Issue 17-05-2013
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Flowing together
What is the reality of the culture in a typical Local Quaker Meeting in Britain today? What do the participants in those Meetings actually believe? These questions have puzzled me for a number of years and I have travelled widely amongst Local Meetings in an attempt to find the precise...
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Minute 36
For me the greatest challenge and opportunity in the Minute 36 Commitment are not the aspirations to sustainability or low-carbon, but rather that we aspire to these things as a community. Â Even as the Yearly Meeting 2011 was in session, it was clear that for some Friends the aspects of targets and...
The China Convoy: Looking back, looking forward
The Convoy’s thinning out along the road; Some of the best have left us on the way – We who remain must lift a growing load Of pain and grief as we go through the day. When our own journeys end we cannot say; We only know we never can...
Yealand Camp
Yealand has happened again. Again? East Cheshire Area Meeting (AM) has been running an event for ten to sixteen-year-olds at Yealand Old School for some sixty years – almost every Easter for four days. Some years there have been very few young people – once only four. This year there were twenty.
Lincoln and leadership
Abraham Lincoln had many qualities a Quaker would want in a leader: clear vision of what he sought to achieve based on ethical principles, combined with a sensitive and compassionate approach to the people he met. These qualities came out strongly in the recently released Steven Spielberg film, Lincoln, which...
Friends walk to celebrate 100 years of NFPB peace witness
Friends will be walking to RAF Menwith Hill to mark one hundred years of peace witness. The walk, from Saturday 29 June to Friday 5 July, is organised by the Northern Friends Peace Board (NFPB), which was founded in 1913. The walk begins at Richmond Castle, where the ‘Richmond Sixteen’, who were...
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Woodcraft Folk back campaign
Woodcraft Folk, the national children’s charity, has pledged to campaign to get the military out of schools. At their recent Annual General Meeting (AGM) the charity voted against military activities leading to recruitment of under eighteen year olds from within UK schools.
Kath Russell bows out at Woodbrooke
Delicious cakes and morning tea were on the table in the new Garden Lounge at Woodbrooke on Friday 5 May as Kath Russell, head of centre development at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham, said goodbye to staff and handed over to her successor, Darrell Farnsworth.
Reinventing QLGF
At the recent Spring gathering of the Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship (QLGF) Michael Hutchinson challenged members to focus on the future without forgetting the past.
Celebrating success
Quakers in Criminal Justice (QICJ) brings together those interested in various aspects of criminal and community justice in Britain today. Some forty-five members of the organisation, and others, gathered at the Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick, for our annual conference. The theme was ‘Celebrating Success in the Criminal Justice System’ and...
Sexual abuse: facing up to the truth
No names, just two friends who meet regularly - one a Quaker, one a Seventh Day Adventist - both committed to values of truth, equality and simplicity and living as sustainably as possible in our spent world. We are both victims of childhood sexual abuse and one of us, also,...
Eye - 17 May 2013
Inspired by worship Next Sunday, take a moment to rest your eyes on your gathered Meeting and ponder how you might capture the sense of the silence and the spirit in paint… or charcoal… or words… Artists in the Quaker Arts Network have done just that. The resulting 2014 calendar, entitled â€...
Letters - 17 May 2013
Protest vote? After the recent success of UKIP in our local elections, is anyone else worried about the size of the protest vote in this country? Given the right conditions, could the success of a protest vote sweep an unsavoury totalitarian party into power? Perhaps a line with the name...