Issue 22-01-2021
Featured story
Thought for the week: Daniel Clarke Flynn’s force of habit
What comes to mind with the phrase ‘the power of’? A first thought for me is ‘the power of prayer’. ‘Pray for what you want,’ some say, ‘and leave the results up to Power greater than us. Let go and let God.’ ‘Prayer works,’ a former marine turned tough journalist...
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Visited in the night: Peter D Leeming considers valuable relationships following a chance encounter.
I close my eyes and I see him again. Walking towards me along a dark forest path comes a tall, gaunt figure with dishevelled black hair, a thick beard and dressed in a long woollen cloak almost touching the ground. It is an almost biblical apparition I think but as...
By their leave: Elsie Whittington wants to protect BYM’s essential children’s work
Towards the end of 2020, the Children and Young People’s (CYP) training team met to say goodbye to Mel Cook and Howard Nurden, who were taking redundancy from Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM). We made commitments to uphold and support children and young people across BYM as it transitions to new...
‘Part of that oppression’: Hoonie Feltham describes Oxford Meeting’s approach to resisting racism.
As I walked away from my first Black Lives Matter demonstration at South Park in Oxford, a question struck me: ‘Am I racist?’ The inescapable answer was ‘Yes, of course you are’. I admitted for the first time that I react differently as a white person when encountering a black...
Inside information technology: Lee Coppack on the digital divide
It is not something that resonates immediately with Quakers. There are not many geeks among us. We might be grateful for Zoom, but see it mainly as a necessity. The digital divide, however, and how the advance of digitalisation increases poverty and inequality, should concern us.
Fighting talk: How knowing ourselves can prevent conflict
At least three times in the years since I became a Quaker our Local Meeting has been torn apart. Friends are still struggling with the effects of the last storm – in which I was one of the central players, and which has caused me to question my continued membership of...
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To open or not to open
Places of worship are exempt under the latest restrictions, expected to last until spring, but faith leaders have expressed caution. While most Meetings have moved online, according to Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM), several have not, leading to some tension within the community over the differing approaches.
Bells ring out for Treaty
Newcastle Quakers are just one of the many Meetings which are displaying a banner to celebrate the day (22 January) when the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is ratified.
Destitution growing, says JRF
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has called for more sustained assistance for people experiencing extreme poverty, in the third of its destitution studies. The report released on 9 December shows that, even before the Covid-19 outbreak, destitution was rapidly growing. Since 2017, it said, ‘many more households, including families with children, have...
Closures ‘foolish’, says Sheila Hancock
Quaker Sheila Hancock has said that it was ‘foolish’ for the government to force places of worship to close down during the two national lockdowns in 2020. Speaking in Premier magazine on 1 December, the Hammersmith Friend said: ‘I think it was foolish of them. It’s rather like gyms… my gym...
Bournville tree stays lit
A large Christmas tree outside Bournville Meeting is to keep its lights on until the end of January in an attempt to uplift people.
Quaker school pupil helps homeless
A York schoolgirl is cycling the distance of a marathon to raise money to help young homeless people.
Let us Dream: The path to a brighter future, by Francis, the pope
New Year encourages us to speculate on our future. In this book, Francis surveys the crises around us: the pandemic, the climate, and also the longstanding problems of inequality, of war and its casualties (think Yemen). Francis sees these in biblical terms, as a ‘sifting’, a time when our usual...
Wonder
What shall I send them today, I wonder, those faithful inheritors of George Fox standing silent and still on the top of Pendle Hill or up against the wall in Launceston Prison.
Letters - 22 January 2021
Breakout rooms I read with interest Louise Rendle’s article of 1 January 2021 in which she says how difficult she finds it to come out of Meeting for Worship on Zoom into a virtual gathering of some twenty people where deep sharing is all but impossible and then to leave the...