Issue 20-01-2017
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Sacred agnosticism
As I grow older, I realise that I know less and less. Perhaps it’s a sign of age that you understand that the world will not change overnight, that glimmers of light may be the grace you are given – not the great illumination which will put everything into context....
Top stories
Sharing a different surplus
In Yearly Meeting 2015 an important theme was ‘sharing our surplus’. We talked about various ways of doing this: by contributing money, sharing a home, voluntary work for charities and in the community, and a range of other options. One of the odder possibilities was a different type of sharing: sharing...
Beyond borders
Coming to terms with the ‘Out’ vote in the recent referendum on Europe takes a while. And how are we left? Seventeen million Brits have revolted – bloodlessly, except for one tragedy for which we, as voting or non-voting citizens, all bear some responsibility. Jo Cox’s husband, the father of...
A sacred stand
‘This is not a place of protest, but a place of prayer’ Sioux elder, Standing Rock, North Dakota Many Quakers have been following a David and Goliath story in the United States that involves Native Americans who are guarding their land and sacred sites from the desecration caused by an...
A day of healing
Perhaps, as never before, what the world needs is healing. Everywhere we look we see sadness, sickness, tragedy, starvation, homelessness and conflict – add to that the damage to the environment and it would be impossible to deny that the world, indeed, needs healing.
Whanganui
It is twenty minutes past seven on a balmy New Zealand Monday evening. People arrive in ones and twos and slowly the hexagonal ‘quiet room’ fills with ‘settlers’, who sit in silence until the clerk of the week welcomes all. So begins the weekly management meeting at the Quaker Settlement...
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Quakers given award for pay transparency
The Religious Society of Friends has been recognised for its commitment to fair pay practices with the award of a Pay Compare Mark.
Kindertransport exhibition at Peace Museum
A new exhibition on the dramatic story of the Kindertransport opens at the Peace Museum in Bradford on Holocaust Memorial Day.
Holocaust Memorial Day
The theme of Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January is ‘how can life go on?’
Website outreach initiative
A new initiative that hopes to change the way information on Quaker websites in Britain is presented is being launched. Keith Walton, of Kingston and Wandsworth Area Meeting, is working with the Outreach team at Friends House to set up a group that will to gather input from Local Meetings...
Extreme caring
Dear Beryl,’ wrote a friend to the author’s wife, ‘I hear that you have been struck down.’ Beryl had suffered a stroke. Stuart Donnan, in his new book Extreme Caring – You Have To Go On, tells the story of the sixteen years that followed, through Beryl’s subsequent illnesses...
The Cause
There is a cause worth fighting for, its name is Truth and Peace, Not many care to join the fight, that would see suffering cease. For this would mean compassion, from hearts grown hard and cold, Many tales abound, of course, of those who reach for gold.
Letters - 20 January 2017
Quakers and Brexit Thank you Antonia Swinson for your excellent article asking ‘whose side are we on today?’ (6 January). It was clear to me that over the Brexit issue Quakers, being on the whole ‘comfortably off’, were out of touch with the real issues affecting those not comfortably off in...