Issue 02-06-2023
Featured story
Machine learning: Alastair McIntosh’s Thought for the week
I’ve been really busy these past few weeks, and when I eventually peered up from the computer, my wife pointed to my shaggy locks, and ordered: ‘Off you go to Wilma’s for a haircut!’
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Body building: Linda Murgatroyd has a personal take on Quaker structures
At Yearly Meeting we were asked to consider our Quaker structures. We looked at Meeting for Sufferings (MfS), trustees, central committees, and Yearly Meeting itself. But in the sessions designated for discernment on these topics, it was striking that most of the ministry from the floor was not about structures....
BYM wins major campaigning award
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has won a major campaigning award, together with the other organisations that formed the Police Bill Alliance.
Food for thought: Martyn Kelly on flexitarianism
The word ‘flexitarian’, for a semi-vegetarian diet, only entered the Oxford Dictionary in 1998, and it was not widely used until at least a decade afterwards. The idea that it encapsulates, however, is as old as time. The food historian Pen Vogler has noted that, in medieval Britain, there were so...
Scree at Pendle Hill
i Metal pins heal warts, ground-to-cloud lightning strikes the summit, nightmares the yellow sun of St. John’s Wort might soothe, arthritic...
Meeting with approval: report from Ireland Yearly Meeting
We gathered in the Dominican Retreat Centre, in Tallaght, West Dublin. Tallaght was a small village in the 1950s, but has grown to be the third-largest town in Ireland. Máel Ruain founded a monastery there in 769CE, and it was a place of pilgrimage for a thousand years. The...
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QSA launches funeral poverty campaign
Friends are being asked to take photos of the front of funeral directors’ premises, if clear funeral costs are not displayed.
Friends fund Uganda health centre
Quakers have helped raise funds to build a village health centre in Butta, in eastern Uganda.
Public Order Bill becomes law
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has said that it will continue to work with others to protect and promote human rights, despite the ‘severe blow’ of the Public Order Bill, which came into effect last month.
Quaker Roots plans peace pilgrimage
A Quaker group preparing witness against a major arms fair this autumn is planning peace pilgrimages in the run-up to the event.
To the letter: Chris Holt of the The Prison Phoenix Trust
This year The Prison Phoenix Trust (The PPT), celebrates thirty-five years supporting the spiritual lives of people in prison. It was founded by volunteers and continues to be powered by them – including a significant number who are Quakers. At the heart of The PPT’s work is a deep trust...
75 Years of Stories: Caux 1946-2021, by Initiatives of Change Switzerland
This is a remarkable book of personal stories, all of which took place at the Caux Palace Hotel in Switzerland. In 1946 this 500-bed hotel was about to be pulled down. It had been a refugee centre through much of world war two, and was in disrepair. But 100 Swiss who were...
Eye - 2 June 2023
Eye spies a light Just as all times and seasons are sacred, so are all glimmers of light – no matter how big or small. So Friends, Eye invites you to share the glimmers of light in your life. Whether it be an act of kindness, a flowering bud, an inspiring...
Letters - 02 June 2023
Bullying I found that the letter in the Friend by Robin Waterston (12 May) spoke profoundly to my condition. My dear wife observed that I run away from conflict. Be that as it may, as a child the bullying magpies swooped down on me in the school yard unpityingly, and...