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.
Many people are looking for God, but perhaps they overlook the most obvious thing. The first letter of John says: ‘If a man says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?’ For this reason, we need not seek God any further than the person next to us. God is right here, right now, in the person next to you.
Many Friends will know young people who received their GCSE results earlier this summer. Too often the headlines speak of grade inflation and a devaluation of the currency of these exams. This is harsh on the students, who have earned these grades. As a cohort, they are working at least as hard as previous generations. It is also harsh on teachers who are making use of developments in teaching practice to improve what they do – and also working at least as hard as their predecessors. Don’t think it is just exams getting easier.
One hundred and eighty Quakers gathered over 8-15 August in Haus Altenberg, Germany, for an all-age gathering of Friends, hosted by the Europe and Middle East Section (EMES) of the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC). We met to explore the theme of ‘The river of life’. Each day was focused on one stage of life: childhood, youth, early adulthood, adulthood, later years, and, finally, preparing for death and loss. Friends had the chance each day to visit future ages or re-live past stages of their lives.
‘Many of us arrived… parched and searching for the water of life. It was as if a holy mist of undeniable infinity fell upon us like dew. We saw it fall on ourselves and others, as the heavenly bread that is not to be stored away but shared…’
After attending a recent gathering of Young Friends in Britain as a kitchen helper, I was struck by the kind of community young Quakers are building, and by how much our wider community could learn from them.
It seems a long time ago that we sowed the seeds of making a quilt at Keighley Meeting. We had been planning an exhibition about Quakers in Keighley and the Aire Valley for Quaker Week 2026, and, after a visit to the Quaker Tapestry, came the idea for a quilt. We didn’t want to replicate the Quaker Tapestry but wanted to create something that included Friends in our Meeting and beyond. The quilt would hopefully capture the rich heritage of Quakers in our area, and be personal to us.
Enduring walls close at their heart
upon decay, the rubble of past neglect,
wells where water is no longer drawn.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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