Issue 11-09-2015
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Refugee crisis
‘That which is morally wrong cannot be politically right.’ (A Quaker statement in 1822) ‘Quakers in Britain urge the UK government to welcome those desperately seeking a place of safety, in Europe, from the dangers in their own countries. In this urgent situation it cannot be right to harden hearts against...
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Christiana’s journey: A family of pilgrims
A husband leaves his family for a distant land in search of what he sees as salvation. Some time later, his wife receives an invitation to join him, and she decides to go, taking her four children and a young woman friend with her, despite all the entreaties of her...
Encountering suicide
There has been such a lot in the media about suicide recently. Robin William’s suicide was well-publicised and much talked about. Suicide has featured on many TV and radio programmes in recent months, including the very moving Channel 4 documentary The Stranger on the Bridge, in which Jonny Benjamin described...
Choosing to hope
I spent a good part of my childhood years in Tokyo and seem to have grasped the significance of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at a very young age. I am not sure exactly where it came from – whether it was having attended local schools with classes...
End of life matters
Dear Friend, This letter was written with courage, and comes with love; we urge you to engage with it. Here is some plain speaking on life, death, fear, love and truth. It is what we have been exploring, ten of us at a QDD gathering on ‘living with dying’. ‘From...
Meeting for Sufferings: Long Term Framework
Forward planning for the future work and witness of Friends was at the heart of Meeting for Sufferings held at Friends House in London on Saturday 5 September. Julia Gordon, clerk of the Long Term Framework working group, introduced the latest deliberations of the working group to Sufferings in the morning...
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Meeting for Sufferings: Vibrancy in Meetings
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) recording clerk Paul Parker and Sandra Berry, director of the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham, spoke about the Vibrancy in Meetings initiative. The joint BYM and Woodbrooke endeavour has been developing over several years. In 2012 ninety-nine Meetings took part in a research project aimed at...
Meeting for Sufferings: National Memorial Arboretum proposal
Friends from Southern Marches Area Meeting have proposed, in an Area Meeting minute brought to Meeting for Sufferings, that a ‘memorial to the innocent victims of war’ be created at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.
Meeting for Sufferings: QCCIR presents revised offerings
Further to minute MfS/15/02/11, the Quaker Committee for Christian and Interfaith Relations (QCCIR) brought a revised paper to Meeting for Sufferings. The committee hopes to send it to the World Council of Churches (WCC), and for it to be used as a study text for Meetings. Sufferings was asked to...
Meeting for Sufferings: Report on the work of QPSW
Quaker Peace & Social Witness Central Committee (QPSWCC) clerk Charlotte Seymour-Smith told Sufferings ‘how we do it is as important as what we do’. She explained that much of QPSW’s work is about the long term. She spoke of questions over QPSW’s geographical footprint and of the challenges...
Meeting for Sufferings: Credit unions
The number of people in Britain who live in poverty today and who do not have access to financial services has been a concern of Friends in Wales. In May Friends attending North Wales Area Meeting/Cyfarfod Rhanbarth Gogledd Cymru produced a minute that encouraged Friends to explore the possibility...
Meeting for Sufferings: News in brief
Handbook group laid down Sufferings approved a proposal to lay down the Meeting for Sufferings Handbrook Group. The group was set up in 2003 to revise and review the handbook. As this is not often required, group members felt that having a separate Handbook Group is not a sensible use of...
Quakers at Greenbelt
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) staff have just spent an invigorating few days at Greenbelt (28 to 31 August) meeting lots of people interested in Quakers.
An omnivore’s tale
I am a human being. Evolution has made me an omnivore, which means that I have a wide choice of things to eat – even though the climate and culture in which I live have restricted that choice to some extent. Some forty years ago, I realised that the world population...
Eye - 11 September 2015
Celebrating sixty in the saddle Mally Gower, a Friend from the Isle of Mull, is celebrating six decades with sixty toilets… and a 1,500-mile cycle ride! Mally’s tour will take in the furthest points north, south, east and west on mainland Britain, ‘with Land’s End and John Oâ€...
Letters - 11 September 2015
Vocal prayer In response to Metford Robson’s suggestion (21 August) it is perhaps helpful to quote from volume two of Thomas Clarkson’s 1806 A Portraiture of Quakerism: ‘If the minister engage in prayer, he kneels, [he had previously written that this applies to women ministers as well] and the whole...