Issue 22-04-2016
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Experience of ‘the Light’
Advice & queries number 5 urges us to ‘take time to learn about other people’s experience of the Light… As you learn from others, can you in turn give freely from what you have gained? While respecting the experiences and opinions of others, do not be afraid to say what...
Top stories
Assisted dying
In his poem ‘Aubade’, Philip Larkin writes of ‘the dread of dying, and being dead’. The poem’s tone is bleak. Religion is dismissed as a trick ‘to pretend we never die.’ What the poem does do, however, is address head-on the subject of death and dying. This is something...
God’s energy
I was struck the other day by a passage in Isaiah (Isaiah 55:8-13). The poet compares the ‘ways of the Lord’ with what at school I was taught to call ‘the water cycle’. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returns not thither, but waters...
Europe: A clear choice?
We are bombarded with what are supposed to be facts from both sides in the argument about whether Britain should leave the European Union (EU) or remain in it. It’s obvious that these facts are carefully chosen to back up that particular side’s case and, while each statement...
Gleanings: Higher Power
Living simply can be anything but simple. At the Britain Yearly Meeting Sustainability Gathering last month, Friends spoke of their dilemmas in cultivating low carbon lives; air travel to visit grandchildren is just one example. Many of our ‘needs’ are modern inventions. Until the 1960s most travel in Britain was...
Quaker Link
On a Saturday in March eight young people and four adult helpers gathered in Gloucester Meeting House for a one-day Quaker Link Group event. During the day we explored the two linked themes of ‘Refugees’ and ‘the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child’ through a variety of...
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The Bear
The night after I returned home from the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham, I dreamed about a polar bear. In the dream, the bear appeared at the edge of the Woodbrooke property, from the direction of the Bournville boating pond. It entered the grounds and wandered down to near...
Talking Trident
Trident was top of the agenda at a recent workshop organised by the Northern Friends Peace Board (NFPB) at Swarthmoor Hall, Cumbria. Eighteen people attended the event, which was facilitated by Tim Wallis, Quaker Peace & Social Witness peace and disarmament programme manager. The topic was ‘Having More Productive Trident...
Global executions increasing
More people were given the death penalty in 2015 than at any point in the last quarter century, according to a new report from Amnesty International on capital punishment.
Arms fair protest trial concludes
A London judge has dismissed charges against peace activists who blocked the road outside September’s Defence Systems and Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair. The eight activists argued that they acted to stop greater crimes being committed using weapons bought in the UK.
No ‘just war’ conclude Catholics
Participants at a ‘Nonviolence and Just Peace’ gathering held in Rome on 11-13 April have issued a statement declaring that they are ‘called to take a clear stand for creative and active nonviolence and against all forms of violence’.
Military spending questioned
The Global Day of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS) took place on 18 April. According to the Global Campaign on Military Spending UK, the United Kingdom is the sixth highest military spender in the world, with an annual budget of £45 billion. Global military spending in 2015 was €1,500 billion (£1,190 billion). This year, once...
Militarism takes centre stage in Yorkshire
‘The New Militarism’, a Quakers in Yorkshire event, took place at Huddersfield Meeting House on Saturday 16 April. The programme included a performance of Over the Top by Journeymen Theatre. The play was commissioned in response to the increasing influence of military values in everyday life.
Irish Friends announce divestment
Ireland Yearly Meeting (IYM) has committed to developing an investment strategy by January 2017 to ethically invest all of its funds in sustainable and peaceful companies, and to divest from destructive industries, including fossil fuels. The commitment was made earlier this month at Yearly Meeting in Dublin.
JRF announces new partnership
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has announced a new partnership with the University of Manchester. A new unit established by the two organisations will ‘promote inclusive growth in Greater Manchester’. The Inclusive Growth Analysis Unit (IGAU) aims to ensure that economic growth brings real benefits to disadvantaged people and places...
Letters - 22 April 2016
EU referendum It is not surprising that Quakers would tend towards ‘remain’ (15 April); after all, William Penn published his essay, ‘Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe’, in 1693. However, it is essential to know what the UK would actually remain in. The European Union is dedicated to political union,...