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‘Saints preserve us’ is a familiar aside. As we move into autumn and the festival of Samhain, I think of them. The saints, the great cloud of witnesses who have run the race before us, and crossed over. But the mystery of passing over the Jordan with its sweet chariot swinging low, or dissolving into an endlessly expanding cosmos, is not the point for me. I’m interested in the here, now and how of saints.
‘This is the least extreme climate you will experience in your lifetime,’ said Hayley Fowler, a professor of Climate Change Impacts at Newcastle University. She was speaking on the screen to a gathering of Stroud residents in Gloucestershire recently. We had come to see one of the screenings of The People’s Emergency Briefing: On the climate and nature crisis, and most of us thought back with alarm to the summer heat we had just experienced. The least extreme? It sounded shocking, even to those of us who already knew it to be true.
It was day three of the Friends Way. I had already walked up Malham Cove, past Malham Tarn, followed the Monk’s Road and descended into Arncliffe. It was around 4pm. I fell gratefully into a pub, conveniently located by the path and savoured a coffee cake accompanied by lemonade, just what I felt I needed to make the more-than-300m ascent over the next hill before a gentle amble along the Wharfe River into Buckden.
Remembrance Sunday holds mixed emotions for me. We should remember all those who have died in war, including civilians and members of the military. I think of military personnel and their families as victims of war. I therefore contribute to the British Legion’s Poppy Appeal. But I feel uneasy about the way in which remembrance commemorations minimise the horror of war. I also contribute to the White Poppy Appeal. But I cannot fully endorse the Peace Pledge Union stance because I am not clear how nonviolence could have overcome Nazism.
Moving to the World Heritage site at Salts Mill in Saltaire has been transformational for The Peace Museum. It’s a much larger space, and has been kitted out and adapted for its purpose. The new location is proving highly advantageous – the number of visitors to the museum has increased more than fifty-fold.
In October 1956, one of very few big-budget films portraying Quaker life was released. Friendly Persuasion is a family drama set in the US civil war, and explores that most enduring Quaker dilemma: whether to bear arms to fight injustice – in this case, looting and pillaging by the Confederate Army in its defence of slavery.
This is all there is when the path ends
Among poppies. There is deep silence
And stillness and even birds are mute.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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