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.
I recently received a message from an Israeli friend asking if I’d read the news. An unknown number of missiles were making their way from Iran to unknown targets in Israel. Without knowledge of their short- or long-term consequences, these missiles existed as a kind of Schrödinger’s cat: deadly and harmless. Mid-flight, they seemed nothing more and nothing less than polymer contaminants in the firmament; ugly and desecrating. Rough beasts slouching towards Bethlehem, waiting to be born.
You may have already enthusiastically registered to attend Yearly Meeting (26-30 July, online and at Friends House), or you may be thinking of doing so, while wondering what is on the programme. One of the items will be a proposal to make a specific change to the way in which Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) is organised – namely, to bring Yearly Meeting (YM) and Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) together in a single, continuing Yearly Meeting.
Education is a key to opportunity, and partnership can be pivotal. One such collaboration exists between Rwanda Yearly Meeting, its schools, the Rwandan Friends Career Center, and Forward Africa Education Trust (FAET), a small UK charity with Quaker roots. Together, we work to provide quality education.
In just a heartbeat
Space dissolves
And time stands still
And oh! the ecstasy, the thrill
In that dissolving unity
That tender gaze…
A blink before the birth of fear
When cruelty was a distant cloud
A devil’s joke
And there was love, and peace, and hope
And all was well and would be well
In 1969,‘the troubles’ began in Northern Ireland. The conflict had been simmering all year, but made worldwide news in August with the battle of the Bogside. Violence spread, and tensions ran high. Many of those who were minorities in their streets fled their homes.
Historical items on loan from Friends House and Swarthmoor Hall are part of a new exhibition at the Quaker Tapestry Museum. Other exhibits include reproductions from the state papers at The National Archives. ‘Sing and Rejoice: George Fox, the English Civil Wars and the Beginnings of Quakerism’ will coincide with the celebrations for Fox’s 400th anniversary.
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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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