Issue 17-02-2012
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Moral leadership
What kind of a society do we live in? What kind of a society do we want to live in? Are the salaries, for example, that are being paid to people in different sectors in ‘right relationship’ to the kind of society in which we wish to live?
Top stories
The cost of cold weather
Cold weather has combined with government cuts to make life harder for some of Britain’s poorest people. That was the message from Quaker Social Action (QSA) as parts of the UK experienced several consecutive nights at sub-zero temperatures.
John Voysey pleads not guilty
An eighty-two-year-old Quaker has pleaded not guilty to breaking the Census Act, saying he has a right to freedom of conscience. John Voysey, of Ludlow Meeting, refused to complete the census after the contract for running it was awarded to a division of multinational arms firm Lockheed Martin (see ‘Court...
Broken or working fine?
We hear that directors of FTSE100 companies had a pay rise of forty-nine per cent last year. Quakers are among many who question whether our current economic system, with its increasing inequality and instability, ecological destructiveness and promotion of superficial materialist values, can really be redirected towards a just and...
Grace in Hitler’s Germany
‘We must learn to regard people… more in the light of what they suffer.’ These words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian who died at the hands of the Nazis, first appear somewhat morally forbidding. However, Friends who find Bonhoeffer’s legacy over-facing, or who do not identify...
Quakers and creation: Unity with the creation
George Fox offers a startling description, in his journal, of his experience of spiritual transformation: All things were new and all the creation gave unto me another smell than before, beyond what words can utter.
All articles
Settling
Not quite silence but on the other hand the ambient sounds diminish –
Stillness
In a world that is always rushing, it is hard to be still. I find it hard to pause on a woodland path just to look at the patterns in the leaves, or to be calm and focus my mind on a piece of paper to create a poem, a...
Keswick Meeting goes solar
Friends in Keswick are celebrating after installing environmentally friendly panels on their Meeting house. The photovoltaic cells were fitted in December – ahead of the deadline.
Hexham debates
Hexham Debates, which seek to carry on the tradition of active radical debate essential for ensuring freedom and justice for all, will be hosting a variety of meetings organised by Northumbrians for Peace and Hexham Meeting during the coming months.
Eye - 17 February 2012
A song of living Many Friends are prompted by articles in the magazine to remember special moments or words from their lives. Patsy Robinson writes to Eye about her mother, Edna Eglinton, of Exmouth Meeting, who read the article ‘Are we afraid to die’ (3 February) and remembered a lovely poem...
Letters - 17 February 2012
Are we afraid to die? Further to Jill Allum’s interesting and challenging article (3 February), over ten years ago I carried out a survey of members and attenders of Norwich and Lynn Monthly Meeting on attitudes to death as part of a part time masters degree carried out after I...