Issue 30-09-2011
Featured story
Come home to within
Dear Lee I was touched when you told me last Sunday that, as you sat in your first Quaker Meeting for Worship a few weeks ago, you felt you had come home. Many of the early Quakers used to say to newcomers ‘Come home to within’ – it was William...
Top stories
Holding open the door
The way we connect with the world, telling our stories and striving to live out our testimonies, is deeply and inextricably connected to our own spiritual lives and the life of our Quaker communities. When we feel rooted and nourished in our spiritual lives and have a real sense of...
Quaker parenting
What are the specific differences in Quaker parenting compared to other parenting? For me, having been raised by Quaker parents and having experienced a wide range of Quaker events, the answer is entwined with being a Quaker: this involves living out testimonies and involving my own children in this. It...
Experiment with Light: Truth of the heart
Experiment with Light is a relatively new practice for modern Friends, but it is probably best understood as a recovery, or retrieval, of a very old practice. The retrieval It is widely assumed that Friends at the beginning, in the seventeenth century, must have done more or less...
A peaceful people
Really nice people who like silence,’ said Kay when asked what she knows about Quakers, ‘Oh, and pacifists.’ We chatted as she bought dinner at the Greenbelt festival. She was one of several people I spoke with, in a quest to discover what young Christians think about Quakers. Greenbelt,...
Service to others
… Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one. Quaker faith & practice 19.32
All articles
What we do and why we do it
The breakthrough came on 1st October 2010. It happened late on Friday afternoon, tucked away in a statement about the following year’s programme of work. Only a couple of dozen people were sitting in the Committee Chamber to hear the news, and few of those appreciated the effort that had...
Posters for peace
The Northern Friends Peace Board is dipping into a rich archival pool to mark its centenary next year. A calendar for 2013, which draws on a selection of several hundred posters from the Board’s collection, is the first in a number of centenary initiatives. Posters were one of the main...
Costing not less than everything
‘I want to see us living our testimony in such a way that other people think not just, “Quakers – peace” but also, “Quakers – peace – the environment”.’ Pam Lunn
Greenham Common: 30 years on
‘We are gentle, angry women and we are singing, singing, for our lives…’ ‘You can’t kill the spirit… she is like a mountain, old and strong, she goes on and on…’ These are words from just two of the songs that we sang over and over again...
Meeting at Glenthorne
We met in silence, the cows and I in the long wet grass, in worship they, ruminating I. They sat. I stood by the wooden fence that set apart the sprawling house from the winding path that climbed in awe to the passing clouds. Again I saw the hill I...
Being a Quaker: a guide for newcomers
There is a difference between ‘narrow’ casting and ‘broad’ casting. In the first you are talking to the converted. In the second you assume little and communicate your message in an open, inclusive and engaging manner. If you can do so with humour, humility and a touch of irreverence then...