1106 June 2011

By Judith Pembleton, Editor. There are two articles in this issue on the proposed online versions of The Australian Friend, and Friends need to consider these prayerfully. If Yearly Meeting 2012 accepts the proposal for The AF to go online, this is likely to be the last year of The AF in this format, and [...]

By Wilma Davidson, Canberra Regional Meeting When I write a personal piece I usually start from the past and work to now. This time I will work from the present and share how I came to be in this remarkable joyful, loving, challenging fraction of life’s path. On the dining table is a little book [...]

Rae Litting, New South Wales Regional Meeting The soul must journey to God by knowing God through what God is not, rather than by knowing what God is (St John of the Cross). At the Yearly Meeting in Melbourne, a Friend called for a dialogue between theists and atheists and humanists. If St John of [...]

Kerry O’Regan, South Australia Regional Meeting I don’t know how it happened, because none of us is particularly religious, at least not in that sense, but each year the choir that I’m in goes off to the Barossa and sings at a Pentecost service plus a few other things. Today we started to work on [...]

By Sue Parritt, Victoria Regional Meeting One of my most poignant childhood memories is of my father sitting in his chair by the dining room fireplace staring into the glowing coals. Minute after minute, hour after hour, barely moving, his eyes riveted to flame and ash. Sometimes he would be sitting there when my sister [...]

By Ian Hughes, New South Wales Regional Meeting The Australian Friend is changing. Is this the movement of the Spirit? In the December 2010 issue of The Australian Friend, Susan Addison wrote that ’writing from a spiritual base’ was a phrase the editors stumbled over. ‘We couldn’t quite pin down what that meant.’ She went [...]

Friends from across our FWCC ‘section’ came together for a Triennial Gathering in Manila in April. FWCC divides the world into four sections. Three sections — Europe & the Middle East, Africa and the Americas are fairly clearly defined. Our section, the Asia West Pacific Section (AWPS) is really the rest of the world! In [...]

By Jim Palmer, Victoria Regional Meeting. This year, the long weekend of Easter and Anzac Day brought F/friends of all ages to Silver Wattle. The event was billed as ‘No Time for War: the Easter Story and Anzac’. The program was designed to be inclusive of all ages, and parents found this particularly valuable. The [...]

By Dale Hess, Victoria Regional Meeting. On 6 – 8 May 2011, 17 Friends, West Papuans and social change and peace educators (and one dog) gathered at the Silver Wattle Quaker Centre for a peace-building conference to discover ways that we might address the most protracted violent conflict in the Pacific, the situation in West [...]

By Lorel Thomas, Victoria Regional Meeting Definitions for the word ‘peace’ include ‘safety in matters of social or economic welfare,’ ‘the absence of mental stress or anxiety’ and ‘the general security of public places’. If we accept that peace means more than the absence of war, then many people living in the Lao People’s Democratic [...]

By Judith Pembleton,  Queensland Regional Meeting. As a relatively new concept, promoting and protecting Respectful Relationships (RR) is still a mysterious process for many Australian Friends. In March, representatives from each regional meeting, together with the Yearly Meeting Presiding Clerk and Secretary, met for a weekend workshop in Melbourne to build common understandings. At the [...]

By Adrian Glamorgan In 1994, within 100 days about 20 per cent of Rwanda’s population was killed. Facilitated by the Rwanda government, the militia used and handed out guns, grenades and machete: estimates vary between 500,000 to one million Tutsi and pro-peace Hutu died in the surprise planned genocide. Nevertheless, before these events the United [...]

By Fiona Gardner, Victoria Regional Meeting. The Meeting for Learning Retreat offers Friends a year-long program with a week retreat at the beginning and end of the year. The program provides a structure within which Friends can explore and nurture their own spiritual journey, supported and enabled by each other and the facilitators. This year [...]

With so much in the news about climate change, it is interesting to know how it is affecting the work of QSA and its project partners. A series of discussions and surveys among project participants in Cambodia, India and Uganda has revealed comments such as needing to dig deeper wells to reach good water supplies, [...]

QSA Notes: people, places and projects Fourteen intrepid Friends joined  Margaret Bywater of Tasmania Regional  Meeting, who works in Cambodia, and  QSA’s Jackie Perkins on a study tour to visit  the QSA and AusAID funded programs  in Cambodia. It was a great opportunity  to see for themselves what work is being  carried out with your [...]

QSA Notes: people, places & projects Under the watchful eye of Josephine  Kizza, the trainers at St Jude Organic  Farming Centre in Uganda continue to  help rural communities to achieve greater  food and water security. For Monica Ssenkindu, a 42-year-old  widow with a large family of nine to  support, this training has made a huge  [...]

By Wies Schuiringa, New South Wales Regional Meeting This issue of The Australian Friend  will appear experimentally on  the web. You won’t find it using a  search engine (even Google doesn’t know  about it yet) but type ‘http://olaf.yerin. info’ into your web browser to preview the  general layout and look proposed for The  Australian Friend [...]

In the presence of Derbal Yarragan Yearly Meeting 2012 will be held  overlooking Derbal Yarragan (The  Swan River Estuary) at Christchurch  Grammar School from Saturday 7 to  Saturday 14 January 2012. We will be using different buildings  within the school to those used for Yearly  Meeting (YM) 2005. The main sessions will be held in [...]

The theme for Yearly Meeting 2012 is ‘What does love require of us’ and we are using this also for Summer School. A number of  Friends in WARM have offered to facilitate groups and we are now ready to receive offers from the wider AYM community. Summer School will occupy the whole of the Sunday. [...]

Book review by Roger Sawkins, Queensland Regional Meeting Chocolate Wars: from Cadbury to Kraft:  200 years of sweet success and bitter rivalry by Deborah Cadbury Harper (Collins 2010 RRP$35) Cadbury’s Milk Tray, Rowntree’s  Black Magic, Kit Kat, Dairy  Box, Aero, Smarties, Mars Bars,  Milky Way, Maltesers, Bournville Chocolate  Creams. If by now you are drooling [...]

Poetry by Sue Parritt, Victoria Regional Meeting July 1970 I’m migrating to Australia seeking a better life My father helps me pack my few belongings My mother weeps The ship is crowded with hundreds of other Optimistic souls Week after week we plough through  stormy seas Vomit day after day August 1970 I disembark at [...]

Book review by Topsy Evans, South Australia Regional Meeting Quaker Origins,  Worship and Identity: Reflections from Kenya by Donald Thomas (Hill of Vision Pamphlet 3, Kaimosi Friends Press, 40pp) Donald Thomas is a British Friend who  has spent much of his life in Kenya. He has written an excellent  summary of Quaker practice, both of  [...]