Issue 08-06-2018
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Thought for the Week: Love and truth
Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life. - Advices & queries 1.02 We all treasure the words of our first Advice, and in fact they...
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A diversity of gifts
The original designer of the committee structure adopted by the Reformed Churches and, I believe, in due course by the Quakers was a figure from the early sixteenth century: Martin Bucer, who was born in Sélestat in 1491 and died in Cambridge in 1551. He toyed endlessly with ideas on the...
Mary Elmes
Mary Elmes was a remarkable woman who was responsible, mainly through her work with Quaker bodies, for saving the lives of hundreds of children and protecting them from the evils of Nazism. After the second world war she was awarded the Legion of Honour (Légion d’honneur), the highest...
Other matters?
I do not think I was the only person to have found the Yearly Meeting agenda a trifle surprising. Apart from the necessary business of Yearly Meeting (appointments, trustee and committee reports, Epistles and so forth), there was really only one item under consideration: the revision of our Book of...
‘It’s a bit more complicated than that’
Just before Yearly Meeting, a colleague made me, as a joke, a badge which says: ‘I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.’ I’d wanted one for ages; it’s a phrase I use a lot. The periodic revision of our Book of Discipline...
Without masks
The Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship became QLGF, with a strapline saying it supported the LGBT+ community. Then it became the Quaker Gender and Sexual Diversity Community (QGSDC), and I rejoiced: no longer putting us into discrete boxes with initials – bisexual, trans, intersex, asexual – it could celebrate our common humanity...
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Boost for ‘greener’ financial markets
A report to align EU financial markets to long-term sustainable goals has been adopted by the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.
Quaker scientist and writer at the Hay Festival
Two Quakers spoke at the Hay Festival last month: leading scientist Jocelyn Bell Burnell and novelist Sally Nicholls described how their Quaker faith has informed their lives and work.
COs’ sculpture on display in London
An artist in Haringey, London, has created a sculpture to reflect the experience of the conscientious objectors (COs) in world war one. The sculpture, The Lost Files, is inspired by the 350 conscientious objectors and their families who lived in Hornsey, Tottenham and Wood Green.
Universal credit is a ‘huge concern’
A computer drop-in centre set up and run by Cornwall Friends has reported ‘huge concern’ about the switch to Universal Credit.
Activism for peace
quakers were among pacifists and anti-militarists from around Britain who attended the annual conference of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU).
Solidarity with Gaza
Friends joined a demonstration in London to mark on 15 May to show solidarity with people in Gaza. Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) has also urged Friends to contact their MPs or MEPs, asking them to encourage the Israeli government to ‘stop its illegal use of live gunfire on unarmed...
Friends’ memorial for FAU orderly
Kendal Quakers have paid tribute to Hugo Jackson, a Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) orderly, who died 100 years ago on the Western Front.
Words killeth
When during my membership application visit I was asked what I understood by the word ‘God’ I replied without hesitation, quoting from my Buddhist vocabulary the paragraph that refers to the unborn, uncreated and unmanifest.
Letters - 08 June 2018
Understanding and articulating I enjoyed Richard Seebohm’s article (25 May) but was stopped in my tracks by a comment about the afterlife in relation to Alzheimer’s. The assumption is that since people with the condition seem to have no sentient life they illustrate the possibility that there is no...