard about racism in the NHS and the disproportionate impact of Covid on people of colour during the pandemic.
Good grief: Barrie Mahoney on the value of funeral planning
‘I don’t like funerals’ and ‘I don’t like hospitals’ are two comments that I often hear. They always make me cringe, and I always feel like responding with ‘Does anyone?’. But I usually manage to bite my lip and smile. It is a truism that none of us...
Eye - 24 March 2023
Another Quaker tale After reading a tale told by Beth Allen (10 February), Jonathan Silvey, of Beeston Meeting, wrote to share another ‘unQuakerly reaction’ with trusty Eye readers. ‘I am reminded, a good Quaker phrase, of a somewhat similar incident at a General Meeting of Friends from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, and...
Digital leader: Helen Johnson on worship at Woodbrooke
Few Friends would have been surprised by the news about the closure of Woodbrooke’s building. But all would have been saddened. After all, Woodbrooke is part of most Quakers’ experience and so, of course, we’ve all got our memories. I remember going there over fifty years ago: getting...
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Friends speak out against hike in military spending
Quakers have criticised the government for pledging to increase military spending by £11bn over the next five years.
London Quakers host ‘Climate Fresk’
Quakers took part in a climate justice gathering last month at Friends House in London.
Cockermouth Friends witness for peace for Ukraine
Quakers in Cockermouth held a vigil to mark the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine.
Quaker researches food and climate conversations
The Quaker and Eva Koch Scholar Naomi Richards has researched how ‘meetings for nourishment’.can facilitate conversations on the climate crisis.
General Meeting for Scotland: Carolyn Burch reports
As is now usual our Meeting was ‘blended’, with twenty-six Friends in Glasgow and almost fifty online. This was a high turnout and, though we still feel a pang at not all being together, we are glad that technology allows for the inclusion of Friends for whom home-based attendance is...
Comfort food? Robert Ashton visits an Anglican feast
An old French proverb says ‘bread and wine start a banquet’. With that thought in mind, I ventured to Blaxhall church to attend the monthly mid-week communion service. For Anglicans, taking the bread and wine is a spiritual banquet, but would I find it similarly nourishing? Although confirmed in my...
Battles of Conscience: British pacifists and the second world war, by Tobias Kelly
Making the choice to be a pacifist can never be easy, but being a conscientious objector (CO) in time of war must be much harder. In world war two, COs were generally treated with more sympathy than they had been in world war one, but their decision was often complicated...
First Friend
Fox by name, George by birth, Earth-Quaker elevated to silent spokesman caught in the fault line of a civil war. Let us live simply, a postscript Penn of beatitudes maintaining a silence towards slavery louder than fear of a good-god inhabiting the crucible colours hung on Calvary.
Letters - 24 March 2023
The future of Meetings I was very interested in G Gordon Steel’s article on the future of Meetings (3 March). His sociological analysis seems right, and his challenge to think outside the box is good, but which side of the box must we think outside of? Going to Meeting on...