Issue 13-09-2019
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Thought for the week: ‘We need to stop buying and selling what is sacred.’
We have been on holiday in the part of north Wales most associated with the poet R S Thomas, the Llŷn Peninsula, so I’ve been returning with pleasure to his work. Leafing through his Later Poems, I came across one called ‘Publicity Inc’. It begins with an address...
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‘The left hemisphere of the brain, without sufficient input from the right, is overconfident.’
I wonder how many readers of the Friend are familiar with The Master and his Emissary by Iain McGilchrist. I ask because the weight of McGilchrist’s arguments, and his overarching purpose in writing the book, seem to me to have a bearing on the dialogues and dichotomies that dance...
‘And then an idea came. It arose suddenly and naturally from our Business Meeting.’
It was the overwhelming feeling of helplessness that started it all. The baking hot summer, glaciers melted to bare rock in Iceland, and wildfires bigger than Belgium in Siberia and in the Amazon. Global warming. We felt so completely helpless. What could we do? The unfolding disaster seemed too huge,...
‘Jesus called out to her and said, “Woman, you have been set free from your infirmity.”’ Luke 13:12
The gospel of Luke is the only one of the four that tells the story of the bent-over woman who is healed in the synagogue on the Sabbath (13:10-17). It is a good story for Bible study groups. Most people find walking round with backs bent tiring after a minute...
‘The Kabul Peace House’ by Mark Isaacs
This book tells the story – and tells it well – of a house set up in Kabul, Afghanistan, by a community of volunteers pursuing nonviolence and equality. These volunteers were young; the originator, a medic called Insaan, seems to have been in his thirties. At the house they taught and learned...
Police interrupt ‘Stop DSEI’ Worship
Hundreds of Quakers were interrupted by police officers at a Meeting for Worship (MfW) last week during their witness against one of the world’s largest arms fairs. The MfW in London’s Docklands was part of the No Faith in War day of peaceful protest against Defence Security and...
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New Meeting starts at university
Yorkshire Friends are piloting a new Meeting at the University of Huddersfield in a bid to attract more young people into the Society.
BYM warns against ‘more discipline’ in schools
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has written an open letter to the secretary of state for education expressing alarm at plans to allow more disciplinary measures in schools including exclusions and ‘reasonable force’.
Friends protest earth tremor
Quakers joined hundreds of people in a rally outside Cuadrilla’s shale gas site this month demanding a halt to fracking in Lancashire after a record-breaking earth tremor caused damage to buildings.
QARN speaks out on Home Office plan
A member of the Quaker Asylum Refugee Network (QARN) has spoken out about Home Office plans to end family reunification for asylum-seeking children in the event of a no-deal Brexit. According to reports, the government has privately briefed the UN refugee agency UNHCR and other NGOs that while ongoing cases...
Friends join XR ‘faith bridge’
Quakers are planning to take part in a ‘faith bridge’ in the next phase of Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests starting on 7 October. The Christian Climate Action group has urged people of faith to book the time off to join the ‘bridge’ which it said would be held with ‘worship and 2...
Letters - 13 September 2019
A precious resource I hope the article by Rex Ambler (30 August) will be deeply and unhurriedly considered. I too have been troubled that the way Friends are determining important questions may be changing from a traditional to a more secular model. Rex is right in suggesting this is partly due...