Issue 28-09-2012
Featured story
Thought for the Week: The Quaker Way
In the seventeenth century, particularly after the English civil war, small groups of ‘Seekers’ could be found throughout England. They were people who had become disillusioned with the established church. They had not, however, rejected religion. Far from it. They were a people who sought spiritual nourishment.
Top stories
Why am I a Quaker?
Isn’t it interesting how controversial the ‘I’m a Quaker: ask me why?’ badges seem to be! Some of us seem to find it so difficult to give a positive response to the question. More generally we often make negative, rather than positive, statements when asked what Quakers believe,...
Of bath water and plastic ducks
Coming to Quakers quite late in life I am constantly struck by how many people, like myself, have reached this place by a rather circuitous route. Coming home Some of those journeys will have taken in membership of one or more other churches, time in the wilderness and...
Posters for peace
The Northern Friends Peace Board is dipping into a rich archival pool to mark its centenary next year. A calendar for 2013, which draws on a selection of several hundred posters from the Board’s collection, is the first in a number of centenary initiatives. Posters were one of the main...
The ecology of the heart
Sometimes you hear a phrase that enables you to reflect on experience, which, otherwise, seems quite elusive. Listening to the radio the other day, I was shaken by the words of a Hindu guru who spoke of ‘the ecology of the heart’. Ecology is a system of life forms...
Speaking truth to power
Speak truth to power From an American Friends Service Committee pamphlet, 1955 This phrase has become a cliché in the political lexicon – so much so that it is no longer specifically identified with Quakerism. Many Quakers themselves, I suspect, would be unsure whether it is a Quaker phrase or one...
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Deep within
There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. At one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and...
Visions of the young
I am a Quaker because I was inspired, moved and fundamentally changed due to spending time with a group of articulate, passionate Quakers. These Quakers just happened to be young people. I became involved in Quaker youth work as a part of my Theatre and Psychology degree fifteen years...
When less is more
One evening three women were sitting in a riverside garden, drinking white wine and enjoying a comfortable conversation. Then one asked an awkward question: ‘Why did you marry your husband?’ The right answer was obvious – ‘Because I was madly in love’ – but none of us chose to give it, finding,...
Living more simply
What would your next step be? Here are some ideas about getting rid of the clutter that gets between us and God, or our essential selves.
Singing streams and star stuff
From earth’s wide bounds From ocean’s farthest coast Through gates of pearl Streams in the countless host, Singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost Alleluia, Alleluia! I can remember singing ‘For All the Saints’ when I was about five or six. Certainly, it was before I had...
Time for climate action
When Britain Yearly Meeting committed to become a low-carbon, sustainable community in 2011, we committed to ‘speak truth to power’. We recognised that our sustainability crisis is deeply linked to a crisis in our global society and economy. Building a sustainable society, therefore, requires us to also work for change beyond...