Being a Friend the Friend Independent Quaker Journalism Since 1843
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Quaker Week issue £2.00 theDISCOVER THE CONTEMPORARYFriend QUAKER WAY Being a Friend the Friend INDEPENDENT QUAKER JOURNALISM SINCE 1843 Contents VOL 176 NO 39 28 SEPTEMBER 2018 3 Thought for the Week: 14-15 A spiritual journey Being a Friend Terry Waite Ian Kirk-Smith 16 Poem: My Old Execrable 4 A quiet joy – or a turbulent delight? Gillian Allnutt Stevie Krayer 17 A matter of conscience 5 Room for more room Rebecca Hardy Ben Pink Dandelion 18-19 Voices of dissent 6-7 Staging a Meeting Kevin Booth Rowena Loverance 20 Truth to tell 8 Room for more Diana Sandy Roger Babington Hill 21 Books: Poacher’s Pilgrimage 9 Humility Ian Kirk-Smith Harvey Gillman 22-23 From the archive: 10-11 A helping hand Faithful lives Members of QARN Janet Scott 12 Rachel’s story 24 Friends & Meetings Rebecca Hardy Cover image: A detail from the ‘George Fox: Lichfield, 13 Sharing stories Pendle Hill’ panel of the Quaker Tapestry. Craig Barnett Photo: © Quaker Tapestry. Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. Desmond Tutu The Friend Subscriptions Advertising Editorial UK £88 per year by all payment Advertisement manager: Editor: types including annual direct debit; George Penaluna Ian Kirk-Smith monthly payment by direct debit [email protected] £7.40; online only £71 per year. Articles, images, correspondence For details of other rates, Tel 01535 630230 should be emailed to contact Penny Dunn on 54a Main Street, Cononley [email protected] 020 7663 1178 or [email protected] Keighley BD20 8LL or sent to the address below. the Friend 173 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ • Tel: 020 7663 1010 • www.thefriend.org Editor: Ian Kirk-Smith [email protected] • Production and office manager: Elinor Smallman [email protected] Advertisement manager: George Penaluna [email protected] • Subscriptions officer: Penny Dunn [email protected] Sub-editor: George Osgerby [email protected] • Journalist: Rebecca Hardy [email protected] • Environment correspondent: Laurie Michaelis [email protected] • Arts correspondent: Rowena Loverance [email protected] Clerk of trustees: Paul Jeorrett • ISSN: 0016-1268 • The Friend Publications Limited is a registered charity, number 211649 • Printed by Warners Midlands Plc, The Maltings, Manor Lane, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH 2 the Friend, www.thefriend.org Thought for the Week Being a Friend ach year Quaker Week provides an opportunity to open doors and invite seekers, in a spirit of hospitality, to learn about and experience the Quaker way. What is this way? What makes it distinctive? What are its roots? Friends, at their best, are E‘practical mystics’ – committed to living a way of life that combines faith and practice. This issue of the Friend is a celebration of these words. There is, first, as Ben Pink Dandelion eloquently writes, a spiritual, mystical, engagement: ‘At the heart of the Quaker way is expanse, the expanse of the soul and the expanse of the mystery we experience in our attempt to nurture the human longing for divine encounter’. This longing is part of the human condition. Alastair McIntosh provides a fascinating account of it in his book Poacher’s Pilgrimage, reviewed in this issue, which records his exploration of spiritual sites from the pre-Christian and pre-historic era on the Isles of Harris and Lewis in the Hebrides. It has found expression, in the Christian tradition, in ritual, creeds, words and music. Those new to Quakerism will, like Terry Waite, discover ‘another dimension’ in the silence and stillness of a Quaker Meeting for Worship. Quakerism embraces an inclusive vision. Today, as Harvey Gillman points out, the sacred texts of many religions are full of the language of exclusion – heathen, damned, infidel – and sadly ‘there is a sorry return to such exclusive categories’ as many people, fearful of a rapidly changing world, grasp for old certainties. Having very strong convictions on particular issues, however, should not mean looking down on others who do not share them. Cherishing diversity and being a Friend are challenging. The Quaker way is no better than others. It is a distinctive way nurtured in Meeting for Worship and rooted in the Christian tradition. Authority lies not in priest, pulpit or book but in direct experience: the Inward Light. Worship should prompt action, as members of the Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network demonstrate, and ‘reaching out in friendship’ to those in need. Janet Scott, in the introduction to her selection from the archives of the Friend published in 1918, asks: ‘What does it mean to be a Quaker?’ She answers: ‘Since we believe that religion is not about what we say but about how we live our lives, we can illustrate the meaning of our faith through telling stories of Friends who, in different ways… have led lives of faithful commitment.’ One story recalls the life of Martha Allen, a Friend from Brigflatts Meeting who passed away in October 1918, and who managed a modest small holding: ‘If a neighbour was ill, she was ready to help before being called upon to do so. She never had control of more than a sufficiency of this world’s goods, but what she had she shared, with that simple kindness which multiplies a gift an hundredfold…’ Take heed to the promptings of love and truth in your heart. Be patterns and examples. Ian Kirk-Smith Editor of the Friend the Friend, Being a Friend 3 Reflection A quiet joy – or a turbulent delight? Stevie Krayer writes about her experience of ‘the eternal’ s the eternal about ‘universal absolutes’ that It is significant to my mind that Jesus, in a vision, ‘cannot change’? Not for me. The only unchanging told Julian of Norwich that ‘…all shall be well’ – absolute in the universe is, I feel, change itself. not ‘all is well’. I’m not a scientist, philosopher or IThe notion of immutable truth almost causes me to theologian. I am a poet who is delighted by being in shudder. Immutability seems to me the characteristic the thick of life, travelling at breakneck speed through of things that are cold and dead. The whole cosmos time and space. I delight in the union between my is dynamic, constantly evolving, and in continual senses and my surroundings, in the swapping of and rapid motion through space, though it appears particles across the universe, in which my body majestically static to us because we are just specks participates. I’m excited by the thought that the stars with a lifespan of less than the blink of an eye. I feel look quite different from how they did a thousand something of the same can be said about truth; and years ago. some Friends seem to share this perspective. John Wilhelm Rowntree once wrote that it was ‘not a fixed I can’t tell you how beautiful I find the thought crystal’. of everything eternally coming into being. When I still myself and contemplate this constant amazing Is everything that exists firstly an idea in the ‘unfoldingness of reality’, that’s when I get a sense of infinite mind before it manifests in form? I am being held, literally, in ecstasy – a moment of dynamic still unconvinced by this. Everything I know and equilibrium beyond time and space. experience about the creative process implies that its outcome is not predetermined but flows Light spontaneously, one thing leading to another, leading that signs the river’s stones with fire – not to a completely unanticipated outcome. My intuition the unblinking glare of Godhead is that this applies to creating generally, not just to but its living quiver, instantly gone artistic creating. Obviously, I am not in a position to instantly renewed know whether this is the way the mind of God works, gone renewed but I like to think that when we talk of the ‘God of gone renewed… surprises’ we also mean that God him/her/itself may sometimes be taken by surprise. I have great empathy with the following from Quaker faith & practice 20.06: I love the fact that the daffodil – or the elephant – could not possibly have been predicted from the Please be patient, those of you who have found a first flicker of bacterial life, and might have turned rock to stand on, with those of us who haven’t and out very differently. What Charles Darwin discovered with those of us who are not even looking for one. when he made his voyage on the Beagle was that local We live on the wave’s edge, where sea, sand and sky conditions interact creatively with the genetic material are all mixed up together; we are tossed head over of life forms and cause them to change over time. heels in the surf, catching only occasional glimpses The process is orderly, yes, but the order can only be of any fixed horizon. Some of us stay there from seen with hindsight. The outcome cannot be known choice because it is exciting and it feels like the beforehand. I can’t square this with the notion of a right place to be. pre-existing concept of a perfect daffodil in a vacuum, divorced from physical circumstances. Stevie is a member of Southern Marches Area Meeting. 4 the Friend, www.thefriend.org Spirituality Room for more room Photo: NASA Hubble Space Telescope / flickr CC. / flickr Telescope Hubble Space Photo: NASA Ben Pink Dandelion reflects on being faithful to the Spirit t the heart of the Quaker way is expanse; Then, everything becomes possible. More than that, the expanse of the soul and the expanse of it becomes necessary.