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.
The impacts of the US-Israel war with Iran will touch us all. I myself have been on edge as I’m expecting a delegation of grassroots leaders to arrive from Indonesia, but their flight from Jakarta to Glasgow, via Dubai, got cancelled.
Routine business
Saturday 7 March 2026 was a historic occasion: the final session of Meeting for Sufferings (MfS), after more than 350 years since Quakers began gathering in this way in 1675.
What is a book of discipline?
The introduction to our current book, Quaker faith & practice, says the roots of the word ‘discipline’ lie in ideas of learning and discipleship. Discipline in our Yearly Meeting consists for the most part of advice and counsel, the encouragement of self-questioning, of hearing each other in humility and love.
Our February Meeting, held online, left business until the afternoon. We started the day with a presentation by the content manager of Climate Cymru, Ruth Campbell.
There’s a point during this play when the woman sitting next to me murmurs her agreement. ‘Men can only rule with violence,’ says Amy Fowler (played by Denise Gough). It is the first of many pacifist observations in this stage adaptation of the 1952 Hollywood movie – and sets up the rather depressing notion that violence is inevitable.
In presence of the gaping crowd,
With noisy voices, shrill and high,
They shout – Tis I, ‘tis I, ‘tis I!
I have the nostrum that shall cure
The ills that mortals must endure –
I have of heaven’s gate the key,
Attend my words and follow me!
I am the wise, the eloquent,
To guide the nations was I sent!
