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.
Throughout history, certain spiritual partnerships have offered not only mutual support but prophetic challenge to the structures of power. These can be both religious and political. The pairings of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and George Fox and Margaret Fell, though separated by centuries, share deep commonalities. Both stood together not merely as teacher and follower, but as co-witnesses to a truth that subverted established authority and gave voice to the inner light in all people.
On Sunday last, I joined Scarborough Friends for Meeting for Worship – I was making a weekend visit to family.
From its beginning, our life is governed by acquisitions. These include not only material objects, such as our possessions, but the gathering of know-how and understanding. From the moment we are born we learn what behaviour is likely to result in the provision of food or other comforts. The acquisition of speech enables us to become more specific in the expression of our needs.
How do we approach Yearly Meeting (YM) 2025? Are we excited to be meeting old and new friends? Are we looking forward to building our community? Are we overwhelmed with the world around us? It matters that we gather together. Can we centre ourselves to listen to that still small voice?
From 14-17 April 2025, four Friends gathered at Claridge House, Surrey, a Quaker centre for retreat, rest, and renewal, for a working retreat run by Quaker Voluntary Action (QVA). We split our time between worship, living in community, physical work, and exploring the theme of Caring for Creation. In addition to the participants, the group was supported by Kit King, QVA coordinator, who facilitated the retreat, and Merry Wood, manager of Claridge House, who provided support in many ways throughout our time there.
Friends concerned about events in the United States may take comfort from the fact that they are following in the footsteps of Catherine Impey (1847-1923), one of the most remarkable Quakers of her time. Then, as now, the concern was that the US was wandering off the steep, narrow, rock-strewn path that leads to civilisation and enlightenment. After a disastrous civil war and the subsequent abolition of slavery in 1865, the chance was missed to reconstruct the southern states in particular on the basis of fairness and equality. ‘Jim Crow’ laws, leading to segregation and disadvantage for black people, were in some cases coupled with lynch law.
I bought the book, A Slat Of Wood,
stark, heartening poems by Helen Morgan Brooks.
Scooped it up from The Net,
found this first edition in a listing by
The Corner Bookshop, Bath, Water Street,
Maine, America, just before the tariffs took effect.
Inside this slim cardboard cover is a label
stating the collection had originally been acquired by
Friends Book Store, at Yearly Meeting Arch Street,
Philadelphia in 1977. You get my meaning?
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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