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Nurturing Quaker community, each issue offers a space for Friends to share their concerns, and to support each other in faith and witness.
The Friend: enriching, inspiring and connecting the Quaker community since 1843.
I have in my hand a magnetic compass that has lost its bearings. Last Sunday, while my wife and I were out walking in the hills above Glasgow, we noticed that the North had become South, and the South had wandered off North!
The prominence of Russia in the news, and the recent death of Peter Jarman, aroused my memories of a visit to Moscow with him in 1989. Back then Peter was the East-West relations secretary of Quaker Peace and Service (QPS). He collected a team, which met at Woodbrooke to prepare for a joint seminar with the Soviet Peace Committee (SPC), a state-sponsored organisation responsible for coordinating peace movements active in the Soviet Union. (The following account was written much later, but I checked its accuracy with Peter and consulted relevant QPS minutes).
Back in April I had the privilege of travelling to the Middle East, to visit Friends and the Friends’ schools in Palestine and Lebanon. The visit was organised by Friends United Meeting, which is the main supporter of Ramallah Friends School. Ethel Livermore (clerk of Europe & Middle East Section) and I joined the visit. We spent eight days in Ramallah, and two days in Brummana. The schools are amazing, thriving in places, amid much uncertainty in daily life, and often a lot of violence, even if it’s not always seen. We went to listen, to be alongside people, to get to know them, and hear their stories. We wanted to learn about their lives in Palestine. Not everyone wanted to talk to us – some of them didn’t trust us at first or know whether they could trust us – but many did talk to us, especially the longer we were there.
Back in March, seventeen Friends met with me to explore the possibility of forming a single Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) across the south-east of England. Friends representing West Kent, East Kent, Sussex East, Sussex West, West Weald and Surrey & Hampshire Border Area Meetings (AMs) were joined for the day by Lesley Richards, who presented a possible road map for change.
I was pretty lost. It was Yearly Meeting and I was squinting at the map in the wrong end of the building, trying to find the right room. What was the name again? Finally, I gave up and went to the front desk to ask. I was directed to the lift, where I squeezed in with two other women. I knew at last that I was going in the right direction, because one of the women had pink hair and a ‘B with the T’ badge (bisexuals standing with trans people). I was on my way to the Quaker Rainbow meeting, the LGBTQIA+ fellowship.
Jennifer Kavanagh’s skilfully-crafted new book traces the history of her family through a series of vignettes, from St Petersburg to eventual haven in England. Jennifer draws out a series of threads – on the roles of women and of men, on home and on music, and on language and antisemitism – and puts these into historical context. It is a book concerned also with the nature of Jewish identity, as the author explores her own circumstance of being Jewish by birth and Quaker by convincement; Russian in heritage, but wholly English.
Hobbled by life, I searched for open doors
to escape this boastful, plug-in city.
Found one, just as the weather was coming fast.
In here, my place was already set
with silence waiting, inviting me to sit.
"If you truly want to be led you must put yourself in a position that allows following" (PYM)
Though written within a Quaker and Christian context, this book can be used by anyone of any religious faith or secular inclination. The only requirement is a desire to follow, to be guided by, to align with the richness of the ineffable, which this book calls "the Way". This book seeks nothing less than to aid readers in aligning their lives with the same power and richness that animated the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
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