Issue 07-10-2011
Featured story
Who are the ‘naughty people’?
The room was full of Friends from every corner of Britain. A gentle hum of voices had calmed to stillness. Meeting for Sufferings was settled. Worship began. The silence, after some minutes, was broken by ministry. A Friend revealed that she was a grandmother and had recently been...
Top stories
Strengthening Area Meetings
The role and ‘right holding’ of Area Meetings has been a concern for some time. The afternoon session of Meeting for Sufferings (MfS), on Saturday 1 October, was devoted to this subject. Paul Parker, recording clerk, opened the session with a short and clear presentation. He reminded Friends of the...
Government cuts
The government’s cuts agenda has come under attack from British Quakers, who have formally declared their opposition to the scale of the cuts and their impact on the poorest people in society. Friends have resolved to campaign against changes to disability benefits, to call for a greater contribution from...
Leeds Quakers going green
Friends in Leeds say that solar panels fitted on the roof of their Meeting house have already saved as much carbon as would be used by driving from Glasgow to Brighton and back again. The sixteen panels have been fitted on the roof of the Woodhouse Lane Meeting...
World Mental Health Day
As World Mental Health Day approaches, charities are warning that people with mental health problems in the UK will lose out as a result of government cuts and prejudice towards benefit claimants. The day, which is marked around the globe on 10 October, is an initiative of the World Health...
One city: One voice for peace
The days of rioting, looting and violence in August, which culminated in the killing of three young men in Birmingham – Haroon Jahan, Shazad Ali and Abdul Musavir – shocked us all. Surely there was going to be a violent racial backlash? But there wasn’t, largely because Tariq Jahan, Haroon’s...
All articles
Letters - 07 October 2011
Political engagement A part of my reason for looking again at the Friend is the history of my own membership of the Society of Friends. I am what used to be called a ‘birthright’ Friend, brought up on brave stories of resolution and championing of the right and the true,...
Playstation warfare
A man sits at a computer in Nevada, in the middle of America. He is British. He does his work, like millions of other people around the world, by operating a keyboard and mouse, looking at a screen. He will go home at the end of the day and spend...
Experiment with Light: New possibilities
The practice of ‘Experiment with Light’ is simple, which makes it all the more remarkable that it seems to have been largely forgotten. It is a matter of attending to our present experience of life so that we can move from there to a deeper and fuller experience of...
Spirituality and the everyday
One of the most powerful moments of feeling that I have experienced happened after I had completed a presentation on community gardening, life and space at an art gallery in the middle of England. The session was on refuges. I talked about small plots of land and what they...
Q-Eye - 07 October 2011
Bees and their keeper ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ Joan King of Bakewell Meeting, has reminded Eye of these famous words in Hamlet by William Shakespeare – and that life is sometimes full of surprises. She was recently very moved...