News

Friends from Nailsworth, Stroud, Gloucester and other quaker meetings joined together in a walk from Tetbury to Nailsworth to commemorate 400 years since the birth of George Fox, one of the founders of Quakerism. Research showed that George Fox walked extensively in Gloucestershire in the 17th century, including from Nailsworth to Tetbury. More than 20 of us walked the whole distance of 5 miles with various others joining us for sections of the walk. The walk was enjoyed by everyone and gave us plenty of appetite for the selection of flapjacks, biscuits and cakes at the end!

The Loving Earth Project is a community textile project started by a few Quakers in 2019. It spread widely and has generated international interest. By the time COP26 was held in Glasgow in 2021, over 400 panels with associated texts, celebrating some of the wonderful things threatened by environmental breakdown, had been made. Loving Earth Project was listed among “the best cultural events in Scotland for COP26”. An edited version of one of the panels is below.

The Project invites us to reflect on such questions as:

• Is there someone, something, or somewhere you know and love that’s endangered by environmental breakdown? 
• How does your lifestyle contribute to that danger? 
• What could you do to help reduce that risk? 
• What are you doing? 

As a result people have been able to engage creatively and constructively with the issues, without being overwhelmed by them.

From mid-February to mid-March 2023 a selection of Loving Earth Panels was exhibited at Portcullis House in the Houses of Parliament. Some Nailsworth Quakers heard this being discussed on the Sunday programme on Radio 4 and decided to bring the exhibition to Nailsworth.  As the panels are loaned a month, Cheltenham and Gloucester Meeting have decided to also host the exhibition. Dates and further details are in the Events pages, and in the calendar on quaker.app.

Cirencester Quakers join World Prayer Day

Cirencester Quakers have invited Christians in Cirencester to worship with them at their Meeting House on Thomas Street on World Day of Prayer (Friday 3 March 2023), at 10.30 am.

They write "We will be part of a huge wave of prayer which circles the earth for at least 38 hours. It
begins at dawn in Western Samoa and Tonga in the Pacific Ocean and ends at dusk in
American Samoa.

"Each year the service is written by the Christian women of a different country. This year is
the turn of Taiwan, a country that has for many years been caught in a superpower struggle.
The people of Taiwan are very much in need of our prayers at this time.

"Our worship will include letters of encouragement for women who face suffering and
injustice. These stories of faith focus on issues that are shared by women and girls around
the world and that continue to challenge us to prayerful action.

"We thank the Christian women of Taiwan for this service and pray that our response will be
affirmative and constructive as we commit ourselves to positive prayerful action."

Concern on Treatment of Refugees

The four Quaker Meetings in the Stroud area have come together to express their deep concern about the treatment of refugees in this country. In a letter published today(7 November 2022) in the Stroud News and Journal, the clerks of the four meetings say:

It is surely a matter of shame that a country which prides itself on treating people in a humane and civilised way can submit desperate refugees arriving on our shores to such degrading and inhumane treatment as that reported at the Manston holding centre this last week.

They call on Stroud MP Siobhan Bailey to:

• speak out against present injustices

• call for a complete overhaul of Home Office culture and practice and

• press for a genuine new commitment to developing safe routes