We feel something - someone - is missing from this 'cheerful' issue. We have been looking at violence and conflict from the human perspective - but what about our fur and feather friends? Eye has been reading some fascinating material about what academics call 'non-human animals' and we see there are wonderful lessons to be learned in the matter of conflict resolution.
We would direct readers with a love of animals to the work of Frans de Waal, a psychologist and primatologist, who has written learned but popular books even accessible to Eye. They have intriguing titles such as Chimpanzee Politics and Peacemaking among Primates.

The clever professor is a pioneer in studying the emotional and social lives of animals. Early in his career in the Netherlands, Frans worked on aggression but found he was more interested in what happened after fights.
'I got interested in seeing these fights going on in a group of primates and then seeing that fifteen minutes later everyone settled down' he said during an interview for the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 'I got puzzled by how they built aggression into their social life.'

After fights, chimps kiss and make up, and there are similar 'reconciliations' among other primates. Such behaviour was spotted first at Arnhem Zoo but researchers have now refined their methods of observation and realise that conflict resolution is widespread. In one study of chimps, former antagonists were attracted to each other after fighting. The researchers believe that chimps show one of the highest conciliatory tendencies among primates. Frans de Waal says information from primatology is relevant when studying violence between people.


To take this theme further Eye has two stories. One concerns a cat called Lilly, who was the companion of Eliza Johnston. Eliza attended Hampstead Meeting. For many years she was in and out of hospital suffering the disastrous effects of bipolar disorder (manic depression). Then, in 1998, Eliza acquired Lilly from the Battersea home for cats and dogs. When Lilly stepped out of her box into her new home 'I got a wonderful sense of a beautiful white light spirit arriving with her.' It was the start of a ten-year relationship in which Lilly rekindled a sense of responsibility in her owner. ‘She gave me a way to learn how to look after myself by caring for her,' says Eliza. 'The thought that I could be sectioned, leaving her alone, possibly left to die, compelled me to stay well.' When Lilly did eventually die, Eliza says she was able to mourn for her companion without being overwhelmed. (We hope to bring you the story of Lilly in a later Friend).

Our second tale is of Molly Brown, a 'love dog'. Molly was the best friend of a professor of philosophy, Anne Benvenuti. In writing of her relationship with the brown and white Jack Russell (in Presence, the international journal of spiritual direction), Anne says 'the most important, immediate and shocking thing I learned when I met baby Molly was that I had a heart.' The dog, she said, prepared her heart for human habitation, and opened the entire non-human world to her awareness. '...we cannot be human without the guidance and support of the nonhuman world,' she concluded.

It seems to us that communing with animals can play a big part in reducing tension and violence in humans.

The editor has asked us to begin auditioning for writers who are going to Britain Yearly Meeting next month and would like to turn a phrase or two for the Friend.

This is an annual event, when we need all the writing help we can get to bring the most fascinating and illuminating news and opinions to readers who never come near Friends House at this wonderful time.

There may be some lunches and special treats for our guest reporters but we won't insist you wear the Friend t-shirts (which are still available from the Friend office, priced at £6 or £10 for two including postage). It's hard work but jolly and Eye promises to share a joke or two. A good sense of humour is mandatory!

It's a rather literary Eye this week. First we have a story from David Boulton about the encouraging North American book tour he has just undertaken. David spent five weeks in Canada and the US promoting his new book Who on earth was Jesus? which offers a single-volume summary of the work of some forty historical Jesus scholars. It was a good start, he tells us, but then started to suffer from its own success. Publishers Weekly and the American Library Association gave the book the equivalent of rave reviews, whereupon the publisher's warehouse was emptied in five days, leaving David to promote a book that was temporarily unavailable. That’s the kind of problem authors dream of!
A hasty reprint came to the rescue. Later an eminent Jesus scholar told a conference in California that the book was 'simply the best and most thorough account' of contemporary Jesus scholarship. But, says David, he spoilt this endorsement by calling the book 'Who the hell was Jesus?'
Eye may well go along to another launch event at Britain Yearly Meeting in May to make sure no such Freudian slips occur.

The novelist Patrick Gale, who has been much acclaimed for his novel Notes from an exhibition, has been saying nice things about us in interviews.

He explained to a columnist from The Times that he chose a Quaker to be one of his central characters in the book, because he needed an anchor for the emotionally unstable female lead. 'I came to the idea of having this Quaker, unjudgmental, who would be a perfect balancing figure', he said. This may be a romantic view! Patrick had known Quakers before researching the novel, but then he started to go to Meetings.

Being gay, Patrick felt that his strongly Anglican family had hoped he would go into the church, but he had other ideas and is not impressed with Anglican attitudes towards sex. 'It was very interesting to spend time with the Quakers', he said, 'to see how advanced they are.'

He won’t be joining us though - with a staunchly atheist partner he says it would cause too much trouble at home.

Have you heard of Ruth Fry? To be precise, she was Anna Ruth Fry and we are ashamed to say we hadn't. But playwright-poet Tony Harrison has put her on stage in his new play Fram, which is being premiered at the National Theatre. It is a play of ideas, centring on the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen who was appointed to the League of Nations, and his attempts to arouse public concern for Russian famine relief in 1922.

Eye is particularly embarrassed as a portrait of this writer-activist hangs prominently over the desk in Friends House library. Picture librarian Joanna Clark reports that the actress who plays Ruth on stage, Clare Lawrence, came into the library to research her part.

Ruth was one of nine children of the jurist Edward Fry, a Quaker who negotiated at the Hague Tribunal of 1917. Of her siblings, Isabel was an educational reformer; Margery was a penal reformer and principal of Somerville College, Oxford; Joan was a leading Quaker; Agnes was an author; and Roger was an artist and critic. In the first world war Ruth was general secretary of the Friends War Victims Relief Committee.

She toured war zones and wrote of her experiences in A Quaker Adventure (1926). Ruth was the first chair of the Russian Famine Relief Fund, secretary of the National Council for the Prevention of War and in the 1930s was treasurer of the London branch of War Resisters' International.

So far Eye has heard indifferent reactions to the play from readers. Has anyone seen it and liked it?

Jenny Mathieson has told us of a catalogue of disasters at Claridge House, the Quaker Healing Centre, which is in need of some healing itself.

Although the centre has had its share of the woes that beset non-profit-making organisations, there have been other gremlins at work to discourage the hardiest Quaker spirit.

'Some problems are normal but when can it look as if it goes beyond the norm?' Jenny asks us.

There appears to be a curse on incoming wardens (now called managers). Recently, this has been the sequence - a warden was diagnosed with a tumour before arriving' another suffered a heart attack before arriving; another couple escaped the curse, but had decided to emigrate before taking up the job and so went on to leave' a few days before the current manager took up her duties, her husband suffered a stroke. Then a colleague needed sick leave for heart problems, and a warden drafted in to give the current manager a respite break needed hospital treatment himself before he could relieve the manager!

Phew! Eye agrees with Jenny that this is all just too much of a bad thing. So Friends are asked to say some prayers for the beleaguered staff. 'We need to lift all at Claridge House on a raft of prayers for at least three months', she says, 'not just individual prayers but please ask everyone who is a part of a prayer group to pray for them too'. Every day from 9.45am until 10am Claridge House comes together in prayer and Friends are asked to join them in spirit.

Photograph from http://www.flickr.com/photos/dipics/2310170594/

As Yearly Meeting Epistles go, this was quite brief!
Southeastern YM, Florida, USA, produces Epistles right through the age spectrum (as does BYM), from the serious adults who are feeling challenged by their affiliation with Friends United Meeting, to the teens who became space buddies - 'but not in a bookshop', to the elementary juniors who found alligators and racoons during their time together, to the really small - the Wee Friends! It’s very short, so Eye will share it with you.
'Playing in the spirit, the Wee Friends led all to create a chain with quotes and friendly feelings. The result was a Quaker chain with "no weak links" almost thirty feet long!'