Quaker interfaith is moving in new directions. Quaker Concern for Animals is to co-sponsor an inter-religious fund and fellowship to support humane medical research, it was announced at the recent QCA AGM. The fellowship will be launched at the Third Interfaith Celebration of Animals to take place at the Golders Green Unitarian Church on 10 September, when representatives of the Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Jain, Muslim and Jewish faiths will be invited to join. More on the fellowship in a forthcoming issue of The Friend, and we will be looking at how the alternative research movement is progressing.

Shuffling breaks appear to have been greatly missed at YM this year. All that intensity in the constitutional sessions rather kept Friends rigidly in their seats for too long. Alison Leonard stretched her legs in our Letters column last week, complaining of the restriction, and Cathy Eglington wondered to us whether the fact everyone was tired out the next day was the reason they let the new membership proposals through without a hitch. She did want to speak about her MM’s experience with old and new methods but found the new clerk’s technique of ‘sort of half standing up holding the minute book, whilst sort of looking around to see if anyone was standing’ rather inhibiting. That’s a neat tactic Martin!

Did Friends listen to the marvellous Daniel Barenboim giving his Reith Lectures? They were all about the power of music and in particular the success of the West-Eastern Divan (or Diwan) youth orchestra, which he and the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said founded a few years ago.
This orchestra, you may recall, is one of the wonders of the modern world, comprising both Israeli and Palestinian musicians. Barenboim and Said met by chance in an hotel lobby when, ironically, Said himself was presenting a Reith lecture series. Between them they dreamed up the orchestra, named after a poem by Goethe on the theme of ‘the other’. Goethe had been given a copy of the Qu’ran by a Spanish soldier, whereupon at the age of 60, he learned Arabic. His poem, ‘The West-Eastern Divan’ was inspired by the 14th century Persian lyrical poet Hafiz.
The orchestra has much for conflict-resolving Quakers to muse on. Barenboim says it is impossible to play music intelligently if you only concentrate on your own performance.
He has his critics, and was challenged by his Jewish audience in Jerusalem, but nevertheless Barenboim always sticks to his guns – or should we say, his baton.