Issue 26-04-2019
Featured story
Thought for the week: ‘What a terrible gift, and responsibility, is the human imagination.’
I’ve been lying on my back in the garden, looking up into a piercingly blue sky. A helicopter has been circling around and I’ve watched it, marvelling in such a thing being up there, like some great airborne insect. Once upon a time there was no such thing...
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‘My clumsiness and inadequacy in the area of race and racism and privilege have been highlighted.’
Our Society is not very diverse, and London Quakers are keen to work on that. But our first steps in this area have demonstrated that this will not be a simple process. Our first effort, a privilege workshop, resulted in tears and distress. I found myself deeply shaken to recognise...
‘What has emerged from hearing these stories is a determination to end inhumane policy.’
Two little children: she was eight, her brother a year younger. They were asleep in their home in Bradford when suddenly their quiet lives shattered. Four men in the dark uniforms of the UK Border Agency forced them to get up, gather a few things, and leave.
An Epistle from Junior Yearly Meeting (JYM)
F rom 12 to 15 April 2019, seventy participants and thirteen adult team members met at Frontier Centre in Northamptonshire for a weekend of inward and outward reflection on the theme ‘Diversity and Inclusivity: How can we use our ideals to change our reality?’
‘There were delightful moments, like when we all said the “Our Father” in our home language.’
I have now been accompanying people on their spiritual pathway for more than four years. Most of them I meet on a monthly basis (although the ‘meet’ happens by Skype with half of the eight). This means I am connected in stillness with individuals in India, Palestine, north England and...
Friends flock for Extinction Rebellion protest
Quakers were among the thousands who took part in the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protest last week, which organisers described as the biggest civil disobedience on record. Friends from Meetings that included Kingsbridge, Bristol, Huddersfield and Bath put their faith into action as they joined protests at four major London landmarks:...
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Greta Thunberg comes to Friends House
There were long queues to Friends House last week when Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) hosted the Swedish climate activist and Nobel Prize nominee Greta Thunberg as part of its commitment to tackling climate breakdown.
Quakers in Criminal Justice call for end of ‘war on drugs’
The Quakers in Criminal Justice (QICJ) group has called for British Quakers to help put an end to the UK’s damaging ‘war on drugs’ policy. The minute was discerned at a conference in February when QICJ met to ‘discuss, discern and learn matters relating to drug policy’.
‘Zombie’ legal fight ends after eight years
Two Quaker parents from Muswell Hill Meeting saw their adult daughter lose an eight-year legal fight against her pre-emptive arrest during 2011’s royal wedding.
Plans to scrap ‘no fault evictions’
Quakers have welcomed the government’s announcement that it will consider ditching ‘no-fault evictions’ in a ground-breaking overhaul of ‘renters rights’.
Talk on early Quaker feminist
A leading Quaker feminist and social activist born more than 250 years ago was the subject of a talk at the Bruce Castle Museum in north London. Local history researcher Margaret Burr spoke about Priscilla Wakefield (1751-1832) from Tottenham, who is widely acknowledged for founding the first English savings bank, the...
The Four Horsemen: The discussion that sparked an atheist revolution
In 2007 Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens – the ‘four horsemen’ of new atheism – sat around a table and recorded a two-hour conversation. This recent book is the transcript of that recording, with brief introductory essays by the three still living (Hitchens has died) and a foreword by...
Letters - 26 April 2019
Close to breakdown Jenny Cozens (12 April) suggests Skyping rather than travelling to meetings. This is a good suggestion but it is a drop in the ocean when it comes to preventing climate breakdown. We need to be adopting far more drastic measures if we are to have any impact at...