And Sally Aspden sends us:
As new leaves unfurl
we discuss what Quakerism
means to each of us.

We wonder how many Friends have shared the fantasy of David J Harding, who found himself tempted to behave in wrong ordering in Meeting? Dismayed at the surrounding frowns, David had to suppress his urge to minister, as he wanted to jump on a chair and shout 'if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands! Stamp your feet!' Instead he went home and sent us these lines (shortened David – sorry, you should have paid attention to our haiku story recently):
It will come as no surprise
That we Quakers close our eyes,
'gathered in' and 'centred down'
faced by faces with a frown...
caused (I think that I should mention)
by religious concentration.
That lets us off lightly
For few ever seem brightly
To 'seek for the Light'
With sparkling delight.

Labels: CLAP

'Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece... But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.'
Answers on a postcard please (and thanks to Daphne Wright for sending it in).

Labels: who

Eye heard recently about an attender at Westminster's Wednesday night Meeting for Worship, who regularly attends football matches. A few Saturdays ago she was up at AFC Wimbledon (who play in the Ryman premier division) when they played Hastings United. Our friend, Liz, takes up the story: 'Half time is pretty boring and fanzines don't interest me so I'm reading the Friend on the terraces when the guy standing next to me identified himself. He was from Wimbledon Meeting. I’m still a recent enough attender to find being called Friend and patted on the shoulder quite touching.'
Eye has heard all about Quakers who wait in anticipation of the Friend arriving through the letterbox, but wonders now where else the journal is read these days.
Liz concluded her story: 'Found myself minding my language for the rest of the match though!' Of course, you'll want to know the score. Wimbledon won 4-0.

Labels: wimbledon

Eye says: If Chuck Fager's article in this week's edition interested you, there will be a chance to question him further at an event being held during BYM hosted by the Friend. Watch for further details.

Labels: chuck fager

All this talk of mystery worshippers (Eye, 14 March) briefly distracted Jez, our production editor, from his travails. He tells Eye that three years ago when he was an editor of Young Quaker, he started reviewing Meetings for Worship in that magazine. 'I started with Earls Colne', he explains, 'as it is near where I grew up. Young Quaker readers soon wrote in with their own reviews and the column still continues to this day.'
Eye hears that young Friends consider issues such as accessibility, numbers of young people and refreshments, as well as important non-material matters such as length and subject of ministry.
After a Young Friends General Meeting planning weekend at Colchester in January, Jez waited anxiously to see what his fellow young Friends would make of his home Meeting. He was relieved recently to see a positive review appear in Young Quaker.

Labels: Meetings, young Friends

Former attorney-general Peter Goldsmith's suggestion that school leavers could swear allegiance to the queen must have set a few Quaker teeth on edge. But our Hexham Friend Caroline Westgate saw an opportunity. She's been reading Decca: the letters of Jessica Mitford and has alighted on an incident where Decca was required to provide a fingerprint and sign an oath when she was appointed visiting professor at San Jose State University. Refusal led to sacking and a court case. The judge said the university's case was unsupported by any validly adopted statute and so couldn't be enforced. While all this went on she hadn't been paid, which enraged the judge.
'How wonderful it would be', says Caroline, 'to give the UK authorities a similar run-around should they be foolish enough to grant us a similar opportunity!'

Labels: oaths

We didn't believe it until we had read it in the New York Times. But the disgraced New York state governor Eliot Spitzer, who has been bugged by police while arranging to meet a prostitute, appears to have used an alias while on his unofficial business. It is not a name which would have occurred to us - George Fox!
According to the NYT, the room in the Washington hotel where Eliot Spitzer stayed was registered under George Fox's name. Police said he was apparently known by this name to the organisers of the prostitution ring. The real George Fox, a donor to the governor, was startled to be confronted by reporters. 'That's the first I've heard of it', he is reported to have said. Our founder would not have been impressed.

Labels: fox, new york, prostitution

What a splendid eco-warrior is Jon Castle, the seafaring Friend who sailed into controversy last week in the waters around the Chagos Islands. He and Pete Bouquet, both of them past cap'ns of the Rainbow Warrior, were detained as they illegally sailed their boat Musichana around the island's waters in protest at the plight of the Chagossians.
Eye is somewhat uneducated in these matters. We have to admit ignorance of the calamity which befell the islanders and only really plugged into this when it was revealed that their lovely island had been used for rendition flights. But now Jon and Pete are bringing the shadier exploits of military personnel to a much wider audience.
We had a look at Jon's blog on the People's Navy website (this is the colour the chaps sail under) and find he is exactly how we pictured him, bearded and gnarled. He spent an idyllic childhood on Guernsey, before the global financial system got there, he tells us. The golden sands, birds, fish and flora all worked their magic on Jon, and matched up with his early dislike of unfairness and bullying, they were the catalyst needed to make him a determined friend of the earth.
'As I grew older I recognised injustice, hypocrisy among the powerful and rich, the underlying evil of power inequality and the many ways we fool ourselves for our own peace of mind, because we all like to think we are the good guys', Jon says in his blog.
Inspiration, he tells us, comes from 'ancient holy wells and great stones left by pagan ancestors, scattered across the sacred landscape, from Taoism, from the Friends of Bideford Quaker group, from living nature.'
We recommend a trip to Jon's blog on peoplesnavy.com and click on the 'cast' section.

Labels: boat, Diego Garcia, direct action

Tiny poems have been winging their way to Eye all week, after we invited readers to try their hand at the classic haiku form. Some of you exercised your Quakerliness to keep in right ordering. Our first haiQ, from Ian McPherson, apparently didn't fulfil the letter, if it did the spirit, for one reader.

Wrote Bill Schaeffer: 'the tutor in my writing class told us that a haiku has lines of five, seven, and five syllables, which the example of Ian McPherson does not. Is it possible that the following observation does not apply to him?'

In order to write
A haiku one must have a
Very high IQ

Generally speaking, your haikus did hit the seventeen syllables mark, if in different formats.
Here a Quaker beekeeper, Anna Botwright, shows profound gratitude that her charges have made it through the winter.
A late winter hive –
Tender sun recalls warm days
Bees break loose and soar

Eye liked this one about 'presence' – although it lacked a season-word:
Complete perception
Zero interpretation
Perfect presence now
(Richard Chapman)

Some missed the syllable count but were magical nevertheless:
In the half dark
Hidden in the hawthorn –
A nightingale sings
(Denise Bennett)

Seasons are important for haikus. They should all contain a 'season word'. Here are two for February.
Squirrels leap, greet
The greening of the park –
Wheeling seagulls presage rain
(Jennifer Kavanagh)

clouds smudge the sky
behind bare trees -
in the dark field crows excavate the spring
(SF)

And another bee presence:
Dripping parasols
Bee-worked lavender, roses,
Incense of garden
(Rilla Dudley)

We'll decorate our page with occasional haikus and in the meantime we'll sign off with one of our own:
Very small poems
Sunlight and essence follow –
our concentration
(Eye)

Labels: haiku

Eye has noticed that some churches are using the unannounced inspection method to check up on their services (Ofgod?) The Baptist Times reports on a pilot scheme using non-churchgoing inspectors to evaluate performance, rather in the manner of commercial enterprises. The method could be rolled out more extensively to give churches some feedback on their sermons and music, and the impact on visitors to the pews.
We like this idea but hesitate to recommend it for Quaker meetings. We recall the observation of a roofer mending slates on a Meeting house, who looked down at the assembled, silent Friends. 'They’re all dead!' he was heard to exclaim.

Labels: ofgod

Those of you who get involved in the interface with schools will recognise David Saunder's tale. In Wells-next-the-Sea, a retired teacher fixes an annual meeting of Churches Together with junior school children. Two Anglicans and a Quaker went this year, to be faced with such enquiries as:
Has God got a face?
Why do wars start?
Does religion start wars?
Can murderers be forgiven?
Why can’t there be one religion/faith for everyone?
What happens when you die?
Who created the world?
...all to be answered in less than an hour.
This may be the soundbite generation, but it certainly gets straight to the point!

Labels: god

There's been a lot about dying in the magazine recently. It appears to be getting to our Norfolk Friend Bob Ward in his sleep. He awoke one morning aware that he had been writing a poem about dying in his dreams. He completed it there and then and sent it to us.

Dying...
...may take place anywhere
but let it be among
people to whom
I can express my love

...may take place anytime
but let it be when
the sun has risen
upon a day to leave to others

...will take place anyhow
but let it be at peace
bearing no grudge
against the world

...must come, will come
but let it be, oh Lord,
in the fullness of an active mind
and not just yet

Labels: death, poetry

Our Friend Alan Russell asks us if we are the sort of email users who forget to attach attachments? 'More likely', he asks, 'does Eye from time to time suffer incoming messages that claim to have an attachment attached but in fact have none?'
Alan, bless him, has found a way around this internet annoyance. 'Chronically absent-minded and disorganised as I am, I have devised a routine'. And this is it:
'Make the attaching of attachments an early step in the writing of your emails. Make it a habit. Do whatever you can to build up the habit as part of the preliminaries that you carry out before getting down to writing the message itself.' And if we forget that?
'There's still hope. When you refer to the attachment in your email, make use of the reminder, break off from what you are saying and deal with the attachment straight away.'

Labels: email, technology

You may have been invited by the clerk of your Meeting to offer a nomination for next year's Nobel peace prize. Quakers have been recipients in the past and are in that privileged position of nominating names to the Oslo committee. Alfred Nobel wrote in his will that the peace prize should go to 'the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.' We are thinking hard.

Labels: Nobel prize

Eye notes that Marina Lewycka's novel Two Caravans, which the Friend presented as a reading at the Edinburgh Festival last year, is on the long list for the Orwell prize for political writing. This sad but funny tale of migrant strawberry pickers is, in our opinion, a very political piece of fiction, in the way that Dickens was political. Marina's book is competing with the Alastair Campbell diaries and William Hague's biography of Wilberforce. A shortlist will be announced on 26 March and the award ceremony will be on 24 April.
Eye is delighted to announce that we are taking our production to Britain Yearly Meeting in May.

Labels: two caravans

Are Quakers associated with any particular decade in the public mind?
Not the sixties surely, although many of us lived our late teens and twenties during this much-maligned time. We don't think that there were many swinger Friends, so to speak. But someone has placed us in the 1970s for Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's anniversary Aldermaston march.
Each gate to the weapons establishment will have a clutch of demonstrators dressed in many guises, representing the different decades of CND's existence. The 'nuclear cowboys' will be riding a 'radioactive' horse prop, among others costumes. Friends will be at the Home Office gate, and Eye is trying to remember what one wore in those days. Was it the long coats with fake-fur trim?
We are assured this is going to be a fun day out. What a far cry from the days when a radioactive horse would have sparked a full-scale security alert.

Labels: Aldermaston, CND, demonstration, nuclear