Issue 05-09-2014
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Words Fail – but ‘Why?’
Words are but poor vehicles to convey the depths of human love; and I wondered –
Top stories
An independent Scotland?
Scotland’s referendum campaign has been both unexpected and protracted. Unexpected because it springs from the outright majority won by the Scottish National Party (SNP) in the Holyrood election of 2011 – in a parliament whose proportional representation system had been designed to deny any single party an outright majority. Protracted in...
Progressive Friends
Last year I spent three months at Pendle Hill near Philadelphia. One of the things that made that time special was encountering Chuck Fager, who was there undertaking research into a branch of American Quakerism called Progressive Friends. Chuck is known as a prolific, if sometimes controversial, writer on a...
Find the Light within you
Journeys in the Spirit, published by the Children and Young People’s team at Friends House, is a very useful set of ideas and resources for Children’s Meeting. One of their suggested plans listed Advices & queries 19 as a reference. I asked the children in my Meeting to read...
On being a banner in the wind
I am feeling torn. The image is of shot silk, rent so that the two colours scream apart, destroying the fabric that needs them meshed to spring to life, shimmer and shift in the light. ‘That’s head talk,’ he said. ‘You need to listen to your heart. Don’t...
World Quaker Day
The first World Quaker Day will take place on 5 October, the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) has announced. FWCC is inviting every Quaker Meeting and Church, wherever in the world, to celebrate the day. The hope is that World Quaker Day will promote unity amongst Friends.
All articles
First world war drama at Jordans
Jordans Meeting House in Buckinghamshire is the setting for a community theatre performance next week that tells the story of Friends in the first world war. ‘This production is about what Quakers did during the first world war and features those who fought, conscientious objectors and the Friends Ambulance Unit ...
Lobbying Act prompts decision at Friends House
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) trustees are being asked to decide whether BYM should register with the Electoral Commission as a non-party campaigner. The move is a response to the Transparency of Lobbying Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014. The Act requires organisations spending over a certain amount on campaigning...
Change in status for Q&B
The Quakers and Business Group (Q&B), formerly a registered charity, although unincorporated, has become a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO). The group stressed that the only difference members may notice is a new charity number.
Meeting houses open to public
Almost fifty Meeting houses are to open to the public next weekend as part of the annual Heritage Open Days initiative. Between 11 and 14 September, the public will be able to visit buildings ranging from the 300-year-old Meeting house at Rickfords Hill in Aylesbury to the brand new Kingston Quaker Centre...
The ‘P’ word
How do you pray? When do you pray? Who do you pray to? These are questions I have never dared ask other Quakers, nor been asked, until I went to our local primary school to respond to questions from children aged ten and eleven. Why are we so shy about...
Faithfully diverse
One of the challenges facing the Religious Society of Friends in Britain today is living with diversity. Other Christian denominations are facing that challenge in different forms. The Church of England is working out how to manage a life of worship and witness when one sizeable minority does not believe...
Letters - 05 September 2014
Mystical experience In Jan Arriens thoughtful consideration of Quaker belief (22 August) he emphasises our being a mystical Society and mysticism can cover everything from a simple sense of awe and wonder to a state of bliss. But for many years Quakers have underplayed this aspect of Quakerism. In the index...