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.
Quakers believe there is a Light in every human being, which we also call ‘that of God’. My other spiritual or psychological groups call this a ‘self’, or ‘true self’. I believe the true self, or inner child, which these groups seek to liberate, is the same as the Light. Calling it ‘Light’, or ‘of God’, we might think it good or truthful. It is each person’s unique, idiosyncratic goodness and truth. But sometimes our willingness to judge might prevent us seeing it clearly. We are influenced by the surrounding culture.
In the course of my work as media officer at Quakers in Britain, I spend some time each week, in Zoom meetings or on telephone calls, explaining the pronunciation of my name. ‘No, not “Kate-o”, “Cuh-too”. It’s Afrikaans, short for Catharina. No, I’m not Afrikaans, just named for my grandmother.’ Sometimes, when this label gets too heavy, I exaggerate to lighten the load, ‘No, half South African, through my mum.’
The Quaker-founded Climate Choir disrupted the Standard Chartered annual general meeting this month, to accuse the bank of financing environmental destruction.
I joined Friends almost fifty years ago, after a mystical experience of being in communion with the world around me. This experience gave me a sense of belonging and of place, to which I have tried to remain faithful even in moments of great doubt. I needed to explore the consequences of this with a group of people with whom I could be open, and who could be open with me. As an extrovert I need the energy of others to stimulate the energy within. Pilgrimage can be a lonely enterprise. On the whole I enjoy and learn from the company of Friends. I have also had to discover just what being in community entails.
Eyeless in the midst of chaos
are the giants of concrete: windows
shattered, knees bent beyond repair.
Testaments to bombs and shells.
An authentic, new reality.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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