Issue 09-12-2011
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Quaker business method
One-upmanship, adversarialism, having the last word, getting the upper hand. All these destructive tendencies are commonplace in our daily lives – in the workplace, at Westminster, on the streets and in our interactions with authority and commerce. We live in a culture which has been made mistrustful through fear of...
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Lessons from Zambia
A young Zambian girl sits on the ground, asking questions of her grandfather: ‘What was the weather like long ago’? ‘Kale kale (long ago), the rains arrived in October’, he says, ‘Now they often don’t come until November or even December’. ‘But what can we do?’...
Gerhard Richter: Panorama
Halfway round the Gerhard Richter exhibition at Tate Modern, I stop in my tracks and smile broadly at the wall. On it hang three massive paintings of an overcast sky, each flecked by a pale puff of cloud. Is this, I wonder, what the James Turrell skyscape in the refurbished...
Love thy neighbour
Well, they founded Marks & Spencer, Burtons, and the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency. They designed the Millenium Dome (Richard Rogers), and they include Albert Einstein and the Freud family (Sigmund, Anna, Clement and Lucein). Dorking and area Quakers, with Churches Together in Dorking, discovered this whilst investigating the...
How you share it
‘The people demonstrating on the steps are Quakers. They say that everyone suffers when we have millionaires on the one hand and homeless have-nots on the other. For the richer countries, what should count is not just how rich you are, but how you share it out. More equal countries...
Meeting for Sufferings: Meetings asked to measure carbon emissions
An important decision has just been taken to help Friends not only ‘talk the talk’ on climate change but to take positive steps to ‘walk the walk’ in addressing it. Quaker Meetings around Britain have been asked to measure their carbon emissions. The request follows a decision by British...
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Meeting for Sufferings: News in brief
Meeting for Sufferings Arrangements Group The terms of reference for the Meeting for Sufferings Arrangements Group were presented as they needed to be updated. The assistant recording clerk is now called the ‘deputy recording clerk’ and a change in the way members were appointed was explained. The changes were approved.
Where does money come from?
Spiralling inequality, chaos in the financial world and the Occupy protests force us to engage with economics. Where Does Money Come From? - A Guide to the UK Monetary and Banking System is about money itself, a subject that has, surprisingly, received little attention and about which there is widespread...
Eye - 09 December 2011
Friendly frolics at Friends House Counters clacked, paper crackled and dice were spilled. Was this really the Quaker Centre? Yes, it was their first ‘games evening’, an opportunity to experience two new Quaker games. The first was ‘Journey Home’, a board game designed by Andrew Connolly and Jennifer Kavanagh, based...
Letters - 09 December 2011
Quietly praying for peace For the past eighteen months, Slough and Windsor Meeting has held a mid-week Meeting for Worship once a month in a public room of a centrally located bar. We had hoped to attract people unwilling to come into our Meeting house. A very small number have...