Issue 11-12-2009
Featured Story
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Spirituality: the forgotten dimension
With climate negotiations underway in Copenhagen, commentators tell us that this is one of the most important international conferences ever held: the last chance to save the planet. Government delegates have been wrestling together with the challenge of cutting greenhouse gas emissions since 1988 when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate…
Top Stories
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Quakers ‘Wave’ to the world
Quakers were anything but silent last weekend as they made their presence felt in the ‘Wave’ through London designed to draw attention to climate change. At least 300, including 100 young Friends, gathered together with Quaker banners and placards in Trafalgar Square and then Hyde Park at the start of…
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The power of Quaker worship
How, it is interesting to speculate, would someone in the seventeenth century describe electricity. Of course they lacked completely the analytical grasp that allows us today to explain and exploit this amazing thing: in their awe quite possibly the closest they could get to it would be ‘a secret power’…
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To evict or not to evict?
On 6 October we rented out our flat to what seemed to be a lovely DSS single mother. On 22 October we started eviction proceedings. We had intended to rent our flat below the market rate as we live in an area of severe social deprivation and racial tension –…
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Walking the Friendly path
‘We are moving like snails, and they are moving like rabbits with jet engines,’ says Israeli Erella Dunyavesky speaking graphically of the differences between the speed of working for peace versus the immense power building the Separation Wall and driving the settler violence in the occupied West Bank. Erella and… -
Hard Rain
We learn a lot about big environmental disasters but we may overlook the pollution we ourselves cause. Lights left on in empty rooms, car journeys that could have been cycle rides, heat pouring out of badly insulated homes, shopping taken home in single-use plastic bags. Our small acts of pollution…
All Articles
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Copenhagen cop-out?
Over a hundred world leaders converge on Copenhagen next week for the high level segment of the UN climate talks. They hope to conclude two years’ negotiations on greenhouse gas emission cuts for the rich world, limits on emission growth for the poor, and mechanisms for financial and technological co-operation.… -
Friends among Friends
Before the devastating typhoons this year, Friends in the Philippines were not very aware of the international aspects of the Quaker family. Only a handful of evangelical Friends had ever travelled overseas, and few had met liberal Friends. The small number of unprogrammed Friends in the Philippines had only met… -
New ways to tackle Quaker giving
Meetings struggling to send out the annual appeal for Quaker work will be able to get help from Quaker Communications Department (QCD) next year. Meeting for Sufferings agreed to a pilot scheme in which a ‘limited number’ of Area Meetings can have Friends House staff support the mailing and administration… -
Quakers and the press move a little closer
Journalists may be allowed to report on future Yearly Meetings (YM), while texting and blogging in Yearly Meeting business sessions are set to be banned. Meeting for Sufferings gave a cautious thumbs-up to the proposal that outside media be invited to Yearly Meeting, recommending that open sessions should become the… -
Equality Bill raises hopes of a religious character for civil partnership ceremonies
There is a possibility of significant movement on same-sex marriage within the next few months. Quakers are hoping to have an amendment added to the Equality Bill currently before the UK Parliament that would remove the bans on religious words and premises being used in civil partnership ceremonies and allow… -
What’s wrong with this picture?
Until I read ‘What’s wrong with the picture?’ by Chris Smith (4 December) I had not realised just how very unhappy and disillusioned I had been when, at our last Area Meeting in November, it was also decided that we too would not sign up for the 10:10 Campaign. How… -
Letters - 11 December 2009
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The fruits of conversation
Rooted in Christianity, Open to New Light – Quaker spiritual diversity by Timothy Ashworth and Alex Wildwood, Pronoun Press in partnership with Woodbrooke. ISBN 978 0 955 6183 3 8. £9. This book comes at the same time as the deadline of the Friends Quarterly essay competition on the future… -
Q-Eyewitness
Eye won’t be in your Christmas Friend, so here are some diversions for the season We are fully aware of the ennui engendered by the long Christmas period (that’s if you’re not the cook of course) and so Eye is giving the column over this week to a research-based exercise…
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