Issue 26-01-2018
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Godself
‘Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong’. Ephesians 3:16 (The Jerusalem Bible) ‘That of God within us’ is a precious Quaker affirmation. God is not above, beyond, and outside, but at work within, inside us: a seed...
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Neglect your spider plants!
The Meeting I usually attend is relatively big and receives a large number of visitors. Often we are asked to donate funds to support other, smaller, Meetings that find it difficult to maintain their activities. This raises at least two questions: are there other ways in which we can support...
Peace Museum hosts CND anniversary exhibition
An exhibition marking the anniversary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) opened at the Peace Museum in Bradford on 12 January – sixty years after the organisation was founded.
Art the Arms Fair to return
The highly successful Arts the Arms Fair is to be repeated in September 2019 to coincide with the next Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair, the Friend can exclusively reveal.
New England Quakers remember Mary Dyer
New England Quakers celebrated Religious Freedom Day last week (16 January) by paying tribute to Mary Dyer, a Quaker hung in Boston, Massachusetts, for her religious beliefs for repeatedly defying a law banning Friends entering the colony in the 1650s.
From the archive: Oh, when the saints…
The Friend published its first issue of 1918 on 4 January. An editorial on ‘Quaker Sainthood’ was inspired by the charm and fascination of Violet Hodgkin’s Book of Quaker Saints. It opened with a reference to the old Quaker records: …they tell of one of the glorious chapters of human history...
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Tax justice
The revelations in the ‘Paradise Papers’ shocked even those of us who thought we were unshockable: Lewis Hamilton’s convoluted arrangements to avoid paying tax on his millions of pounds of earnings; the queen’s private wealth invested in the Cayman Islands, with prince Charles making a huge profit through...
Who agreed with Balfour?
It began in February 1917 in the context of the first world war – a war in which two sides had reached a stalemate. New allies were being sought urgently. A conference was held between representatives of the British government and the Jewish community resident in the United Kingdom. On 2 November Arthur...
The destination of Anne Frank?
I was recently at a church event where the speaker described the work of his organisation to evangelise and convert Jews to Christianity. He was enthusiastic. I felt uneasy.
Sharing experiences at Malvern
The headline on the flyer for the late November weekend at Malvern was: ‘Sharing our stories over a morning, finishing with a shared lunch’. The aim of the workshop, led by facilitators Geoffrey Durham and Eoin McCarthy, was to encourage us all in Britain Yearly Meeting to help deepen the...
Friends get active for Holocaust Memorial Day
The Holocaust Memorial Day HMD) Trust has identified ‘the power of words’ as a unifying theme for the 2018 remembrance of the millions killed in the Holocaust under Nazi persecution, and in the later genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
On the water at Ullswater
Young Quakers at Penrith Meeting, Cumbria, are braving the winter weather to canoe the length of Ullswater in aid of refugees. A team of twelve, including six Young Quakers, will start at 9am on Saturday 27 January.
QPSW spring conference
Friends are preparing for the annual Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) spring conference. The event, which will be held on 23-25 March at the Hayes Conference Centre in Swanwick, will look at how QPSW is seeking to challenge the rise of militarism in schools and wider society.
Bee project has people buzzing
A Syrian refugee and beekeeping expert has been interviewed on BBC Radio 4 about his beekeeping and the course he runs at Huddersfield Meeting House.
Twin toilets for charity
Winchmore Hill Quakers are raising money to install a ‘toilet twinning scheme’ in their newly refurbished eighteenth century Meeting house. The scheme, run by the charity Toilet Twinning, which is funded by TearFund, involves ‘twinning’ already installed lavatories with an impoverished family’s latrine in a developing country.
Meeting for Worship
Reflections on a silent Meeting for Worship, Colchester, November 2017 We sat in a circle, Listening for the echoes of grace within. For a while nothing seemed to be happening; The sun fell on our faces, Faint noises filtered from outside, No one spoke.
Letters - 26 January 2018
Solving poverty Friends concerned about the levels of poverty in the UK can welcome the news of Claire Ainsley’s appointment at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) to take forward its proposals to end poverty (19 February). Poverty is about people lacking the resources necessary to share in ordinary and inclusive...