Issue 03-07-2009
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Three conversions necessary: heart, mind and purse
Quakers need to stop treating money like a taboo subject and start thinking about it as part of their spiritual life, a gathering of Quaker treasurers has heard. At the Annual Conference of Treasurers, which was told that donations from individuals and Quaker Meetings to the centrally managed work of… -
Legacy facilitates Cuban seminary
Cuban Quakers are to build their own seminary, thanks to a legacy from a Canadian Friend. Cuba Yearly Meeting, which has a tradition of employing pastors to serve Quaker Meetings, currently has no dedicated space to train them. But Friends decided at their Yearly Meeting to ‘create a facility that… -
Meeting at the fourth plinth
An unusual Meeting for Worship will take place later this month – alongside Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth. Peter Davies of Bridgend Meeting has been selected as one of 2,400 volunteers taking part in sculptor Anthony Gormley’s ‘One & Other’ project, in which each person spends an hour on top of… -
‘Recognising our personal gifts’
Swiss Friends gathering for their Yearly Meeting at Aeschi in the late spring focused on the theme ‘Recognising our personal gifts’. It was an opportunity to explore skills and talents, as organisation of the programme was handed on to a younger generation. Instead of the common practice of inviting guest… -
Refuge? Asylum? Sanctuary?
The terminology changes but the underlying reality remains: public opinion, inflamed by the popular press, begrudges any rights given to non-residents to settle here under any circumstances, and no government has had the courage to challenge that attitude or to distinguish between the provisions of international human rights law and… -
Embracing diversity – the challenge for British Quakers
I once worked in a place where staff would openly admit that if they didn’t like a new colleague they would make them so uncomfortable they would leave. Of course this wouldn’t happen in our Meetings. Or would it? My own experience of being a Quaker for eleven years is… -
An eternal verity
Ask many a Roman Catholic priest (though by no means all) about women and priesthood and he will tell you that women may have a vocation, but they simply cannot be priests as that is for men only. Consult the Book of Leviticus, and it will tell you that priests… -
Truth in the face of bullying
When phoning Southeastern Railways recently, I was reminded that one of the most helpful things I learnt at school was the importance of not giving in to bullying. Although I got beaten up for resisting bullies, I probably got hurt less than those who submitted. In the adult world, official…
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