Issue 03-10-2025

The Friend

The Friend is a weekly magazine in which Friends speak to each other and to the wider world, offering their insight, ideas, news, nurture and inspiration.

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.


Latest issue: Issue 03-10-2025

Thought for the week

Thought for the Week: Sungsoo Kim wants genuine encounter

by Sungsoo Kim

The spiritual disciplines that emerged from early Quaker experience continue to nourish me. These are not merely historical curiosities but living traditions. At the same time, I have come to understand Buddhism as a sophisticated exploration of the human heart and its capacity for both suffering and compassion.

Features

An invitation from the Divine: Tania Brosnan learns to pray the rosary

by Tania Brosnan

It was at morning prayer in 2023, reciting Psalm 125 – ‘Peace be upon Israel!’ – that my personal journey with the rosary and Mary the mother of Jesus began. Like so many others, I was in despair and shedding tears over the war in Israel. 

Features

Combining a parallel: Steve Day on being both Quaker and Buddhist

by Steve Day

A few years ago, on a new morning after rainfall, I reread an account of why I was applying for Quaker membership. I’d been in attendance one way or another but this application was important to me. Quaker, yes, now owning it.

Features

All this we do: Ol Rappaport on Yom Kippur

by Ol Rappaport

This is a hard confession for a Quaker to make, but I love Yom Kippur and its liturgy. By sunset I am exhausted from the fast begun the night before, worn down by the cycle of prayer and confession. I have wept at the courage and sacrifice of those I long to emulate, my ears filled with the raw cry of the shofar and the intoxicating music. It is an ecstatic experience: I am lifted out of myself and my everyday world. I stand with the congregation in worship and sing: ‘Our Creator, Our Sovereign / Be gracious and answer our prayers / For we have little to commend us / Deal kindly and gently with us / And save our people.’ The liturgy is like a polished stone in a riverbed, refined and enriched by millennia of devotion.

Features

People of the book: Rob Paton on a club anniversary

by Rob Paton

I remember it clearly: a regular attender stood up in ‘notices’ to give an impassioned plea for others to join in him in reading Waiting on God, by Simone Weil – a modern classic of spiritual seeking. That was in 2005, and the Friends that met in response to his plea… just kept going. Our Meeting already had a book group, so we called ourselves the Alternative Book Group (ABG).

Reviews

Still

by Rebecca Cooper

It might seem a contradiction that stillness be put into form, yet amid these pieces, made of natural materials and carefully crafted to delicately hold space unobtrusively, then hypnotically a stillness is invoked. I fell into that deep quietness that is also found in Meeting. Mobiles, in sweeping curves, bring a mesmerising calm. In weavings, dandelion surfaces intricately twisted and entwined to present a beautiful array of colours and skill, and took my thoughts to our connection with the land. 

Features

A reflection on peace

by Fiona Murdoch

Where do we find the divine – the source of peace?

Did Elijah hear God in the storm, the earthquake, or the fire?
No. It was only when silence fell, did ‘a still, small voice’ emerge.

News

Reclaim ‘radical roots’ for climate, church told

by Rebecca Hardy A Quaker occupied the roof of Winchester Cathedral to urge the Church of England to…
News

BYM warns UK on arm sales to Israel

by Rebecca Hardy Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) welcomed the UK government’s ‘long overdue’ recognition…
News

Paris Friends hold circle of silence for Peace

by Rebecca Hardy Paris and Ile de France Quakers were given eleventh-hour permission to witness for peace…
News

Flashmob choir sings against Rosebank

by Rebecca Hardy One hundred members of the Climate Choir came together for a ‘flashmob’ performance in…
News

Southampton Friends host slavery exhibition

by Rebecca Hardy Southampton Quakers displayed an exhibition about transatlantic chattel slavery for a…
Q-eye

Eye - 03 October 2025

by Elinor Smallman Promoting peace Graham Spinks, from Sheringham Meeting, sent in a recent photo and shared:…
Letters

Letters - 03 October 2025

by The Friend Process of acceptance I have a granddaughter who has become a grandson, and know a number…

Past issues