The Friend

Two perspectives: Friends in Scotland report from their June gathering

On 6 June, Quakers in Scotland gathered for something a little different: a Meeting focussed on worship and connection, with very little business! We thought we would offer the perspectives of two Friends, one online and one (who would prefer to remain anonymous) in the room.

Superb blasphemy: Jonathan Wooding asks whether Walt Whitman’s poetry is the counterpoint to Quaker stillness

If John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), were to have had a good experience of his contemporaries, the Quakers, might he not have included an allegorical figure of Quakerism in his great prose-poem of spiritual journeying? Never mind Evangelist, Faithful, Mr Sagacity and even Mrs Light-Mind, we might have had Friend Inward-Light, speaking in elevated tones of freedom, equality, courage and peace (and the dangers of complacency and respectable piety, of course). If Bunyan’s wayfaring Christian had met Friend Inward-Light midway on his hair-raising pilgrimage and asked her the Way – well, what if she’d sounded like this:

I speak the pass-word primeval… I give the sign of
      democracy;

By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their
      counterpart of on the same terms.

A toxic composite: Pennie Quinton remembers Grenfell

Last month, a Westminster Friend and I joined the monthly walk that is held – in silence – in remembrance of those killed by the Grenfell Tower disaster on 14 June 2017. This event was the ninth anniversary of the fire, and was significant because the last remains of Grenfell Tower are due to be demolished. The demolition is devastating for the survivors of Grenfell, because to date there have been no prosecutions for the disaster. 

Poem: Sestina For Elizabeth Heyrick

Where there is dissonance, she trusts the tone.
The worry written within each line of letters holds
equality as the cost of buying back what’s free.
This crowded house has open doors; not to let
lunacy in, but bit by bit, filch what night carries
beneath its wings. This is how she was told to me:

The Testament of Ann Lee, directed by Mona Fastvold

This film, now available on streaming services, tells the life story of Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers. Born in Manchester in 1736, she joined a Christian group that had broken away from the Quakers. Ann led eight of them across the Atlantic to start a new community in the United States. Against all odds, they were successful, and the Shakers, or Shaking Quakers, flourished. Estimates of the membership at its peak vary between 2,000 and 6,000. 

Refugee: Poems of El Salvador and Palestine, by Paul Totah

This is a short, impressive, and deeply moving collection of narrative poems. They allow the people that author Paul Totah interviewed to speak their truth in sometimes raw, stark, and shocking ways. The poetry invites us to pause and absorb what is being said more than prose could.