Issue 19-08-2011
Featured story
When is enough enough?
‘Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; but, for that reason, it should be most our care to learn it.  We are too ready to retaliate, rather than forgive, or gain by love and information. And yet we could hurt no man that we believe loves us. Let us then...
Top stories
Riots: the challenge
The morning of 10 August brought phone calls from anxious friends in India asking ‘How are you?’ Are you all right?’ One caller is a Tibetan woman in Dharamsala. Once she had established that my family and I were not in danger she told me about the current suffering of monks...
Target setting
It was terrific to hear so many Friends ‘call to action’ at Canterbury in support of a lower carbon economy; but I was disappointed at the apocalyptic approach of many Friends there. I think this did more to harm, rather than support, the ‘call to action’.  Britain Yearly Meeting seemed...
Re-thinking Sufferings
The proposals of the Review Group on Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) and Yearly Meeting (YM) Trustees were presented and accepted at Yearly Meeting Gathering. The most substantial of these were the reduction of MfS from 179 members to 98 and the reduction of representatives from each Area Meeting (AM) from two (or...
Making the Quaker connection
‘Language bursts out of the silence. Creation emerges out of the void.’ Quaker writer and poet Sibyl Ruth penned these words in her script for a recent BBC Radio 4 programme on Quakers and poetry. She reflects on her experience of making the programme. I used to organise poetry readings. Iâ€...
All articles
Our shared future
‘When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; What is man that thou art mindful of him?’ A good question – not to mention the wonderful diversity of species and habitats with their intricate webs of networks and...
Epistle of Junior Yearly Meeting 2011
To all Friends everywhere: For JYM this year, 106 young people between the ages of sixteen and eighteen gathered for a sunny week in Canterbury from the 30 July to the 6 August as part of the Yearly Meeting Gathering of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain. We explored the theme â€...
Under 19s’ minutes
New Shoots (0-2 year olds) We have done an on-going picture minute of all we have done together. We’ve enjoyed toys, walks, songs, sleeps and lots of paint and sticking. Walks together with pictures under the willow tree were a highlight that let us keep cool.
Minute from the Young People’s Programme (11 to 15 year olds)
Throughout the week, we have had many different activities surrounding our theme of ‘Sustaining Ourselves’ (although this was broken down into a different theme each day: Sustaining Quakerism, Sustaining the Economy, Sustaining the environment, Sustaining our spirituality and Sustaining friendships) and also many non-themed activities to connect with one another...
Letters - 19 August 2011
Yearly Meeting Gathering Epistle I was shocked to read the words ‘We have not only inherited the earth from our ancestors: we have borrowed it from our children and from their children’ in the Epistle from Yearly Meeting Gathering. We have not inherited the earth. It is entrusted to us...
Eye - 19 August 2011
Scottish peace tree Quakers all over Britain were involved in commemorating Hiroshima Day on 6 August. Among the events that Friends in Scotland got involved in, Sue Bennett tells Eye, was the ‘Peace Tree’ displayed at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh. It was made by the Gareloch Horticulturalists, a group...