Issue 15-11-2019
Featured story
‘To define is to put a limit, a finality, around something. Why would I want that?’
How do you describe yourself, and for what reason? These questions arose when I decided to revise my Facebook profile. Although I have used Facebook for some time, I have never completed the religion slot. This may seem odd for someone who was outreach secretary for Britain Yearly Meeting for...
Top stories
‘There is no audience quite like a prison audience.’
October was Domestic Violence Awareness Month and those who noticed were encouraged to wear purple to show their support. I have to ask, who actually did know? At Journeymen Theatre, as we engage with audiences all over the UK, performing our play on domestic abuse Rock And A Hard Place,...
‘Misogyny is expressed in an economic system that exploits the Earth.’
Why is violence against women such a difficult issue for Quakers to take on? When mentioned it emits bountiful support. But when proposed as a topic for, say, Area Meeting, warnings are given about ‘safety’ and how it could be very disturbing for some. When I went to represent General...
‘The Light said: “I did not bring you here to sit alone”.’
There are many ways that lead to God and Quakerism. As with my autism, my story is only one of many and one size fits no one. My parents were from Roman Catholic families but by the time I was born they had stopped attending church and I was not...
‘No one is too Small to Make a Difference’, by Greta Thunberg
The upcoming Christmas story takes place in obscurity. Bethlehem is the least, the smallest, of villages. Mary and Joseph are among the least of society. The baby is born into physical smallness and social insignificance. I am struck in these times by smallness. This small book (eighty pages) is by...
Poem: A Friend reads Psalm 139 in Meeting
I sit in a different seat today. Cutting it fine, Friends slip in, join the deepening stillness. The crunch of tyres on gravel, a door-tongue carefully released, the known slow tap of ferrule on floorboard: the small sounds stir the silence which settles again, as water over a pebble or...
All articles
Met ‘ban’ of XR action ruled ‘unlawful’
Quakers have welcomed the news that the Metropolitan Police’s controversial ban of Extinction Rebellion (XR) gatherings in London has been ruled unlawful. The decision announced by the high court on 6 November said that the Met had been wrong to define XR’s ‘autumn uprising’ as a single public assembly.
Quakers gather for Remembrance
Days before Quakers gathered for Remembrance Sunday, the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) welcomed a decision by the Royal British Legion to promote remembrance for civilians for the first time.
St Neots Friends hold climate crisis event
Five St Neots Quakers sponsored a climate emergency event this month attracting between 150 and 200 people. The event ‘The Time is Now’ at the United Reformed Church on 2 November was inspired by St Neots Town Council unanimously voting in February 2019 to declare a climate emergency and to take steps to lower...
Zimbabwean Friend speaks at YFGM on gay rights
A Young Friend from Bulawayo Meeting in Zimbabwe visited Edinburgh Meeting last month to tell Quakers about an organisation he has set up to help gay people.
Fleabag cites inspiration for Quaker Meeting scene
A new book by writer and actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge has revealed the inspiration behind the scene in her hit series Fleabag that was set in a Quaker Meeting.
Quaker Activist Gathering
Friends from all over the UK came together for a Quaker Activist Gathering at Friends House, London, for a day of inspiration and contemplation.
Eye - 15 November 2019
Quaker translations Recent research led Richard Seebohm, of Oxford Meeting, to a Friend article penned by two Quakers based in Ghana in 1967. Tongue firmly in cheek, Alan and Julie Longman reflected on how words and phrases can develop different meanings and offered impish translations that ‘are not intended to cast...
Letters - 15 November 2019
A bygone age Ken Clarke, who is retiring as an MP, now seems to represent a bygone age of politicians who were intelligent, tolerant and modest. The present conduct of the government disturbs me greatly. We Quakers aim to be inclusive, but now at Westminster yah-boo politics seems to be...