poliphilo

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Quakers come to decisions by "discernment"- which involves listening to the inner voice and taking due note of what everybody concerned has to say. It can take time.

We try not to argue.

And we try not to demonise any person or opinion. One of our key texts (though no Quaker text is accorded the weight of "Scripture") is this- that we should "look for that of God in everyone."

Natural leaders emerge within a Meeting but no-one is set above anyone else. Each Member's opinion counts. If there is disagreement then the matter should be set aside until a common mind can be reached. Forcing a decision through in the teeth of opposition is most unQuakerly.

When the Meeting is asked to decide whether a certain decision has its approval the proper form for showing assent is "I hope so,"- which allows for the possibility that with the best will in the world the Meeting and the individual may have got it wrong.

I was reading in "The Friend" (the Quaker magazine) about a man on Death Row in the United States who was befriended by a London Quaker and eventually became a Member (at a distance) of her Meeting. "Right on!" I thought.

A Quaker Meeting is made up of whatever folk care to show up and hang around- and the only reason someone should be excluded is if they put others in danger or cause more disruption than the Meeting can happily cope with. We don't ask that they conform to any particular set of moral standards. We are not a sour-faced huddle of the unco' guid.....

Our Meeting has an issue to deal with- or side-step. Two Friends are saying that another Friend is not as nice as he should be. Well, what a pity! The two paragraphs above constitute the answer I have "discerned".

I gave up on the mainstream media a while back. Now I pick through the podcasts looking for one that isn't opinionated and parti pris. Maybe it's asking too much of human nature to exercise Olympian oversight.

But then again you can have engagement and you can have detachment- but it's a tall order to expect to find them together.

I think of Jesus being approached to give an opinion on paying taxes to Caesar and how his response was both witty and dismissive. "None of my business," was more or less what he was saying.

Constantine at the Milvian Bridge taking the cross as his insignia- that's when things started to go really wrong.

Because God isn't on anybody's side. God is on every side at once.....

And while we're talking about religion I'm still mulling over a clip I watched of Russell Brand and Tucker Carlson going on about much they love the Lord Jesus. I'm not questioning either man's sincerity- just wondering about the implications.....

Picture Diary 59

1. Tunnel of Light

2. A Moscow of the Mind

3. White Nights

4. A Long Way to Tipperary

5. The Path to Fair Elfland

I don't know why the Scarlet Claw is set in Canada. I don't think I heard any Canadian accents- only British ones. Perhaps it is to make it clear that this is Not, repeat Not, the Hound of the Baskervilles.

A spooky legend, a glowing apparition, misty marshes, victims with their throats torn out. But we're not on Dartmoor so it's absolutely not the Hound of the Baskervilles.

But to be fair, though the set-up is very Houndish the denouement isn't. It's a silly movie- not quite as silly as the House of Fear, but also not quite as much fun. There were times, somewhere in the middle, where I was thinking, "Come on, get a move on...."

This was my second Sherlock Holmes with Rathbone and Bruce. I don't suppose I'm going to trudge through the complete oeuvre.

I had lived to be 73 without watching any of the many little movies Universal made starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson. Last night I repaired the omission. The one I watched was called The House of Fear or something like that and was extremely silly and very good fun- and no, I didn't guess the solution ahead of the big reveal. I may watch more.

We were out to lunch again yesterday. When I was looking forward to what I suppose I could call retirement (though I havent worked a "regular job" for something like 30 years) I said I intended to eat out every day and never cook again. Well, we couldn't actually afford to do that but we must be eating restaurant meals at least once a week.

Quakers have fewer rules than most religious bodies but we have some because you can't play any game without rules. We were discussing the rules yesterday- and I find I'm pretty far out in my libertarianism. My Friends are saying that we need to rein in a bit or we'll no longer we identifiably Quaker- and they have a point.

I dreamed I was writing a book or reading a book by someone else which was about a group of people on a journey and then changed to be about animals who were variously rabbits, foxes and mice. Also, though the novel started off being words on a page it swiftly morphed into pictures. How unsettled things are in dreams and how readily one accepts it!

YouTube inserted a movie called The Hidden Room into my feed. Never heard of it. But the title was irresistible because If something is hidden I dearly want to find it. The Hidden Room is a British movie, directed by Edward Dmytryk- on the run from a prison sentence after being brutalised by the HUAC. It stars Robert Newton- with his unfathomably dark eyes- playing it svelte ansd straight. The Hidden Room is the US title. The British title is Obsession which isn't half as good. The screenplay is by Alec Coppel from his own play and novel. Coppel also wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock's Vertigo.

Supporting players are Sally Gray- once the "British Ginger Rogers" and later an Irish peeress- and Naunton Wayne- best remembered as one half of the pair of cricket-obsessed twits in The Lady Vanishes. Here he's the admirably laid-back police inspector. The year is 1949, the place London and the hidden room is accessed via a bomb site.

Newton is going to commit the perfect murder- and it's worth one and a half hours of anybody's time to find out if he manages to pull it off.

Picture Diary 58

1. Summer Rain

2 The Pink House

3. The Truth Emerges

4. 20/20 Vision

5. Rising Through the Dimensions

I had a dream in which a bad man was planning a bad thing (I don't know what it was) and I was simultaneously experiencing things from the perspective of the bad man who was planning the bad thing and from the perspective of a person who was afraid of the bad man and the thing he was planning- and it didn't seem in the least bit odd to be two people at once....

It put me in mind of how- after we die- we undergo a life review in which we experience the things we did not only from the fixed perspective of our earthly life but from that of the people who were affected by our actions- so if we were in the habit of smacking people round the head we get to experience the smacking- and it hurts- and if we were in the habit of handing out flowers we get to feel the gratitude of the recipients.

Because we are all One, see-

All One.

Terry is moving out of his flat and has donated his library to the Meeting House. We may now be the only Meeting House anywhere in the world to own a collection of books on art and design.

I rang the Church Army to see if they could tell me anything about Keith's time as one of their Captains. What they furnished me with was sketchy but acted as a corrective to my assumptions. I had thought, from the weight he accorded it, that he'd had a long career with them; in fact he served between twelve and thirteen years. He was "commissioned" in 1967 and resigned in 1980. During that period he worked in parishes in the Durham, Manchester and Cheshire dioceses- so never long enough to put down roots- with a couple of years spent running a hostel, probably in Manchester. My informant didn't have- or chose to withold- the names of the parishes- and it all happened so long ago it's unlikely if I had them I'd be able to trawl for personal memories. So that's that. What did he do with the rest of his life? I know he spent some time at Claridge House- a Quaker retreat house in Lingfield- but I doubt that that accounts for more than a handful of the missing years....

In order to retain its charitable status our Area needs to be able to field five trustees. Three of ours are about to retire and we' don't have people falling over themselves to replace them. If need be I'll volunteer. In West Kent the situation has gone from serious to critical and they're putting out a call to neighbouring Areas to lend them bodies (which would be within the rules.) Again I'd be willing to volunteer. I know West Kent pretty well, and find- a little to my surprise- that I have an affection for it. Gotta keep the show on the road....

In the long term (and everything to do with the Society of Friends takes a long time) there's a proposal on the table to merge the following Areas: East Kent, West Kent, Sussex East, Sussex West, Surrey and Sussex and Hampshire and the Islands. It would appease the Charity Commission but, on the other hand, would be a retrenchment and an admission of failure. This morning, to amuse and inform myself I've done a tour of all the individual Meetings by way of their websites. West Kent is the only area that is on life support (I wonder why?) and elsewhere the picture is chequered. Certain Meetings seem to be flourishing- Brighton and Winchester are stand-outs- and others have a tiny attendance but are not necessarily downhearted. Surrey and Sussex has the dullest websites and Hampshire the liveliest ones. I think our own website is pretty good.....

Ailz is a trustee of the Quaker run Bernhardt Baron care home in Polegate.

(Baron was a tobacco king in the days before we worked out that smoking was vile and stupid. A Jew with a weakness for Quakers)

What did you talk about? I asked. And she reeled off an agenda I would rather sleep through than attend to.

"You could be a trustee too." she said.

"Never," I replied.

"You said the same about the Area Meetings," she said. "And you enjoy those."

And it's true. I do, I do.....

P.S. Ailz read this post and pointed out to me that she is actually a trustee of the Sussex East Area Meeting (SEAM) which meets at Bernhart Baron and is going to be a trustee of the Care Home. (How complicated.) I asked her if she wanted me to correct the text and she said she didn't care, but. still, in the interests of accuracy.....

1. Middlemarch. I've read it twice, so I can't be accused of not giving it a fair go. I'll concede its greatness, but Eliot is just too high-minded for me- and if she has a sense of humour I don't remember stumbling across it.

2. Brave New World. I couldn't finish it. Firstly I thought it was very badly written and secondly I just didn't buy what Huxley was trying to sell me. Apart from BNW I quite like Huxley- and I've read his non-fiction with profit and enjoyment. I may be one of the few people to have read Island- which is a sort of a sequel to BNW. It's just as badly written but quite good fun. I think Huxley understood all sorts of things but the human race wasn't one of them

3. 1984: Orwell was consumed by self-loathing-and extended his loathing to the world at large and I just can't stomach him in sizeable doses. Also he was wrong about Kipling.

4. Almost anything by D.H.Lawrence: Like most of my generation I swallowed the hype about Lady Chatterley, read it and found I detested it- and have avoided Lawrence ever since. He was a fascist and that's all I've got to say on the subject. I say "almost anything" because I do rather like his poem "The Ship of Death".....

A couple of days ago I posted an image of the painting "Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stair." I think it's terrific, so naturally I wanted to know more about the artist.

Sir Frederic William Burton is not well-known. Google him and you have to sift his entries from the ones dealing with an obscure American actor of approximately the same name. He was Irish, left handed and worked almost exclusively in watercolour. "Hillelil and Hildebrand" is untypical; it was created under the influence of the pre-Raphaelites and has a simplicity and intensity that are unique in his work. He was in demand as a portrait painter- and he was a good one- but not individual or original enough to stand out from the competition. You know how you can go into a gallery and certain picures sort of leap of the wall at you (not literally)? Well that's unlikely to happen with the average Burton. He doesn't have a style or an aura that is instantly recognisable- as the greatest artists do.

Here's a fine example of his portrait work. It's famous because of its sitter- a personal friend of his- but there are other images of George Elliot and this is almost certainly the most vivid.

GR6EF2WKFZ6PJTWXMDTCODKZRU.jpg.jpg

In later life he was appointed director of the National Gallery in London- and seems gradually to have given up painting. He was an excellent director and purchased some of the collection's great masterpieces, for example, Hans Holbein's wall-filling portrait of "The Ambassadors". In person he was austere and retiring and a life-long bachelor (though there was an engagement to a much younger woman that dragged on and on until it petered out.) Here's a photograph of him in old age which I find both endearing and a little sad. I think I would have liked him.

burton-09.jpg.webp

Ailz guessed the tapas bar would be closed when she saw one of the guys who run it breeze past on a bicycle. And so it was- for "technical reasons" according to the note pasted to the inside of the window glass. Instead we went to an Italian restaurant a few doors up that we hadn't tried. Very good it was too. Eastbourne is full of excellent places to eat- and though we've had simple meals and run-of-the mill meals I don't think we've ever had a bad one.

Water rats (that's the species to which Ratty in The Wind in the Willows belongs) have been re-introduced to East Sussex. I doubt I'll ever see one but it's nice to know they're around....

The Sahara is turning green again. This is due to equatorial weather systems moving north. The anchor woman who fronted this story tried to put a negative spin on it by saying this meant countries like Nigeria and Cameroon were no longer getting the rainfall they need. Unfortunately for her agenda the clip had been watched by people who were better informed and the comments underneath mostly said things like "I'm a Nigerian and our country has never been wetter."

Is the word "media" singular or plural? I try "the media is' and then "the media are"- and both look wrong.

I know what, I just won't write about the media at all.....

I bought a very decent colour print of this painting at the Tip Shop but had nowhere to put it so I offered it to Wendy

Hellelil_and_Hildebrand,_the_meeting_on_the_turret_stairs,_by_Frederic_William_Burton.jpeg

Hellelil_and_Hildebrand,_the_meeting_on_the_turret_stairs,_by_Frederic_William_Burton.jpeg

It's called The Meeting on the Turret Stairs. The artist is Frederic Burton and the original is in the National Gallery of Ireland. It illustrates a Danish legend about star-crossed lovers.

Wendy said "It's too big." And then she said. "On second thoughts I'll take it. I had a dream last year where I was in a castle where there was fighting going on and I was climbing a turret stair just like the one in the picture and I was wearing a blue dress of just that colour."

We have new bedroom curtains. They let in a little light round the edges but otherwise impose complete blackout. I think we'll sleep better.

I had a dream where it was World War II and I was in khaki- and I went to a pub and danced a frenetic hornpipe and explained to the people standing round I should really have joined the Navy because I love the sea....

Putting in the new curtains entailed moving a picture (the portrait of the Duke of Wellington my mother bought in a house sale when I was a wee lad) and this has had a knock-on effect with pictures being shuffled from place to place and room to room- which has yet to be resolved.

A Quaker from Herstmonceux dropped in on our Thursday get-together. She's a jolly Yorkshire woman- and we were all very jolly together.

I think jolliness is closer to godliness than most other things. I appreciate cleanliness but I'd put jolliness higher in my personal scheme of things. This is something I came to fairly late in life.....

This gal (well, she's a lot younger than me) volunteers at a soup kitchen run by an evangelical outfit on Seaside. I'm inclined to be sniffy about evangelicals but they're usually in the front ranks where good works are concerned, so if they insist on banging on about Jesus they've maybe won the right....

She said she'd served nearly 100 breakfasts that morning. I've got to say the number took me aback. I knew we had homeless people but I didn't know we had quite so many.....

In a nice little piece of synchronicity our clerk told us (a) that the Eastbourne food bank is the biggest in the country and (b) that it's running short of food. We decided on the spot (no sitting around waiting for discernment on this one) that we would start collecting foodstuffs at the Meeting House.

Big box by the door. Beginning this weekend....

This is Keith, taken last summer (God, but that day was hot!) at the little vigil for peace we held alongside the War Memorial roundabout

Keith died on Monday.

He did more than anyone to keep the Meeting House going after covid and after the clerk and treasurer resigned in a flurry of drama I have yet to understand.

When I showed up for my first Meeting it was Keith who greeted me. He was very tall, soft-spoken, sweet- and wore his hair bunched up in a stubby ponytail.

He'd been a church Army captain, and came to Quakerism late in life. He was more of an evangelical Christian than any of the rest of us. Every so often he would buttonhole me to talk about "outreach"- and I would nod along and think to myself "Ain't never going to happen."

Because there's no way I'm going to stand on a street corner handing out leaflets.

He was a very private man. None of us- not even those who used to socialise with him regularly- know who the next of kin is.

He had an ex-wife in a care home in Llandudno- far-gone in dementia- whom he used to visit faithfully.

Recently he had been ill himself. Altzheimers. Stomach cancer. I last spoke to him about a week and a half ago.

News of his death came through as three of us were driving over to Battle to speak about Quakerism to a small women's group. First engagement of that kind that any of us has done in ever so long. Not exactly street evangelism but outtreach of a sort....

Nice one, Keith.....

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poliphilo

March 2026

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Quaker Decision Making

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Picture Diary 59

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Picture Diary 58

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