I have just spent most of a day thinking about a friend who recently died. I had the opportunity to join her family and friends at her funeral. I knew – and was content to hear from those who knew my friend longer and deeper – that she was not …
Someone has died, someone I know who was around my age. I didn’t know her for long, but I feel I had a bond with her. Her way of being made it easy to be close with her. I have been thinking about what will change in the world with …
What to do in a situation when one side is being violated? It seems straightforward to chose the victim’s side – but how many of us do that? Do we look for excuses to not chose the victim’s side – he seems so nice, surely that story is not true…. …
I have met evil. I can tell you I would not have even thought to say those words before meeting evil a year ago. And I haven’t been in a formal war zone, I haven’t seen people being shot; I have been here in Northern Europe speaking with quite ordinary …
[Originally posted on the Quaker Council for European Affairs blog: qceablog.wordpress.com] One of the decisions this week at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) has been related to the killings of journalists, police, and Jewish people in a kosher supermarket in Paris. Therecommendation (to the Committee of Ministers) asks resources to be allocated to hate …
[Originally published on the Quaker Council for European Affairs blog, qceablog.wordpress.com] Before I start, I might note that some of the topics here, the structures by which human rights are protected, might seem overly formalistic and even boring. However, in the end of the day, it is those structures that …
[Originally published on the Quaker Council for European Affairs website, qceablog.wordpress.com] As an inhabitant of the Brussels ‘bubble’, I would say that every week brings something interesting. This year has been particularly eventful with the elections for the European Parliament and then the restructuring of the European Commission. This final …
[Originally published on the blog of the Quaker Council for European Affairs, qceablog.wordpress.com] Update 30 August: The European Council meeting has ended with the announcement that Poland’s Donald Tusk has been named the President of the European Council and Italy’s Frederica Mogherini as the new EU High Representative of Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Frederica Mogherini has …
[originally published on qceablog.wordpress.com] They tell us that the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) between the European Union (EU) and Canada has been finalised – but not what the text is. In fact, if you search on the European Commission website for CETA, you find only documents that are nine months …
I have been a Quaker for 22 years. ‘Unprogrammed’ or liberal Quakers, as you may know, don’t have pastors or other leaders. Community leadership role are usually rotated after a few years, and it is the community which makes decisions together to act in the world. A few years ago, …