I spent much (too much) of yesterday engaged in creating what might be recorded as the most obscure cover in the Friend's history.

The image is of an ostrich with an identity crisis: it thinks it is an owl. The inspiration is an article by Susan Robson, who followed up a recent article by Jamie Wrench which referred to the animal conflict-types as they relate to Quakers. Susan has done a lot of study on this and writes: "They wanted to be owls, not sharks, teddy bears or even foxes. The Quaker version of the animal conflict typology in Conflict in Meetings increased the number of animals. The solitary avoiding turtle was given two new companions in avoidance, the lemming and the ostrich. The original five-fold typology places the avoiding turtle at the bottom left-hand corner of a diagram, able to back out of it. Unspoken conventions stop Quakers even getting onto the diagram. Aversion, the stage before avoidance, is practiced. Eyes and minds are turned away from conflict in a Quaker group. Ostriches abound."

The image is therefore of an ostrich with an identity crisis. It involved taking the adaptation of an ostrich with its head in the sand, as rendered by Toogle and then replacing the image of the ostrich, letter by painstaking letter, with the phrase "I am an owl" and other phrases from the description of the collaborating owl to be found here. When you look close up, the creature insists it is an collaborating owl, but when you look from afar, it is quite clearly an ostrich.

The exercise was interesting as it threw up revelations about our own self-images, including my own (so when I say 'we' I am refering to Friends as referred to in the article as well as myself). We all like to think we are the balanced, sane one as we interact with others, but what is the reality? Sad to say, at The Friend we are not only on the receiving end of a lot of poorly directed anger, but we hear more than our fair share of the pitfalls of employment by Quakers as well as manipulation, threats and malice that is kept well out of the projected image of Friends. We often have to take criticism that we feel is unfair and internalise it, we probably take such encounters more to heart than the large amounts of lovely comments, constructive criticism and generous feedback. Some of the text, as I typed it in, developed a tone of self-righteousness: echoes of people saying 'I take a great deal of time and effort' and then feeling hurt and angry when everything is not OK. The Swarthmore lecturer Simon Fisher refers to the great deal of offence that we build up inside ourselves by not developing positive conflict strategies. Working on the image and thinking about the idea made me see that I am just as much at fault in many of these respects.

In some ways, the image calls on the Society to assess its benign self-image, but it is not necessarily negative. The ostrich may have poor crisis-management skills and a tendency to lash out at the wrong time, but they are flamboyant, exuberant and hilarious, capable of running incredible speeds and strong as well. Ostriches have provided a creative opportunity for UK farmers in trouble with their (sorry vegetarians) delicious meat and eggs. We can be proud of being ostriches, even if we aspire towards improving on our weak areas.