The editor has asked us to begin auditioning for writers who are going to Britain Yearly Meeting next month and would like to turn a phrase or two for the Friend.

This is an annual event, when we need all the writing help we can get to bring the most fascinating and illuminating news and opinions to readers who never come near Friends House at this wonderful time.

There may be some lunches and special treats for our guest reporters but we won't insist you wear the Friend t-shirts (which are still available from the Friend office, priced at £6 or £10 for two including postage). It's hard work but jolly and Eye promises to share a joke or two. A good sense of humour is mandatory!

It's a rather literary Eye this week. First we have a story from David Boulton about the encouraging North American book tour he has just undertaken. David spent five weeks in Canada and the US promoting his new book Who on earth was Jesus? which offers a single-volume summary of the work of some forty historical Jesus scholars. It was a good start, he tells us, but then started to suffer from its own success. Publishers Weekly and the American Library Association gave the book the equivalent of rave reviews, whereupon the publisher's warehouse was emptied in five days, leaving David to promote a book that was temporarily unavailable. That’s the kind of problem authors dream of!
A hasty reprint came to the rescue. Later an eminent Jesus scholar told a conference in California that the book was 'simply the best and most thorough account' of contemporary Jesus scholarship. But, says David, he spoilt this endorsement by calling the book 'Who the hell was Jesus?'
Eye may well go along to another launch event at Britain Yearly Meeting in May to make sure no such Freudian slips occur.

The novelist Patrick Gale, who has been much acclaimed for his novel Notes from an exhibition, has been saying nice things about us in interviews.

He explained to a columnist from The Times that he chose a Quaker to be one of his central characters in the book, because he needed an anchor for the emotionally unstable female lead. 'I came to the idea of having this Quaker, unjudgmental, who would be a perfect balancing figure', he said. This may be a romantic view! Patrick had known Quakers before researching the novel, but then he started to go to Meetings.

Being gay, Patrick felt that his strongly Anglican family had hoped he would go into the church, but he had other ideas and is not impressed with Anglican attitudes towards sex. 'It was very interesting to spend time with the Quakers', he said, 'to see how advanced they are.'

He won’t be joining us though - with a staunchly atheist partner he says it would cause too much trouble at home.

Have you heard of Ruth Fry? To be precise, she was Anna Ruth Fry and we are ashamed to say we hadn't. But playwright-poet Tony Harrison has put her on stage in his new play Fram, which is being premiered at the National Theatre. It is a play of ideas, centring on the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen who was appointed to the League of Nations, and his attempts to arouse public concern for Russian famine relief in 1922.

Eye is particularly embarrassed as a portrait of this writer-activist hangs prominently over the desk in Friends House library. Picture librarian Joanna Clark reports that the actress who plays Ruth on stage, Clare Lawrence, came into the library to research her part.

Ruth was one of nine children of the jurist Edward Fry, a Quaker who negotiated at the Hague Tribunal of 1917. Of her siblings, Isabel was an educational reformer; Margery was a penal reformer and principal of Somerville College, Oxford; Joan was a leading Quaker; Agnes was an author; and Roger was an artist and critic. In the first world war Ruth was general secretary of the Friends War Victims Relief Committee.

She toured war zones and wrote of her experiences in A Quaker Adventure (1926). Ruth was the first chair of the Russian Famine Relief Fund, secretary of the National Council for the Prevention of War and in the 1930s was treasurer of the London branch of War Resisters' International.

So far Eye has heard indifferent reactions to the play from readers. Has anyone seen it and liked it?

Jenny Mathieson has told us of a catalogue of disasters at Claridge House, the Quaker Healing Centre, which is in need of some healing itself.

Although the centre has had its share of the woes that beset non-profit-making organisations, there have been other gremlins at work to discourage the hardiest Quaker spirit.

'Some problems are normal but when can it look as if it goes beyond the norm?' Jenny asks us.

There appears to be a curse on incoming wardens (now called managers). Recently, this has been the sequence - a warden was diagnosed with a tumour before arriving' another suffered a heart attack before arriving; another couple escaped the curse, but had decided to emigrate before taking up the job and so went on to leave' a few days before the current manager took up her duties, her husband suffered a stroke. Then a colleague needed sick leave for heart problems, and a warden drafted in to give the current manager a respite break needed hospital treatment himself before he could relieve the manager!

Phew! Eye agrees with Jenny that this is all just too much of a bad thing. So Friends are asked to say some prayers for the beleaguered staff. 'We need to lift all at Claridge House on a raft of prayers for at least three months', she says, 'not just individual prayers but please ask everyone who is a part of a prayer group to pray for them too'. Every day from 9.45am until 10am Claridge House comes together in prayer and Friends are asked to join them in spirit.

Photograph from http://www.flickr.com/photos/dipics/2310170594/

As Yearly Meeting Epistles go, this was quite brief!
Southeastern YM, Florida, USA, produces Epistles right through the age spectrum (as does BYM), from the serious adults who are feeling challenged by their affiliation with Friends United Meeting, to the teens who became space buddies - 'but not in a bookshop', to the elementary juniors who found alligators and racoons during their time together, to the really small - the Wee Friends! It’s very short, so Eye will share it with you.
'Playing in the spirit, the Wee Friends led all to create a chain with quotes and friendly feelings. The result was a Quaker chain with "no weak links" almost thirty feet long!'

Hello to a new kid on the block! Limerick Meeting has changed its status and become a full and independent Monthly Meeting within Munster Quarterly Meeting. Latterly it was affiliated to Waterford. A hearty welcome - and a delicious lunch - greeted the new Meeting at Munster QM recently.

Eye takes back every aside we've made about Quaker Oats. The breakfast company that the country loves and Friends get linked with has scored a green goal with its plan to convert oat husk waste into energy for its plant in Fife. The company is investing £6m in a combined heat and biomass boiler which will power up the factory and reduce its CO2 emissions by 9,000 tonnes a year.
Thousands of road miles will also be saved taking the husks away from the plant. We won't ask where they were going before or what they'll be doing with the lorries instead.

Eye was pleased to hear that the lost 'c' from the St Albans ducks' Quakersnacks (Eye, 4 April), has been found - on a cheque made out to Newbury 'Quackers'! The cheque has been presented and Newbury Friends are waiting to see if the bank accepts it or not.

Excitement in Cumbria at the Quaker Tapestry. A new display called Weapons of the Spirit - the Quaker response to conflict will be officially opened on Tuesday 15 April.
The new panels will show what the response has been to conflicts since the seventeenth century and will be echoing the words and stories of those involved, etched with bravery, sadness and humour.
The Tapestry also launches a new CD-ROM at the same time, called These houses hold secrets. This charts the efforts of Dutch Quakers during the second world war to save Jewish families.
The opening speaker at the launch will be Maurice Hopper, who has recently published a book on human rights witness in the West Bank. Some of the new panels feature his work. A review of Weapons of the Spirit will appear in the Friend shortly after the launch.

Inspired, we think, by David J Harding's experience of wanting to shout in Meeting (Eye, 28 March), Barrie Rowson found us this poem which appeared in Inward Light (see http://fcrp.quaker.org/) in 1952, by Myrl Ijams. It is rather dispiriting...

In meeting for worship
With heads bowed low
A sudden shout of 'tally-ho!'
All heads lifted
And all eyes stared
At the mad-cap woman
Who had dared
Scream 'tally-ho'
And oh, the silence after the shout!
But they never asked 'why?'
Or 'what about?'
The sisters and brethren
In sober frocks
Put her quietly into the stocks
And never more till her dying day
Had that troubled woman aught to say

Sometimes in meeting for worship I
Could break the silence
With a monstrous cry
Of 'tally-ho!'
Is this my soul, I want to know -
Or that of the woman of long ago?

Hermann Goering and Josef Goebbels were very different chaps but it is extraordinary how people still get them confused!
It was of course Goering we were quoting in Eye (28 March). Gustave Gilbert, an intelligence officer and psychologist granted access to Nuremberg prisoners, noted Goering's words in his cell on 18 April 1946 during a recess in the trials. They appeared in Nuremberg Diary, which Gilbert published. Most of you guessed correctly, but not all - Goebbels' name also cropped up.
Eye was intrigued that our production editor Jez enjoyed receiving the postcards and is planning to put the colourful ones up on the wall. On further investigation Eye learned that Jez used to belong to a 'postcard-crossing' club to satisfy his interest.
One reader reminded us that these sorts of questions are just too easy nowadays - 'half a minute on Google' does the trick. We must think up a test of memory and intelligence for you that eludes internet search engines. Now there's a challenge for us!

Last week in the Friend we read of people living together in communities. Readers might also like to know of a case of Quakers living over the shop, so to speak. In Brussels city centre the four-floor building which houses the Quaker Council for European Affairs office is also home to several of the staff. By eliminating the daily commute, Eye can't think of a better Quakerly contribution to sustainability.

The editor wants to ask Friends for some ideas for uses of empty shop premises in her village, which have been bought by the local community trust. The village sounds very well catered for in terms of retail, educational, entertainment and catering facilities ('we have five cafes – is this a record?' she asks) and the villagers are pondering on a good use for the spacious shop. The editor thought a gym might be a good idea 'considering we are all supposed to be turning into fatties', and there is likely to be a brainstorming meeting soon. This must be happening all over the country, so Eye would welcome some innovative ideas from readers to pass on.

Eye was looking through past suggestions for the column and came across a leaflet from St Albans city and district council, which was sent in by Sarah Bell last year.

The good people of St Albans council, concerned about the feeding of the city's birds in parks and ponds, came up with a 'Quackersnacks' project to educate the masses about the pitfalls and dangers of feeding bread to the birds. They also came up with grain bags that people could use instead.
Unfortunately for them, a slight typo on the leaflet came about and they ended up with 'Quakersnacks'.

Eye was disappointed, but not really surprised, to encounter the ruthless mindset of local newspaper colleagues when it comes to literary criticism. If readers think national media critics are unkind, just look through your local papers!
We are referring to a critique of Ben Pink Dandelion's The Quakers: A Very Short Introduction, which appeared in the Islington Tribune. The critic, John Horder, has a wicked sense of humour and we are hoping that Ben is a humorist at heart or at least can take a good ribbing.
The critic has told his sister Caroline - 'who does good works while I do none' - that he wants a Quaker funeral when he dies with lots of delicious silence and no curates doing Alan Bennett-type imitations. He knows little about Quakers, 'apart from their enjoying silence at their meetings when one of them isn't speaking the inspired word of God'. It gets worse. Silence, says John, is impossible to write about, and he couldn’t think why Ben (or Pink as he calls him) hadn't mentioned Meher Baba, who was speechless for forty-four years. Also, he said our man hadn’t managed to dig up a single interesting fact about George Fox. Ben does mention Nixon, and our caustic critic wants to know whether ‘his trickster habit patterns had been actively encouraged by his Quakerism'. Hold on John!
The sharpest barb for Eye comes in the comment - 'there is too much gratuitous theorising, and very little, if any, hard-won experience'.

Bloggers have been let loose on the human fertilisation issue, to add to our confusion.

After our much-appreciated analysis of the debate (21 March), Eye's attention has been drawn to The Times faith blog which has unearthed many more interpretations of the status of the foetus from past theology.

Whereas in the translation of Exodus used by early church fathers a sentence of death was passed on anyone injuring a pregnant woman and causing her to lose her baby, only a fine was levied if the foetus was unformed, or not yet like a human being. Others, such as Basil, a Cappadocian Father, thought it was wrong to abort either a formed or unformed foetus.

St Augustine could not see a soul in the unformed foetus and St Thomas Aquinas went even further in not ascribing a soul to any foetus before forty days in males and ninety in females!

In 1869 Pope Pius IX seems to have levelled the centuries-old debate by abolishing laws that made a distinction between formed and unformed. It is pointed out to us that if the technology had been around before that time, the current bill would have had church sanction.

Labels: pope

Some readers are all for the concept of unannounced inspections of religious services. Let 'em come, seems to be the sentiment where Quaker meetings are concerned. Jill Allum has a list of good practice she'd like to see an anonymous inspector rate us on. They are:
Welcome and friendliness;
Ambience of surroundings;
Simplicity and honesty of worship;
Relevance and depth of ministry;
Brevity and sparkiness of notices;
Warmth of chat over cup of tea; and
Follow-up invitation to a time of sharing or social event.
Well, Friends, how do you shape up to those at your meetings?

Meanwhile, Young Quaker's review of a Meeting for Worship in March was written by the Friend's own Oliver Robertson, who visited Dumfries and Galloway in January while on a speaking tour about his previous job at the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva.