I thought and prayed very hard about what to say with opportunity of giving the BBC Daily Service ahead of World Quaker Day. It was broadcast this morning. Here it is: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

(Picture from the BBC Studios in London)

I've just been sent this picture of me unblocking a sink in a meeting house on my travels. I think it's my favourite picture from my time in this role yet.

Events in Australia often begin with an acknowledgement of the injustices which have happened on the land where we meet, now recognised as Genocide www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Let's not wait 180 years to recognise what is happening in Gaza as Genocide, and do all we can to stop it while we can.

You've heard of the Quaker Tapestry in Kendal, which was completed in 1996.

Did you know about the Australian Quaker Tapestry which is still being stitched, including at Yearly Meeting this week?

The panels are placed around the edge of the hall. Here are some of them.

I've also found a book of (niche!) Quaker humour

Apparently there was an early Quaker who protested titles by naming his children, 'Sir', 'Master' and 'Prince'!

Swotting up on Australian Quaker history, ahead of Yearly Meeting beginning this afternoon

Hello from Australia! I'm going to be giving the Backhouse Lecture in Melbourne on Monday. It's possible to watch online. See you there?https://www.quakersaustralia.info/resources/backhouse-lectures @quakersaustralia.bsky.social

Excitingly, I have discovered that, although Emily Provance's brilliant Swarthmore Lecture wasn't printed in Britain, it was printed in Aotearoa by New Zealand Quaker Books.

When I get home it might be the only one in the UK!

Online version is here: www.woodbrooke.org.uk/research/swa...

Currently visiting Friends in Aotearoa New Zealand. Thank you Marvin Hubbard for having me on your radio show: oar.org.nz/shows/commun...

Visiting Friends in Auckland, and have had first sighting of the George Fox postage stamp!

Excited to be giving the Backhouse Lecture in Australia next month. Delighted that it already exists in paper form, at the Quaker Bookshop!

Lecture announcement: thefriend.org/article/tim-...

Print copy link: bookshop.quaker.org.uk/the-seed-is-...

When I sing in worship, I find my way to the same still small place that I reach in a mostly silent Quaker Meeting.

Now I sing on the way to meeting, and sometimes on the way home too. It makes the cool spring of expectant waiting worship even more refreshing.

westernfriend.org/magazine/voc...

I've been trying to find words since the raid at Westminster Meeting House, and went there to be with Friends on Sunday.

My mind though keeps coming back to this panel of the Quaker Tapestry: www.quaker-tapestry.co.uk/panels/keepi...

The details are different but the parallels are obvious.

This juxtaposition of signs at a recent Friends World Committee for Consultation meeting (held in a Franciscan conference centre) made me chuckle every time I saw it.

(For friends who aren't Quakers, the joke is that Quakers tend to bypass liturgy, although these were just directional signs)