Our highlighting of the haiku poetic form in the Friend (15 February) struck a chord with Ian McPherson. Ian lives in a part of the country perfect for a haiku lover - Cumbria - and Brigflatts is his meeting. 'I have long regarded haiku as quintessentially "Quaker" poetry', he says, 'embodying, as it does, simplicity, economy, integrity, a nature theme, deep insight into the human condition and, perhaps above all, the spontaneity by which, like ministry, it arises from the silence'.
Ian offers some writers to help a novice haiku poet - Sam Hamill (The Sound of Water), Kenneth Yasuda (Japanese Haiku) and William J Higginson (The Haiku Handbook - How to Write, Share and Teach Haiku).
Ian has a novel idea for us. 'I would like to propose a regular "Haiku (HaiQ?) Corner" in the Friend which would contain one or two original haiku submitted by readers. Not only would this provide haikuists with the opportunity to appear in print but might also serve to inspire others to try their hand. It is a wonderfully simple yet profound way of being creative with words and of sharing one's insight with others.' And he has started the ball rolling with one of his own –

Jackdaws protest -
The lone jogger disturbs their roost
As evening comes on.

This is in keeping with our search for a leaner, more disciplined poetry. Eye invites readers to try their hand at the very short poem and we will print the best ones.

Labels: haiku, poetry

One small step that didn't make the headlines while the archbishop Rowan Williams was facing the Church of England Synod over his sharia law lecture, was the historic meeting that the Faith Communities Forum (FCF) held in Church House. This invitation to meet during the Synod came about after three years of consideration by the church. There followed a reception at which bishops and other Synod members met the FCF group. There was a briefing on the workings of the complex organisation that is the Synod, and then the forum members sat in on the afternoon session.
Chas Raws, the Quaker on the forum, takes up the story: 'With so much government activity in the interfaith sector at present, not to mention the furore caused by the archbishop's lecture, it was not surprising that much of the time at the FCF meeting was spent discussing issues such as "Britishness", shared values, a community of communities and multiple identities. Many of us are involved in trying to write responses to the consultation on an interfaith strategy for the UK, "Face-to-Face and Side-by-Side", and some doubts were expressed about the helpfulness of its questionnaire format. The archbishop's faith adviser suggested that we would do well to ignore many of the questions and focus on the big issue – what role do we actually want government to take in relation to faith communities?' It seems to us that this very sensitive arena is getting pretty crowded.

Labels: Church of England, sharia, synod

We've had our wrists slapped by a reader from New Zealand for sloppy sentence construction in a news story (23 November 2007, page 4). She sends her critique by hand-written airmail ('my computer is defunct, as is – almost – its eighty-nine-year-old Quaker owner'). Eye looked at the offending passage and sees our reader's point. It was a story on a UN call to halt executions. The heading was fine, but the first paragraph began: 'The call last week for a global moratorium on executions by the UN General Assembly's Third Committee...'

Labels: syntax, UN

So it's not just seniors who have those exasperating senior moments. On the Young Friends' agenda at their recent General Meeting was an item to consider whether to work to become a Fairtrade church, only for them to be reminded that they already were and that the certificate was in their office! But there is a sequel. Young Friends questioned their own commitment and decided to monitor whether they were doing enough to promote Fairtrade. It's not enough, it seems, just to wake up and smell the coffee.

Labels: fairtrade

Not all Friends have happy encounters with energy preservation. Laura Jefferies in Shrewsbury started out with the best intentions. 'Progressively', she tells Eye, 'the incandescent lights in my household were replaced with "energy-saving lamps". Progressively I became conscious that my eyesight was failing. I could no longer read for long periods in the evening and I found that the television screen was becoming blurred too.'
Obviously it was time for an eye-check. But before that she installed an environmentally friendly standard lamp adjacent to her armchair. No improvement, so Laura fitted a more powerful bulb. 'Still no improvement in visibility, but I did gain a painful and persistent rash on the right-hand side of my face nearest the lamp.' She applied creams but the rash worsened.
Then Laura heard a radio interview with a dermatologist who suggested that energy-saving bulbs could radiate ultra-violet light and cause dermatitis in some skins. That was enough for our Friend trying to do her bit for the environment.
'My next act was to purchase all of the remaining incandescent lamps in my local supermarket. These lamps were fitted into the light-fittings in my sitting-room. Predictably, despite my determination to use only a simple moisturiser on my face, the rash gradually disappeared.' Her eyesight improved, and now she can read for long periods again, and she and her partner can actually see their TV screen once more.
If these energy-saving measures become widespread, Laura fears she will have to smuggle incandescent bulbs from countries which continue to supply them. 'Otherwise I shall need to go to bed as darkness falls and rise again at sunrise.'
Eye thinks that's not such a bad idea.

Labels: lightbulb

Leslie Fuhrmann, that grand old man of Quakerism, tells us that at seventy-nine, he's been a widower for fourteen years but still tries to be useful. 'My family visit me weekly', Leslie says. 'For the last couple of years I have been cooking an evening meal for us to share, a roast joint and seven veg. The leftovers used to provide me with good meals for the next couple of days, but now I have a pressure cooker which provides freshly cooked daily veg in five minutes.'
Leslie's catering has expanded recently: 'I now buy a larger weekly roasting joint, which provides lunch for me and four other widowers on the following day as well'.
His usefulness extends to the street. Accumulating supermarket plastic bags, he takes some out on walks and collects rubbish in them – wearing a plastic glove for protection. This all goes into roadside litter bins. At least the roads near Leslie's home are spick and span.
Leslie asks Eye, 'what can your readers offer or suggest towards making our communities more pleasant?' Now there's a question!

Labels: community

Remember the National Quaker Week website? No, Eye didn't either, but it is alive and well at www.quaker.org.uk/sing and the T-shirt prizes from last year's competition have been dished out.

For those of you who like elephant stories, Eye has a friend whose birthday fell during an assignment in India. She has been given a temple elephant as a gift, which startled her. She felt sorry for the elephant and wanted to release her. But she was even more astonished when the animal, given a banana, proceeded to peel the fruit by fixing it into the corner of her mouth and massaging it with her trunk. She then ate the peeled fruit. 'I was pretty impressed', says our friend.

Labels: elephant

Reading of Donald Swann last week reminded Eye of Donald's contribution to the founding of the The Leaveners, an idea taken from his musical play The Yeast Factory, written with the Quaker librettist Alec Davison. The central song from this was seminal at street theatre events during residential Yearly Meeting at Lancaster in 1978.

Donald became a patron of the new Quaker Youth Theatre and opened the first Leaveners Arts Base in Highbury. It was from QYT's musical and choral work that the Quaker Festival Orchestra and Chorus were inaugurated at the Royal Festival Hall in 1985 with Tony Biggin's oratorio, The Gates of Greenham.

As a result of this public declaration that the Society of Friends could break with over 300 years of antipathy to music and the arts, Donald became a Quaker. Even though he had been in the Friends Ambulance Unit during the war, he had remained an Anglican, feeling that no spirituality rejecting song could be his. Living in Battersea, he joined Wandsworth meeting.

Sheila Hancock was one of the two narrators in the oratorio. She was a Greenham woman on a spiritual quest herself and, prompted by the event to go to an enquirers' gathering at Charney Manor, also became a Friend soon after.

Eye also hears that Barry and Gill Wilsher were sad that there was no mention in our profile of the six-year-long run of Soundings by Swann which preceded Swann with Topping by several years.

In Soundings Donald explored new forms of church liturgy and its attendant music. The show toured churches and cathedrals throughout the UK and also had a three-week run in the USA. It went out about once a month during the six years following its opening at the Edinburgh Fringe in the mid-1960s.

Barry's main contribution was to narrate a half-hour-long Jewish tale to which Donald had set music for his Swann singers (mentioned by Simon Risley) and a locally recruited children's choir.

Gill Wilsher marshalled these forces and directed the show. Donald's name was good enough to bring in large audiences from these various congregations of mainly Anglicans and United Reformed churches. Sidney Carter joined the group on the American trip, and he and Donald gave several concerts together in that time.

Barry Wilsher continued: 'One memorable performance was given at Selly Oak to a triennial conference of European and Near East Friends. This came in late 1969 and was instrumental in bringing us into Friends. We had hitherto no "religious" leanings being a lapsed Anglican and Methodist respectively, but exposure to people of faith softened us up so that we were primed and ready for Quakerism.'

Labels: davison, musical, swann, wilsher

Eye was at Chester cathedral last week for the official opening of the Quaker Tapestry exhibition. Chester Friends say that you can drive to the city, park at the racecourse and walk in, but Eye chose the environmentally acceptable route of train and free city-centre bus.

Broadcaster Felicity Goodey, who cut the official ribbon, was so interested in the tapestry panels that she was still discussing them with her hosts when the tea ran out and the party had to repair to the refectory and haggle with the staff. On closer inspection this story doesn't hold up. We suspect that Tapestry trustee Jamie Wrench was so enthusiastically verbose, and the polite broadcaster so accommodating, that tea slipped right off the agenda.

The exhibition is on through February - not Sundays - from 10am to 4pm. Entry is free and there's an organ recital on Thursday lunchtimes.

Labels: chester, goodey, quaker tapestry

Stan Holland found our Christmas piece on the Godalming to Lancashire canal journey of Tony Haynes a cause for pleasant reminiscence. Pausing only to correct our description of Tony's 'barge' - ('it was a narrowboat') - Stan regaled us with the story of his own canal-drifting days.

'As Tony proceeded north on the canal to the current limit of navigation he would have passed under Bridge 19, which is shown as Quaker's Bridge in the waterways guide, although no-one seems to know how it got this name. Can anyone tell me?'

Stan recalls on one trip, putting his wife offshore to go to Meeting in Bourneville. She began her ministry there by saying: 'I don't suppose many Friends came to Meeting this morning by boat.' The couple's daughter was marrying the following Saturday at the Meeting and this had inspired a ministry on life's varied journey. 'This event occurred thirty years ago, and our daughter is still happily married - and so are we', Stan tells us. 'After sixty-three years it is still an interesting journey. I think I might manage a little more.'

Labels: narrowboat

We are apt to think of the early Quakers as folk of simple taste. What we may have missed is that the wealthier ones possessed a taste for beauty and style.

This piece of exquisite furniture (pictured), an eighteenth century mahogany bookcase, was made by the renowned cabinetmakers Gillows of Lancaster for the widow of Thomas Hutton Rawlinson. He was a Quaker ironmaster who made his money (£49,000 by all accounts) from trading in the West Indies. The mahogany could have been imported by the family firm.

Eye is no expert on historical artefacts but we are told the bookcase is a fine example of carving, marquetry and tracery work. The president of the Furniture History Society says that the Rawlinson bookcase shines 'even in comparison with a piece which would, until its emergence, have been regarded as the summit of Gillows production at this period'.

Now the bookcase is back where it belongs, in Lancaster. It has been purchased for £260,000 by the Lancashire County Council Museums service after a campaign to save it for the nation. Mary Hutton Rawlinson had taken delivery of it in July 1772 at a cost of £21.

When the London antique dealer Apter-Fredericks first acquired the bookcase it had descended through the Gurneys. Obviously, it has stayed within the wider Quaker family.

Labels: gillows, ironmaster, lancaster, marquetry, rawlinson

Eye is, of course, anonymous.

But it is not beyond the ingenuity of readers to identify who writes what here.

But the Friend has a problem with material sent which says 'name and address withheld'.

The editor currently has one such piece, which details the writer's departure from the Religious Society of Friends.

He/she looks back to a time when elders were kind and guided a new Friend. Recent attitudes of Friends are disappointing to the writer.

If this is your piece, we would like to hear from you.

The Friend can't publish anonymously unless the editor knows who the writer is.

Labels: anon

In this issue we carry a review of a Quaker approach to the treatment of the mental illness called bipolar disorder. It was written by John Miles, a Friend from Nailsworth Meeting. John's personal story is a harrowing one - his father, brother and son have been affected by this condition.

Writing of his experience in the journal of MDF The Bipolar Organisation, John paints a picture of family life over three decades.

John's father, he writes, 'had periods of intense and extended flights of fancy, restless and fired up with big ideas of how he could help save the world'.

His brother's living conditions and financial circumstances took his mother to the depths of despair. After John's father died, the family discovered that John's son was bipolar too.

Families suffer from this condition as well as the patient. 'Emotions, property, financial stability, life plans, all are at risk of being hijacked in bizarre ways without warning', says John.

Labels: bipolar

Those little 'spare' Meeting house rooms can come in quite handy when your city is hosting something like City of Culture.

In Liverpool, Friends have a room adjacent to the street – just perfect for inviting in weary visitors to the Capital of Culture this year.

It's simple and relaxing - just bring a sandwich and you can have coffee or tea and rest between exhibitions.

Friends will be on hand to talk to visitors, and the South Liverpool Photographic Society will be displaying some of their pictures of the city. Liverpool Meeting is opening the 'café' this month for three days a week initially, expanding to six days, over lunch times.

Bernard Thomas, of the new project committee, tells Eye that Liverpool Friends want to 'minister with our Meeting house. We have a really nice building right in the city centre and we want to open it up to people.'

DVDs on the history of Liverpool Quakers are planned, to give to visitors.

Making the most of a very good opportunity!

Labels: city of culture, culture, liverpool