The Friend

‘De-tribalising the mind’: Jonathan Doering reports on a ‘bread and roses’ project in Kenya

‘Compassion, to be effective, requires detailed knowledge and understanding of how society works… What is important is… that those who are concerned about these values be prepared to grapple with the complex realities of modern society as it is.’

Grigor McClelland in Quaker faith & practice 23.47

Kenya is lush, energetic, and chaotic, its people brimming with vision and vibrancy. Yet it is also riven by economic exploitation, the history of colonialism, and inter-tribal tensions and civil strife. My family and I were privileged to spend four weeks on a working visit there in 2019, and were awe-struck by the people and the land.

Quakers in court for DSEI witness

Eight Friends appeared in court last week for their witness at the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair in London last September.

Poetic synergy: Jonathan Wooding has more on the ‘Quakerish predisposition’ of William Wordsworth

If Friends were obliged to write a creed by which others (and we ourselves) might understand what we are up to in Meeting for Worship, I can plainly confess I wouldn’t mind hearing these words ring out of a Sunday morning:

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Action plan: Mary Aiston prepares for Yearly Meeting

I had been to Yearly Meeting (YM) several times before I thought to ask: who sets the agenda for it?

The answer is that the agenda is discerned by Yearly Meeting Agenda Committee (YMAC), a committee that does what it says on the tin, and of which I have now been part for three years.

Before considering YMAC’s work, it is worth thinking about the purpose of Yearly Meeting. As set out in Quaker faith & practice (Qfp) 6.05, YM is there to take decisions, but also to guide, teach, inspire, celebrate, and call us to action.

A bypass ticket online

Failing sight, loss of hearing,
Sleepless night, muddled thinking

Pad for leaks, dressings for ulcers
And painful feet which can’t be mended.

You don’t think about getting old.
It won’t happen to you, not yet.

Not yet, and when it does you think
That you will go there gracefully.

With dignity and with all your
Various parts well working.