Issue 21-12-2012 and 28-12-2012
Featured story
Thought for the Week: An ocean of love
County Donegal, located in the northwest of the island of Ireland, is in the province of Ulster. It is not, however, part of Northern Ireland. Donegal is in the Republic of Ireland. Remote, and far from the centre of power in Dublin, the county has suffered economically over the years....
Top stories
O little town
‘My children left for school and when they got home, there was this horrible wall, nine metres high,’ says Arlette. She stands behind the counter of her gift shop on the edge of Bethlehem. Were it not for the number of nativity sets, it could be anywhere in the...
Arctic reflections
Svalbard: one of the world’s last wildernesses, soon to be despoiled by humankind’s lust for material comfort. A land of exquisitely delicate flowers, which is still slowly rebounding from the last ice age, where animals have no fear of humans. The vast bulk of the glaciers, deep silence,...
Christmas gifts
Perhaps, like many Friends of a certain age – seventy plus – I have been fortunate to spend Christmas with younger generations of my family. I remain very thankful for this blessing and the joy it brings. Inevitably, one reflects back upon one’s childhood – in my case a working-class one – and...
Conscientious objectors
İnan Suver. Julián Fierro. Myungjin Moon. Three people who have refused to conform. Three conscientious objectors whose lives will always be affected be their decision to reject violence.
All together?
A Labour election poster from the 1930s shows four men standing on a ladder in rising floodwater. The topmost – his wealth indicated by top hat and tailcoat – turns to those beneath him whose coats are inscribed with their descending levels of income and says: ‘Equality of sacrifice – that’s the...
All articles
Inside out
Stars, candles, twinkling fairy lights, warm firelit glow – what exactly is it that gives this image its seasonal charge? Would it work just as well if the curtain were drawn? Through the window panes the night is dark, with a hint of snow – or is it moonlight – between the heavy...
Nativity
A fine rain was steadily, silently, falling: the kind of rain only known in places like the Lake District; the kind that can continue for hours, saturating the country and all who venture forth. It was silent; as silent as falling snow would be in another season. Maybe it...
Waiting
A cold time of year, a dreary gap between leafy trees, when after autumn burn-out, Europe, sterilised by freezing temperatures, erupts into odd festivities to keep the blood circulating. Wintertime and Christmas are an occasion for a kind of collective madness. October’s Halloween, followed with bonfires on Guy Fawkes’...
Balthasar
‘A cold coming they had of it’, Lancelot Andrewes, 25 December 1622
The faith
I need the Quaker faith, Need to hold onto the human race. I need to take a stand, Be a strong man.
The Journey of the Magi
It is December 1991. I am a sixth-form student enjoying my first year of A Level English Literature, delighting in a cornucopia of reading. As the Christmas holidays approach, I decide to treat myself to some wider reading and take out T S Eliot’s Ariel poems from my college library....
Eye - 21 & 28 December 2012
There once was a Friend who liked limericks, Inspired by linguistic mavericks, So he contacted Eye To inspire a wry Look at Quakerly topics. Thankfully Roy Payne, from Shropshire, has a defter touch than Eye and inspired a frenzy of rhythmic rhyming in the Friend office with his rib-tickling verses....
Letters - 21 & 28 December 2012
Sustainability I am grateful to Laurie Michaelis for his article on ‘Climate crisis and spiritual community’ (14 December). It has given me a better understanding of the different approaches to the spiritual dimension of the threat to life on planet Earth that Friends have expressed. The spiritual basis never seemed to...