Issue 22-03-2013

Featured story

Thought for the Week: A quiet power

FREE 21 Mar 2013 | by Jonathan Doering

It is my first Quaker Meeting. Driven by a need that requires that I look elsewhere than conventional church services, I have spoken to relatives who have attended Meetings over the years. ‘It’s really peaceful,’ comments my brother, ‘But you need to have your own reserves. It can be...

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Top stories

Faith in conflict

21 Mar 2013 | by The Friend Newsdesk

Coventry Cathedral is hosting an ecumenical conference: ‘Faith in Conflict: Finding better ways to handle conflict in the church’.

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Speaking truth to power

21 Mar 2013 | by Judith Niechcial

'We are of the view, like many of the British public, that the carrying of such weapons for any purposes of “general deterrence”... is completely unwarranted' | Photo: Photo: robmcm / flickr CC.

One day last August, during the Olympics, my husband and I were walking through the low and narrow tunnel at Victoria underground station that leads from the booking hall to the District and Circle line platforms when we were astonished and shocked to see, walking in the opposite direction, two...

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Life in the country

21 Mar 2013 | by Terry Wood

Terry Wood reflects on a January walk. | Photo: Photo: Su-May / flickr CC.

I live in a village in east Kent and am happily retired. I take a walk, daily, of four miles into the surrounding countryside, with our two dogs and a pair of binoculars. I am an enthusiastic bird-watcher and an ecologist.

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Gretchen Castle at Rome inauguration

FREE 21 Mar 2013 | by The Friend Newsdesk

Gretchen Castle leaving Indiana for the Papal inauguration. | Photo: Photo courtesy of FWCC.

Gretchen Castle, general secretary of Friends World Committee for Consultantion (FWCC), attended the inauguration Mass of Francis I on 19 March.

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African tribe mourns Quaker archaeologist

21 Mar 2013 | by The Friend Newsdesk

Bronze Igbo Ukwu pendant. | Photo: Photo: Ukabia via Wikimedia Commons.

A West African tribe is mourning the death of a Cambridge professor and Quaker who was their honorary chief.  Thurstan Shaw was a world expert on the archaeology of West Africa, whose research into the Igbo people of Nigeria led to them making him their Onu n’ekwulu ora –...

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All articles

Rowntree Foundation austerity project

21 Mar 2013 | by The Friend Newsdesk

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has embarked on an ambitious £512,000 project to highlight the impact of public spending cuts and government policy changes on poor people and communities in the United Kingdom.

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Nobel nominations sought

21 Mar 2013 | by The Friend Newsdesk

The closing date for Quaker nominations for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize is 1 May.  In 1947 the Prize was awarded to Quakers worldwide for the work they had done, particularly relief work, between the two world wars and after the second world war.

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‘Big Bang’ fair criticised

21 Mar 2013 | by The Friend Newsdesk

The executive director of Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR) has criticised the recent four-day ‘Big Bang’ science and engineering fair in London for its weak ‘ethical perspective’.  The Fair was launched in 2009 and is the largest event of its kind in the UK. It is designed to attract young...

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The Last Runaway

21 Mar 2013 | by The Friend Newsdesk

The latest novel by award-winning writer Tracy Chevalier is set in a Quaker settlement in Ohio in the mid-1850s.  Tracy Chevalier grew up attending Quaker summer camps and her sister and stepmother joined the Religious Society of Friends. ‘I never did’, she explained in a recent interview with...

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Experimental living

21 Mar 2013 | by Jeni Edwards

Over the past two years I have been privileged to assist in the birth of a phoenix. Rising from the ashes of the original community at Bamford, which disbanded after more than twenty years of creative existence, has come a new vision and a new way of working. It is...

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A ‘virtual Area Meeting’

21 Mar 2013 | by Lucy Pollard

A few days before we were due to hold our January Area Meeting (AM), the forecast was for heavy snow. We cover, in Ipswich and Diss, quite a wide geographical area: many of our members and attenders live in the more rural parts of it. Like other AMs, we have...

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My life, my faith

FREE 21 Mar 2013 | by Rachel Rees

Like many other Meetings, we wonder how we can get to know one another better. Every week after Meeting we drink tea together and talk. But there are lots of us and many things to attend to: meetings, rotas, you know the sort of thing. Then there is the important...

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Eye - 22 March 2013

21 Mar 2013 | by Eye

John Myhill, of Norfolk and Waveney Area Meeting, has been a busy bee and approached Eye with an offering of ‘something entirely different – for all those Quakers looking for a book to read perhaps!’ A baker’s dozen of Quakerly quotables…

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Letters - 22 March 2013

21 Mar 2013 | by The Friend

The clutch: a metaphor Having driven a car for many years without really understanding the clutch mechanism, I was interested to read Noël Staples’ article (1 March) and found myself thinking that it was a metaphor on life itself. ‘Friction ceases when you take your foot off the pedal… The...

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