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.
Collapse is no longer a distant possibility. A terrifying government report, forced into the light of day by Freedom of Information requests, makes this clear in its title: ‘Ecosystem collapse & national security’. Collapse draws near through climate breakdown, the acceleration of artificial intelligence, geopolitical fracture – and through their interaction. Yet this is not only a political emergency. It’s a spiritual one: a crisis of meaning, of what we hold sacred, of what we are willing – or unwilling – to face together.
When a visitor makes a circumnavigation of the Venetian walls of Heraklion, Crete, they come to the Martinengo Bastion. There they will find the tomb of Nikos Kazantzakis.
An elder was once asked, ‘How do you differentiate between mediation and worship?’ They replied that, ‘If I am meditating, I still myself to connect my body with my surroundings. If I worship I still myself to connect with the divine.’ In all our Meetings for Worship we seek collectively to connect with the divine as our guide to living our lives, and focussing our actions. Quakers don’t differentiate on this according to the purpose of the Meeting. Whether purely for worship or for business, learning or threshing, all seek connection with the divine, with something beyond ourselves as a guide for our actions.
‘If you don’t read books, how can you know what’s going on in anyone else’s head?’ my teenage daughter asked me recently.
While studying the history of Friends in Devon, I have come across some beautifully-written old texts about various sites. This one relates to the Sticklepath burial ground to the north of Dartmoor. It was written by Francis Dymons in 1899, and in summary (and my editing) says:
‘You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. The very prevention of war requires more faith, courage and resolution than are needed to prepare for war. We must all do our share, that we may be equal to the task of peace.’ Albert Einstein, as quoted in Einstein On Peace, edited by Otto Nathan & Heinz Norden.
Today we sat in the flat on Station Road,
drinking mugs of dark Thai tea, discussing
what these wars are doing for the world.
How they break out on Earth
and take the next decade so lightly.
He leans towards me and offers a quote
from Future Sense. His book has been
reverberating in my brain like
the great gong in Ubon Ratchathani.
Einstein On Peace, as if Albert
was a theologian rather than a physicist.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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