Issue 03-01-2020
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‘My instinct is to choose another option and follow the trees.’
The earth’s magnetic north has begun to move faster than before, and now travels at the rate of about thirty-four miles per year – faster than it has been seen since magnetic north was first detected in 1831.
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‘We thresh… to find the kernel, the root, the way forward, and discern what Love requires of us.’
Seventeen adults and two children aged five gathered for Finland Yearly Meeting’s (YM’s) autumn gathering at the Ilkko Conference Centre, Tampere, from 15-17 November. The overall theme for the weekend was: ‘Where is my spiritual home?’ The first session was a sharing of thoughts on the theme.
‘We discussed how to witness and to work more effectively as a spirit-led community.’
This was the last General Meeting (GM) for Scotland to be clerked by Adwoa Bittle before she joins the teams of Yearly Meeting clerks in January 2020. Each clerk brings their own style to the task and we’ve enjoyed Adwoa’s service.
‘In the fullness of the Spirit there is room for all forms of creativity.’
For nearly thirty years I have had the privilege of making music with people in day centres, mental health hostels, hospitals, residential homes and prisons. I have been witness to the power of music to overcome disability, like the Parkinson’s sufferer putting a tambourine on his shaking leg and...
Quaker activism rocks the country
2019 was a year in which Quaker activism rocked the country. Hundreds of Friends took part in the mass protest against the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair in September, shutting down the road for around nine hours and raising awareness of the world’s largest arms fair in...
‘Stansted Fifteen’ receives suspended sentences
The year started with the high-profile news that the ‘Stansted Fifteen’ group of protesters, which included Friend Lyndsay Burtonshaw, were appealing their terror-offence-related conviction received at the end of 2018. The members of the End Deportations group were found guilty of blocking the take-off of a deportation flight in March 2017 at...
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‘Embodiment’, by Dinah Livingstone
The very last line of this celebratory collection of poems reads, ‘Thank you, Life!’ The fact that the poet puts the ‘L’ in uppercase suggests that she wants to personify life, to make it a person with whom one can relate. In the mystical vision of Saint John Jesus calls...
Friends push for child smacking ban
Quakers helped changed the law last year when Scotland became the first country in the UK to make it a criminal offence for parents to smack their children. The move came after Quakers in Scotland campaigned for the ban. In March, General Meeting for Scotland made a submission to the...
Quaker in same-sex marriage denied CTE presidency
The news that Quaker Hannah Brock Womack had been blocked from her appointment as a Churches Together in England (CTE) president because she was in a same-sex marriage sent ripples through the press.
Quakers head to Glastonbury
Quakers undertook some musical outreach in 2019 when, for what is thought to be the first time ever, it had an official presence at Glastonbury Festival. Writing in the Friend, Joseph Fuller, from Cheltenham Meeting, who was part of the team of four who ran a stand in the Green Futures...
Historic England recognises beauty of Meeting houses
The beauty of Quaker buildings was officially recognised when seventeen Meeting houses were granted listed status or had their listed status upgraded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on the advice of Historic England.
Quakers pave way for climate emergency declarations
As 2018 drew to a close with the ominous warnings of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report tolling in people’s ears – that the human race had just twelve years to limit the most devastating impacts of global warming – a steady wave of councils kicked the year off by...
Eye - 3 January 2020
Political pronouns In an article about the politics of pronouns published in November 2019, a writer in The New York Times turned to early Friends for insight. Teresa M Bejan, a professor of political theory, wrote about the issue of gender pronouns in the context of trans, nonbinary and genderqueer activists...
Letters - 3 January 2020
Of things to come? The saddest and most poignant piece of writing I came across in 2019 was a handwritten invitation that I discovered in the window of a small supermarket in New Zealand, while visiting my son. The sheet of A4, which contained a photograph of a young woman and...