Pagans at YMG!

Simon Beard wrote this piece and emailed it to me. Unfortunately I missed it at the time. Apologies to Simon. A group of us Quaker pagans met during Thursday lunchtime to celebrate the harvest season and call on the spirits of abundance to bless Yearly Meeting Gathering and the many projects and friendships it produces. [...]

business method

‘The purpose is, quite simply, to reside in the light. To allow ourselves to be led to a transcendent place of unmistakable harmony, peace and tender love. And then to live out what that has revealed about what life is like when a loving God rules over all. The role of the clerk is to [...]

Speaking out in the world

In the past few days we have seen and heard coverage about a Quaker decision at Yearly Meeting on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, in the Times, Guardian, Daily Mail and Daily Mirror newspapers, a piece from the Press Association and regional coverage such as on the BBC Lancashire website. All this coverage [...]

Guess how many Quakers

Ruth Gledhill, religion correspondent for The Times writes: ‘ At their annual gathering in York this week more than 1,600 Quakers agreed “to treat same-sex, committed relationships in the same way as opposite-sex marriages, reaffirming our central insight that marriage is the Lord’s work and we are but witnesses”.’ Alec Mackinson at BBC Lancashire goes [...]

Other people’s reactions to our decision on same-sex marriages

It seems as though all the so-called quality newspapers have reported our decision in an even-handed way. I’ve read the online reports in the Guardian, the Telegraph (which simply records yesterday’s item from the BBC News website), the Times and the Independent. The Independent gets extra marks for including comment by Peter Tatchell, who is [...]

We’re in the news

Yes, Friends, as Jez Smith has just pointed out on here, our process is already up and out there on BBC News. Colin Billett had a very brief slot on the Today programme, around 6.50am, and the news item was in the news headlines at 8am on Radio 4, as I understand it. It seems [...]

light asides

Things we’ve seen and noticed from YMG at York. Coots’ feet are big. Goose poo is big and green. I watched a man with a broom chasing some geese outside Vanbrugh College, so that they eventually jumped into the lake to escape him. The sign ‘Lost? Ask me’ amused many and quite a few variations [...]

After YM session

Friends, we had a session of Yearly Meeting this afternoon that dealt first with some nominations issues and then went onto the subject of committed relationships. We have not yet reached a minute on the subject so I won’t write substantively about where we are up to. But you can follow some of what happened [...]

Coast and Cliffs walk

Yesterday I went walking along the stretch of the Cleveland Way which passes up the coast to Robin Hood’s Bay. I think there were about 80-90 Friends on the walk altogether. We travelled there in two coaches and then walked in 4 parties. It rained rather a lot. We had a late lunch in the [...]

York wildlife

One of the delights of YMG09 is the abundant wildlife around the campus. The other evening, for example, there were rabbits grazing outside on the lawn whilst I ate my evening meal in the Galleria dining room. Then there are the wildfowl which live on the lakes. There are various types of ducks and geese, [...]