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.
Who doesn’t love rose windows? Often visually complex, with myriad colours and images, the beauty of these ‘heavenly circuits’ (to borrow an expression from Plotinus) emerges each day as the light of the sun covers the world.
We are all participants in the journey of living and dying. As Quakers, we bring an important perspective on how to travel this road in a thoughtful, engaged, and spiritual way – in our own and in other communities.
This year is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. The council was a pivotal gathering of Christian bishops, convened by the Roman emperor Constantine I, who had converted to Christianity having seen a vision of a cross in the sky.
Our regular June business included reports on the ways in which our lives and witness have been supported by Crynwyr Cymru/Quakers in Wales (CCQW). This included our communications with the Senedd and other public bodies, particularly those engaged in justice, peace and interfaith work.
Faced with the genocide of the people of Gaza, what can Quakers do? We march, write to MPs, raise money, even make a collective statement at Yearly Meeting. More Quakerly still we act against arms factories, advocate as ecumenical accompaniers, and help broker listening circles between Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers. But not many are led to that work, and for most of us it all feels limited, and the horror overwhelming.
‘In Britain, as in a number of other countries, with economic advantages and no war on our actual doorstep, a settled narrative for decades was one of material development… this narrative has faltered – some will say shattered.’
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Whether you are new to Quakerism or have been going to Meeting for years, you’ll find something here to inspire, inform and challenge you.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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