Issue 16-01-2015
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Nobody’s fault
It is a truth universally acknowledged that, in the Latin, contingit stercore - which is most decorously translated as ‘bad things happen’. Now, it is equally true that when some notable event occurs human nature, being what it is, seeks an explanation. When bad things happen we naturally look for...
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Quakerism
It was followed by fifteen minutes of silent worship and then everyone in attendance sang the song ‘Simple Gifts’. The Union Chapel hosts the Quaker Christmas Shelter each year. Thank you for inviting me to speak today and, much more importantly, for allowing Quaker Homeless Action to use the excellent...
Solidarity
In my career as a journalist, I have riled people. At The Elmira Independent in Canada and at the Friend I have published and written things at which people have taken umbrage. Especially when you are engaged in satire, people can take offence. Of course, it is right that those...
Let them eat gold!
Christmas and the New Year holiday season is a time when the stark contrast between those who have and those who have not pricks the conscience of most of us, if only fleetingly. It may be the homeless man on the street or the woman outside the supermarket begging for...
‘A Clerk’s Progress’
The Story so far: The Clerk has set off on a Journey, seeking one Modest yet Momentous Minute. Protected by the Mantle of Mindful Ministry against the dreaded Rhinoceros of Right Ordering, she has already traversed the Desert of Desperate Decision-Making, and now contemplates the Ocean of Organisational Upheaval. Accompanied...
Eco Award for South Belfast Meeting
South Belfast Meeting has won an Eco-Congregation Ireland award, in recognition of its commitment to the environment. Kate Fletcher and Megan Corrigan accepted the award on behalf of the Meeting on 7 December.
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Solidarity with France
Falmouth Quakers held a Peace Vigil at 2pm on Sunday 11 January, to coincide with the unity march in Paris. ‘We stand in solidarity with the people of France’, Falmouth Meeting elder Andrina Cossey told the Friend.
Homestore hits twenty-five
Quaker Social Action (QSA)’s Homestore project has marked its first quarter century. Friends and supporters gathered at the Stratford showroom in London on 14 December to celebrate with stories and a short film.
Exhibition shows Quaker response to war
A major exhibition on the Quaker response to the first world war opens on 17 January in Birmingham. ‘Faith and Action: Quakers and the First World War’ will be on show in the Community Gallery at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until 7 June. Original photographs, film, interviews and artefacts will tell...
Drone base breach
Four protesters were arrested inside RAF Waddington on 5 January. They were campaigning against the continuing use of armed drones.
New director for Ecocentre
Michael Addison has been appointed director of Northfield Ecocentre, a Central England Area Meeting project in Birmingham. Michael will work three days a week from 23 February, heading a team of six paid staff and ten volunteers. His initial priority will be to develop a new Ecocentre strategy for the next...
There were shepherds
The account that we get in Luke 2: 8-20 is the Jewish version of a magical birth story – no magi or Arabian spices, but shepherds on the hills around Bethlehem.
Happier people healthier planet
Happier people healthier planet by Teresa Belton is a fascinating book that took me a lot longer to read than I expected. It is, a bit like Quaker faith & practice, a book that few would, I feel, want to read from cover to cover in a sitting. I think...
Eye - 16 January 2015
Two haiku A haiku is a traditional Japanese three-line poem with seventeen syllables. Moments in Meeting have inspired Maureen Jewell, of Blue Idol Meeting, to turn her hand to this centuries-old poetic form. The two haiku are ‘thoughts on our continuing pilgrimage away from the Blue Idol, after eighteen months...
Letters - 16 January 2015
Ministry In their article ‘Secret worshippers’ (12 December 2014), Tony and Jane Robinson seem to decry Meetings in which there is no spoken ministry. ‘Some Meetings we left after hearing no ministry at all.’ Surely that should be ‘after hearing no spoken ministry at all’. Did they not hear the silent ministry? â€...