The Friend

Gift of tongues: Frances Voelcker & Pen Waugh attend CCQW

For many years, Crynwyr Cymru/Quakers in Wales (CCQW) met three times a year in person. Since Covid, we have gathered online in February and in October, and in person in June. But Meeting online has its own hazards, including incompatible equipment, unfamiliarity with the translate function, and the neglect of rural areas when it comes to good internet provision.

Truth ache: Oliver Müller on the similarities between science and religion

‘So what has surprised you the most in your research?’ I asked. A professor of education had just summed up the work he did, researching how people learn. After a moment’s thought he answered that it was the similarity in how we learn scientific and religious concepts. No one could re-do all the work already done by other scientists, he said, so we were forced to trust what they have done – not just specific research but whole paradigms. There is a degree of blind faith involved. Religion, too, requires this trust, usually in the form of a belief in a higher being, scripture or church authority.

Something about Mary: Simon Webb imagines a scene

The Durham Quaker Bible group is looking at the figure of Mary, the mother of Jesus. One of our number, who knows his way round the Good Book, took us through the mentions of this celebrated lady in the New Testament. 

Head First: A psychiatrist’s stories of mind and body

My interest in medicine came from my mother. She qualified as a doctor in the 1940s. In the 1960s she trained as a psychiatrist, specialising in hypnosis. At that time there was a pill for everything, so she was out of step with her colleagues. She believed most mental illness was a rational response to intolerable situations, and that listening to people was often more useful than giving them drugs.

Poem: The day

It has just broken 5:30am,

the day greyed over, my angled desk light pointing

away from me so it can’t dazzle the keyboard.

I am sat in my room with a silent drum kit

and a laptop containing the whole world.

For a short while, perhaps five minutes, no more than that,

I left this space to its own order and counted my breathing.