The Australian Friend- June 2026 Issue.

The focal theme for this issue is Simplicity. The Quaker Testimony of Simplicity, affirms the need to lead a life led simply, enabling attention to spiritual values and God’s guidance. It also affirms that one should be more concerned with one’s inner condition than one’s outward appearance and with other people rather than oneself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testimony_of_simplicity

George Fox wrote: ‘Therefore, live and walk in God’s and Christ’s Light, life, spirit, and power, which is over all (and the seed of it) in love, innocency and simplicity.’ From The Sealed Epistle of George Fox, Ch 52: https://www.sermonindex.net/ebooks/w/writings-of-george-fox.pdf

As is evident in several offerings in this issue the practice of simplicity can have a transforming power. There is both a mystical and an activist side to this: opening to one’s inner life and caring for others.

The English poet William Blake, born 66 years after George Fox’s death, encapsulated both aspects in his poem Auguries of Innocence.  In this poem he laments human cruelty towards the innocent, whether animals or humans,

A robin redbreast in a cage

Puts all Heaven in a rage…

A dog starv’d at his master’s gate

Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misus’d upon the road

Calls to Heaven for human blood…

Every night and every morn

Some to misery are born.

Every morn and every night…

Some are born to sweet delight,

Some are born to endless night.

His poem begins with this profound mystical vision of how it is the smallest, seemingly most insignificant things that can open us to an experience beyond the reach of normal human thought. Theologians describe this idea as ‘the incognito of revelation’:

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

However, it is worth noting that not all Quakers see simplicity in these terms, as is evident in the article Simplicity: A Testimony  in the Friends Journal USA, see https://www.friendsjournal.org/2005058/. There, Caroline Lanker argues:

.. there is a way in which simplicity itself may actually be undesirable; this is in simplifying our thinking. The world is a very complicated place. Do we try to simplify our thinking by denying the complexities inherent in it?’

Bearing this paradox in mind let me turn to our offerings that bear on Simplicity in this issue:

Kaye Wright offers simple reflections on how her experience in Friends Eastern Meeting with two new people deepened her sense of what was needed both in meeting and in life outside meeting. She was especially warmed by her sense that the Quaker meeting offers a safe and welcoming space for people to share their spiritual experiences and aspirations.  

Halcyon Evans has a beautiful reflection on the sources, for her, of spiritual vision, aligning perfectly with the simplicity of Quaker worship.

Noel Staples gives an account of his spiritual experiences. He suggests the way that Quaker worship, in its simplicity and freedom from the politics of established religions, has helped to deepen his own understanding of such experience.

Gerard Guiton, in Eden Within: Hope and Liberation, uncovers, especially in early Quaker writing, the simplicity that makes the inward Light available. The key, he argues, is that we must make space -through a deep connection with silence, with ‘who we really are.’  

Jessica Morrison shares her experience of a Friend’s passing and takes us into the core of the simplicity that awaits us all.

Jim Palmer gives a wonderful account of how his discovery of Silver Wattle brought his life back into alignment with Quaker values, especially the simplicity, that he had experienced as a child.

Valerie Joy expressed her appreciation of the Silver Wattle course on Judith Wright in the context of Wright’s relationship to the landscape and her friendship with First Nation’s poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal. The course challenged Valerie to find a Quaker balance between contemplation and activism.

David Evans, former editor of the Australian Friend, offers a highly appropriate poem, for our own times in the current climate of global hostility and local Australian repression of legitimate challenges to violence: Attitudes.  

Jess Dundas’s Learning about Meeting for Business at the Friends’ School is a beautiful and well supported illustration of using a story-telling strategy to introduce children to the essence of how a Business Meeting is run. The outcome is quite extraordinary. Children (and staff) come to experience how stillness, listening and openness can dramatically undermine the way Business is usually conducted.  Jess presents a model of how simplicity is a powerful tool in a complex world.

Supporting Jess Dundas’s practice, Scotland Clerk- Adwoa Burnley, spoke recently on her experience of Clerking Britain YM, and particularly of Friends’ business meetings.

The Book Review by Reg Naulty on Peter Fitzimmons The Courageous Life of Weary Dunlop gives a fascinating glimpse of a man who dedicated his life’s energies to helping victims of the Thai-Burma Railway construction in World War 2. The punch line of the review is the last sentence where Reg presents Dunlop’s profoundly Quaker response to one of the Japanese prison guards who, wishing to ask for forgiveness, visited Australia after the war.

There is an article announcing the Yearly Meeting hosted in 2026 by the Queensland Regional Meeting (authors  Naomi Doessel, QRM, Marian James, QRM, and Christine Venner-Westaway).

There is a note on the work completed by Quaker Services Australia, and there is also an announcement for World Quaker Day- Global Online Meeting 4 October.

Michael Griffith