Issue 21-01-2016
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Words and silence
For a group of people who value silence, and whose mode of worship is based on deep silence, we Friends do get hung up about words: ‘theist or nontheist’, God-language or none’ and so on. A word currently being thrown about with an aura of disapproval is ‘secular.’ I wonder...
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Letter from Calais
First, the less bad news. The refugee camp ‘The Jungle’, located on sand dunes beside a smelly chemical plant a few miles to the northwest of Calais, is teeming with volunteers. They are from France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, the USA, Poland, and England. There may be some from other countries,...
Be yourself
Jesus said: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the father but by me.’ Some take this to mandate the imitation of Christ as the only way to fulfilment and salvation, but I (being something of an ornery critter) take it to mean something...
A huge question mark
1916 was one of the bloodiest years of the first world war, with two major battles of attrition: Verdun and the Somme. We all see things from our own point of view and that point of view will reflect, among other things, our character, our experience, our upbringing and our culture....
Quaker Christmas Shelter
The overriding sensation on first arriving at the Quaker Christmas Shelter is one of bustle, of things getting done. It is evening and in the basement of Islington’s Union Chapel the focus is on getting the sleeping area ready. Volunteers and ‘guests’ carry fold-down cots into a large, bare,...
Leeds Quakers become ‘dementia friends’
Friends at Carlton Hill Meeting House in Leeds recently addressed the subject of dementia when a Meeting for Worship was followed by a training session on the condition.
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Friends mark centenary of Military Service Act
The centenary of one of the most significant moments for Quakers in the first world war is being marked next week with events at both Westminster in London and Holyrood in Edinburgh.
Lucky escape for Quaker Tapestry in Kendal
It is business as usual at the Quaker Tapestry Museum, despite the worst floods in Kendal in six decades.
Scottish affordable housing project wins award
An affordable housing project in Scotland that received support from the Quaker Housing Trust (QHT) has won a major community regeneration award. SURF, the independent regeneration network for Scotland, made the award to the Helmsdale Affordable Housing Project for ‘best practice in community regeneration’.
Churches to express solidarity with the homeless
Homeless Sunday 2016 will take place on 24 January. Organised by the charities Housing Justice and Scottish Churches Housing Action, the day is about ‘showing our concern for individuals affected by homelessness, challenging the conditions that create it, and celebrating work that tackles the problem’.
Kingston Friends mark museum loan
The installation at Kingston Quaker Centre of stained glass panels on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum will be marked by a ceremony on 4 February.
Public urged ‘don’t stand by’
The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2016, which will take place on 27 January, is ‘Don’t stand by’. The organisers, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said: ‘The Holocaust and subsequent genocides took place because the local populations allowed insidious persecution to take root. Whilst some actively supported or facilitated state policies...
Quakerism and Schubert
Quakerism grows on me. As I fast approach my eightieth year, and am continually intrigued and puzzled by life’s changing and challenging experiences, I relish its solidity all the more. Well, ‘solidity’ isn’t quite the right word – it’s a type of fluid, elastic solidity, a flexible dogma...
Poem: The Listening Walk
Brag, sweet tenor bull, descant on Rawthey’s madrigal. Basil Bunting, Briggflatts We straggle across a stubble field, tuned in to the rasp of straws, squeak-clunk of a kissing-gate, our own breath as we climb to a solitary oak, its bell of shade.
Letters - 22 January 2016
Dilemmas for pacifism Jim Graham writes of the dilemma that can face pacifists (8 January). I experienced this dilemma myself as a pacifist during the second world war. When the appalling atrocities of the Nazis were revealed you realised that the Allies were not opposing a mere Nazi ideology, but the...