Issue - 24 January 2014
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Thought for the Week: I was born light-filled
I was born light-filled. Becoming aware of the spokes of my new life, I reached out in wonder and grew along them, Filling them with feelings, Experiences, Knowledge And memories. They fascinated me and I turned with this wheel of my life, Adding to it and changing it, Becoming it,...
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How should we remember Buchenwald?
The city of Weimar is a cultural historian’s dream. It is chock-a-block with elegant, pastel coloured eighteenth century buildings in the classical style. There is the obligatory Schloss and along the cobbled streets are coffee shops offering a mouth-watering selection of cakes. Weimar is the cradle for German literature...
A metropolis of death
The story of Theresienstadt ‘ghetto’ or dystopic propaganda camp and of the deportation and murder of Jews from Czechoslovakia and elsewhere by the Nazis in Auschwitz is well known. Much less so is an extraordinary poem I Would Sooner Perish by a Czech woman of about twenty years old who...
Answering that of God in all
At a meeting last year in Brighton, to commemorate the Holocaust, I was sitting next to a Jewish solicitor and I told her that, although from a Jewish family, I was a Quaker. ‘But Quakers are anti-Semitic’, she declared. The debate over the boycotting of goods from illegal settlements in...
Creating a more peaceful society
Peace is defined as the absence of hostility – characterised by a lack of violence and aggression, both in the international community and within smaller groups in society. While international affairs are somewhat out of our control, it is our individual responsibility to live peacefully and to influence others to find...
Nurturing seeds in Scotland
‘Grass roots movements involve planting seeds. Those seeds are our own faithful lives’ Jane Pearn said in her report on Meeting for Sufferings to General Meeting for Scotland on 16-17 November. It was a sentiment that ran through General Meeting.
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Group buying power supports renewable energy
Friends House in London and thirty-seven Quaker Meeting houses have joined the Renewable Energy Group Buying Initiative (REGBI) scheme, which was launched on 16 January. The idea behind the REGBI scheme started at a local Quaker meeting. With the support of 2buy2 it has resulted in Meeting houses joining from...
Newtown report
A recently published academic report has revealed extremely high levels of student satisfaction at one of Ireland’s leading Quaker schools. The research was conducted at Newtown School, Waterford, by sociologist Joan Hanafin of University College Cork. It was entitled Educating for Life in the Quaker Tradition.
Poll favours remembrance
The British public strongly prefer a solemn remembrance of the lives lost in the first world war to a centenary commemoration that places a central emphasis on Britain’s victory in the war, according to a new poll.
Quaker Food Choice project launched
Quaker Concern for Animals has teamed up with Quakers and Business Group to launch a new project called Quaker Food Choice.
Eye - 24 January 2014
Knitting yarns Sheila Hancock is one of many Quakers to take up her knitting needles and purl for peace. Jaine Rose, organiser of the Wool Against Weapons campaign, paid her a visit: ‘She told us that she was on the original Aldermaston march in the fifties, as a...
Letters - 24 January 2014
Prayer and presence How lovely to read Lesley Morris’s account (10 January) of god being no respecter of time or place! Don’t I know it! And, for that matter, just trying to articulate something of experience of ‘the presence’! Lesley, you not alone: there are many of us and...