Bridgend Quaker Meeting

08/03/2026

We hope that the forthcoming Elrctions to the Welsh Senedd (Parliament) in May 2026 will be characterised by love and kindness rather than scorn and hatred.

06/03/2026

https://www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-events/news/quaker-meeting-house-raided-by-metropolitan-police-again

Yesterday evening, 5 March 2026, for the second time in a year, the Metropolitan Police raided a Quaker Meeting House and arrested a number of young nonviolent activists who were meeting there, on the grounds that they were conspiring to commit a criminal act.

24/01/2026

October 21 st (2011)

At the Quaker Meeting House

By Anne Cluysenaar

We sit in a room with light
streaming through the windows: one side,
we throw long shadows, on the other
we’re in darkness with dazzled eyes.
If we look up. And I do.
Notice a line, light gliding
To and fro through the air outside,
Lit blue by a winter sun.
There must be a spider out there
Hung from the plane tree, her silk
a single thread, wafting slowly
from seen to unseen and back.
Cars passing by, out of sight?
Or someone walking beneath?
Or just, that its lightness lies
in cold above warming ground.

From Touching Distances. Diary Poems
Cinnamon Press 2014, p. 60

06/01/2026

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1276740051160594&id=100064738324280

04/01/2026

This was piece from Quaker Faith and Practice read aloud at the beginning of our Meeting this morning.

Many of the testimonies and practices established by early Friends have survived only in part. One which has almost died out in Britain is the naming of days and months by number instead of by names of pagan origin. It is rare now to hear ‘first day’ instead of ‘Sunday’ or ‘third month’ instead of ‘March’, though the practice is still acceptable.

Another testimony held by early Friends was that against the keeping of ‘times and seasons’. We might understand this as part of the conviction that all of life is sacramental; that since all times are therefore holy, no time should be marked out as more holy; that what God has done for us should always be remembered and not only on the occasions named Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.

This is a testimony which seems to be dying of neglect. Many Friends, involved with family and the wider society, keep Christmas; in some meetings, Easter and its meaning is neglected, not only at the calendar time but throughout the year. What I would hope for is neither that we let the testimony die, nor that we keep it mechanically. I hope for a rediscovery of its truth, that we should remember and celebrate the work of God in us and for us whenever God by the Spirit calls us to this remembrance and this joy.

Janet Scott, 1994

28/12/2025

This was read aloud towards the end of our meeting today.

17/12/2025

https://www.facebook.com/100064738324280/posts/1262234362611163/?

Quakers in Britain hold all those affected by the horrifying antisemitic attack in Sydney in the Light.

08/12/2025

From Advices and Queries.

Every stage of our lives offers fresh opportunities. Responding to divine guidance, try to discern the right time to undertake or relinquish responsibilities without undue pride or guilt. Attend to what love requires of you, which may not be great busyness.

30/11/2025

Todays Reading from Quaker Faith and Practice.


My first experience of healing came when I was very ill for many weeks with lung and respiratory problems and in an extremely physically weak condition. Whilst fighting for each very painful breath I began to think I might not recover and lay in a twilight world of sleep, pain and exhaustion but yet knowing ‘Thy will be done’. It would have been so easy to let life slip at this point, but it was exactly then that I felt a surge of energy go through my body and I knew that it was right for me to be given more time on earth and that I would recover. It felt as if I was being ‘ticked off’ for lacking faith. As that energy passed through me I remembered clearly and strongly a very dear member of my meeting and wondered if she was praying for my recovery. I continued to hold on to her image in my mind and began to feel the strength returning to my body. She later told me she had indeed prayed for me daily and had sometimes been joined by other Friends for intercession. I knew experientially I had been upheld in God’s healing light and power and it is this experience which has made me so convinced of the healing ministry. I know there may be more mundane, matter-of-fact explanations for my recovery but in extremis and in great need I was reaching for far more than the mundane.

Joolz Saunders, 1994

10/11/2025

Remember

Remember Ypres, the Somme, Mons, and Verdun.
Remember the Western Desert, El Alamein, the Normandy beaches.
Remember Dresden, Hiroshima and the Burma Road.
Remember Korea, the Falkland Islands, Northern Island, Iraq.
Remember the courage, the comradeship, the ingenuity,
the spirit of working together for a common cause,
the planning together for a better world
that would come with peace.
Remember the call to arms, the patriotic songs, the posters,
the partings which were such sweet sorrow,
the sound of the drum, the skirl of the pipe,
the prayer that God would be on our side.
Remember the carnage, the colossal, stinking, bloody horror;
the ripped bodies on the wire,
the platoons of which only three out of forty lived.
Remember the widows of sixty years and more,
the old men and women living now who never knew their fathers.
Remember the love that was lost, the wisdom wasted,
the minds that were twisted and the limbs distorted.
Remember the wealth of nations being fired from guns, dropped as
bombs: smashing schools, homes, factories, churches and
hospitals;
ruining crops, destroying trees,
Remember the hope of a whole generation
left to evaporate in the sands of a desert
or sink forever in the oceans of the world.
Remember this day the children who will die
while the world spends its wealth on arms;
the young who have no work
while others in their generation are trained to fight;
The ambulances that will not come
while we argue about how many troop carriers we need;
the research into disease left neglected
while brilliant minds are used to study more effective destruction.
Remember the one who asked us to remember him.

Graham CooK

02/11/2025