Issue 06-01-2012
Featured story
Thought for the Week: A spiritual path for our time
This year is the tenth anniversary of the birth of Quaker Quest. It began as a tentative idea. Friends in London had a concern. A concern about the future of their faith. How could they ‘reach out’ to people, particularly the broad community of spiritual ‘seekers’, who knew nothing about...
Top stories
Reaching Out: Quaker Quest ten years on
As we travelled, we came near a very great hill, called Pendle Hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it… From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered....
Time without food
My stomach is grumbling. It is lunchtime on Wednesday. Nothing unusual about that except that, for the past few weeks, I have been fasting: once a week with no food between 6am and 5pm. Only water permitted. I have to push back my thoughts of eating lunch again.
Peace activist faces ASBO
A pacifist campaigner has been threatened with an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) by the Metropolitan Police. Chris Cole, a Roman Catholic peace activist from Oxford, has already served several prison sentences for offences committed in the course of nonviolent protests (see ‘More faith than hope’, 4 February 2011).
Court for census boycotter
An eighty-two-year-old Quaker is ready to go to prison over his boycott of the census. John Voysey, of Ludlow Meeting, has said he will refuse to pay a fine if found guilty. He will face magistrates on 1 February. A boycott campaign began after the government awarded the contract for...
Practising the Presence
There is a chamber of the mind prepared for me. When I am ready, willing to surrender. When I am quiet, I may enter there To find a place of stillness, a place already occupied By the light of the welcoming Presence.
All articles
Ministers ‘massaging’ aid money
Ministers have been accused of using ‘made-up money’ to meet their overseas aid targets. They plan to cancel a debt owed by Sudan and have said the money involved will be counted as aid. The Department for International Development made the admission in an email to Jubilee Debt Campaign....
Pioneering project in Uganda
A Quaker couple in Uganda have pioneered a new project aimed at tackling environmental problems and securing employment for disabled people. Mike and Liz Watson, of Skipton Meeting, moved to Uganda to work on health issues with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). After a two-year placement, they will return to...
Arms export guidelines broken
2012 will see UK ministers sending arms sales delegations to governments with a reputation for using violence against their own citizens. The arms wing of UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), the government’s export promotion unit, is planning missions to countries including Bahrain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Representatives will visit the...
Spiritual needs
In a recent Australian census, seventy-five per cent of the population put themselves down as religious believers, but only about fifteen per cent attended any kind of religious service on a Sunday. It is unlikely to have changed much. It seems that the great mass of believers is unconvinced of...
Driving safely
Most of us are road users and probably drivers too. So there must be a Quakerly approach to driving, where personal behaviour and actions on the road reflect the principles of nonviolence, simplicity, equality and justice.
Work: virtue or vice?
The protest outside St Paul’s Cathedral has raised the public’s consciousness of the inequalities of our present economic system, yet even the protesters themselves admitted that they had no solutions to the problem, nor does it seem has anyone else. Could it be, therefore, that there is no...
Eye - 06 January 2012
Dolls at Sibford A unique collection of dolls has found a new home at Sibford School near Banbury. The dolls, each dressed meticulously in accurate period costume, are part of a collection that was put together by Beatrice Saxon Snell, a Quaker who lived from 1900 to 1982. The dolls were used...
Letters - 06 January 2012
Population Elizabeth Hocking (11 November 2011) mentions ‘technological changes, possible economic collapse, the exploitation and destruction of the world’s resources and, above all, the explosion in population.’ Population gets occasional mention in the letters column, but rarely with any response. This is much the way that people in general react, but...