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.
This I can say…
For decades I was a supporter of assisted dying, informed by a lifetime’s experience of caring for the frail elderly. But recent events have led me to lay aside that support.
In a radio interview on the BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme, our Friend Tim Gee (general secretary to Friends World Committee for Consultation) described his coming back to Friends as ‘a mountain top experience’, an ecstatic experience of relationship with God. ‘I quaked,’ he said.
During worship at my Local Meeting in September, I was moved to speak and act under concern. This text summarises what I said:
In 2012, when I arrived in Bradford on Avon as the new Meeting house warden, I was pleased to see that there was wheelchair access and an accessible toilet. When opening the door to this, the sight was as follows: a toilet at the far end, and next to it a large space filled with traffic cones, a wheelchair ramp, and a folded-up wheelchair.
Our Meeting was held in Dundee Meeting House, and online (Anthony was online and Piers in Dundee). Being in the room has advantages: meeting new Friends, regaining acquaintances, and there was interesting side-chat about property, rewilding and the US election. But joining online saves the pre-dawn rise and late return – saves flagging energy.
‘In opening worship, hearing words from Joanna Macy, we were encouraged ‘to be absolutely present’.
Our workshop with Sarah Diedro Jordão on anti-racism and anti-oppressive behaviour started with a summary of the two previous sessions and then in small groups we considered what we can do to improve diversity, both in QCEA and also in our own communities and meetings. The recognition of the dominance of English was clear and became a theme throughout the two days. We look forward to including an agenda item at future General Assemblies (GA) in another European language, and to learning from those in our community who already have more focus on translation and interpreting in their meetings.
"If you truly want to be led you must put yourself in a position that allows following" (PYM)
Though written within a Quaker and Christian context, this book can be used by anyone of any religious faith or secular inclination. The only requirement is a desire to follow, to be guided by, to align with the richness of the ineffable, which this book calls "the Way". This book seeks nothing less than to aid readers in aligning their lives with the same power and richness that animated the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
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