Issue 20-06-2014
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Trapped
‘Why me?’ is, ultimately, a futile question, which dominated forty years of my life. I’m not quite fifty. The grief of being born into a body heavy with cerebral palsy offered plenty of scope for self-pity. Though the first alarming signs of suffocation at birth suggested I would need...
Travelling, music and faith
Not long ago I had a holiday travelling in Denmark and Sweden. During this time I realised that there is a great similarity between my enjoyment of making journeys and the enjoyment of listening to music. More recently I have realised that this similarity also has something to say about...
Standing in this place
Aotearoa New Zealand Yearly Meeting was held at Kiwi Ranch, Curious Cove, South Island, a sheltered narrow bay accessible only by small boat. We had tall inaccessible cliffs behind and the Queen Charlotte Sound in front, with an ever changing sky above us. We had wild pigs and deer among...
Take action!
What is happening in your life and the life of your community that shows witness to our testimonies? These words were written in the Tayside Quaker this spring. The Dundee Urban Orchard (DUO), although not an official Quaker project, is a direct response to the question: ‘How do we...
Plain speaking needed
We should celebrate the first same sex weddings, but we need to look beyond our own noses. While the campaign for equal love has made progress in the West and Latin America, around the world there is a savage backlash. This is fuelled by those claiming to speak for...
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Teenage girls get new start
Vulnerable teenage girls are to be helped by a largely Quaker-funded project that has just been opened in Tamworth. Quaker Housing Trust (QHT) trustee Jeffery Smith presided at the official opening last week of Home-Start Tamworth.
Friends celebrate landmark prison Meetings
A group of American Quakers has just marked forty years of Meetings for Worship at the Auburn Correction Facility in New York state. The Meetings, which were the first in the state prison system, began in 1974. They started at the request of prisoners who had met Quakers already involved...
Good Chicken Award
Friends House Hospitality has been awarded a Good Chicken Award by Compassion in World Farming (CiWF). This award recognises the steps that the company have taken to ensure that all the fresh chicken Friends House uses meets minimum welfare criteria. This is the second award they have received from CiWF,...
Peacebuilder exhibition travels
This Light that pushes ME, an exhibition on African peacemakers that recently graced the walls of Friends House, has been on display at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, which took place in London between 10 and 13 June.
New Zealand Friends to disinvest from fossil fuels
Quakers in Aotearoa New Zealand agreed at their recent Yearly Meeting to withdraw funds from the four main Australian-owned banks because of their investment in fossil fuels. Aotearoa New Zealand Yearly Meeting also agreed not to make future investments which profit from fossil fuels. Local Meetings, committees and trusts...
Olympic rower joins staff at The Mount
Olympic silver medallist rower Gillian Lindsay has been appointed by The Mount School in York as their new director of sport and wellbeing. Gillian was a national champion in the single scull at thirteen and went on to become world champion in 1998. She has competed in three Olympic Games...
Only a Signal Shown
Garnishing a love story and the lives of the characters within it with some personal experiences, Leela Dutt’s Only a Signal Shown is an enjoyable, emotional journey. This journey starts with a burnt marmalade-basted chicken. Eleanor and Alec share the results of his limited cooking skills and both...
Eye - 20 June 2014
Dancing for Peace Paintbrushes have been wielded for peace in Pembrokeshire. ‘Muddied soldiers from the grim trenches; the bright flower of Hiroshima; drones being tested over the summer beaches of Aberporth…’ These are just some of the canvases that are appearing in the new ‘Dancing for Peace’ exhibition....
Letters - 20 June 2014
A solution for eastern Ukraine? The Russians in the Ukraine are afraid. The economy has failed, the previous president was seen as too close to Russia and so, in many eyes, the Russians are to blame. History instructs us that when an economy fails a minority community is picked on,...