By Craig Barnett (x-posted from Craig’s blog, Transition Quaker) “The best thing about not having children must be that you can carry on thinking of yourself as a nice person.” Fay Weldon Over the last few years as a Woodbrooke Associate Tutor, I have helped to lead a couple of courses on ‘Being a Quaker…
“Last year, three children drowned while trying to get to school from Ambohidava, can you imagine that?†Theresa Haine, a Welsh Quaker who is dedicated to helping people in Madagascar to improve their lives, is explaining why her charity has just been helping to build a new secondary school in Ambohidava, Madagascar. For the past…
by Philip Austin Set up after a peace conference of Quakers in the North in 01/1913, the Northern Friends Peace Board (NFPB) has undertaken a variety of work with and for Northern Friends, supported by funding and representatives from throughout the North of Britain. When, a couple of years ago, NFPB members began to think…
by Gil Skidmore What really appeals to me about the process of becoming a Quaker – convincement – is that it is usually a gradual process rather than the once-for-all ‘lightbulb moment’ of conversion. Descriptions of the way in which early Friends came to Quakerism identify several stages. First of all the individual is ‘reached’…
by David Zarembka I suspect that we, my Kenyan wife, Gladys Kamonya and I, are Quakers who are members of the 1%. At least we are in my home town of Lumakanda in western Kenya. Here we are multi-millionaires in shillings, since there are 85 shillings to a US dollar so $11,764 makes one a…
by Julia Ryberg The liturgical year is not observed among Quakers. In my parents’ childhood homes, neither Christmas nor Easter were celebrated. All days are holy days and all of life is sacramental. My mother, however, promised herself that this would change when she had a family! So, I have celebrated Christmas all my life,…
22/11/2012 Dear Barack Obama, I am one of your supporters, a dual national living in Sweden. As an 11th generation Quaker, I feel connected to you because your daughters attend a Quaker school – I am also a product of Quaker education! I feel more deeply connected because I believe that your most profound hopes…
By Joel Wallenberg It seems that much of the world has come to a consensus over the last few years: the banking industry has made some rotten decisions, and somehow it’s managed to muck up a whole lot of our personal finances in the process. But surprisingly, there has been very little activity on the…
Yorkshire Quaker voices Meeting Voices from YQAP on Vimeo.
By Oliver Robertson This talk boils down to three basic questions: Which parts of our life bring us closer to God? Which parts are spiritually deadening? And how can we change the second type into the first? For me, one of the crowning geniuses of the early Quakers was the Meeting for Worship for Business,…