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.
Fear can be a spiritual Pied Piper. It can mesmerise us, leading us away from Love, and from trusting each other. We see it at the international border and the military recruitment office, in the class system, and in the labelling of people as ‘strangers’ or ‘foreigners’ – as ‘them’.
When I first began to feel a leading to travel in the ministry – to visit Quaker Meetings to worship with Friends and share freely of what I was given – I thought it seemed like a truly terrible idea. I was aware of my profound shyness and introversion, and I felt that I didn’t have much to contribute. Although I experienced a deep love for Friends and a prompting to share the joy I’d found in our faith tradition, I was afraid to speak vulnerably about my experience – afraid that, if I answered this call, God might ask more than I could live up to. I spent a great deal of time in prayer, reminding God that there were much better candidates for this work: more confident and capable speakers; people with deeper knowledge of Quaker faith and practice. I told God that I was just trying to cope with my own life, just trying to follow Christ’s guidance in my daily interactions. I asked God to leave me alone and send someone else.
When Friends try to recount our experiences of the divine, we are trying to describe the indescribable. I use terminology that is meaningful for me, but you may need to translate it. It is the experience itself that matters. Since the time when Quakerism arose, Friends have been concerned with enabling people to have this experience, which I would describe as the transforming power of God’s grace – you use your own words. But however we depict this experience, it was the manner in which early Friends went about enabling it that would cause so much conflict.
Hiroshima is a beautiful city. When I opened the curtains of my hotel room on the thirteenth floor, it was all spread out before me. It sits in a crescent bay, its extended arms seemingly holding the sea in a wide embrace. In the centre is the bay area, and the suburbs fan out among the wooded hills, which rise gently up from it. It is breathtaking.
A Friend asked me recently if Quaker Voluntary Action (QVA) was still alive and kicking. Very much so! As a new QVA trustee, I’m keen to talk about our activities and retreats.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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