Issue 04-10-2024

The Friend

The Friend is a weekly magazine in which Friends speak to each other and to the wider world, offering their insight, ideas, news, nurture and inspiration.

Nurturing Quaker community, each issue offers a space for Friends to share their concerns, and to support each other in faith and witness.

The Friend: enriching, inspiring and connecting the Quaker community since 1843.


Latest issue: Issue 04-10-2024

Thought for the week

Young at heart? Mary Brown’s Thought for the Week

by Mary Brown

‘When I became a man I put away childish things.’

Despite Jesus’ injunction to become as little children, Paul seems to be suggesting to the Corinthians that adulthood is to be preferred. I hate the term ‘second childhood’, and do not appreciate medical staff and workmen talking to me as if I were a child, but I confess that in old age I am learning to appreciate some things I had previously put away as childish.

Features

Hold the lion: Kit Pearce says facing our fears need not be as scary as it sounds

by Kit Pearce

An Estonian town is locked down. Police cars broadcast an announcement: ‘A dangerous lion is on the loose! Stay at home!’ The local chief constable deals with the unprecedented emergency, but it is made worse by loud and lairy lion-deniers. Meanwhile, a timid council employee is scared witless, even though he’s already home. But (wouldn’t you know it?), a door is open in his house. The lion enters. Just as the man is about to escape, it blocks his only exit: he’s stuck – can’t go forwards, can’t go back. He must confront his paralysing fears. He inches past the old moth-eaten lion. It’s so close he feels its breath on his skin, smells its fetid musk. He escapes unscathed and is transformed, determined to live more boldly in future. 

Features

General Meeting for Scotland: Robin Davis reports from Inverness

by Robin Davis

The term ‘hybrid Meeting’ got a new note at General Meeting for Scotland last month. As we met for opening worship, online and in Inverness, we played our Friend Sally Beamish’s Peace Bugle, to recognise the International Day of Peace. 

Features

Taking action: Ruth Kettle-Frisby wants to clear the air

by Ruth Kettle-Frisby

Two years ago, two other local mums and I set up on organisation called ‘Clear the Air In Havering’. We created it to support clean air initiatives, including School Streets and the expansion of London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ). Air pollution is a thorny topic where I live; legitimate concerns are frequently entangled with ideological politics, car culture, and Islamophobia. We wanted to: raise awareness about air pollution; tackle misinformation; and champion the right to clean air for everyone.

Features

On sufferance: Ol Rappaport’s High Holy Days

by Ol Rappaport

Why do bad things happen to good people? Conversely, why do good things happen to bad people?

As a practising Jew, the High Holy Days are an enormous challenge for me. From Rosh Hashanah (the New Year, which starts at sunset on 2 October) to Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement, ending at sunset, 12 October), we meditate on and repent our shortcomings. If our repentance is true we will be inscribed in the Book of Life for a good year. As a Liberal congregant, much of this is stripped from our liturgy (we do not believe God’s love is so conditional), but the traditional greeting remains: ‘May you be inscribed for a good year’.

News

Scottish Friends call for anti-fossil fuel treaty

by Rebecca Hardy

Quakers in Edinburgh joined demonstrations calling for a treaty on the nonproliferation of fossil fuels.

The call was part of widespread action across Scotland in support of the Global Week of Action for Climate Finance and a Fossil Free Future, with demonstrations in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Stirling.

News

Women ‘suicidal’ in Home Office hotels

by Rebecca Hardy Quaker Asylum Refugee Network (QARN) has highlighted a new survey that shows refugee women…
News

Review trade with Israel, says BYM

by Rebecca Hardy Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) joined twenty-five charities calling for the UK to review its…
News

BBC show highlights The Peace Museum

by Rebecca Hardy The Peace Museum featured on The One Show last month as part of an episode about the…
News

Quakers revive ‘New Economy’ work

by Rebecca Hardy Quakers in Switzerland are seeking to learn from British Friends who were involved in…
Reviews

The Department of Work and Pensions Assesses a Jade Fish

by Stevie Krayer Friends may be aware that a book is being published about the Department of Work and…
Features

Poem: On two fronts

by Steve Day They bided their time, and it has come. Beating a battered drum,  the rim, that…
Q-eye

Eye - 04 October 2024

by Elinor Smallman Quakerleles Friends who find themselves fleet of finger on the strings of a ukelele have…
Letters

Letters - 04 October 2024

by The Friend 'Development'Elizabeth Coleman’s article (20 September) showed the subject of child…

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