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.
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‘When I became a man I put away childish things.’
Despite Jesus’ injunction to become as little children, Paul seems to be suggesting to the Corinthians that adulthood is to be preferred. I hate the term ‘second childhood’, and do not appreciate medical staff and workmen talking to me as if I were a child, but I confess that in old age I am learning to appreciate some things I had previously put away as childish.
An Estonian town is locked down. Police cars broadcast an announcement: ‘A dangerous lion is on the loose! Stay at home!’ The local chief constable deals with the unprecedented emergency, but it is made worse by loud and lairy lion-deniers. Meanwhile, a timid council employee is scared witless, even though he’s already home. But (wouldn’t you know it?), a door is open in his house. The lion enters. Just as the man is about to escape, it blocks his only exit: he’s stuck – can’t go forwards, can’t go back. He must confront his paralysing fears. He inches past the old moth-eaten lion. It’s so close he feels its breath on his skin, smells its fetid musk. He escapes unscathed and is transformed, determined to live more boldly in future.
The term ‘hybrid Meeting’ got a new note at General Meeting for Scotland last month. As we met for opening worship, online and in Inverness, we played our Friend Sally Beamish’s Peace Bugle, to recognise the International Day of Peace.
Two years ago, two other local mums and I set up on organisation called ‘Clear the Air In Havering’. We created it to support clean air initiatives, including School Streets and the expansion of London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ). Air pollution is a thorny topic where I live; legitimate concerns are frequently entangled with ideological politics, car culture, and Islamophobia. We wanted to: raise awareness about air pollution; tackle misinformation; and champion the right to clean air for everyone.
Why do bad things happen to good people? Conversely, why do good things happen to bad people?
As a practising Jew, the High Holy Days are an enormous challenge for me. From Rosh Hashanah (the New Year, which starts at sunset on 2 October) to Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement, ending at sunset, 12 October), we meditate on and repent our shortcomings. If our repentance is true we will be inscribed in the Book of Life for a good year. As a Liberal congregant, much of this is stripped from our liturgy (we do not believe God’s love is so conditional), but the traditional greeting remains: ‘May you be inscribed for a good year’.
Quakers in Edinburgh joined demonstrations calling for a treaty on the nonproliferation of fossil fuels.
The call was part of widespread action across Scotland in support of the Global Week of Action for Climate Finance and a Fossil Free Future, with demonstrations in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Stirling.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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