Quakers in the Surrey & Hampshire Border Area

26/12/2022

• Voltaire: "The best is the enemy of the good."
• Confucius: "Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without."
• Shakespeare: "Striving to better, oft we mar what's well."
Voltaire's version was quoted in a Psychology Today article about vainly and desperately trying to resurrect a failed relationship that had seemed so good, instead of moving on to other possibilities.

19/10/2022

*** A Poem by Erich Fried, followed by a translation in English ***

DAS MEER
Wenn man ans Meer kommt
soll man zu schweigen beginnen
bei den letzten Grashalmen
soll man den Faden verlieren

und den Salzschaum
und das scharfe Zischen des Windes einatmen
und ausatmen
und wieder einatmen

Wenn man den Sand sägen hört
und das Schlurfen der kleinen Steine
in langen Wellen
soll man aufhören zu sollen
und nichts mehr wollen wollen nur Meer
Nur Meer
ERICH FRIED

THE SEA
When you come to the sea
you should fall silent
by the last blades of grass
you should lose the thread of thought

and breathe in the salty foam
and the sharp hissing of the wind
and breathe out and
breathe in again

When you hear the sand sawing
and the shuffling of the little pebbles
in long waves
you should stop "shoulding"
and no longer want anything more
want only sea
Only sea
ERICH FRIED

31/08/2022

"The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own. Injuring, hurting, killing, drinking are all part of it, because you've lost your identity, because you now owe your allegiance to this thing that's bigger than you are and that controls you."

Does this quote of George Carlin, American comedian & author, (1937-2008), ring true with you?

10/07/2022

From Bertrand Russell's 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

09/06/2022

POEM BY Nigel Adams

alright jack

every day begins
every day ends
world turns
wheel turns

and

every day I begin
listening to the world
I turn the wheel
to the day's end

world doesn't care
what time it is
what day it is
it just keeps turning
and I am
slowly learning
to be
more like the world

n.a. 30.4.22.

15/11/2021

Can anyone in the Surrey & Hampshire Border Area produce a photo of their Meeting House as appealing as this one of Scholes Meeting House near Bradford? 😙

16/01/2021

"I think of religion as a kind of psychological manifestation of deep powers, deep imaginative, mysterious powers which are always with us."

~ Joyce Carol Oates
(American author and atheist)

Interesting to consider how these words would chime with an "average" Quaker?

14/08/2020

This 2011 17-minute TED talk video has got a 95% 'thumbs up' in its argument for how the gun promotes local, regional & world peace in the hands of the armed forces of a democratically elected society with an effective constitution.

I wonder what percentage of Quakers would give a 'thumbs up'?

http://www.ted.com Peter van Uhm is the Netherlands' chief of defense, but that does not mean he is pro-war. At TEDxAmsterdam he explains how his career is o...

10/07/2020

Does this apply only to theists?