Issue 08-09-2023
Featured story
A gallery of icons: Dana Smith’s Thought for the week
Sunday morn: our faces are poured through space and time. Some of these Zoom bodies are located in kitchens, or front rooms looking outwards; others sit, eyes closed in front of panoramic heavenly backdrops of valley, hill and sky. Somehow these points of light, these million colourful pixels, constitute something...
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On your bike: Anne M Jones joins the Big Ride for Palestine 2023
The P word is an inflammatory one. P for Palestine. Using it in conversation provokes defensiveness and verbal ping-pong, with ‘tit for tat’ tones. These conversations are often based on an inadequate understanding, and fruitless. Our media doesn’t help here: information about daily events in Israel and the Occupied...
‘T-shirt memorial’ against gun violence
One US Quaker Meeting has highlighted the victims of gun violence by organising an unusual roadside display.
Odessa Cathedral, July 2023
The rash of wounded cities spreads across the map; I walk Odessa in my mind once more, to join a festival of loss, of torn-up friendships in a poisoned land. Into this sacred space we came together with knees which faithful bent, with lips which kissed the antique ikon of...
Senior Conference 2023: Aidan Ashcroft & Aspen Stopard-English
‘From 19-26 August we gathered at Sibford School for fun, friendship and spiritual growth. Through speaker sessions and time as a community, we explored “Simplicity and Sustainability in an Unequal World”. We grew in our appreciation and understanding of the complexities of the world around us, and where we fit...
A Secular Age (2007), by Charles Taylor, and God’s Funeral (1999), by A N Wilson
There is a (probably apocryphal) story of a meeting between Napoleon Bonaparte and Pierre-Simon Laplace, the astronomer and physicist, in 1802. Napoleon comments that he has heard that Laplace has written ‘a large book on the system of the universe’ without mentioning God at all. Laplace’s cool, perhaps even dismissive,...
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BYM petitions PM on right to boycott
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) staff joined others to hand in a petition at 10 Downing Street urging the prime minister to scrap the anti-boycott bill.
Friends remember Peterloo Massacre
Friends were among a gathering to mark the 204th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre last month. The event on 16 August marked the moment in 1819 when over 60,000 peaceful pro-democracy and anti-poverty protestors gathered to call for democracy but were met with brutal attacks.
Horsham Friends hear ‘Refugee Tales’
The Illegal Migration Act has made it even more pressing for the volunteer community to pull together, Horsham Friends heard last month.
Joan Baez campaigns for AFSC
Joan Baez, the renowned folk singer and activist, is raising funds for American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) ahead of a new documentary about her life.
Quaker Rainbow reaches gold: Rob Francis reports
September 7 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of Friends Homosexual Fellowship (FHF), now known as ‘Quaker Rainbow: Friends LGBTQ+ Fellowship’.
Eye - 8 September 2023
Celebrating seventy-five years The Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) represents Friends at the United Nations, and has done for seventy-five years! At an event in June to mark this anniversary, Sarah Clarke, QUNO’s New York director, said that: ‘Quakers have consistently served as Ambassadors for Peace. In that effort...
Letters - 08 September 2023
Faith and patience Beth Allen’s ministry (25 August) about her recent experiences of losing her husband and going through cancer treatment spoke deeply to me. I have not lost my husband but have seen him suffering loss of strength and many medical problems and having to manage without two important...