Issue 14-08-2015

Featured story

Thought for the Week: All life is sacred

FREE 13 Aug 2015 | by John Myhill

For me a foundation of Quaker faith is the idea that there is no division between the sacred (spiritual, meditative, religious, sacramental) and the secular (material, busy, atheistic, mundane). Quakers aspire to live and have their being within the sacred. Thus we are all priests. We abolished the laity, not...

Read more

Top stories

Modern day slavery

13 Aug 2015 | by Rebecca Fricker

‘Slavery and Liberation’ was the theme of the North East Thames Area Meeting All Age Gathering held in April. The weekend covered the history, current situation and role of the Quakers in slavery and was led by Quaker, and co-founder of charity Free the Slaves, Kevin Bales. During the weekend...

Read more

Human rights

13 Aug 2015 | by Jan Sutton

The Human Rights Act (1998) stems from the European Convention on Human Rights (1950). This Convention was set up after the second world war in order to ensure that never again would such atrocities be committed by a state against human beings. The European Convention on Human Rights includes the right to...

Read more

Changing lives in Bolivia

13 Aug 2015 | by Denise Gabuzda and Chris Stotesbury

Three student residents of the Internado with their parents and younger siblings. | Photo: Courtesy of Denise Gabuzda.

It is easy to forget that the education of children beyond the age of eleven is relatively recent in the British Isles. Free, compulsory education up to the age of twelve was introduced only in 1899. In the late nineteenth century all children had access to a ‘primary’ education, but children...

Read more

Listening to trauma

13 Aug 2015 | by Andrew Lane

In June Charles Tauber reached twenty years living in Vukovar, a town near the Croatian-Serbian border. Vukovar was devastated by violent conflict during the Yugoslav wars of the early and mid-1990s. About 3,000 were killed or went missing, and 22,000 civilians fled the town as refugees. Charles was a GP in...

Read more

Lanterns and reflections

13 Aug 2015 | by Ken Veitch

Lanterns on the river in Hiroshima. | Photo: Florence Nobuko Smith / flickr CC.

I t was morning, ‘going to work and school time’ when the nuclear bomb detonated 2,000 feet above Hiroshima city centre. Two and a half miles away, thermal radiation was twenty times greater than that of the sun. The blast wave travelled the same distance in ten seconds. Some 80,000 people died...

Read more

All articles

Hiroshima and Nagasaki remembered

13 Aug 2015 | by Tara Craig

Friends, and others, gathered across Britain on 6 August to mark the seventieth anniversary of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. More than 200 people attended an interfaith service at Friends House in London. Readings were given by representatives of a number of religions.

Read more

Friends mark Hiroshima anniversary in Coventry Cathedral

13 Aug 2015 | by Tara Craig

Coventry Quakers marked the seventieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a service for all faiths or none in the Chapel of Unity, Coventry Cathedral, on 6 August.

Read more

Friends back Charities Bill change

FREE 13 Aug 2015 | by Tara Craig

The Quaker Housing Trust (QHT) has endorsed an amendment to the Charities Bill. QHT has joined other housing groups in backing a House of Lords amendment to the Bill. This will protect social housing homes under threat from government plans to extend the right-to-buy scheme to include housing associations.

Read more

Leaveners partner hosts writers

13 Aug 2015 | by Tara Craig

The P Café in Stirchley, Birmingham, recently welcomed a group of poets from the Leaveners’ ‘Poets’ Corner’ project. Poets and volunteers came together to learn new writing techniques. They ranged from beginners to experienced writers.

Read more

Young Friends plan record-breaking Meeting for Worship

13 Aug 2015 | by Tara Craig

This month, for the first time, participants in Friends Southern Summer Events (FSSE) Senior Conference and Junior Gathering will hold a joint Meeting for Worship.

Read more

Friends share nominations practices

13 Aug 2015 | by Tara Craig

Fifty Friends gathered recently at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham for the first nominations conference. Participants were drawn from a number of groups concerned with nominations at the Yearly Meeting level. The groups represented included the Nominations Committee, the Committee on Clerks, and the Yearly Meeting Nominating Group. Members...

Read more

Whither goeth the bus?

13 Aug 2015 | by John Anderson

It is not just because I am deaf that I think ‘afterword’ is a very bad idea. I do not know how widely this practice has been taking hold in Britain Yearly Meeting as a whole but it has certainly spread like a rash in our neck in the woods....

Read more

Gnosis?

13 Aug 2015 | by Elizabeth Angas

Bits of Truth come as Certainty. Where do they come from? Is that Gnosis? Does Certainty come via Intuition? A Knowingness that its Guidance is from the Holy Spirit? Yes, a certainty that it’s a bit of Truth.

Read more

Eye - 14 August 2015

13 Aug 2015 | by Eye

A memorable path A seaweed labyrinth made an impression at a recent gathering. Scarborough Meeting House hosted the Quarterly Meeting of Quakers in Yorkshire on 18 July.

Read more

Letters - 14 August 2015

13 Aug 2015 | by The Friend

Be still and know God I have meditated for some years on this verse from Psalm 46:10. To start with, the whole verse: ‘Be still, and know that I am God’ and often reflecting slowly and deeply on each word in turn and joining them up as I went along until...

Read more