1203 March 2012
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PDFEditorial
Print PDF Mark Johnson, March Coordinating Editor Welcome Friends one and all to the new online format of The Australian Friend. Since its inception in 1887 The Australian Friend has undergone a variety of formats, and it is with much excitement and enthusiasm that the editorial panel offers the official journal of Quakers Australia in [...]
Quaker Committee Meetings Online
Print PDF John Michaelis, New South Wales Regional Meeting Overview: Concern for earth care, the cost and time of travel are strong motivators for Quakers to supplement face-to-face meetings with alternative methods of meeting using phone conference calling or the Internet. Combinations of Internet, phone and face-to face meetings can allow the participation of people [...]
Silver Wattle in 2012
Print PDF Helen Bayes: Silver Wattle Quaker Centre The 2012 program of courses and events includes a wonderful range of opportunities to explore your faith, learn more about Quakerism and become clearer about your own action and witness in the world. Elaine Emily – Healing and Eldering Elaine Emily, Silver Wattle Travelling Friend and teacher [...]
QSA Notes
Print PDF Pitchandikulam Forest, Tamil Nadu Some months after the devastation of Cyclone Thane Jackie Perkins has returned from a visit to QSA’s project partner at Pitchandikulam Forest in Tamil Nadu, Southern India. During her visit she has had opportunity to take stock of the enormity of restorative and regenerative efforts undertaken by Joss Brooks [...]
David Atwood, From the Inside Out: Observations on Quaker Work at the United Nations, The James Backhouse Lecture Given at Australia Yearly Meeting, Perth, January 2012.
Print PDF By Lyndsay Farrall, Hobart Meeting. This year’s Backhouse Lecture given by David Atwood, who recently retired as Director of the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva, is an excellent introduction to the work of QUNO. It provided David Atwood with an opportunity to reflect on his sixteen years as a staff member [...]
Changes and choices for The Australian Friend
Print PDF The Australian Friend is now online at AustralianFriend.org, as AYM agreed during Yearly Meeting in January 2012 in Perth. There are significant advantages to receiving The AF as a web-based journal: Explore Quaker Voice – our new portal for global news from a Quaker perspective, Post free classified ads, See images in colour, [...]
How can Friends realize the Kingdom of God?
Print PDF By Valerie Joy, Queensland Regional Meeting, FWCC/AWPS secretary. The world has changed remarkably since the Fifth World Conference of Friends in 1991, both for good and for ill. The 6th World Conference to be held this year has as part of its theme Friends living the Kingdom of God, when we will [...]
Transition to a New Chapter
Print PDF Robert Howell, New Zealand Yearly Meeting. A New Zealand Friend wished me well in a new exciting chapter of my life when he heard of my appointment to work with the Peace and Earthcare Committees in providing a Quaker voice in Canberra. But last December was not exciting. It was a rush to [...]
Quakers in Cyberspace.
Print PDF Virginia Jealous, West Australia Regional Meeting. Dear Friends, I’d like to share some of my recent experience of Quaker community in cyberspace. This started as an attempt to keep up the spiritual momentum after a visit to Silver Wattle, and to counteract some of the challenges (of distance, communication, resources) of being [...]
Friends in Stitches.
Print PDF Cathy Davies, New South Wales Regional Meeting. In November the Australian Quaker Narrative Embroidery : Friends in Stitches met in Silver Wattle for our annual workshop. Since then we met again in Perth at Australian Yearly Meeting. Patricia Wood, the co-ordinator of our Western Australia Regional Meeting embroidery group reported that : The [...]
Australian Yearly Meeting, Western Australia, 2012
Print PDF Sue Reynolds, Aotearoa/New Zealand Yearly Meeting My first impressions of Western Australia were the warmth of our welcome by the local people and Quaker F/friends. On our arrival at Perth airport we were met by an elderly Aboriginal woman with 2 enormous suitcases and a very large bag. She asked us for directions [...]
Through My Eyes Only, Yearly Meeting 2012.
Print PDF Wilma Davidson, Canberra Regional Meeting. By the time you read this you would have received the minutes of YM and had access to DIA. You will know about decisions made and reports accepted. You may have read the Backhouse Lecture and State of the Art Address. You may have read of the power [...]
Annual Report of Friend’s School Hobart
Print PDF John Green, Tasmanian Regional Meeting. It seems to me that there is never a normal year at The Friends’ School. In all my reports to the Yearly Meeting I have always been able to describe remarkable achievements by members of the School community as well as significant improvements, additions and changes to our [...]
Soulful Discernment
Print PDF Grace Verity, Western Australia Regional Meeting. I have made some spectacularly bad decisions in my life, and at other times, apparent miracles have fallen into my lap. The unpredictable results of my decision making processes has led me to give this area of my life some serious, committed attention, and look [...]
47 Backhouse Lectures
Print PDF Ian Hughes, New South Wales Regional Meeting The James Backhouse Lectures were instituted by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia on the day it was established, January 1, 1964. They have been delivered during Australia Yearly Meeting in January each year, with a few exceptions to this pattern. The lectures delivered [...]
What is a Friend?
Print PDF Mark Johnson, New South Wales Regional Meeting A book I recently read, Sources of the Self, The Making of Modern Identity by philosopher Charles Taylor, maps some of the paths which have led to contemporary understandings of identity as realised throughout the Western world. Over-arching themes of reason and of feeling dominated this [...]
Alternatives To Violence (AVP) Asia-West Pacific Regional 2012 Gathering
Print PDF Bev Polzin, Alternatives to Violence Project Nine of us travelled on from Yearly Meeting 2012 to Guildford Grammar School, to participate in the Asia West-Pacific Gathering of AVP. There we joined a number of others, including four from overseas (Singapore, Aotearoa/New Zealand, USA and Indonesia) for a memorable, well-organised and very fruitful Gathering, [...]
Haiku
Print PDF Helen Gould, New South Wales Regional Meeting The willie wagtails Singing all the moonlight long Young love once mine. Flies buzz against glass Beyond a door is ajar Am I trapped or free? This Haiku was written with Jean Talbo and Mark Macleod during Writing Weereewa at Silver Wattle, October 2011. [...]
Writing Weereewa
Print PDF Jean Talbot, New South Wales Regional Meeting and others. Renga Afternoon sunshine: Brown, green, brown, blue, brown again are the lake floor’s stripes. Later, as the sun goes down, a shadow creeps over it all. Morning sunshine, suffusing gold into morning mists: Weereewa awakes. Startled crimson rosellas launch skywards as doors open. Melodious [...]
Six Queries on Global Change
Print PDF Friends Responses to Global Change: An FWCC Worldwide Consultation among Friends When we use the term „global change‟, we see it as being about “unity, integration and the inter-connection of all change. Seemingly different or unrelated changes are in fact aspects or facets of a single greater change” (Stargardt 2008). One of the [...]
Living Systems Retreat: Forward Announcement
Print PDF In the spirit of ‘living experimentally’, The Online Australian Friend invites Australian Quakers to a virtual retreat. This idea was talked about in a dynamic Share and Tell session at AYM 2012. The details are still to be worked out, and we welcome ideas, suggestions and offers of help (use the comments form [...]
Reflections on a river
Print PDF Therese Douglas and Ian Hughes, New South Wales Regional Meeting The Giving River. Maybe you know the Silverstein fable about the giving tree? The one where the tree tries to be all things to the boy/man/cranky old fart to the point of becoming a dead stump? Well I sense that’s the fate of [...]
Junior Young Friends’ Epistle from Yearly Meeting 2012, Perth
Print PDF Twenty-three kids, 480 juice boxes, two vans, and a bunch of food headed to Camp Woody for a children’s getaway. We arrived to find canoes, pool tables, bush, and an opportunity for fun. The drinking water was not enjoyed by some, but it was part of a very small list of things. Trips [...]
Children’s Epistle from Yearly Meeting 2012, Perth
Print PDF We have had a happy and busy time in the Children’s Program. Some of our favourite things were: going swimming, playing ping pong, drawing, playing with my friends, the big soccer game, going to Aqua, buying our turtles at Aqua, making towers with pillows, singing in Meeting for Worship. And Oliver said: ‘I [...]
Epistle from Australia Yearly Meeting 2012, Perth
Print PDF To all Friends everywhere, warm greetings from Friends in Australia. We pay our respects to the Elders of the Indigenous people of the Bibbulmun country —past, present and future—upon whose land we are gathered for our Yearly Meeting, 7–14 January 2012, at Christ Church Grammar School, Claremont in Perth, Western Australia. The significance [...]
Quaker Voice
Print PDF John Michaelis, Ian Hughes, Wies Schuiringa; New South Wales Regional Meeting. Quaker Voice is part of the Online Australian Friend project. The vision of Quaker Voice is to provide the opportunity for Quakers and like-minded writers around the world – many of whom are located in trouble spots, to publish news and commentary. [...]
