Issue 04-07-2025

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.


Issue 04-07-2025

Thought for the week

Just imagine: Dana Littlepage Smith’s Thought for the Week

by Dana Littlepage Smith

I was glad when a Friend at Meeting reminded us recently that our integrity has a lot to do with how well we integrate all of the parts of ourselves. This might take a lifetime. My Buddhist friends laugh with me: it might take many lifetimes… from gnat to giraffe to woman!

Features

The language of nature: Peter D Leeming offers a poetic response to the climate crisis

by Peter D Leeming

A few years ago, we planted a witch hazel (hamamelis) close to our living-room window. We needed more privacy from a road which runs close by, and during spring and summer the bush’s thick cloak of leaves has served that purpose well. 

Features

Women’s spiritual voices: Daniel Clarke Flynn reports from the Quaker Universalist Group Conference

by Daniel Clarke Flynn

The 2025 Quaker Universalist Group (QUG) Conference, ‘Women’s Spiritual Voices’, met in April at High Leigh Conference Centre in Hertfordshire, and online; it attracted over fifty participants.

Features

In a word: Richard Pashley spots a trend

by Richard Pashley

Traditionally, following a death in one of our Meetings, it has been common practice within the Religious Society of Friends to hold a Memorial Meeting to give thanks for the grace of God in the life of the deceased Friend. But it is now common for these Meetings to be defined in more limited terms, along the lines of giving thanks for the life of the deceased Friend. The word ‘God’ is now usually omitted. 

Features

In harmony: Dorothy Curtis reports from the Quaker Music Network

by Dorothy Curtis

The Quaker Music Network has been running choral and chamber music weekends for over twenty years. Our early venues were Charney Manor in Oxfordshire and Glenthorne Quaker Guest House in the Lake District. But we have long outgrown those two delightful buildings, and this year, in February, there were fifty-eight musicians registered at the Christian Conference Centre at High Leigh in Hoddesdon, near London. 

Reviews

Riverbanks of Grief, an exhibition at Friends House, London (until 20 July)

by Michael Robertson

Margot Schiemann’s ‘Riverbanks of Grief,’ an emotionally moving exhibition of sixteen mixed-media works, offers a narrative of a journey from brokenness to (partial) healing. The poetic fragments next to each picture are enticingly open-ended, and the pictures themselves are richly enigmatic, ranging from harsh jaggedness to explosive beauty.

Features

Poem: Human life (1827)

by Bernard Barton (1784–1849)

I walk’d the fields at morning’s prime,
The grass was ripe for mowing;
The skylark sang his matin chime,
And all was brightly glowing.

News

Quakers worship at Hoddesdon again

by Rebecca Hardy Hoddesdon Meeting House has reopened to Quakers after more than fourteen years since it…
News

ICE-fears keep students from school

by Rebecca Hardy Seventy per cent of students stopped going to one Philadelphian school due to fears about…
News

Friends back return of Naga remains

by Rebecca Hardy Oxford Friends and others joined an event welcoming elders and leaders from Nagaland.
News

Friends welcome book on mental health

by Rebecca Hardy Friends have welcomed a book released by Quaker Voices on Mental Health (QVoMH), shining a…
News

Record Armed Forces Day protests

by Rebecca Hardy A record number of demonstrations and other actions to challenge Armed Forces Day took…
Letters

Letters - 04 July 2025

by The Friend Blood lines I am writing to ask two questions in relation to the proposals announced by…
Q-eye

Eye - 04 July 2025

by Elinor Smallman Quaker bakes Rachel King got in touch with Eye, after spying the delicious Quaker-themed…

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