Issue 06-09-2024

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 06-09-2024

Thought for the week

Thought for the Week: Howard Grace plays a part

by Howard Grace

Waiting for Godot has a reputation as one of the most influential plays of the twentieth century. I knew little about it, however, so I decided recently to attend a local production. It was well acted but I sat there bemused. The play seemed pointless.

Features

Travelling Light: Matt Rosen journeys home around the Yearly Meeting

by Matt Rosen

I’ve travelled extensively around our Yearly Meeting over the past year, visiting many small and struggling Meetings. I’ve witnessed the exhausting demands of many Quaker roles, and the anxiety of many Friends about the future of our Religious Society. 

As I’ve travelled, I’ve marvelled at the confidence and conviction of our spiritual ancestors, who joined the Quaker movement in extraordinary numbers while this was seriously risky. They clearly had a message worth suffering for. It was a simple message that appealed to many seekers, up and down the country, who had become exhausted and despairing looking for the truth outside themselves. ‘Why gad you abroad?’ they preached. ‘Return, return to Him that is the first Love’, they cried in towns and villages, on hillsides and in steeplehouses (Quaker faith & practice 26.71). Their earth-shaking message was that Christ can be found in every heart, and that once listened to, he will join us together to learn from him: their slogan was, ‘Christ has come to teach his people himself’. As they listened, this Voice of Love and Hope led them to preach by word and deed everywhere they went. 

Features

Trials and errors: Rebecca Hardy catches up with Ben Jarman after his Swarthmore Lecture

by Rebecca Hardy

What has the response been from Quakers since you delivered the Swarthmore Lecture? 

Really positive. I had a couple of emails sent to me on Saturday that just said ‘wow!’ and I had a really satisfying, interesting and slightly difficult ‘Q and A’ – not in a bad way, but people were sharing issues that the lecture raised. Overall, I’ve been really happy with the response.

Features

Somewhere to believe in: Abigail Maxwell visits the Greenbelt Festival

by Abigail Maxwell

Greenbelt is a festival of ‘artistry and activism,’ where ‘the sacred meets the secular’. It has included Quaker worship for at least twelve years. This year the Quaker Arts Network and Loving Earth Project were at the heart of the event. 

The festival offers some free tickets to people who cannot afford them. Friends from Brighton Meeting took three refugees who had worked with us. After experiencing the cruelty of Suella Braverman’s asylum system, I wanted them to experience something beautiful of England. We arrived on the field with three tents, one borrowed the evening before which we had little idea how to erect, in winds gusting over forty miles an hour. 

Features

Poem: He asks for so little

by Jim Jepps

and, by a bed of bleeps and signals

sticking oxygen tangled with detergent

     the boy,     he prays,

Reviews

Our Island Stories

by Alison Leonard When Ann Morgan and other Friends in the Lancaster area began to go public about the…
News

Campaigners call for emergency plans at Lakenheath

by Rebecca Hardy A Norwich Friend has called on the new Labour government to reconsider signing the UN…
News

Quakers shine spotlight on ecocide

by Rebecca Hardy A Woodbrooke course highlighting the campaign to make ecocide an international crime…
News

Chichester Friends lead Fox walking

by Rebecca Hardy Chichester Friends hosted a public walking tour of  local Quaker landmarks to…
News

Friend wins Hugo award for science fiction

by Rebecca Hardy A Quaker is part of a science fiction editorial group that won a Hugo Award last month.
News

UN report echoes Quaker concerns on UK racism

by Rebecca Hardy Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has highlighted a United Nations report saying the UK should…
Q-eye

Eye - 06 September 2024

by Elinor Smallman On this day In 1912 the 6 September issue of the Friend featured big news about a property…
Letters

Letters - 06 September 2024

by The Friend The peace of the placeNick Tyldesley (23 August) asks ‘If our Meeting closed down would…

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