Issue 08-08-2014
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Young voices
I am a Quaker because I like the sense of being part of a supporting community. I make lots of new friends and have lots of fun. I also like being quiet and listening.
Top stories
Being a Friend
The sun shone on the huge white tent and Quakers, who had descended from near and far, made their way into the largest indoor space British Friends had ever worshipped in. It was huge. It was dramatic. There was a sense of expectation in the air as Friends took their...
Yearly Meeting Gathering 2014
Swarthmore Lecture: Open for transformation
Ben Pink Dandelion of Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre gave this year’s Swarthmore Lecture at Yearly Meeting Gathering on Sunday 3 August. Speaking to a packed Big Top, Ben shared his thoughts on ‘Open for Transformation: being Quaker’. He began by pointing out that Friends already have the answer to what...
Quaker faith & practice
Yearly Meeting decided, on Sunday evening, to defer a decision on asking Meeting for Sufferings to begin the process of revising Quaker faith & practice. The session was introduced by Catherine James. She explained that every few years Quaker faith & practice was revised and described the book as a...
George Gorman Lecture: Equality
Equality was chosen by Jessica Metheringham, parliamentary engagement officer for Quakers in Britain, as the theme for this year’s George Gorman Lecture, which was delivered in the Big Top on Monday evening. Jessica told Friends that she had chosen to speak on equality as we are at risk of...
All articles
Art at Yearly Meeting Gathering
Commemoration events
Bearing light in commemoration The second full day of Yearly Meeting Gathering coincided with the one hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of world war one. Friends were able to mark 4 August in a number of ways. Light and darkness were at the heart of a very simple, creative and moving...
Special interest groups
Disability group concerns The Quaker Disability Equality Group (QDEG) held its annual general meeting (AGM) on Sunday 3 August. Afterwards, participants were asked what they wanted from their group. Some two dozen people were present. Suggestions were wide-ranging, but the key message was that QDEG and its work need to be...
Being a Quaker
Eric Bramsted’s reflections on culture, religion, identity and Israel (11 July) bear upon my own uneasy thoughts about what it means to be a member of the Religious Society of Friends today, and the unfortunate habit of excluding attenders from certain items of Area Meeting business. Membership was not felt...
From the archive: Should we form an ambulance unit?
Friends responded quickly, in August and September 1914, to the needs of wartime. One of the responses of which we are now proud was, at the time, contentious, as shown in these extracts from letters to the Friend. Philip J Baker, who became the first commandant of the Friends Ambulance Unit,...
Do-it-yourself media
When George Fox asked his famous question – ‘what canst thou say’ – I wonder if he was foreseeing the internet, for there has never been a development so perfectly moulded to that early vision. Although many Quaker activists long for a corporate voice on pressing social matters, personal, inner experience has...