Can you identify these places in the life of George Fox? Rearranged, the initials of all the answers spell out the place where GF is buried.

1. George Fox's (GF) birthplace. .......................
2. The county of GF's birth. ...................
3. In this county GF made his first convert, Elizabeth Hooton. .................
4. GF was imprisoned more than once in this town in the North West. ..................
5. GF was also jailed in this town, famously associated with a range of herbs. ........................
6. A town near Swarthmoor Hall, home of GF's future wife. ......................
7. GF preached to multitudes at ..................... Chapel and Fell.
8. In this county James Parnell, a convert of GF's, became the first Quaker martyr. .......................
9. Woe to the bloody city of ....................., cried GF.
10. GF travelled to the West .................... in 1671.
11. GF visited this country just before his marriage. ..........................
12. GF married Margaret Fell in this city. .........................
13. GF visited this country in 1677 with William Penn. .....................

Answers to follow in January 2008.

Labels: quiz quaker

As Winter's grip tightens, the days shorten and the nights lengthen. It is by these signs meteorological and astronomical that we discern that it is once again that season when periodicals offer their readers a quiz to while away the dark evenings of the mid-winter holidays.

This year the questions concern midwinter religious celebrations.
1 Chanukah, the Jewish festival of lights and dedication, is celebrated on? (John 10:22)
a) 25th Kislev
b) 1st Tishri
c) 14th Nissan
2 The Jewish month of Kislev is equivalent to which month in the Roman calendar?
a) April
b) May
c) December
d) January
3 When was Mithras' birthday, the Iranian hero/deity adopted by many Romans in the second century CE?
a) 25th Kislev
b) 25th December
c) Winter Solstice
d) Spring Equinox
4 When did pagan Romans celebrate the 'Birth of the Invincible Sun' (natalis solis invicti)?
a) 25th Kislev
b) 25th December
c) Winter Solstice
d) Spring Equinox
5 When did Christians begin to celebrate Jesus' birth of 25th December?
a) Within a decade of His crucifixion
b) During the first century CE
c) During the third century CE
d) During the fourth century CE
6 According to tradition, which of the following were conceived by a deity/god and born of woman?
a) Gautama Siddhartha (the Buddha)
b) Mithras
c) Jesus
d) Alexander of Macedon
e) All the above
7 Why are evergreen plants such as holly, ivy and fir trees associated with Christmas?
a) They look nicer than leafless twigs
b) They are symbols of regeneration/rebirth amongst death
c) Jesus' cross made from holly and fir
d) Jesus' manger was made from holly and fir
8 Who said 'I was to bring people off from Jewish ceremonies, and from heathenish fables'?
a) George Fox
b) St Nicholas
c) Pope John Paul II
d) Martin Luther

Advice (because you can't have a Query without an Advice)

Another testimony held by early Friends was that against the keeping of 'times and seasons'. We might understand this as part of the conviction that all of life is sacramental; that since all times are therefore holy, no time should be marked out as more holy; that what God has done for us should always be remembered and not only on the occasions named Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.
From Quaker faith & practice 27.42

Answers will be revealed in January 2008.

Remember folks, don't write in with your answers, its just for fun!

Labels: quiz

The board game 'Monopoly' was invented by a Quaker, Elizabeth Magie-Phillips in 1903, as a warning against the evils of land speculation and how a community can lose its heart when badly regulated markets allow monopolies to take over.
She was a follower of Henry George, a radical economist of the time. who developed his theories about the benefit of a single tax on land to effect the redistribution of wealth while working as a journalist in 19th century San Francisco. There he witnessed the suffering of bonded immigrant Chinese labour, the land grabbing of the railroads and the injustice of unearned income linked to land speculation and landlordism. Elizabeth's original game had properties called Beggarman's Court, Lonely Lane, Easy Street, and if you trespassed on Lord Blueblood's estate, you went to prison. In another corner was a Poorhouse, and where the modern version has stations and utilities there were cornfields, farmlands, and forest. Income for basic goods could be collected on squares marked 'absolute necessity'. Andrew Simms, who discloses this in his recent book Tescopoly (a treatise against the monopolies that have
caused the demise of thousands of small shops in our town centres), says that 'Before being swiped by a sharp sales rep during the Great Depression and sold as his own idea to a games manufacturer, the game acquired folk status among Quaker communities. Many developed their own variations of the rules and street names, but all the early players understood the game's true purpose.' Something to think over as you settle down to a family session of Monopoly this holiday: perhaps you could enjoy creating your own 21st century version.

Can board games be an aid to religious development? Judging by the surprisingly large number available, several certainly try. Do they succeed? As vehicles for thinking about religion, possibly; as games, generally not.
This failure-as-games does not surprise games designer and Quaker David Parlett. The core of a good game, he says, is an original rules set, a way of playing that hasn’t been done before; the theme, message or look of the game is secondary. Take Monopoly, he says. 'One of the reasons why that has lasted so long is that when it came out it had a completely original mechanism.' Many religious games come from the opposite viewpoint: they have a message to push or information to get across and then cast around for an appropriate vehicle, which often replicates another game.
Which isn't to say they are all bad. Bibleopoly (no prizes for guessing its inspiration) is actually pretty fun first time round, if only because you spend your time laughing at the differences with the original (and no, Sodom and Gomorrah do not take the place of Old Kent Road). Sadly, the sole Quaker contribution to this genre, The 1652 Country Game, came out badly: the dual elements of racing around a board as fast as possible and regularly stopping to discuss Quaker values and beliefs don't gel well.
BuddhaWheel, based on Buddhist ideas of rebirth and enlightenment, is the best of the crop. Emily Rogers, a Buddhist with Quaker roots, spent five years developing the game, in which players travel through many lives trying to become Buddhas. The process of creating and playing BuddhaWheel has helped Emily develop her own faith, because she had to consider which of the actions players engage in during the game are positive and negative, as well as see the positive effects of negative actions. One of the most interesting features is that when a player is reborn in a hell or god realm, they must describe for themselves hellish or godlike experiences. Emily says that non-religious players in particular have found this liberating: 'Unless we have a spiritual path or spiritual community, we don’t really talk about what we really love and really hate'.
Like religion in general, different religious board games appeal to different people (The Evangelical Explosion Game, anyone?) but many have focused too heavily on the ends of informing people about the religion instead of the means of producing a great game. And if it’s not a game people want to play, then it won’t be a goal they ever bother to reach.

Labels: games

Buffalo revenge...

Satirical postcards are our favourite way of imparting a brief, but telling, radical message. Postcards are cheap, cheerful and much more green than the increasingly expensive greetings cards which use paper for envelopes. Eye received one of Leeds Postcards' marvellous cards recently, 'God Wants to Know'. Christine Hankinson runs Leeds Postcards and she is one of those canny business people who can manipulate the market for radical causes. 'I like to get issue groups into the High-street' she told Eye, 'because that's where they need to be.'
Do you remember the famous Leeds Postcard which showed Margaret Thatcher stealing the purse from a woman's basket?

Congratulations to Angela and Charles Birch of Minehead Meeting for becoming the first Eco-Heroes, an initiative of the West Somerset group of the Somerset Wildlife Trust. But for those of you who don't approve of 'awards' this was not a competition with rules but a recognition of exceptional 'greenery'. Angela and Charles impressed the Trust with their efforts at recycling and low energy use at their home in Watchet. They ride an electrically assisted bicycle and entertain with their own home-made musical instruments. The Good Life indeed.

The Friend has a mascot. Her name is Nutmeg, a (we think) tortoiseshell moggie who enthusiastically assists her mistress Clare Barnett in the recording of the Talking Friend, our audio version. Listeners of the tapes can sometimes discern the contribution of Nutmeg. 'She is always very keen to 'get in on the act,'' says Clare, 'whenever we are recording the Friend, with enthusiastic meowing.' Nutmeg also favours reader interaction, and purrs into the mike when she has a chance, but Clare sometimes has to curb this.
'She is most distracting when she tries to nudge me with her paw whilst I am speaking into the mike, obviously wondering why this piece of equipment is getting so much more attention!'
On occasion Nutmeg has been very vocal, to the amusement of listeners. One listener noticed that following Nutmeg's meow Clare had 'a smile in her voice.'

Our enterprising sub-editor packed the large white van (the one that got her husband stopped on the way to Heathrow) with all sorts of paraphernalia and took her two grandchildren off to help her with a boot sale. Because of the propensity of teenagers to want to stay in bed on weekend mornings, she decided to camp about ten minutes from the annual RNLI bootsale in Henley-on-Thames to allow them the maximum lie-in. Having roused them at 6am, they were washed, dressed, tent packed and ensconced in the van by 6.30am only to find that they couldn’t exit the campsite - a small sign, hidden by a parked van (outside the barrier!) told of the height barrier which had been erected after their arrival the previous day and which would not be opened until 9am on Sundays! As the boot sale began at 7am that was just a tad late. A frantic phone message left on the camp's answering machine saved the day and she managed to arrive just in the nick of time. Her flat is now somewhat clearer but more boot sales may follow.

Labels: white van

We've been reading The God Delusion, a little behind everyone else. If we were paranoid we might now be suspecting an atheist conspiracy. Everywhere we look religion is taking a hammering and not just the fanatic wing. Richard Dawkins even thinks mainstream religion has a lot to answer for, and a poll this week showed that an unnervingly high number of people consider religion harmful. Polly Toynbee became the new president of the British Humanist Association with some fighting talk about the here and now being all there is, and John Humphrys published a book called In God We Doubt. Really, what is a life-affirming Quaker to make of it?
But Friends, Eye is not a fearful column. We find the sparring and shaping up tactics of biologists and intelligent design theorists not just greatly entertaining, but stimulating and illuminating. Some tremendous ideas are emerging, simply because more people are talking about God.

Labels: dawkins