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.
For most of my life, I have felt repulsed by street-corner preachers screaming ‘Jesus died for you’. And, as a former child protection officer, I could never quite fathom how a father would sacrifice his son. I still cannot square these notions, but I have to accept the mystery of it all, perhaps an allegory for suffering in all its myriad forms.
Dennis was in his prison cell when a letter arrived from his daughter. ‘Dear Dad, I love you,’ she wrote. ‘Why don’t you give up this life of crime and drugs?’
There was depressing news recently for the creative arts in the UK, as the government cut funding for performing and creative arts courses at English universities. All the more reason, then, to celebrate a new initiative to encourage young people’s engagement with the arts, focusing on how art can help young people with their mental health and wellbeing by combating isolation and loneliness.
‘To all Friends everywhere,
‘On Sunday 31st March 2024, twelve Friends gathered at Westminster Meeting House for a discussion group, hosted by London Young Adult Quakers (LYAQ) to explore the topic of “Can healthcare be illegal: Discussing the issues with decriminalising abortion as opposed to legalising it”.
I once felt moved in Meeting for Worship to give ministry that included a reading of the first nine verses of John’s Gospel. After an appropriate time for reflection I was surprised when a fellow member stood up and said the problem with the Bible was its masculine domination. Actual masculine pronouns were quoted to support this belief. I didn’t respond, as ministry should never degenerate into a debating session. I didn’t follow it up later during refreshments either, perhaps because I knew the person concerned was a nontheist. I had thought that the passage was probably the one most likely to resonate with nontheists, since it includes the phrase ‘that was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world’; this could have been the origin of ‘the light that is in us all’ from Advices & queries 5.
I come to a place of light
in an ocean of darkness.
They said: Stand still in the light,
submit to its power.
When temptation came
and troubles appeared
I was to sink to the bright seed.
Troubles would be hushed
and darkness fly away.
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