QUAKER UNIVERSALIST GROUP NEWSLETTER AUGUST 2025
Dear QUG supporter
QUG Annual Conference 17th to 19th April 2026
Sound and Spirit
Our 2026 Quaker Universalist Group conference at Launde Abbey in Leicestershire is set within gardens and parkland. It will offer time to reflect on how music and sound have connected us to the soul of the universe. Our speakers will share recordings of how sound and music are used in places of worship of different religions, and explore the effect of music in our lives, including listening and playing/singing. We will invite participants to reflect on their own responses to pieces of music.
Launde Abbey is able to make most of its rooms available to us for our conference. To help us plan with them, do contact us (by replying to Tony Philpott, Clerk of QUG, on this email) if you are thinking of coming. The cost will be similar to last year (about £300 for the weekend). In addition, if you have any ideas of what we might do at the conference please let us know. We plan to send out application forms later in the year.
Also, we hope to make the conference blended, as last year, and we are at present investigating Launde Abbey’s technical facilities.
Our journal, Universalist – February 2026 edition
In relation to our conference we are keen to have some articles in the February 2026 edition of Universalist on the relationship between music and spirituality.
We would also like articles which describe your own spiritual journey.
If you write any articles or reviews please send them to contact@qug.org.uk. The deadline is the end of November 2025.
Our recent annual conference – April 25th to 27th 2025 – Women’s Spiritual Voices
We are delighted that this conference went so well, with 35 people at High Leigh and 21 online.
The talks have just been published in Pamphlets No. 48 and No. 49 and have recently been sent free to all members of QUG and to all who attended the conference. They are also available for purchase – please see our website https://qug.org.uk/pamphlets-2/
We are pleased that the Friend published a two-page account of the 2025 Conference in its 4th of July issue – see https://thefriend.org/article/womens-spiritual-voices-daniel-clarke-flynn-reports-from-the-quaker-universalist-group-conference.
Our Wednesday evening meetings for worship and sharing
These are our next two meetings:
August 20th Richard Thompson will talk under the title Not Surmisings but Refreshings.
September 17th Jennifer Schoek will talk about her spiritual journey and about QUF (Quaker Universalist Fellowship) in Canada and the USA.
Two recent talks – by David Brown and Paddy Watkins – are now online at https://qug.org.uk/talk-transcripts/
The meetings start at 7.00 p.m. The Zoom will open at 6.45 p.m. We send out reminders two or three days beforehand to everyone who has registered. If you do not have the joining instructions and would like them please send an email to contact@qug.org.uk
Contacting us, questions and unsubscribing
If you have any questions or wish to unsubscribe from this newsletter please reply directly or send an email to contact@qug.org.uk