Blog posts of '2024' 'July'

On Saturday 27th of July between 12.30 to 1.30 pm at The Quaker Bookshop at Friends House we will host James McCarthy and Peter Parr for a signing session of the new Kindlers books The Kindness of Presence: Revisiting the Bible with an open heart and mind and  Quaker Worship: Reflections and Explorations.

1) Peter Parr: The Kindness of Presence: Revisiting the Bible with an open heart and mind. The Kindlers.

This book is about presence and kindness. Its reflections, prayers and meditations are reminders of God’s presence and unconditional loving kindness. They also invite us to be a loving presence in the world.

In the Bible, the ‘name’ of God refers to the essential nature of God; to God’s intrinsic qualities. Presence is a name for God, since the Divine Spirit is ever-present, pervading all that is. Kindness is also God’s name, for God is love and love is kind.

If we are created in the image of God, then we share the nature of our Source. Our problem is, we become distracted by a thousand and one other goals. Like the prodigal son in the parable, we need to 'come to our senses' ‒ to return to present-moment awareness. When we are fully present, we can experience the presence of God and make a conscious choice to be kind.

It has been said that God has no hands but ours. It is through us, when we attend to the promptings of love and truth in our hearts, that God’s love finds expression in the world. The Kindness of Presence encourages us to be open to receiving those promptings, and faithful in responding to them.

2) James McCarthy Quaker Worship: Reflections and Explorations The Kindlers.

What is Quaker worship? This practice – sitting with others in silence, waiting, listening – why do we do it? What happens in a meeting for worship and what effect does it have? Does it make any difference - to anyone?

This booklet gets inside the experience of worship by asking over 50 Quakers in the unprogrammed tradition what they value about worship and what they do in meetings. The answers are varied, personal, surprising, and strangely compelling.

“Meeting is where I can be in a community experiencing the source of our being.”

"Without Meeting, I'm not me."

Quaker worship can change lives. How can we sustain and nurture it? Quakers have a recurring need to reflect on these questions. Sometimes the questioning becomes part of the worship.

Quakers often say that their first experience of Quaker worship was like coming home. This booklet explores what home is like.

Michael Gilson will present his book "Behind the Privet Hedge -Richard Sudell, the Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain" here at our bookshop Thursday, 11th July.

It is said that Britain is a nation of gardeners; the suburban garden, with its roses and privet hedges, is widely admired and copied across the world. But it is little understood how millions across the nation developed an obsession with their colourful plots of land. Behind the Privet Hedge explores the history of this development and how, despite their stereotype as symbols of dull, middle-class conformity, these new open spaces were seen as a tool to help bring about social change in the early twentieth century. The book restores to the story a remarkable but long-forgotten figure, Richard Sudell, who spent a lifetime 'evangelizing' that the garden be in the vanguard of progress towards a new egalitarian society.

https://bookshop.quaker.org.uk/Behind-the-Privet-Hedge-Richard-Sudell-the-Suburban-Garden-and-the-Beautification-of-Britain_9781789148602

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We are pleased to announce another book launch in our bookshop, this time with the new book by Jocelyn Robson - “Elizabeth Heyrick: The Making of an Anti-Slavery Campaigner”.

Elizabeth Heyrick fought fiercely for the rights of oppressed people. After a disastrous marriage, she became a prolific pamphleteer, a Quaker and one of the most outspoken anti-slavery campaigners of her time. Despite renewed contemporary interest in slavery, and in the stories of those who opposed it, female abolitionists are still much less well known than their male counterparts. Yet they were often more radical and more daring. Heyrick defied male authority and she led others in challenging William Wilberforce and his colleagues to fight for the immediate rather than the gradual abolition of slavery.

Published on the 200th anniversary of her most powerful and influential anti-slavery pamphlet, this book is the first full length biography of Elizabeth Heyrick and it sets her life in the context of the British anti-slavery movement of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She was a woman who dared to put her head above the parapet and to call out those responsible for one of the worst abuses of human rights in history. She was courageous, loyal and uncompromising, and did not suffer fools gladly. It was not until long after her death in 1831 that her contribution to the anti-slavery cause started to be recognised and even today, she remains hidden in the shadows of the movement. Using archival records and recently unearthed family materials, as well as contemporary fiction and memoirs, the author creates a compelling account of an unsettled life set in turbulent times. https://bookshop.quaker.org.uk/Elizabeth-Heyrick-The-Making-of-an-Anti-Slavery-Campaigner_9781399068383

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