Issue 03-07-2015
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Tunisia
Last January my husband and I travelled to Tunisia for a winter break near Sousse. While the weather was colder than we had been expecting, the welcome was warmer. We took two tours to places of interest. The first was to the Bardo Museum, in Tunis, to see their wonderful...
Top stories
A reason to hope
As we approached the meeting place, the sky got menacingly dark. There, ahead, through the windows of the crammed public bus, I could just glimpse a white jeep, but couldn’t make out the emblem on the side to reassure us it was a vehicle from MIPAREC (Ministère Paix...
Gathering at Woodbrooke
To Friends everywhere, Loving Greetings, Srdečné pozdravy, kærlige hilsener, Hartelijke groeten, Lämpimin terveisin, salutations affectueuses, Liebe Grüße, Szeretettel köseöntzük, Calorosi saluti, Hjertelig hilsen, Serdecznie pozdrawiamy, сердечный приветвие, saludos cariñosos, kära hälsningar, Beannacht dé oraibh, salut amics, salamu za upendo This year’s...
Set her free
It was a warm sunny day with, as one speaker said, the winds of change preventing it becoming stifling. The women inside Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre near Bedford normally find their confinement there, indefinitely and with little judicial oversight, just stifling. Many are victims of sexual oppression, rape...
Gleanings: Living with diversity
When religions engage with sustainability, they often start by revisiting scripture. Christians and Jews may refer to Psalm 24, which asserts that ‘the Earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof’. Quakers have found much in the writings of early Friends to support a connection with nature and a duty...
Pedalling the Kingdom
The telephone rings one afternoon: ‘Hello, Jonathan. This is Lucas. I’m a peace pilgrim from Holland…’ Unable to contact our Local Meeting clerk, who is away visiting family, Lucas has tried me, and asks if I might be able to provide a bed for the night. A small favour,...
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God and Allah
When I was nine we went to live in Egypt. I was lucky, being the daughter of a journalist, as I had already travelled a lot. I liked languages and foreign places. I started school in Cairo, made a few friends, and heard the call of the muezzin from the...
Friends promote peace at military celebrations
Quakers across Britain marked Armed Forces Day, 27 June, by expressing their commitment to peace in a variety of ways. Members of South East Scotland Area Meeting produced a leaflet to distribute in Edinburgh. They handed it out during a parade and military ‘entertainment’, Jane Pearn explained to the Friend.
Blue Idol doors open once more
The Blue Idol Meeting House near Coolham, West Sussex, re-opened on 27 June following extensive renovation. One hundred and twenty guests attended the celebration, including actress Sheila Hancock, and local members of parliament Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) and Jeremy Quin (Horsham).
Friends celebrate London Pride 2015 in the sun
Friends turned out in strength for London Pride on Saturday 27 June. Central London Quakers were joined by members of a number of Meetings, including Glasgow, Golders Green, Kingston, Oxford, Richmond, Sutton, Watford, Westminster and Winchmore Hill. Before the parade, some twenty Friends gathered for a Meeting for Worship in Paddington...
Refugee Week
Doncaster Quakers and the Northern Friends Peace Board, among others, support a weekly club for refugees and asylum seekers –the Doncaster Conversation Club. The Conversation Club celebrated the recent Refugee Week with a five-a-side football tournament.
Friends in fracking protest
Quakers were among those protesting on 22 to 24 June against the Cuadrilla energy company’s plans for fracking in Preston, Lancashire. Pat Carney of Cambridge Jesus Lane Meeting told the Friend that while there was no formal Quaker representation at the protest, she was ‘cheered that individual Quakers turned up out...
Call for equality continues to resonate
Twenty-seven Friends met at Central Manchester Meeting House on 20 June to review the first Quaker Equality Week. Area Meetings represented included East Cheshire, Hardshaw and Mann, Lancashire Central and North, Manchester and Warrington (M&W), and North Wales. Suzanne Ismail and Maya Williams of Quaker Peace & Social Witness ...
Being Christian
Rowan Williams, in his book Being Christian, has some thought processes and ways of articulating his religion that are alien to someone with my scientific background. I found it, however, a fascinating and sometimes amusing work that contains a clever juggling with ideas. In my teens I was a born-again...
Mykene
Summer morning come heat on the wine-field and the lizards crinkle understone. In olive groves cicadas chirr and the blunt lion-gate lies open to the horde. Those hills opposite were purple in the dawn, now fragments in a heat like...
Eye - 03 July 2015
Sing a song of Basil A song on a recently-released album has been inspired by Quaker poet Basil Bunting. Mark Knopfler, who first found fame with Dire Straits, has spoken of his inspiration for the song ‘Basil’, which appears on his new album Tracker. ‘I was about fourteen or so...
Letters - 03 July 2015
Militarisation It was good that the BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme on 28 June drew attention to the new Quaker film challenging the government’s promotion of a military ethos in schools, The Unseen March. But I thought both the speakers missed a crucial point. At the heart of militarism is the...