The Friend

Food for thought: Anne M Jones returns to the refugee camp at Calais

When faced with ten kilogrammes of tomatoes for chopping, time seems to stand still. But it’s Friday already, and I have been in Calais for four days.

Feeling the pinch: Kate Graham on finding a deeper connection

What use is spirituality when you are really upset?

That’s an angry way of putting it, but when the proverbial has hit the fan – when your world has turned upside down, and you are feeling rejected, abandoned, angry, fearful, desolate, sad, furious and sad again – is spirituality, and spiritual practice, any help at all? Is there a Quakerly response? Can one have all these feelings and still connect with a sense of something greater? That’s the question facing me right now, and I would like the answer to be yes.

Good as new: Deborah Rowlands is at October’s CCQW

We met online, via Zoom. After routine business, we had an inspiring presentation from our coordinator, Carina Mundle Garratt, who had attended the conference on the Future of British Quakerism. In small groups we discussed: what gives us joy in our Quaker communities? What kind of organisation and infrastructure do we need to sustain our spiritual lives and witness? Given the context in which we live – ecological crisis, conflict and trauma across the world – how can we look for joy? How can we acknowledge our own pain and grief while trying to move forward with positive change, one step at a time?

The Golden Thread in My Life: A spiritual journey with Quakers

Towards the end of her book, Moira Fitt asks: ‘Do we open ourselves to the possibility of experiencing a new sense of spiritual reality which will feel appropriate for us?’ This very readable work describes the ways in which Fitt did this, particularly in the second half of her life. Some of these ways came through opportunities she sought, and some were the outcome of invitations from others, to which she responded positively, even if not sure at the time what the outcome would be. She was a Friend for most of her adult life, active locally, nationally and internationally. 

Red Chartist

It must occasionally happen that translators would rather not work on a particular passage. Perhaps such a thing happened to the Scottish Chartist Helen Macfarlane when she was translating The Communist Manifesto from its original German. She was a socialist with strong religious beliefs, whereas Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels seem to have regarded religion as a dead end.