Issue 25-10-2019
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‘So how, one might wonder, can one hallow, or make holy one’s diminishments?’
Seven years ago, when my husband began to exhibit signs of Alzheimer’s disease, I became his full-time carer. Since then I have had to relinquish various activities and interests, all of which were rewarding and life-enhancing. Recently, John Yungblut’s Pendle Hill pamphlet On Hallowing One’s Diminishments has...
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‘We must remember that we need a home for our current ministry.’
In June this year at Wymondham we began preparations to host Area Meeting, and to offer a presentation on the life of our Local Meeting. We decided to look at the fact that we are the only Meeting within our area without a Meeting house, and to consider how we...
‘We show respect to everyone… We engage in no violence, physical or verbal, and carry no weapons.’
Extinction Rebellion (XR) has been in London over two weeks in October. There are Quakers there, speaking out against the wanton destruction of the biosphere. I went for five days, staying with a Friend in London. Brave protesters camped. One told me that the police had moved him five times....
‘When you did that, that was you, that was the real you.’
When was the last time you did something good? Something good just because you could? Maybe it was giving your place in the queue to someone unable to wait, or donating money to a charity on the spur of the moment, just because you felt like it.
‘Without a home it is difficult to realise that of God within oneself.’
Quaker Housing Trust (QHT)came about as a practical social witness to Friends’ concern for housing justice, expressed at Yearly Meeting in 1966. It exists to support the creation of homes for people of any age, when they are vulnerable at points of transition in their lives. Without a home it...
Quakers still worship despite ‘extraordinary’ XR ‘ban’
Friends still gathered in Trafalgar Square for Meeting for Worship (MfW) despite what the Quaker organisation Turning the Tide (TTT) described as the ‘extraordinary’ decision to ‘ban’ Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests anywhere in London.
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Friends in call to end hunger by 2030
Quakers are among a coalition of national and local charities, anti-poverty organisations and faith groups who have urged the country’s leaders to act now to end hunger in the UK.
Quaker for Christian World Communions chairperson
Gretchen Castle, the general secretary of Friends Worldwide Committee for Consultation (FWCC), has been appointed the chairperson for the Conference of Secretaries of Christian World Communions, making her the first woman to fill the role.
Blue plaque at Woodbrooke for Gandhi
A blue plaque has been unveiled at Woodbrooke to mark the 150th birthday anniversary of Mohandas Gandhi – and to honour his speech there exactly eighty-eight years ago.
Huddersfield hosts peace lecture with David Gee
Forty people came to hear Quaker David Gee deliver Huddersfield Meeting’s annual peace lecture this month on ‘Rethinking Security’. Robin Bowles, from Huddersfield Meeting, told the Friend that the talk on 3 October was ‘fantastic’ and ‘some people called it “transformative”’.
Eye - 25 October 2019
Unseen sights Film of a Quaker initiative during the second world war appeared for the first time in seventy-five years in a recent BBC programme, Lost Films of WWII. The programme explores unique films shot by ordinary people, as 1935 had seen the introduction of cine film aimed at amateur film-makers. ...
Letters - 25 October 2019
Sustainable and simple Friends seeking actions towards sustainability (Meeting for Sufferings, 11 October) should include funerals too (Claire Brandon, 4 October). Cremation is not consistent with sustainability because it uses fossil fuels and pollutes the atmosphere. Green burials are not ordinarily cheap and it seems some currently offered are commercial enterprises with...