Issue 07-09-2012
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Shooting stars
I watch the night sky and my eye catches a shooting star, a streamer of light drawn across the face of oblivion. As it dies, it throws out its brightest light. A doomed, beautiful, inspiring image in my mind’s eye. Is that image enough? Is a memory enough?
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Peacework in Kenya
On a grey day in Lugari, twenty people have gathered to refresh their skills in campaigning using nonviolent principles. When they learned last year about plans for a dam downstream they were outraged to discover that it would flood the land and homes of about 50,000 people.
Portrait of a peaceworker
What is it that makes a peaceworker? More particularly, one for whom peace and nonviolence are such passionately held convictions that peacework takes over his entire life?
Quakers in the Canaries
It is always good to go home. My partner, David, and myself experienced just that feeling recently when we visited our Bournemouth Quaker ‘home’.
Seeing change happen
A nonviolence trainer said recently, ‘I went away for a few days, and when I came back, Occupy was happening at St Paul’s. I hadn’t seen it coming.’ Rosa Parks, a black woman who refused to move to the back of the bus, said, when asked why, â€...
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Cost of children highlighted
As parents face back-to-school costs, new research published by the Child Poverty Action Group, and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, details the costs of meeting the minimum basic needs of a child in 2012.
Pilgrimage for peace
Quakers are involved in plans to develop a major pilgrimage in 2013 that will focus public attention on the coalition government’s proposal to spend billions of pounds renewing the Trident nuclear weapons system.
Restorative justice at Chelmsford
Restorative justice will be the main focus of discussion at an ‘outreach day’ organized by Mid-Essex Quakers in October. The event, entitled ‘Forgiveness, Punishment and Reconciliation – an exploration of restorative justice’, will bring together an impressive line up of contributors.
Friends welcome light move
The phasing out of energy-guzzling light bulbs last weekend has been welcomed by environmentalists.
Lewes tapestry
A group of children at Lewes Meeting have produced a stunning tapestry panel of Quaker artist Edward Hicks’ famous painting ‘The Peaceable Kingdom’.
Thoughts from the moon
He stepped on the moon And saw to his delight, The planet Earth, blue and beautiful, Hung in the sky. It evoked weightlessness Held by miraculous magnetism.
Eye - 07 September 2012
Delightful discovery Eye’s literary challenge prompted Gerard Benson to write in with word of a warm, sympathetic portrait of a Quaker librarian in James Joyce’s Ulysses. ‘He’s quite a minor character but, like many of Joyce’s minor characters, beautifully drawn. He’s bald with large ears...
Letters - 07 September 2012
Punishment enough I was not surprised to read the story in Juliet Lyon’s article (24 August) about the young man trapped by his inability to read and write. However, for many the problems run even deeper. There is good evidence that sixty per cent of young offenders may have significant...