Issue 05-04-2019
Featured story
Thought for the week: Joseph Jones has some loose change
According to Gallup polling, the older we are, the more likely we are to enjoy spring. In the US at least, people overall pick it as their favourite season (in 2005, thirty-six per cent chose it over the next highest, autumn, at twenty-seven per cent). But these figures skew by age....
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‘I would like to… make life kinder, freer and more respectful for for the women coming after me’
I’m sitting in a cafe in Potters Bar and listening to a Quaker telling me about an orgasm she had that felt like it could create world peace. Yes, really. Being British, I shuffle in my seat awkwardly and take a sip of my tea, only too aware of...
The Magic Radio
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who loved listening to the radio. Whatever the radio played she would dance to it. If the radio played pop she sang along using her hairbrush as a microphone. If the radio played jazz she clicked her fingers and tapped her...
Sow far, sow good?
‘And he says to them, Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?’ (Mark 4:13) The parable of the sower is one of the few parables which appear in all three of the synoptic gospels. Only Mark, however, makes this comment about how essential it...
‘I am witnessing, it seems, a Meeting for Worship stretched out over time.’
I am in a gathered silence but not in a Quaker Meeting, in a building that, in terms of ostentatious decoration, is ying to the Meeting house’s plain yang. The space – an Orthodox church in Bucharest – is empty save for a few people moving around with purpose. They cross...
Quaker author shortlisted for prestigious award
The Quaker author Sally Nicholls has been nominated for the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) Carnegie Medal for her Young Adult (YA) novel about three suffragettes.
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Friends welcome cross-party call to stop arming Saudi
Quakers have welcomed the news that five opposition parties have called for the British government to end arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The letter signed by leaders of the Labour Party, Scottish National Party, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party says the policy has contributed to a catastrophic...
Alastair McIntosh considers the future of Christianity
Pendle Hill Friends were among an audience of around seventy who came to hear Quaker ecologist and writer Alastair McIntosh ask the question: ‘Does Christianity still matter, and if so why?’
Quakers organise for arms fair protest
Friends gathered at a meeting of the Quaker group Roots of Resistance to plan action against the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair in September.
Winchmore Hill interfaith art display to ‘celebrate diversity’
Quakers at Winchmore Hill Meeting House have invited other local faith groups to share their ‘Reflections on the Sacred’ for an interfaith art exhibition aimed at bringing people together.
Vibrancy in Meetings gets independent evaluation
Ninety-six per cent of Quakers surveyed have rated the support provided by Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM)’s Vibrancy In Meetings pilot programme as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’.
Eye - 5 April 2019
Finding fellowship At the beginning of March a group of Young Quakers organised an informal weekend in Derbyshire. Fred Lenox-Conyngham shared the picture below with Eye and explained: ‘We hired a house, splitting the cost, and relaxed, played games and enjoyed each other’s company…
Letters - 5 April 2019
Simple funerals The funeral described by G Gordon Steel (15 March) may well be simple but it is not one that I would wholly recommend as it involves cremation. Approximately two thirds of the human body consists of water which is evaporated during the cremation process, something which requires a lot...