Issue 26-01-2024
Featured story
Thought for the week: Kate McNally on what love can do
I have lived for thirty-four years in the grace of my husband’s love. It’s unconditional but it still took me a long time to count on it. I believe that my husband has always loved me – not always my actions, but always me. I don’t have to...
Top stories
‘De-tribalising the mind’: Jonathan Doering reports on a ‘bread and roses’ project in Kenya
‘Compassion, to be effective, requires detailed knowledge and understanding of how society works… What is important is… that those who are concerned about these values be prepared to grapple with the complex realities of modern society as it is.’ Grigor McClelland in Quaker faith & practice 23.47 Kenya is lush, energetic,...
Quakers in court for DSEI witness
Eight Friends appeared in court last week for their witness at the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair in London last September.
Poetic synergy: Jonathan Wooding has more on the ‘Quakerish predisposition’ of William Wordsworth
If Friends were obliged to write a creed by which others (and we ourselves) might understand what we are up to in Meeting for Worship, I can plainly confess I wouldn’t mind hearing these words ring out of a Sunday morning: And I have felt A presence that disturbs...
Action plan: Mary Aiston prepares for Yearly Meeting
I had been to Yearly Meeting (YM) several times before I thought to ask: who sets the agenda for it? The answer is that the agenda is discerned by Yearly Meeting Agenda Committee (YMAC), a committee that does what it says on the tin, and of which I have now...
A bypass ticket online
Failing sight, loss of hearing, Sleepless night, muddled thinking Pad for leaks, dressings for ulcers And painful feet which can’t be mended. You don’t think about getting old. It won’t happen to you, not yet. Not yet, and when it does you think That you will go...
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BYM condemns UK/ US airstrikes in Yemen
Quakers have called on the UK government to use peaceful means to resolve conflicts in the Middle East, following the attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen.
‘Emotional tasks’ crucial for climate success, says Quaker
The social aspects of sustainability are crucial to progress in tackling climate change, a Quaker professor said last month. Yet around ninety per cent of funding – ‘certainly at the EU level’ – goes towards technological projects, not social ones, said Falmouth Friend Rosie Robison, in her inaugural professorial lecture.
Quakers co-create walking peace vigil
Friends joined a thousand people on a ‘Peace is Every Step’ walking silent prayer and vigil in London last weekend.
Gaza war emissions has ‘huge climate cost’
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM)’s peace and disarmament team has highlighted a study showing that the first months of the conflict in Gaza produced more planet-warming gases than twenty climate-vulnerable nations do in a year. ‘One of the lesser talked about calamities of the terrible war in Gaza and one...
Being Real: The apostle Paul’s hardship narratives and the stories we tell today, by Philip Plyming
Philip Plyming is the new cathedral dean up here in Durham. He is also new to publishing books: the last thing he brought out was a 2001 pamphlet called ‘Harry Potter and the Meaning of Life’. Now he is in charge of the cathedral where scenes in the boy-wizard film were...
Eye - 26 January 2024
Friends flocking despite floods Harvey Gillman, of Rye Meeting, admired the determination of Hastings Meeting after the recent deluge. He writes: ‘I attended Hastings Meeting yesterday [7 January]. The Meeting house has been flooded twice recently. Newspapers were scattered over the floor to dry it. ‘I had heard once in a...
Letters - 26 January 2024
Laying down of Q-CAT We are saddened at having to lay down Quaker Concern for the Abolition of Torture (Q-CAT), which has acted on behalf of Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) for many years, recently as a linked recognised body, but has now become unsustainable because of the low level of...