Issue 12-07-2013
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Beyond words
For me, spiritual experience is that which reaches me from ‘beyond’ – beyond the physical, the intellectual and the emotional, and beyond words. If I am to communicate what I know, I have to use words, but I’m limited to the words that I, and any listener, will understand. This...
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Witness for peace
Our Quaker testimony to peace has been well proclaimed during the last hundred years by our Friends in the north. Northern Friends Peace Board (NFPB) is this year celebrating its centenary. Besides conferences, and the publication of resources for adults and children to explore issues of peace, it has marked...
Mental health in Meetings
The issue of how to support people in the way they want to be supported can be complex and challenging. Some years ago a birthright Friend, ‘John’, returned to Quakers following his marriage breakdown. He was taking medication for depression and had become estranged from his father, who was attached...
Travelling in ministry: Lifting up our tradition
There is a question that becomes evident as I travel in ministry among British Friends. The question is ‘Why?’ It might be surprising to Friends that the ‘Why?’ is not a lofty ideal that the voice of God said to go among British Friends! The answer seems pragmatic and subtle....
Meeting for Sufferings: Welfare cuts - A growing concern
On Saturday 6 July, Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) discussed a Quaker response to the welfare cuts in a session of passionate contributions from Friends who spoke of their ‘anger’, ‘despair’ and ‘frustration’. Welfare cuts were discussed at two previous MfSs but there was a strong sense that more needs to...
Meeting for Sufferings: Economy of life, justice and peace for all
Economy of Life, Justice and Peace for All is a ‘call to action’ produced by the World Council of Churches (WCC). It is ‘about recognising that the churches must be part of a movement for positive change’ referring back to the way the wider Christian church changed its stance on...
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Meeting for Sufferings: Friendly vibrancy
The vibrancy initiative is a joint initiative by the trustees of Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) and Woodbrooke. It is a process of exploration and development in several projects. A joint working group of trustees from both organisations had noticed some areas of common interest in the community that they...
Meeting for Sufferings: Regional Gatherings
Regional Meetings are being planned to explore and strengthen the relationship between Area Meetings (AMs) and Meeting for Sufferings (MfS). MfS Arrangements Group is offering to meet with regional groups of Friends to explore how AMs and MfS can best work together and share good practice.
Meeting for Sufferings: Refurbishment budget revised
At Meeting for Sufferings on 6 July, Friends heard a report on the minutes of a recent meeting of Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) trustees.
Meeting for Sufferings: 2013 operational plan
‘Close to poetry when they are good’, was how Jennifer Barraclough, clerk to Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) trustees, described operational plans, with 2013’s as a case in point.
Meeting for Sufferings: Long term framework
Who, what, how, when and where do Quakers in Britain want to be in the next five years? These questions are at the heart of the process of developing a vision that will eventually be presented in the Long Term Framework and were a focus for Meeting for Sufferings,...
Meeting for Sufferings: Yearly Meeting 2013
‘We spent three days living our individual testimonies in common, in community, groping our way to discernment through the mists and the shadows, believing the best of each other,’ said David Amos in his oral report on Yearly Meeting (YM) 2013.
The conversation club
Walking on broken glass? In the Meeting room? How often does this happen? This was the thought that prompted me to consider the newsworthiness of a recent event I attended at Doncaster Meeting house. The Doncaster Conversation Club had conjured up – the word seems appropriate – a spectacular offering for Refugee...
Whither your soul?
We can do little more in this life than speculate about the impalpable, nonphysical soul. I feel that it lies at the root of consciousness; a real dimension or attribute of life. I relate it to the permanent, vital, but mysterious energies from which we benefit, though we know little...
Eye - 12 July 2013
Getting to know you Helen Wilberforce, of Brigflatts Meeting, has taken a creative approach to getting to know her Meeting community better.
Letters - 12 July 2013
Bryant and May: the complexities Nick Matthews (5 July) encourages us to embrace cooperative values because Quaker businesses of earlier times ‘became the same as other businesses’. He highlights the matchgirls’ strike of 1888 to show that things could go wrong with Quaker enterprises even then. But I want to point out...