Issue 10-10-2025

The Friend

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.


Issue 10-10-2025

Thought for the week

A life that matters: Tony D’Souza’s Thought for the Week

by Tony D’Souza

Like every other living organism, we are in the grip of time. The simple truth is that we all have to die someday – we just don’t know the date. And that is our problem. We muddle through each day never thinking it might be our last, and we go to sleep with the unfounded expectation that we will wake up in the morning. We never face our mortality; we never ask how we are to spend the fleeting days we have on earth in a meaningful way. 

Features

Is peace possible? John Lampen on what to do when the international order breaks down

by John Lampen

For most of my life I was offered two sources of security at the international level. One was nuclear deterrence (‘the Cold War’) which I profoundly mistrusted because it opposed threat with threat and carried an immense risk of human error. The other was the system of international order, supported by the United Nations, with rules on how nations behaved to each other. This was buttressed by a number of instruments such as international conventions, declarations, treaties and bans; and also by trade agreements, alliances and so forth. The system claimed to be based on morality, and almost every state professed to be bound by it. There was hypocrisy, and there were violations and failures in many instances from arms trading to whaling to human rights, because of the folly of our own leaders as well the malice of others. But the system gave us a fairly stable framework within which states could talk to each other and come to agreement. A common language existed in which peacemakers could negotiate with leaders in conflict in the search for satisfactory outcomes.

Features

Prisons Week: Melanie Jameson of QICJ

by Melanie Jameson

Prisons Week has come round again in England and Wales, from October 12-18 (16-23 November in Scotland), providing an annual opportunity for Quakers in Criminal Justice (QICJ) to take stock of the situation in our prisons and decide what to highlight. 

Features

Poem: Disinformation

by Jennie Osborne

No one knows quite where this had its beginnings.
It seemed to ooze up from nowhere
started small, a trickle of whispers
kept in place by good firm banks.
But soon, there appeared several thin
streams converging one by one
each with their own lisp
of myth and maybe

News

Meeting for Sufferings: October’s residential, part one (Friday & Saturday)

by Joseph Jones Arrival The wet, grey edge of Storm Amy greeted Friends as they arrived at High Leigh…
News

Quakers offer solidarity after synagogue attack

by Rebecca Hardy Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) issued a statement in response to the antisemitic attack of a…
News

Quakers join call to close foreign bases

by Rebecca Hardy Quakers in Yorkshire supported a global call to close foreign military bases this week.
News

Friends welcome fracking ban promise

by Rebecca Hardy Anti-fracking campaigners, including Quakers, were heartened to hear that the government…
News

Quakers cleared of ‘locking on’ charges

by Rebecca Hardy Four Quakers were among fifteen climate protesters cleared of charges that they were…
News

BBC echoes Quaker Week theme

by Rebecca Hardy The BBC Daily Service explored the concept of ‘Love Your Neighbour’ last week, echoing…
Q-eye

Eye - 10 October 2025

by Elinor Smallman On this day In 1930 the 10 October edition of the Friend was a special, dedicated to…
Letters

Letters - 10 October 2025

by The Friend Making a case Thank you, Marigold Bentley, for the sensitive reflection on the spectacle…

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