In Search of Hope: A Personal Quaker Journey by Joanna Godfrey Wood – reviewed by Steve Jenkins – Friends Journal – April 1, 2025
Joanna Godfrey Wood’s In Search of Hope opens with a short biography of Margaret Fell, the first-generation Friend who became convinced after hearing George Fox preach (and later married him). During her life, she contributed greatly to Quaker growth through her ministry and activism, as well as her numerous theological writings. “‘Witness a living Hope’ is a stand-out phrase in Fell’s writings,” Wood says, and she proceeds to examine the three key words of this phrase one at a time, giving each a short chapter. What did Fell mean by “witness,” “living,” and “hope”? And does thinking about hope through these words help us better recognize something that can manifest itself in many and sometimes unrecognizable ways? Through queries, stories, and activities, Wood creatively explores the potential of hope and suggests ways we might experience its “continuing forward propulsion” in our lives today. Continue Reading
Free Exercise a film by Leo Eaton & John Paulson – reviewed by Hope Ascher – Friends Journal – March 1, 2025
In telling the story of religious liberty in America, the new documentary Free Exercise not only educates viewers about this important history, but inspires us to avoid complacency and remain ever vigilant to preserve the rights and freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment. The film tells this evolving story chronologically through the struggles of six different religious groups, including the Quakers of 17th-century New Amsterdam. The filmmakers do not hold back in recounting the torture and death that some Friends faced due to Governor Peter Stuyvesant’s intolerance. It is with this early Quaker group that religious freedom was granted under pragmatic pressure. But, as subsequent sections of the film elaborate, that freedom has always required a strong defense by a citizenry that cares. As legal scholar Akhil Amar says near the film’s conclusion, “Religious liberty will not survive and thrive unless it lives in the hearts and minds of the American people.” Continue Reading
These Times Are Spiritual Doorways – Daniel Hunter – Friends Journal – February 25, 2025
How Trump’s Win Convinced Me I’m Quaker: There is something afoot in these times of great political turbulence that is inviting us to connect with greater Spirit. I’ve been knee-deep in resistance to the Trump administration well before he took office on January 20. In 2020 I cofounded Choose Democracy to train thousands of people in how to stop a coup after Trump said he might reject unfavorable election results—which he did. Following Trump’s 2024 win and now his and Musk’s coup, I’ve been encouraging diverse responses: from tax resistance to developing community groups to observing ICE to defending civic institutions to long-term visioning. It’s going to take a big, wide net of strategies and tactics to resist their authoritarian takeover, but even more than that, I’m sensing many of us are going through an inner transformation as well. In the days right after Trump’s election last November, my article “10 Ways to Be Prepared and Grounded Now that Trump Has Won” for Waging Nonviolence went viral. It quickly reached over a million views, and I got inundated with interview and coaching requests. Continue Reading
I Found the Quaker Sasquatch – by Cassie J. Hardee – Friends Journal – March 1, 2025
My Quaker faith and autistic self mesh more than I ever could have fathomed. I find that the very testimonies of Quakerism welcome the very nature of my neurodivergence…. Like many autistic individuals, I like rules that are black and white, and I dislike the “fluff” that surrounds and fills life and many of the religious spaces I had experienced. I also like understanding things to the point of obsession. Hypocrisy was something I saw so frequently in the churches I grew up in and experienced in my college years. You say you welcome everyone, yet I find as a queer person that your welcome and love is conditional. You show that you want to be a part of the world in the way that you hold your Sunday services, yet you do not practice what you preach in the community. I felt myself to be so much an “other” in the world of religion. Continue Reading
“What if activism looks like what I can do?” – Omkari Williams – by Cat Chapin-Bishop, Mt. Toby Friends Meeting
Activism takes a lot of forms. Large protest marches are one, but far from all there is. Think about the variety of roles it takes to organize an economic boycott, or a union! Think about religious groups organizing sanctuary for undocumented folks in danger of deportation, or the lawyers who brought their laptops to the airport when the first Trump Administration announced a ban on Muslim entry to the US, or the volunteers who created and staffed the rape crisis center I joined in the early 80s, answering hotlines, teaching community groups, and sometimes, yes, risking arrest in order to keep cops from harassing survivors of sexual assault in hospital emergency rooms. Continue Reading
Emblems of Change – by Sharlee DiMenichi – Friends’ Global Responses to Climate Crisis
Global warming has made the earth’s atmosphere more humid, intensified precipitation, and caused glaciers to melt rapidly, according to a 2021 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate change has disrupted the water cycle around the globe, which has led to more droughts, arid land, wildfires, and floods, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. More frequent and severe natural disasters that result from climate change take human lives, cause homelessness, and threaten people’s health, both physical and mental. Quakers around the world are drawing on their spiritual resources to respond to climate-related calamities.
The Delight of Being Alive – by Gail Melix (Greenwater) – Friends Journal – February 1, 2025
In April of 2020, during the pandemic, suddenly and with no warning, the U.S. Department of the Interior disestablished the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s reservation, taking their 320 acres of land out of trust, affecting the tribe’s sovereignty, and creating a great suffering for the Mashpee Wampanoag people…. For the next two years, I focused my attention on Indigenous rights, decolonization, right relationship, and environmental concerns, working with other Indigenous and Quakers. (A U.S. district court later reversed the ruling and the federal government dropped the legal battle against the Mashpee lands in December 2021.) In 2022, burnt out from the slow pace of social justice, I realized that I was beyond my measure: doing far too much and some of it not in the right spirit. From worship, I discerned (individually and with others) that I needed to take a break from half of what I was doing. I prayed for Creator’s guidance to give me what was mine to do. I sought advice and counsel from Indigenous elders. I added a woodland walk to my daily schedule. I went into the woods to heal, and this has made all the difference. What follows is my story about healing in and with the natural world. Continue Reading
Rhapsody in Purple– by Kat Griffith – Friends Journal – February 1, 2025
Maybe it is a weird quirk that I actually like going door-to-door to talk to complete strangers about politics. Maybe it is even weirder that I enjoyed it during this most recent election: as a “blue” Democrat in a “purple” town where Trump won for the third time. Sure, I’ve experienced my share of yuck over the years, usually in the form of doors slammed in my face or getting cussed out. But those moments are much smaller to me than the folks who invite me in or shiver on the stoop with me for 20 minutes in their stocking feet while we talk politics. The occasional unpleasant moments weigh so much less than the moments of unexpected connection and even intimacy with people I might never have met any other way. Continue Reading
Faith and Still Practicing – by Carl Magruder – Friends Journal – January 1, 2025
In many different Eastern meditations I have participated in, the metaphor is used of an individual collecting water, nectar, light, life, or peace in a bowl, perhaps symbolized by joined palms. The practitioner is encouraged to try to retain the gathered spiritual juice and carry it forward as long as one can. Admittedly, one could leave such a meditation, then feel their phone buzz, and read the incoming message from their boss—“Sorry to bug you during time off, but your proposal made it to the final committee, and they want to see a few revisions by 10 a.m. tomorrow. I’ll email you their comments and requests so you can get it in good shape in time.” Little porcelain bowl of gathered joy juice goes flying in the air, and the bowl itself, though not shattered, rolls under the furniture. Sploosh. It happens. However, at every Quaker meeting I’ve been to, a more intentional approach is used for emptying the tranquility tray, the bliss bowl, the harmony holder. Continue Reading
Figuring Out Who We Are As Citizens Is An Onoing Task – By Philip Gulley – December 9, 2024
“I’m reminding us of this because there is rising hatred in our nation, and each of us will need to decide who we are and how we will conduct ourselves. Because if we don’t tell the world who we are, the world will tell us who it wants us to be. After a while, we might even start believing we had no choice in the matter. But we always have a choice. We are not blank slates upon whom anything can be written. We are not cogs in a vast machine. We are Quakers with a moral code, informed by 375 years of decency and justice. We know who we are. We know what we believe, and we are determined to live within the boundaries of our moral code. We decide who we will be, and no one else. Not our bosses or co-workers. Not our neighbors. Not our childhood friends. Not our family members. Not a social media influencer, podcaster, radio personality, nor some amoral billionaire who grew fat and sassy at the public trough. We decide who we will be, and no one else.”
Guide Our Feet into the Way of Peace – by Ron Hogan – December 2, 2024
The last few years have sorely tested many Quakers’ pacifism. Many Friends have told me about debates within their meetings concerning the ongoing violence in Gaza. Some feel that the Israeli government has the right—perhaps even the duty—to do whatever it deems necessary to protect its people after the October 7 attacks by Hamas. Others say the military response has long since passed the limits of justifiable self-defense. In my own quarter, the last meeting for business spent several minutes arguing about whether a minute could use the word “genocide” to describe the systematic campaign of violence against the Palestinian people. But the test didn’t start there. Ever since Russian forces crossed the border into Ukraine in 2022, Friends have struggled to discern an appropriate response. Do the Ukrainian people have a right to defend their sovereignty against a foreign invader? Or should they turn the other cheek, come humbly to the negotiating table, and let Russia take as much of their land as the global community will allow? Continue Reading
Hope’s Many Answers– by Sharlee DeMenichi – December 1, 2024
Friends meetings committed to revitalization can take advantage of several programs offered by Friends United Meeting (FUM), Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) Section of the Americas, and School of the Spirit Ministries. FUM offers a congregational coaching initiative called Flourishing Friends. In 2025, FWCC Section of the Americas will convene the first two-year long cohort of a new spiritual companionship program called Quaker Connect. School of the Spirit Ministries offers Faithful Meetings, a faith development program that Friends can sign up for on a rolling basis. Friends Journal staff writer Sharlee DeMenichi spoke with Friends from each organization to learn more about how these programs will work to bring Quakers closer to each other and their neighboring communities—even if they’re not always able to make it to meetings. Continue Reading
Toward Spiritual Optimism – by Mike Higgins – December 1, 2024
If we hope to move beyond the pessimism triggered by the realities of the modern world, we need a faith that gives rise to a theological hope. For me, such hope is nurtured in the coincidence of mediated experience (contemplation of Scripture and the example of ancestors who have lived hope-filled lives) and my immediate experience in the stillness of prayer. Continue Reading
Just Us by Molly Beth Griffin illustrated by Anait Semirdzhyan – reviewed by Eileen Redden – December 1, 2024
This lovely picture book shares one family’s winter holiday traditions. Their grandma flies in and makes three kinds of pie. They have a big dinner with aunts, uncles, and cousins. Every branch of the family brings something: perhaps the turkey or the green bean casserole. But one year, there is an enormous snowstorm, and grandma’s flight is canceled. The aunts, uncles, and cousins also decide the roads are too treacherous. So the celebration involves only the four members of the nuclear family. All in all, though, it turns out to be a pretty special day—and there’s even a recipe for Grandma’s apple crisp! Just Us is a wonderful book to read aloud to discuss family, holiday traditions, and how to adapt to changing circumstances. Continue Reading
Loving and Letting Go – by Mary Ann Downey – December 1, 2024
On a Saturday afternoon in 2023, I sat in our meetingroom with a small group of 18 Friends gathered to help support Lynn, Georgia, and their son, David, for Lynn’s decision to end treatments for multiple health conditions. Lynn loved to joke about everything, and the message on the T-shirt he wore read, “I’m not dead yet.” It conveyed well his struggle to hold on to life, and we knew it was hard for him to say to us, “I’m tired, and I want you to let me go.” Georgia told us that she wanted to honor his wish and needed our help. After 40 years of a loving marriage and family, they knew they faced an everyday challenge in his remaining time. This meeting for Lynn was a time to prepare this group for the work ahead, using lessons we discovered while assisting Sandy and her husband, John, in the last year of her life. We agreed to work in nine teams of two, each team being on call for a week at a time. While we were all members of Atlanta Meeting, we did not all know each other well and so began with introductions, describing how we knew Lynn and Georgia and the skills we could offer. During the three months we worked together before Lynn’s passing, I was amazed by the generosity of each Friend but also by what we gained in the process of working together. Sharing the care, asking for help from others on the team and in the meeting, strengthened our community and each of us. Continue Reading
The Lord Is My Chosen Portion and My Cup – by Ron Hogan – November 11, 2024
In the days since the U.S. presidential election, Friends have been comforting each other by sharing a quote from the 17th-century Quaker Edward Burrough: “…we are not for Names, nor Men, nor Titles of Government, nor are we for this Party, nor against the other, because of its Name and Pretence; but we are for Justice and Mercy, and Truth and Peace, and true Freedom, that these may be exalted in our Nation; and that Goodness, Righteousness, Meekness, Temperance, Peace and Unity with God, and one with another, that these things may abound.”Burrough continues from there, and I actually like the line that immediately follows: “such a Government are we seeking and waiting for, wherein Truth and Righteousness, Mercy and Justice, Unity and Love, and all the Fruits of Holiness may abound; and the contrary be removed, cast out, and limitted (sic).” Continue Reading
Do Not PutYour Trust in Princes – by Ron Hogan – November 4, 2024
I voted this year not because I put my trust in any of the “princes” who put themselves forward, but as a necessary first step. I looked for the people I thought most likely to do the work of executing justice for the oppressed and giving food to the hungry. If they win the election, I’ll need to do my part to hold them accountable to those tasks—and to create alternative infrastructures should they fall short. If they don’t win, I’ll likely have to work even harder. Because whether we call it the Kingdom of God or the blessed community or any other name, it doesn’t just get handed to us. We need to show up. Continue Reading
Bread of Life – by Vicki Winslow – November 1, 2024
A light-handed baker, an alchemist of rich gravy, and the queen of cobblers, Doreen Bishop, a petite widow of 78, held the undisputed position of finest cook at Prescott Friends Meeting. Naturally the newly formed Cookbook Committee at Prescott planned to feature her prominently in Bread of Life, a collection of recipes submitted by members to raise funds for the food pantry. The project had kicked-off in early April. Over a month in, no one could have foreseen Doreen’s refusal to participate. Mamie Cosgrove, chair of the Cookbook Committee, was beside herself. She lamented to Cody Blake, youth minister and staff liaison for the cookbook project, after their biweekly planning meeting. “Doreen shares her recipes with everybody, but for some reason, she wants nothing to do with the cookbook. It won’t sell nearly so well without her. What can we do, Cody?” Continue Reading
A Friend in Deed: The Life of Henry Stanley Newman by Maggie Waldman – reviewed by Martin Kelley – November 1, 2024
If your first reaction to the news of a biography of Henry Stanley Newman is wondering who Henry Stanley Newman is, you’re not alone. Maggie Waldman, the author of A Friend in Deed, admits how little known Newman is even in his native Leominster, a market town on the western side of England, despite a lifetime spent bettering the lives of its people. Newman was born in 1837 into a Religious Society of Friends that was decidedly insular and set in its ways. Generations of sons were expected to apprentice young, join their fathers in the family business, marry into a respectable Quaker family, and keep the cycle turning. But as an early teen, before the apprenticeship, Newman took advantage of an increased Quaker appreciation for education and studied at two Quaker boarding schools, where he developed a thirst for international adventure, current events, and a new evangelical spirit sweeping the land. He considered a career in teaching, but ever the dutiful son, he put aside these dreams and joined his father as a respectable Leominster grocer and staid Quaker. Only he didn’t, quite. And the path he chose, especially as the editor of The Friend, kept traditionalist and evangelical Quakers in Britain from splintering (as they did in the United States) and laid the foundation for a new spiritual synthesis, one rooted in science, biblical criticism, and a return to early Quaker concepts such as the Inward Light. Continue Reading
Deep Hospitalityby Rhiannon Grant – reviewed by Diane Randall – November 1, 2024
Does your Quaker meeting long to have new people attend and become active in the meeting? Most of us who care about the life and health of the Religious Society of Friends want to welcome and encourage others to experience the community and spiritual life that we have experienced. So how can we truly welcome people to our Quaker communities? Rhiannon Grant, a British Friend, addresses this central question in her Pendle Hill pamphlet Deep Hospitality: Reflections on Welcome to the Quaker Community. She asks how unprogrammed meetings that are “mostly white and middle class” have “failed to welcome many outside of that narrow group.” It is not necessarily our intention to be less than welcoming, but in probing how we might offer deep hospitality, Grant asks readers to consider how our own identities—culture, age, gender, race, profession—influence how we acknowledge, interact with, and include new visitors. Continue Reading
Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas – reviewed by Trevor Brandt – November 1, 2024
Nell and Fay first speak before the 20-minute meeting for worship that begins each day at Idlewild, a Quaker school in Manhattan. Nell, a bashful junior, has had a “golden retriever” crush on Fay for years, and she is flustered when Fay casually comments to her about how beautiful the morning’s weather is. The date is September 11, 2001. Seventeen years later, Nell and Fay, now in their early 30s, reminisce on the profound year-and-a-half friendship that blossomed after their initial meeting. While the traumas of 9/11 and the Trump presidency bookend Idlewild, these events only tangentially inform the novel’s plot. Rather, readers are warned of a far deeper, more personal tragedy: that of the catastrophic end to the friendship between Nell and Fay, a friendship in which both are wholly seen as they begin to explore their queer identities. Continue Reading
Choose Not to Vote at Your Own Peril – by Norval D. Reece – October 29, 2024
Quakers, like most religions, believe one’s religious and civic lives should be seamless, that we have a moral duty to ensure that people of all religions—or none—can practice as they wish; have economic opportunities; and enjoy the freedom to work on issues like poverty, education, healthcare, and equal rights for all. To paraphrase Plato: “If you choose not to be involved in civic affairs, you do so at your own peril by letting those with different priorities decide what rights and freedoms you and others will have.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt said it bluntly as well: “Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.” Continue Reading
The Courage of a Caterpillar – by John Andrew Gallery – October 1, 2024
Messages in meeting for worship almost always originate with a source outside myself. An event, person, or something someone else says touches a place deep inside me and brings forth a thought, an insight, a message to be shared. It seems that the external influence sends off vibrations that produce a complimentary vibration within me that occurs without conscious effort on my part, much like two tuning forks vibrating in harmony with one another. That was the case recently while attending a meeting for worship via Zoom. One participant’s profile picture was an image of a butterfly, which flashed briefly on the screen before she turned on her video to reveal herself. The butterfly was drawn in black on a white background and had blue and orange colors—whether it was a real butterfly or an artist’s interpretation I am not sure. It was a striking image in contrast to the squares of solemn faces on my screen and caught my attention immediately. And just as immediately a message came forth, fully formed in my mind in a brief instant, but one that would take me several more minutes to figure out how to say and even longer to actually say it. Continue Reading
The Story Is in Our Bones by Osprey Orielle Lake – reviewed by Lauren Brownlee – October 1, 2024
Osprey Orielle Lake, founder and executive director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, shares lessons that have emerged from her listening to and learning about Indigenous communities around the world. Much of The Story Is in Our Bones is an exploration of what communities worldwide did to care for the earth and each other before colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy defined the times—and the book paints a dire picture of where today’s dominant worldviews have gotten us. As a Quaker, I appreciated queries that appear throughout the book, such as “[w]hat is the composition of our cultural soil?” and “how can the dominant society relearn our role as a keystone species and protect and enrich water, land, forest, animals, and the entirety of the web of life?” Lake notes that the “changes so necessary for our survival will not happen without impassioned advocacy from change-makers.” I believe Quakers are up for the task. Continue Reading
Wait and Watchby John Andrew Gallery – reviewed by Hope Ascher – October 1, 2024
John Andrew Gallery’s engaging Wait and Watch explains how what we do in meeting for worship and meeting for worship with attention to business can inform and enhance our living as Friends in the world beyond our meetinghouses. The words wait and watch undergird the specific advice Gallery offers: be present; be patient; remember God; be open to the unexpected; be nonjudgmental; know when to speak; and have courage. Gallery is generous in sharing personal anecdotes to explain how learning and honing these skills in worship and business meetings has enabled him to live a more spiritually led life in the conflict-laden secular world. Wait and Watch holds value and insight for both new and seasoned Friends, and would be a wonderful shared reading for a book discussion group. Continue Reading
Resisting the Fake News About Jesus – by Christopher E. Stern – October 1, 2024
Jesus’s role and ministry was centered on teaching us that we are all one family of God and that God is calling us to care for and love one another. When he was asked in Matthew 22, “What is the greatest commandment?” he replied, “To love God with all your heart, soul, and mind . . . and love your neighbor as yourself.” When asked, “Who is my neighbor?” he insisted that this love is required to go beyond religious, national, cultural, racial, and economic divisions. Jesus challenges these divisions, and he makes it absolutely clear that they have no place in his uncompromising vision of God’s Love for the whole family. Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection was—and continues to be—a living demonstration of that love. To present it in any other terms is “fake news.” Jesus is constantly misrepresented and misquoted with sound bites taken totally out of context.… Do we really believe that Jesus was a self-righteous promoter of religious and racial discrimination and violence? That he wants to see the Apocalyptic end of the world so he can “return in glory” and send all the “non-believers” to hell? These are dangerous and distorted manmade messages full of hate, oppression, revenge, fear, and bigotry. There is no semblance of true news or good news in them! Yet this is what many professing Christians have come to believe. Continue Reading
The Book of Nature by Barbara Mahany – reviewed by Mark Jolly-Van Bodegraven – October 1, 2024
he Book of Nature spoke directly and deeply to my spiritual journey, resonating with truths that would feel familiar to any Friend, even as it was written by a woman with a syncretic Irish Catholic and Jewish identity who draws thoughtfully from both traditions. Our spiritual growth, she counsels, is best served by the combination of paying close attention to the natural world and reading Scripture and other enlightened books. Mahany’s book and the actual Book of Nature it honors both serve as calls to prayer. Attention to the natural world, she tells us, provides evidence for God’s immanence in our world. Even more consequentially, that attention is how we find and restore “shards of holiness” infused throughout creation. Continue Reading
What Kind of Quaker Am I? – by Micah MacColl Nicholson – October 1, 2024
I am a Quaker who wishes there was a better way to describe my history with this religion. When I was growing up, my parents always seemed steadfast in their practice of Quakerism and the value that faith brought to their lives. But calling myself a birthright Quaker never sat well with me. What does it mean to be born into a faith tradition rather than discovering it later in life? Even my parents’ introductions were through two very different paths: my father’s from a long family history, and my mother’s through a deepening spiritual journey that spanned decades after stepping away from her own family’s dedication to the Presbyterian clergy. To this day, their stories and lives shape my own, but I still struggle to understand the right I have to this religion, having come into it simply by being born of Quaker parents. Does that lineage make me a good Quaker, a bad Quaker, a Quaker at all? Continue Reading
Be Doers of the Word – by Ron Hogan – September 2, 2024
“…be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.” A few weeks ago, I wrote about Quaker testimony as a living out of the wisdom and insight given to Friends through Spirit’s revelations, and mentioned how the distinction between such testimony and more abstract principles has become blurred in recent decades. The acronym SPICES has become common among modern Friends, a list of “testimonies” including simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship. (Social justice and environmental concerns have brought “equity” and “sustainability” into the mix, as well.) Continue Reading
We Live Worship – by Sharlee DiMenichi – September 1, 2024
When Quakers think of community ties, Friends from one’s meeting often come to mind first. Friends meetings, churches, and worship groups offer opportunities to form deep interpersonal ties. Friends living in intentional communities find additional chances to forge relationships that stretch them spiritually and enable them to use Quakerly methods of conflict resolution.In intentional communities, Quakers and non-Friends live together using Quaker practices for decision making and conflict resolution, as well as sharing financial responsibilities and laboring together on property maintenance and other chores. Friends Journal talked with current and former residents of intentional communities with Quaker connections in the United States, Britain, and Aotearoa/New Zealand about how they related to others with whom they lived, the history of their communities, and the spiritual benefits of communal living. Continue Reading
The Messy Businessof Relationships – by Pamela Haines – September 1, 2024
The moment is etched in my brain. We were pulling out of the driveway, leaving all the familiarity of my childhood home, and heading out for the big, scary unknown of college. I was terrified. And I didn’t look back. It felt like I was emerging from a cocoon. I had no idea what kind of person I might become, but I was ready to find out. It wasn’t that I hadn’t belonged there. My parents had intentionally set up circles of belonging: a big, close family that was nestled in an intentional community and a new Quaker meeting.… Within those borders, largely progressive and professional, there was richness and blessing. But others were clearly outside our circle: the plumber, the twins in my first-grade class who were “mountain people” and explicitly named as other, the working-class, trailer-park kids who were the first on our bus and always sat in the back, and the people who lived in the poor Black section of town. And I felt that somehow I was part of the barrier. By devoting my energies to these communities, I was doing my part to keep them strong—right up to their boundaries and not beyond. Continue Reading
Forgiveness: Freed to Love by Christine Betz Hall – reviewed by Jon Shafer – September 1, 2024
Forgiving more leads to loving more. We all have emotional injuries, which we carefully feed and nurse. The longer we harbor them, the longer they will burden us and prevent our souls from growing. Christine Betz Hall’s Forgiveness: Freed to Love is a short, remedy-packed guide full of ways to let them go. In this Pendle Hill pamphlet, Betz Hall makes clear that forgiveness is our job to do, and it doesn’t involve “forgetting” or ignoring. In my decades as a chaplain in treatment centers, hospices, and prisons, I have found that not forgiving is often foremost among the blocks on the way to wholeness and love. This is not new insight. Jesus pointed out that it is a lifelong process. Isaac Penington wrote about it in 1667: “Our life is love, and peace, and tenderness; and bearing one with another, and forgiving one another.” If we wait for the other person to apologize or initiate healing, we often end up bearing that burden our whole lives. In that case, we are the ones who suffer. Continue Reading
Growing into Our Perfect Selves – by Mary Linda McKinney – September 1, 2024
Throughout our history, there have been Friends who try to enforce cultural norms or maintain systems of power under the guise of eldering. These Quakers often act as if eldering is an authoritarian role rather than a nurturing one. This misuse has caused many Friends to mistakenly believe eldering is about chiding, dictating how things “should” be, upholding tradition, or censoring. It should be none of those things. Eldering should always be aiming to build someone up, even when it is done in response to harmful behavior. Eldering is about potential and growth and helping to create conditions that bring out the best in each of us; this kind of relationship is one full of humility and love. In my experience, eldering involves looking beyond our own limited perspective so we can see others with Spirit’s vision. True eldering is about loving, seeing, naming, and inviting Continue Reading
Relationships in the Quaker Community – by Donald W. McCormick – September 1, 2024
If the sense of connection between Quakers leads to a greater willingness to help each other and a sense of safety, what leads to the sense of connection? I think it’s the sense of community. Some people define community as a group of people who care about each other. A more technical definition of community is a group of people who share particular characteristics or live in the same place. It seems that the depth I see in so many relationships among Quakers happens because we are a community. But we aren’t just any community. As Amy Cooke once pointed out to me, historically Quakers “do not show up and are ministered to, but actively take that role in our communities.” Also our community isn’t based on being neighbors or a shared interest like a mutual love of Taylor Swift’s music. It’s based on our deepest values and mutual connection to the Spirit. Continue Reading
Do Quakers Pray? by Jennifer Kavanagh – reviewed by Patricia McBee – September 1, 2024
ecause we Friends don’t speak much about prayer and because we are aware of a diversity of practice among Friends, we may find ourselves feeling that our personal approach to prayer is not honored, is substandard, or is out of the Quaker mainstream. Maybe it’s too traditionally Christian, we tell ourselves; too abstract and mystical; or too down-to-earth and unspiritual. Jennifer Kavanagh affirms them all as valid approaches to prayer. As you read Do Quakers Pray?, there will likely be stories that don’t fit your experience or belief, but then you’ll hit parts where you say, “Yes, yes, that’s me!,” and feel seen and encouraged to open your heart and deepen your practice. Continue Reading
A Love Letter to My Meeting – by Nancy L. Bieber – September 1, 2024
Dear Friends, It’s been over 40 years since we first met, and I think it’s time to tell you how much you have meant to me. I had heard of you before that Sunday morning when I first showed up for worship, but I only had a vague sense of “Quaker.” I knew about the silence, of course, and the reputation that preceded you of being “good people though a little strange.” I decided to give you a try, mostly because I didn’t know where else to go. The church of my childhood didn’t fit any more; in fact, no church was a good fit then. At least, I thought, Quakers wouldn’t preach at me in words that no longer had much meaning. So I came. I fell in love first with the quiet. It was peaceful in the old-style meetinghouse with the centuries-old benches all facing inward. As a mother of two lively preschoolers, the spacious silence was extraordinary! It drew me to return the next Sunday. And the next. I’ve never left. Continue Reading
The Living Fountain by Benjamin Wood – reviewed by Derek Brown – September 1, 2024
In The Living Fountain: Remembrances of Quaker Christianity, Benjamin Wood argues that Liberal Quakerism has embraced radical plurality but has lost its sense of shared spiritual tradition. Wood points toward a drift from community, belonging, and accountability to an individual, autonomous spirituality. He believes the loss of shared Christian stories and symbols (which have acted as a roadmap of meaning for faith communities) is to blame for the lack of a “collective spiritual story.” To regain this shared spiritual tradition, he calls for Liberal Friends to—among other things—corporately read and wrestle with biblical texts, learn from the example of Christ, and embrace the Christian vocabulary and imagery used by the first Quakers. Wood traces how the rise of Universalism, nontheism, and religious humanism within Liberal Quaker circles made the primacy of traditional Christian language and symbols untenable, considering the diversity present within the meeting. However, he proposes, by bringing the collective reading and study of Scripture into the mix, Friends can regain a shared “God-language” and grow in Spirit and community. Continue Reading
The Eye Is the Lamp of the Body – by Ron Hogan – August 26, 2024
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.” “The main design of gospel ministry,” the 18th-century Welsh Quaker John Griffith wrote in his Journal, “is to turn the children of men to the grace of God in themselves, which will teach them to work out their own salvation, and diligently to seek the Lord for themselves.” The Religious Society of Friends has placed great value on that personal engagement from the very beginning. Few things bothered George Fox and his first comrades more than what they called “professors,” people who merely professed faith, saying all the right things but doing little if anything to work out their own salvation. You had to commit yourself to the cause, so to speak—cultivating a heart and eyes that would turn away from treasures on earth in favor of a more divine reward. Continue Reading
A Call to Homeland Return – by Hans Brinker and Nancy Wood – August 23, 2024
In the fall of 2023, when we heard that the Woolman at Sierra Friends Center Board had announced its intent to enter into a purchase agreement with the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe to return their homeland, our hearts were opened and a leading took shape. We recognize that we are all living on Indigenous land. Given this and our nation’s unjust treatment of Indigenous peoples for centuries, we felt strongly in support of the transfer of this land, the site of an ancestral Nisenan village called Yulića, from a Quaker center to the descendants of those villagers as a form of reparations and step toward healing. We wanted Quakers across the country to know about this historic moment and invite them to help make it possible. The tribe set a fundraising goal of $2.4 million and opened a crowdfunding campaign at the end of January 2024. For us, and many others, it was a priority to ensure that the tribe would not have to bear any of these costs. Continue Reading
This Teaching Is Difficult; Who Can Accept It? – by Ron Hogan – August 19, 2024
“When many of his disciples heard [Jesus speak], they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’ But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, ‘Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.’” When we ask other Quakers to hold us or someone we care about “in the Light,” we tend to imagine a warm, soft incandescence surrounding us, sometimes with healing properties but always providing a sense of comfort, especially through hardship. Early Friends believed in an Light that heals, too, but perhaps not as gently as our modern version. George Fox, for example, spoke of “that inward light, spirit, and grace, by which all might know their salvation, and their way to God,” and associated it directly with Christ. Continue Reading
I Sought the Lord, and He Answered Me – by Ron Hogan – August 12, 2024
Thanks to my Roman Catholic upbringing, I heard a great deal more about the Virgin Mary than Protestant children do—or so I’ve been told, anyway. And then I wound up attending the University of Notre Dame, where I heard even more, and not just because of the school’s association with “Our Lady.” I’d arrived, you see, in the middle of an intense debate about whether the Blessed Virgin had been appearing to a group of teenagers in a small village in Bosnia and Herzegovina (still, then, part of communist Yugoslavia) for the last half-decade. Back then, I considered the stories coming out of Medjugorje unlikely. I had a head full of science and rationalism, and little use for miracles or apparitions. Then again, I’d spent the summer before heading off to college watching Joseph Campbell on PBS, so some part of me also delighted in the mythopoetic symbolism of retreating to a campus dedicated to the virgin mother to reinvent myself into adulthood. But I didn’t consider that symbolism “real,” you understand—just a nifty cultural coincidence. Continue Reading
White Supremacy Culture in My Clerking – by Michael Levi – August 1, 2024
I recently served as clerk of the board of trustees at a Friends school. It was a turbulent time for the school, and board meetings were often contentious. One of the dynamics that played out in our meetings was differences in perspective and approach between the Quaker members (all of whom were White) and the non-Quaker members (many of whom were Black). During a debriefing session toward the end of my term as clerk, one of the Black board members told me that when I called for a period of silent worship after she spoke during a meeting, she felt that her voice had been silenced and her concern dismissed. My immediate reaction was “That was not my intent; that was the opposite of my intent!” This was soon followed by the thought, what we need here is better education on Friends business process. As time has passed, though, I realize that I need to unpack more than just a misunderstanding. At the most fundamental level, a woman of Color told me directly that I had caused her harm. I am a White man. I believe that my obligation, in response, is to listen, to appreciate the gift of truth I have been given, to do my best to hear, and to do my best to process what I’ve understood. Continue Reading
What Does Love Require of Us Now? – by Shulamith Clearbridge – August 1, 2024
Friends, the Divine Friend needs you. I hope you won’t let yourselves get caught in despair about what’s going on in the world—that can lead to you becoming a casualty, too. You’ll become unable to help other people, and you’ll be unable to be God’s hands, eyes, compassion, or love. Losing you won’t help the world. Early Friends didn’t write about local or world events in their journals and articles. They remained focused on the Light, anchored not in events, but in what love required of them in the moment. Yes, most of us feel angry or despairing at times, but if that’s where we let our attention remain, we will wither and die. Continue Reading
A Simple Faith in a Complicated World by Kate McNally – reviewed by Diana Sacerio – August 1, 2024
In the early chapters of A Simple Faith in a Complicated World, Kate McNally describes her discomfort with many of the tenets of the dogmatic faith in which she was raised. She questioned, for example, the doctrine of original sin, and felt that the Apostles’ Creed skips over the details of Jesus’s life on earth. She longed to know more about Jesus as a historical figure, and she “wanted to find the faith of Jesus rather than the faith about Jesus.” After exploring various faiths during her university years and striving for professional success, she eventually found her way to Quakerism. In a brief discussion of the origins of Quakerism, she addresses the necessary shift in thinking that results when we move away from traditional images of God and Jesus (God as an omnipotent ruler, Jesus as a blue-eyed European) to having a more direct and personal relationship with the Divine. The insights that follow are expressed in clear, lucid language and are profound and thought-provoking. How do we love one another? How do we find our way to an intimate connection with God (or for those who eschew the word “God,” with the Divine or some other life force)? Continue Reading
Let Your Schools Speak – by Sam Thacker – August 1, 2024
In my role as a history teacher at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia, I got the chance a few months back to collaborate with a dear colleague and a talented group of high school students on a course called “Another World is Possible.” We studied hopeful, ambitious visions for change and strategies for achieving them—George and Berit Lakey, adrienne maree brown’s “emergent strategy,” Joanna Macy, Rebecca Solnit, degrowth, library socialism, and more. One central concept in the course was that of “prefigurative practice.” Drawn from anarchist thought, prefigurative practice is a way of doing things based on two notions. The first is that we don’t have to wait to build institutions that will help realize the change we wish to see in the world. The other is that the institutions and practices we develop along the way ought to embody our ultimate vision. Put another way, prefigurative practice aligns its means for achieving change with the ends sought. If, for example, we are working toward a just, inclusive future, our institutions now should be just and inclusive. Prefigurative practice is proactive, courageous, and true to itself. In Quaker parlance, its life speaks. This concept has inspired and influenced me since I first encountered it, but I had never thought of Friends education as a form of prefigurative practice until very recently. Continue Reading
You Are Our Brothers – by Jean R. Soderlund – August 1, 2024
When Quakers began arriving in 1675 to establish Salem and West New Jersey on the east bank of the Delaware River and Pennsylvania on the west bank, they entered a region dominated by the Lenape people in alliance with Swedish and Finnish colonists. These earlier European colonists had learned to share the land, not try to force the Lenape people out of Lenapehoking. George Fox and other missionaries who had traveled in Lenapehoking several years earlier told prospective settlers that the Lenape people were strong and committed to their own religion, yet courteous and generous to those who came in peace. The West Jersey proprietors and William Penn set up governments without militias or fortifications and, following the lead of Lenape people and earlier European settlers, negotiated to resolve conflicts peacefully. Even so, Quaker colonization in southern Lenapehoking resulted in disruption of Lenape communities and expropriation of land. By 1700, when European colonists numbered 3,500 in West Jersey and 18,000 in Pennsylvania, Quaker settlers took advantage of Lenape population decline to settle densely rather than share the territory with their Indigenous hosts. Continue Reading
unalone by Jessica Jacobs – reviewed by Michael S. Glaser – August 1, 2024
Jessica Jacobs’s unalone is a stunning and exciting example of what can happen when biblical scholarship and discipline fuse with the richness of a seasoned poetic mind. Jacobs’s poems explore how the biblical stories found in the book of Genesis speak importantly and powerfully to the currency of today’s world. They reveal how biblical metaphor can shed insight as we grapple with ways to understand the fragile humanness of our lives today. A fascination I have long had with biblical stories is paying attention to what is not said: what is left out.… Jacobs’s reflections and explications focus mostly on the creation stories (Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Joseph and Jacob) but are as wide-ranging as Genesis itself, often veering off to wonder about the gaps in a story’s narrative. Often events from Jacobs’s own life are used to reflect back and shed meaning on the Genesis stories. All of this makes for a fascinating new dance that offers fresh insights and questions for the reading of the biblical text. Continue Reading
Silent Steadfastness – by Cheryl Weaver – August 1, 2024
Rows of raised benches faced each other; a few gray, padded steel chairs dotted the rows. I gazed up at the quilt-covered balcony, which I read can hold up to 300 people, though I didn’t believe it. We sat on a bench on the right side of the meetingroom. People entered, maybe nine or ten, and a small, silver-haired woman started the 11:00 a.m. meeting with a reading, saying that those present were welcome to hold it in our focus during meditation. I couldn’t concentrate on the words, only her description of the author, the Choctaw elder and Episcopal bishop Steven Charleston. Another woman fumbled a bit with a laptop before two Friends appeared on screen through Zoom. Members’ backs hunched in unison. Most closed their eyes. A few, I’m convinced, drifted off here and there, their bodies slouching further, occasionally swaying. After a few minutes, I stared at the floor and then peered out the window. The glare of the sun and the heat in the room made me think of the dwindling of summer: how the first week of August heightens a nostalgic ache in my stomach as I anticipate the fall, and that winter would be coming soon enough. I thought about the start of my teaching year. I thought about a research fellowship I had been on earlier in the summer. I sneaked a glance at my watch. Only 11:30. Continue Reading
Pathways to Nature, Pathways to Spirit – by Melissa Breed-Parks – August 1, 2024
In March 2020, the COVID pandemic hit, and I was six months pregnant. I was suddenly, like the rest of the world, confined to my own home, which fortunately had a small yard and gardens. Tending the gardens and taking daily neighborhood walks with a nearby friend became my primary activities outside of remote work. Despite the terror of the unknowns of the pandemic, the climbing death count, and the worry of what my local hospital might be like when my due date rolled around, we had never noticed such a beautiful spring. Each day, a new tree rose into blossom. Each day, a new dooryard flower bed came into bloom. Time for society had seemed to stop, but nature kept its phenological march. Isolated from my friends, Friends, students, colleagues, and family members, nature became my dearest companion. It was during these walks, both before and after my daughter was born, that I decided to further my education. I had found a passion to protect nature and a desire to share my love for it, and so I began a master’s program in conservation ecology and community. Continue Reading
Surviving God by Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan M. Shaw – reviewed by Windy Cooler – August 1, 2024
It is a provocative title for most religious traditions: Surviving God: A New Vision of God through the Eyes of Sexual Abuse Survivors. I immediately thought of the choice as a type of “chutzpah,” or the “spiritual audacity” referred to by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis as that which enabled one to argue with God—virtuously, as did Moses and Job. Through the lens of Quaker theology, this book can be said to be a spiritually audacious argument with God or with the Divine within each of us. But on its own terms—through its self-identified lens of process theology—it is actually an argument that God is not to be survived as one who opposes us. God is not the perpetrator or enabler of abuse that many of us have learned through a patriarchal church but a survivor accompanying each survivor of sexual abuse in this same church. Continue Reading
Session Zero – by Michael Huber – August 1, 2024
I started playing Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in the late 1970s. A few years later, I started attending a Quaker church. For most of my life, my identity has been formed by these two communities. As a matter of history, we Quakers aren’t exactly renowned for the playful exercise of our imaginations. As a young Quaker, I learned about Robert Barclay, who expressed thrilling, radical ideas when he defended the authority of spiritual experience. But he sounded just like his Puritan contemporaries in his Apology for the True Christian Divinity when he condemned all games and recreations as incompatible with “Christian silence, gravity, and sobriety.” In seventeenth-century Britain, religious thinkers made more allowances for racism and land theft than they did for a deck of playing cards. By the 1980s, the Quakers I knew were willing to accept card games at youth-oriented events. However, most of them were still very suspicious of computer games. And they certainly didn’t like games that simulated violence. It might be all right for young Friends in the church basement to bloody their knuckles trying to grab the last spoon as part of a card game, but drawing an imaginary sword to combat an imaginary ogre seemed beyond the scope of Quaker tolerance. For all these reasons, I’ve mostly navigated my love for Quakers and my love for D&D as two separate worlds. Lately, however, there are signs of rapprochement. Continue Reading
Quakers March to Urge Vanguard to Divest from Fossil Fuels – by Sharlee DiMenichi – July 31, 2024
On July 3, Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) organized a rally, march, and prayer vigil calling on Vanguard Group, a manager of retirement assets, to divest from all fossil fuel company holdings. The rally at Cedar Hollow Park outside Malvern, Pa., drew participants from the Friends General Conference (FGC) Gathering held in nearby Haverford. Demonstrators marched down the road from the park to an entrance of the company’s corporate campus, where a silent prayer vigil was held. About 300 people participated. Activists called on incoming Vanguard CEO Salim Ramji, who took the helm of the company on July 8, to guide the firm away from fossil fuel investments. “There’s a courageous course you could take that could change the company and could change history,” is what Keith Runyan, the general secretary of Quaker Earthcare Witness, would like to tell Ramji. Continue Reading
How the “Inside Out” Movies and Quaker Advice Converge – by Andy Tix – July 26, 2024
Last year, I spent several months reading through as many versions of Quaker books of faith and practice as I could find online. I would look for quotes that sparkled with meaning for me, and write them down in a journal to reflect on later. At some point, I read the advices section of Britain Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice, and I was stunned to find some advice that felt like a synthesis of so much of what I’d learned about the science of emotion in the previous three decades. It reads: “Try to find a spiritual wholeness which encompasses suffering as well as thankfulness and joy.” When I watched Inside Out 2 with my family shortly after its release, this advice came to mind, as it coincides so well with the core message of the films. Based on decades of emotion science, the Inside Out movies emphasize how every emotion has a purpose.… Emotions can be hard—life is hard—but accepting all of our emotions as part of being human is essential to living well and connecting with the experiences of other people in our lives and, indeed, all humanity. Continue Reading
Filled with All the Fullness of God – by Ron Hogan – July 25, 2024
Whenever Quakers in my (liberal, unprogrammed) meeting call me a “Christ-centered Friend,” I have to smile. I know a fair number of Christ-centered Friends, and I share many of their beliefs about what it means to live out our Quaker testimonies so that, in George Fox’s words, “your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them.” But I don’t have anywhere near the faith in Jesus Christ they do. If you hang around English-speaking Friends long enough, you will inevitably hear the phrase “that of God in everyone.” The expression goes all the way back to Fox, but has come to mean different things to different Quakers. Some take it as an expression of full human equality based on our common nature as part of God’s creation. Others go even further, claiming each of us possesses a spark of divinity within us. Continue Reading
In this episode of Quakers Today, we ask, “Who is a historical figure you admire but whose words or actions trouble you?” – July 16, 2024
In an all-new episode of the Quakers Today podcast, co-hosts Peterson Toscano and Miche McCall are joined by Johanna Jackson and Naveed Moeed, the co-authors of “George Fox Was a Racist,” which in little more than one month has already become one of the most widely read Friends Journal articles of 2024. What does Fox’s failure to confront the evils of slavery mean for Friends here and now? “If we keep going, and if we keep querying, and if we keep testing and testing and testing the ideas and the notions that we have now, and how they were rooted in behaviors of the past, we can decide for ourselves what works and what doesn’t work,” Naveed says. “The idea of continuous revelation is that what is true in the now may not be true in the future. And so we have to continue to examine, discern, thresh, test… and keep changing.” Listen Now
American Gun by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson – reviewed by Isaac Barnes May – Friends Journal – July 15, 2024
The AR-15, a rifle often known by its military designation M16, is a ubiquitous and deadly presence in U.S. society. Designed in the 1950s, the gun would become the main weapon of the U.S. military during the Vietnam conflict. Starting in the 1980s, it surged in popularity among civilian gun owners. In American Gun, journalists Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson (both veteran Wall Street Journal reporters with experience covering mass shootings, protests, and gun culture and industry) tell the story of the firearm’s history and how it became the most commonly used weapon in mass shootings in the United States. Though McWhirter and Elinson never explicitly state their politics, their book is a clear plea for gun control. (McWhirter is a Quaker and an occasional contributor to Friends Journal.) The narrative the authors provide is one of repeated grisly mass shootings, brief bursts of hope for reforms, followed by small changes and considerable disappointment as such measures fail to pass. They do point toward several comparatively moderate measures—a limit on the size of gun magazines, the temporary removal of guns for those who are deemed a likely threat to others, and tighter licensing laws—which have the potential to reduce mass shootings, but there is no panacea offered here. Continue Reading
Indigenous Alaskans Plan Traditional Healing Center Partially Funded with Quaker Reparations – by Sharlee DiMenichi – June 27, 2024
Tribal leader Joel Jackson of the Organized Village of Kake, a Native village in Kake, Alaska, plans to convert a disused USDA Forest Service building into a traditional healing center funded in part by Quakers paying reparations for Friends’ roles in Indigenous boarding schools. Religious groups, including Quakers, operated boarding and day schools designed to assimilate Native American children by forcing them to give up their languages, religions, and lifeways. Students were often forcibly separated from their families and endured psychological abuse by teachers, according to Jackson. Many Indigenous children from Alaska were taken from their families and placed in boarding schools and orphanages in other states. So far, Quakers from three states have contributed $93,000 in reparations to support the healing center. Continue Reading
Quakers Fast for Peace in Gaza and Israel – by Sharlee DiMenichi – Friends Journal – June 24, 2024
Quakers for Peace in Palestine and Israel, a group of at least 17 Friends from the United States, Ireland, and Venezuela, fasted and participated in virtual worship sharing on April 8 to express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, according to participant Claire Cohen. The event coincided with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, during which believers fast from dawn to sunset. The current phase of the longstanding conflict between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Palestinians began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took more than 240 hostage. The IDF responded with attacks on Gaza that have killed more than 35,000 Palestinians. The war has caused starvation and blocked the delivery of international humanitarian aid. Participants in the April worship sharing considered several queries, including one about reaching out courageously and lovingly to people on all sides of the conflict, and another concerning their practices of daily connection with God. Continue Reading
Fox at 400 – by Sharlee DiMenichi – June 1, 2024
As the four-hundredth anniversary of George Fox’s birth approaches, Friends around the world are reflecting on how Fox has inspired them and are preparing to honor Quakerism’s seventeenth-century British founder. To observe the birth anniversary, many Quakers are planning to educate contemporary worshipers about Fox’s life and work. Some Friends intend to continue evangelizing, as his example has motivated them to do. Not every worship group intends to commemorate Fox’s birth, however. Fox was born in July 1624 (the exact day is unknown) near Leicester, England, and lived until 1691. He rejected ritualized, hierarchical Christianity, as espoused by the Church of England. He read the Bible extensively but believed the indwelling Light of Christ was just as important as Scripture. In 1650, Fox went to prison for blasphemy. He married Quaker widow Margaret Fell in 1669. He traveled widely to preach Quakerism to residents of Europe, North America, and the West Indies. Continue Reading
A Life Steeped in the Quaker Way – by Geoff Knowlton – June 1, 2024
I still think of myself as a kid growing up in Vermont. Back then, with some regularity, my folks packed us up and drove over the line into New Hampshire to attend Quaker worship. That was my introduction to George Fox and the way of faith he inaugurated centuries earlier. I suppose here is where I could go on with a long review of Fox’s life: his triumphs and struggles, his accomplishments, and the roots of the movement he started. But I will leave that to other more learned people. I want to reflect on how a man born 400 years ago came to shape what I believe, how I live and, in the end, who I am. I have a strong feeling there are millions of folks who could say the same. It’s remarkable to me that one person who lived long ago could have such an impact. Continue Reading
From Dorothea to Me – by Cathy Barney – Friends Journal – June 1, 2024
I grew up in the shadow of an early Quaker, before I ever knew what Quaker meant. It wasn’t founder George Fox, but rather Dorothea Scott Gotherson, a Quaker minister and writer born in 1611, a descendent of Edward III, King of England. She and her first husband, Daniel Gotherson, joined the Religious Society of Friends around 1657. I was raised Methodist, yet Dorothea, 11 generations earlier, still loomed in our family history. She came to the forefront for me when, in 1999, I walked into Cincinnati (Ohio) Meeting and never left. Continue Reading
His Work Is Alive in Africa – by George Busolo Lukalo – Friends Journal – June 1, 2024
When I enrolled for the first catechism class at Friends Church Mbale Monthly Meeting in Chavakali Yearly Meeting, Vihiga County, we were only taken through the basics of Quaker history, which told us that the founder of the Religious Society of Friends was George Fox. Pastor Stanley Amuliodo gave us a one-page summary of the life of Fox. I learned that he was born in 1624 and that his father was Christopher Fox and his mother was Mary Lago. He was disturbed by incidents around his cousin’s drinking. He married Margaret Fell; they never had any children together, although Margaret Fell had seven daughters and one son from her previous marriage. Fox and his parents were members of the Anglican church, and Mary Fisher assisted him in ministry. The second catechism class’s emphasis was on the history of Quakerism in Kenya. I could boast that I knew Quakerism when I really just knew a slice of it. Continue Reading
Holy Adventure: A Spiritual Memoir by Lynn Johnson – reviewed by Ruah Swennerfelt – Friends Journal – June 1, 2024
Holy Adventure is a lovely little book of some of Lynn Johnson’s life-changing spiritual experiences. It is a daring thing to share such intimate encounters with the Divine with a wide audience. And I appreciate the direct way that each story is told. It assures the reader that the Divine is available to all. The author bio on the back cover shares that Johnson “believes in the Quaker testimony that there is ‘that of God in everyone’ and in all creation.” She draws from that belief to tell six stories, beginning with one spanning early childhood through young adulthood, when she felt she was lacking because she had not had a dramatic spiritual experience.… It’s easy to relate to the stories of dreams, travel adventures with friends, and solitude. Johnson shares from a deep place within, and we learn that discernment of the seemingly ordinary can lead to new spiritual understanding. Continue Reading
George Fox Was a Racist – by Johanna Jackson and Naveed Moeed – Friends Journal – June 1, 2024
In 1701, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the largest yearly meeting of Friends in the British colonies, chose to republish George Fox’s Gospel Family-Order (published shortly after his 1671 trip to the New World). This writing implicitly endorsed the practice of keeping slaves; it exhorted slave owners to bring the enslaved closer to God. It gave permission for white Quakers to own slaves. It went as far as detailing the responsibilities that white owners have to control their slaves’ religious agency. The selective publication of this tract reinforced notions of hierarchy, right order, and out-of-order meekness. It also reinforced the notion that Fox’s word was somehow more authoritative. We have made great strides since the 1700s. Our perception of what is evil—particularly of how slavery and racism are evil—has taken huge leaps forward. But some of the lasting legacies leave Quakers frozen to this day. Continue Reading
Sweet Baby Jesus – by Patricia Wild – (originally published December 2018) – Friends Journal – December 1, 2018
What did the word Christ actually mean to George Fox? This foundational question came to me during silent worship one morning. A former Unitarian Universalist from childhood, the word Christ has been tainted for me, associated with those elements of Christianity I have felt most squeamish or heartbroken or confused about: the Crucifixion, the Crusades, communion, for example. So this Spirit-generated prompt intrigued me. Might such an exploration offer “great openings,” as Fox would say? I began my exploration by reading the Journal of George Fox, which I’d never read cover to cover before; I quickly realized I needed a timeline.… I was fairly conversant with seventeenth-century English and American history. Still, it was grounding to be reminded, for example, that in 1625 (the year after Fox was born and six years after the first enslaved people were forcibly transported to Britain’s North American colonies) 35,000 people died from the bubonic plague in London; John Milton began his study of Latin, Greek, and Italian at Christ’s College, Cambridge; and Charles I, who would be beheaded when Fox was 25, became king. How charismatic, how relatable, how prophetic—in the Old Testament sense of that word—Fox must have been to attract the attention of his exhausted, fearful, and profoundly unsettled listeners! But what could Fox have said that so moved those profoundly unsettled people? And how might Fox’s Christ-centered language speak to our (exhausted, fearful, unsettled) condition today? Continue Reading
Transcendence by Cai Quirk – reviewed by Cassie J. Hardee – Friends Journal – June 1, 2024
Cai Quirk’s new photography book, Transcendence: Queer Restoryation, has opened my mind to a new way of viewing gender and stillness within nature, which is the place where I experience the pureness of the Divine most strongly. Stories of rebirth, discovery, and transformation come to life through ethereal, nude self-images captured outside in the natural world. Whether they are curled up inside a tree, letting sand sift through their fingers, or kneeling among shallow waters, Quirk affirms the existence of genderfluid and transgender individuals by presenting their own body as evidence. The photographs are echoed by short prose-style novellas that help the reader center and experience the collective work as one fluid story. Quirk weaves together near mythological tales of gender and Spirit that speak to the queer experience in today’s world, reminding us that gender-diverse individuals have always existed. By placing themselves among nature, within nature, and of nature, Quirk’s Transcendence lives up to its title as a journey that transcends. Continue Reading
The Egalitarian Partnership with Margaret Fell Fox – by Amos Smith – Friends Journal – June 1, 2024
On the quatercentenary of George Fox’s birth, I want to articulate the yoked spiritual legacy of George and Margaret Fell Fox, who married in 1669. This seems to me to be the holistic approach to Fox’s life and legacy, for he did not journey alone. His partnership with Margaret meant the world to him, shaped his thought, and had a profound impact on the development of the Religious Society of Friends. George and Margaret represent the origin of the river called Quakerism. What are the main points of this legacy? If George and Margaret are our spiritual forbearers (and they certainly are my spiritual elders), what did they put into motion that makes Quakerism unique? What did they put into motion that continues to touch us in life-giving ways today. Continue Reading
The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism by Carl McColman – reviewed by Marty Grundy – Friends Journal – June 1, 2024
Although there is no succinct explication of mysticism, Carl McColman identifies it with God’s unconditional love; inclusion of all, especially marginalized people; and the necessity for both individual preparation and a supportive community. McColman’s The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism (expanded from its original 2010 edition) is a mixed bag: an effort at a comprehensive exploration of Christian mysticism but seen almost exclusively through a Roman Catholic lens.… There is no indication that McColman understands or appreciates Friends’ concept and practice of mysticism, let alone the corporate mysticism of a gathered meeting. On the other hand, McColman likes Evelyn Underhill and Howard Thurman—the latter especially dear to Friends. Readers desiring to learn more about Christian mysticism will find much to like, but Friends wanting a Quaker approach to mysticism will need to do their own translating. Continue Reading
George Fox Encouraged Singing in the Spirit – by Walter W. Felton – (originally published in May 1994) – Friends Journal – May 1, 1994
During the formative years of George Fox’s ministry (1648-1649), he defined his concept of Friends’ fellowship, praying, and singing: “And I was to bring them off from all the world’s fellowships and prayings and singings, which stood in forms without power, that their fellowships should be in the Holy Ghost and in the eternal Spirit of God, that they might pray in the Holy Ghost and sing in the Spirit and with the Grace that comes by Jesus, making melody in their hearts to the Lord who hath sent his beloved Son to be their Saviour.” In one of his collected epistles, Fox wrote, “singing in the Spirit is public.” What did he mean by “public”? His explanation was given in another letter. He regarded singing in any of the world’s churches as particular or private; and singing in the Spirit as public or universal. That epistle began, “Friends … we need no Mass to teach us, for the Spirit that gave forth the Scriptures teaches us how to pray, sing, fast, etc.” Epistle 312 contains my favorite writing about singing in the Spirit: “they that do sing in the Spirit do reach the Spirit in others, [who thereby] have a sense that it proceeds from the Spirit. … To all that receive it in integrity and sincerity, they cannot but rejoice at the sound of the Power. Continue Reading
The True Last Supper – by Barbara Birch – Friends Journal – June 1, 2024
Many Friends know George Fox through a few selected quotes that appear in their Faith and Practice or in memes on social media. Some have read Fox’s Journal, which has been through several editions to make it more accessible to modern readers. Fewer Friends have tried to read the tracts in Fox’s original language, and they often find them heavy going and even off-putting. The writing can be cranky, judgmental, wordy, and obscure because he alludes to Scripture passages that we Bible illiterates don’t catch. And yet, for longtime Friends, young Friends, and newcomers, the tracts contain some striking messages still relevant to our time. In a tract published in 1685, “A Distinction Between the Two Suppers of Christ,” George Fox wrote about the significance of the term last supper. He downplays the importance of the traditional Christian last supper—known as the sacramental Eucharist or Communion. For Fox, the real last supper was Christ’s invitation to a mystical feast of love as revealed to John of Patmos and recorded in the Book of Revelation: “I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you with me. . . . Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches” (Rev. 3:20–22). Continue Reading
Drawing Circles, Not Lines – By Sarah Katreen Hoggatt – Friends Journal – June 1, 2020
This being June 2024 and Pride Month it would seem appropriate to revisit Sarah Katreen Hoggatt’s article on “Drawing Circles, Not Lines”
I look out among the faces in front of me and am in awe of their compassion and protectiveness of one another. The people gathered together care deeply about one another’s well-being, especially those who are typically disenfranchised or whose voices aren’t heard as loudly as those better represented in our community. We stand up for each other, firmly and with alacrity, making sure everyone is respected and given space to bloom. I love them and their loving hearts so much. Our yearly meeting, Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting, is not yet even four years old. Created after another yearly meeting decided it would not include any LGBTQ+ inclusive church, we decided at the very beginning—even before deciding we were a group—that we were passionately inclusive. The meeting has since proved those words time and time again. Continue Reading
The Radical Original Vision of George Fox – by Marcelle Martin – Friends Journal – June 1, 2024
By 1648, Fox was coming fully into his prophetic powers. In that year he had a powerful inward experience, described in his Journal. In a vision, he was taken up into the Paradise of God and into the condition of Adam and Eve before their disobedience, the original human state of walking daily with God and receiving and heeding Divine Guidance. In this state, Fox was able to see into all creatures, and the “divine Word of wisdom and power by which they were made” was revealed. Then he was immediately taken up to “see into another or more steadfast state than Adam’s in innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus, that should never fall.” In this divine revelation, Fox experienced an invisible unity, a oneness that underlies the diversity and apparent separateness of people and things, uniting all in God. He wrote that this fundamental oneness would eventually be revealed to each person who sufficiently surrenders to God: “as people come into subjection to the Spirit of God, and grow up in the image and power of the Almighty, they may receive the Word of wisdom, that opens all things, and come to know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being.” Continue Reading
William Penn – by Sharlee DiMenichi – Quaker.org
The reputation of religious freedom advocate and early Quaker William Penn has evolved over the years since he lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A close associate of the British court, Penn was an accomplished speaker and writer. He also spent time in a debtors’ prison and died in bankruptcy. Historically, he has been lauded as a proponent of tolerance and a friend to Indigenous people. He also enslaved Africans, and historians have called into question his dealings with the Lenni Lenape native inhabitants of Pennsylvania, the colony he established in 1681. Reckoning with Penn’s morally problematic dealings with people of African descent as well as Indigenous people has led modern-day Quakers to remove his name from locations such as a room of the Friends House in London and the former William Penn House in Washington, D.C. In January 2024, the U.S. National Park Service proposed removing a statue of William Penn from Welcome Park in Philadelphia, Pa., but changed course after public comments opposing the move. This article was created for Quaker.org, our reference site for those new to Friends’ faith and practice. It will also be published in the June-July issue of Friends Journal. Continue Reading
Frog Songby Megan Hollingsworth – illustrated by Bonnie Gordon-Lucas – reviewed by Gail Whiffen – Recommended for ages 9 and up – Friends Journal – May 1, 2024
As a kid who loved animals and facts, I enjoyed learning about our planet’s great diversity of wildlife. But how sad it was to learn about the extinct and endangered species! What can we do, I wondered, to stop or prevent such things from happening? There are many ways to get involved and connect with groups doing conservation work, but a child learning these facts can easily feel overwhelmed or hopeless. Megan Hollingsworth’s Frog Song offers one accessible entry point into the important work of researching these species and finding solutions to our current global ecological health crisis. Did you know that globally amphibians are the most endangered vertebrates? The back cover of Frog Song leads with this truth, and makes a promise: “We can help them.” This coupled with the cute and smiley frog on the front cover, illustrated by Bonnie Gordon-Lucas, pulled me right in. Continue Reading
Psalms of Wonder – by Carey Wallace – illustrated by Khoa Le – reviewed by Ken Jacobsen – Recommended for ages 6-12 – Friends Journal – May 1, 2024
Poet Carey Wallace was inspired to turn 29 psalms excerpted from the Bible into prayer-poems for young people (and for us “children” of all ages). Khoa Le illustrates each psalm with visual wonders: living mountains; fields; flowers; stars; creatures; and always, children who are playing, praying, dancing, and sharing the divine creation together. The biblical psalms were originally sung; they were a songbook, but by now we’ve mostly lost the music. Wallace invites music back into her selection of psalms. Remaining faithful to the texts, she reshapes them in musical ways, with rhythms and rhymes appealing to children that invite reading out loud. Continue Reading
Friends Seeking Non-Traditional Membership – by Sharlee DiMenichi – Friends Journal – May 1, 2024
Quakers at Collington, a Kendal-affiliated senior living facility in Mitchellville, Maryland, formed a worship group in the early 2000s. Many Friends who attend worship there also maintain membership in the meetings they belonged to before moving to the facility. Residents of senior living communities often have common spiritual needs. “I think living in a retirement community changes the focus quite a bit. We’re in a community where people die and leave a spouse sometimes alone. I think that is a spiritual need that sometimes we fail to address. And that happens more here than it would happen in an ordinary Quaker meeting,” said Jim Rose, a Collington resident who attends the worship group along with his second wife, Susanna. Rose is still a member of Patapsco (Md.) Meeting, which he and his late wife were instrumental in founding. Continue Reading
Speaking to Our Members’ Conditions – by Steven Dale Davison – Friends Journal – May 1, 2024
When I applied for membership in my first Quaker meeting, I was actively hostile to Christianity and the Bible. I told this to the Friends who served on my clearness committee, feeling that I should be honest about this for the process. Also, I later realized, I might have been putting them on notice that I would cause trouble—not consciously, but in effect. But I wanted the meeting, and the meeting wanted me.… The clearness process wasn’t quite a pro forma exercise, but nobody was surprised when the meeting accepted my application. Then I proceeded to make good on my tacit threats. I harassed a Christian member for her vocal ministry. I acted to keep the First-day school from teaching my kids the Bible. I don’t remember anybody talking to me about my behavior, but maybe they did and I’ve blocked it out. Several years later—against my will, more or less—I felt led to write a book of Bible-based earth stewardship theology. As I followed that leading, I regained the love of the Bible that I’d had as a teenager. I woke up to the harm I had been causing in my meeting and the wrongness of my militancy. And I developed a deep personal concern, born of my own experience, for how we approach membership and what membership means. Continue Reading
The Light Will Be Shining at the End of It All – by Matt Rosen – Friends Journal – May 1, 2024
Elizabeth Hooton is often considered the first Friend to have been convinced by George Fox’s preaching and conversation. Even before the Quaker movement coalesced, with Fox preaching to thousands in northern England, Hooton had been imprisoned for the convictions that led her to admonish a priest. James Parnell was 16 when he traveled to Carlisle jail to meet an imprisoned Fox, and it was there Parnell was convinced. Only a few years later, he died in the appalling conditions of Colchester Castle’s jail. Elizabeth Fletcher was even younger than Parnell—a mere 14—when she was convinced, and she brought the Quaker message to Oxford and to Ireland before dying of injuries received at the hands of a mob of Oxford scholars. These three were clearly Friends. Convinced by the preaching of itinerant Quakers, they turned inward, discerned a need to transform their lives, and began to obey the promptings of a Light that had been there all along. This led them into radical forms of witness, for which they suffered intensely alongside many other Friends. And yet, none of them was in membership of a religious society as we understand that today. Continue Reading
Membership at a Distance – by Dirk von der Horst – Friends Journal – May 1, 2024
I worshiped in person with San Francisco Meeting as an attender from 2005 to 2013. During that time, I served on and then clerked the Peace and Social Concerns Committee. When I moved away, I stopped attending meetings because I don’t have a car, and it would take too long to get to the other side of Los Angeles for one of the more local meetings. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, I started attending online worship with San Francisco Meeting. There wasn’t a deliberate choice [at San Francisco Meeting] to open membership to those at a distance. Rather, one person who had been participating in Zoom worship requested membership, and it was approved. I was the second person to request membership despite my living at a distance, and a member noted that the meeting had already opened the door to this new way of being a member. This decision will undoubtedly change the nature of the community in unforeseen ways. Some of those changes will strengthen the community; some of those changes will be challenges. Often major changes come about through subtle shifts that are hard to discern at the outset. Since it is far too early to see the implications of this decision for the meeting, I want to reflect mostly on how I approach my responsibilities to the community amidst the dizzying changes technology is bringing to our society. Continue Reading
Two New Years by Richard Ho illustrated by Lynn Scurfield – reviewed by Lisa Rand Recommended for ages 3–5 – Friends Journal – May 1, 2024
Drawing upon his own Chinese and Jewish heritage, Richard Ho shares the story of celebrating both Rosh Hashanah and Lunar New Year through side-by-side pages that highlight common elements of the two holidays. Illustrated by Lynn Scurfield in a bright, rich palette of inks, each page of Two New Years is filled with joy and vibrancy. On the page that says, “Both New Years inspire delicious dishes,” a person holds a tray with a jar of honey in the center surrounded by apple slices, pomegranate, fish, carrots, and other traditional Rosh Hashanah foods. The opposite page reads, “We prepare foods that symbolize togetherness and the heartfelt sharing of good wishes,” and it features a person with a tray that has an orange in the center, surrounded by lotus root, dried fruit, nuts, candies, and other Lunar New Year treats. Continue Reading
Where the Light Comes to Meet Us – by Leticia Garcia Tiwari – Friends Journal – May 1, 2024
I have been in and out of Quaker churches, meetings, online groups, and retreats over the last ten years. While I am not currently attending a meeting, I practice listening as a spiritual practice and regularly contemplate Quaker writings. I almost became a member several times at meetings I attended, yet those spaces were not designed to resonate with the rhythms that drum through me. While Quaker spirituality aligns ideologically with many of the value systems I embody, the normative cultures of those spaces—especially relating to the political polarization of Quaker denominations—do not. Conservative branches that are not LGBTQ-affirming and adopt a literal reading of Scripture are not an option for me. I refuse to attend an institution that does not affirm the identities of my loved ones, and I take Scripture too seriously to limit myself to a literal lens. However, while Liberal branches are more in alignment with my beliefs and values on paper, the racialized class cultures of those spaces are politely violent and quietly exclusionary.… These ruptures and refusals do not help me cultivate my relationship with the Light or that of God in each person, except through clenched teeth and a compassion that holds on by a string. Continue Reading
More Than a Dream by Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long – reviewed by Gwen Gosney Erickson Recommended for ages 10-14 – Friends Journal – May 1, 2024
More Than a Dream opens with Quaker civil rights activist Bayard Rustin meeting with his mentor, A. Philip Randolph, to discuss strategy for what would become the August 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long deliver a full package, thanks to the inclusion of primary source illustrations, sidebars, thoughtful queries within the text, and the questions set with suggested assignments at the end. While written for younger readers, the book does not shy away from complexities and missteps: disagreements among the planners, Rustin’s homosexuality, White privilege, and the violence and danger faced by civil rights activists. Continue Reading
339 Manumissions and Beyond Partners with Howard University – by Sharlee DiMenichi – Friends Journal – April 29, 2024
Through a collaboration among Howard University, Haverford College, and the 339 Manumissions and Beyond Project, researchers intend to tell the life stories of more than 400 formerly enslaved people, mostly from the Philadelphia, Pa. area, who were freed by Quaker enslavers in the 1700s. Howard University officially became a partner on the project in November 2023 and university students began preliminary research in September of last year, according to 339 Manumissions and Beyond founder Avis Wanda McClinton, who is an attender at Abington Meeting in Jenkintown, Pa. Because Quakers have emphasized their history of abolitionism, McClinton explained, for many years, people did not think to look in Quaker archives for evidence that Friends had enslaved people. Continue Reading
Seeking the Light by Linda Seger – reviewed by Sharlee DiMenichi – Friends Journal – April 1, 2024
Seeking the Light offers an accessible and engaging introduction to Quakerism for curious non-Friends as well as those new to the faith. Writing in a conversational style, Linda Seger introduces Quakerism to non-Quakers by referring to the 1956 film Friendly Persuasion, based on a 1945 Jessamyn West book about a family of Friends who grapple with the ethical issues raised by their pacifist convictions during the U.S. Civil War. She also notes several famous Quakers such as singer Bonnie Raitt and author James Michener. In later chapters, Seger explains the spiritual significance of Light and silence to Quakers. She includes comparisons and contrasts from Friends who practice Buddhist meditation in addition to Quaker waiting worship. She also describes visualizations she uses during worship, including one in which she rides down an imaginary elevator that takes her into spiritual depths. When she leaves the elevator, she meets a contemporarily dressed Jesus figure, in whom she confides and who gives her caring advice before they walk together into a vibrant ray of light. Continue Reading
The Gospel Model of Fatherly Love – by John Andrew Gallery – Friends Journal – April 1, 2024
Joseph is not the only father who appears in the gospels, but he is one of only two mentioned by name. The other is Zebedee, father of the disciples James and John. Zebedee appears for a brief instant in Matthew 4:21, the scene where Jesus is walking along the Sea of Galilee and summons James and John to follow him, while they are in the boat with Zebedee mending their fishing nets. When I originally read this verse, my attention was drawn to James and John. I marveled that they could so easily walk away from their past lives. Did they know Jesus already, and did he know them? Were they disciples of John the Baptist and at the river when Jesus came to be baptized? Or were they among John’s followers when—as some stories say—Jesus stayed with John for a while thereafter? Or did they go simply because their friends Simon and Andrew were with him, and it looked like something more interesting to do than mending nets? But when I think of this incident now, in the context of my thoughts about Joseph, it’s the figure of Zebedee that draws my attention. How did he feel when both his sons jumped overboard and went off without asking permission or even saying a word of goodbye? Continue Reading
Season 3, episode 2. In this episode of Quakers Today, we ask, What does bird watching have to do with Quakers? – Friends Journal – April 16, 2024
Birdwatching may seem like a serene, perhaps even solitary activity, but in the latest Quakers Today podcast, we discover it’s a window into much larger conversations about community, justice, and spirituality. Rebecca Heider discusses her recent Friends Journal article, “A Quaker Guide to Birdwatching: Eight Lessons for Friends and Seekers,” with Peterson Toscano, elaborating upon the profound joy that can be found in everyday moments of observation. As you’re listening, take a moment to appreciate the background sounds, designed and produced by co-host Miche McCall! Meanwhile, Tykee James, the president of the Washington, DC, chapter of the Audubon Society, opens up about the joys and dangers of birding while Black. Tykee shares how his experiences with urban birding as a teen exposed him to community connections and the stark realities of racial and environmental injustices, and how he’s built on those experiences—including the formation of the annual Black Birders Week, which is coming up at the end of May. Plus: Peterson and Miche tell us about the books they’ve been reading, the games they’ve been playing, and the apps they use to unwind—and how all that media resonates with Quaker spirituality. And then Peterson and Miche want to know: When you walk into a new space, what do you see, hear, or experience that makes you feel welcome? What might be present that leads you to conclude you may not be welcome? It could be someone’s home, a Quaker meetinghouse or some other religious venue, a café, a shop… any space at all, really! Share your thoughts by leaving a voicemail at 317-QUAKERS (317-782-5377) and you might find yourself featured in the next episode! Continue Reading or Listening
Altar to an Erupting Sun by Chuck Collins – reviewed by Ruah Swennerfelt – Friends Journal – April 1, 2024
Chuck Collins challenges readers of his new novel, Altar to an Erupting Sun, to contemplate how much they would be willing to risk in order to stop the terrifying destabilization of Earth’s fragile community of life. The story follows the radicalization of the main character, Rae Kelliher—but it opens at the end of Rae’s long life, with her decision to commit a drastic and violent act in a desperate attempt to stop what she considers to be a greater evil. Furious after learning that the Big Oil companies had long known about the catastrophic effects of climate change and the role of their products in creating it, Rae decides to kill an oil company executive by detonating an explosive device concealed in her clothing. Although the path to her principled action is clear to her, it baffles and bewilders her friends and many in the peace community. Collins goes on to show readers the people and incidents that shaped Rae’s thinking. She is greatly influenced by Quakers, and throughout the book, Quaker values are lifted up, along with many Quaker elders—like the real-life figures Wally and Juanita Nelson of the Woolman Hill Quaker Retreat Center in western Massachusetts. Collins brilliantly and seamlessly intersperses real and fictional people throughout the book, lending a feeling that what the reader is experiencing is all real history. I am personally grateful for the light that his book sheds on the challenges and dilemmas that he faced as he charted his own course as an environmental activist. Continue Reading
Planting Ourselves in Time and Place – by J.E. McNeil – Friends Journal – April 1, 2024
The U.S. Department of Defense defines conscientious objection as a “firm, fixed, and sincere objection to participation in war in any form or the bearing of arms, by reason of religious training and/or belief.” For many decades the Center on Conscience and War bought into the government definition of conscientious objection; after all, the founders of the center had helped craft it. But I became increasingly uncomfortable with the government definition, [and] in early 2007, I reached out to the group Appeal for Redress, which consisted of career military personnel who objected to the war in Iraq but would deploy there, if ordered.… Around that time, some of the service members involved with Appeal for Redress were featured in a segment on 60 Minutes, and I was invited to a celebratory dinner for them a few days later. At the event, a young marine and I had an interesting conversation. He was concerned that there might not be any vegetarian choices on the menu. I asked him why he was a vegetarian: health reasons, climate reasons, cruelty to animals? He said he refused to kill animals. I was startled for a moment and then said, “I am not criticizing you but am trying to understand: you don’t want to kill animals, but you are willing to kill humans?” A couple of weeks later he filed a CO application. Continue Reading
Radical Acts of Justice by Jocelyn Simonson – reviewed by Michele Sands – Friends Journal – April 1, 2024
Radical Acts of Justice is both a hopeful and a helpful look at mass incarceration in the United States. Jocelyn Simonson, a former public defender and current legal scholar and professor, explores tactics of hundreds of community groups and individuals, within the penal system and without, to reveal injustices and to imagine a new form of public caring when someone is wronged. With a wealth of examples gleaned throughout the country, the book focuses on four interconnecting approaches that ordinary people can and have taken: bail funds, court watching, participatory defense, and budgets. Ordinary individuals and Quaker working groups who question and want to counter the existing justice system will find this book an informative, instructional, and inspirational resource.… To the many questions the author raises, I add a query: As Jesus of Nazareth confronted the order of his society, how do we deal with a law and order system of mass incarceration that erodes the Thirteenth Amendment? – Continue Reading
Bearing Witness for Peace – by Sharlee DiMenichi – Friends Journal – April 5, 2024
Through the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), Quakers join members of other faiths to provide a supportive presence at the request of Palestinian church members in the region. EAPPI sends 25 to 30 accompaniers at a time and has provided more than 2,000 volunteers since the program began in 2002, according to its website. Israeli peace activists also offer protective accompaniment. Friends Journal talked with three protective accompaniers about their inspiration and experience. Ian Cave and Debby, who requested that we use only her first name, are British Quakers who volunteered with EAPPI from mid-January to mid-April 2023; both were based in the West Bank.… The United Nations views accompaniers as the “eyes and ears” of the UN, explained Cave, because they are able to verify and report any human rights abuses they might witness in the ongoing Israeli military occupation of Palestine. Continue Reading
My Dad’s Green Burial – by Christine Ashley – Friends Journal – April 1, 2024
Dad died this past summer. Instead of a churchyard burial, he rests in the middle of a meadow filled with six-foot-tall wildflowers, hovering bees, mooing cows, and songbirds. Dad’s body was wrapped in his mother’s quilt that had the words “Sweet Dreams.” His grandchildren carried the body, which was wrapped in a shroud and placed on a board, and they used ropes to gently lower him into a shallow grave. Family and friends threw wildflowers picked from the meadow onto his body. Afterward, three grandsons shoveled about three tons of dirt onto his flower-covered body. Dad’s body lies in an unmarked grave in a conservancy cemetery, where the grasses and tall groves of wildflowers take over his plot. Only GPS coordinates locate his remains. Continue Reading
Wealth Supremacy by Marjorie Kelly – reviewed by Pamela Haines – Friends Journal – April 1, 2024
Anyone who feels the weight of White supremacy—or sees the danger signs of growing inequality or cares about a livable future on this planet—would do well to take heed of Marjorie Kelly and her new book, Wealth Supremacy. Kelly speaks of how we are living in a trance in a reality we cannot see. Unnamed wealth privilege has been embedded in our cultural psyche for centuries.… The silent encoded message says that wealth is to be revered above all else. The rest of reality—workers, communities, small businesses, and the environment—is all implicitly subordinate. Kelly sees the power of creating a shared understanding that capital bias against people and in favor of wealth is illegitimate. Continue Reading
A Quaker Guide to Birdwatching – by Rebecca Heider – Friends Journal – April 1,2024
I finally found time to explore nature photography during the COVID-19 pandemic. 2020 was my year of insects, when I spent long hours in sunny meadows chasing butterflies; 2021 was my year of mushrooms, poking around in wet leaves on the forest floor. In 2022, I was ready for the year of birds, so I purchased a camera with a telephoto lens. I thought our family trip to Alaska—specifically a day of rafting through a bald eagle preserve—would be the perfect time to launch my career in bird photography. In fact, that was a foolish and hubristic plan. I could barely operate the camera, and I now realize that even a veteran photographer would find it challenging to get a good photo while bobbing over whitewater. By waiting to begin my journey into bird photography until I had traveled thousands of miles to this one special place on this specific day, I had set myself up for disappointment. And I had missed out on opportunities to get started earlier closer to home. This brings me to my first lesson: If we look to connect with Spirit only in a designated sacred place or on a specific holy day, we limit our opportunities for spiritual transformation. Continue Reading
Pray without Ceasing – by Chester Freeman – Friends Journal – March 1, 2024
What is prayer? For me, prayer is a spiritual experience whereby we tap into the spiritual resources of the universe. Praying is a lifestyle choice. It is the way we live our lives, the way we work with others, and the way we think of others. In other words, it is the way we live. This is how I interpret the Scripture that says “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). I used to ask myself, How can you do that? But when you live a prayerful life, that is how it is accomplished. When the thought of someone comes in my mind, while I am working or even washing dishes, that focus of energy on that particular person is my prayer. It could be a friend, a relative, or an acquaintance. At that point, I am focusing on raising my energy level to send positive and uplifting thoughts to and for that person Continue Reading
A Quaker Ecology: Meditations on the Future of Friends by Cherice Bock – reviewed by Lauren Brownlee – Friends Journal – March 1, 2024
A Quaker Ecology is an expansion of Cherice Bock’s Bible Half-Hour series at New England Yearly Meeting’s annual sessions in 2020. Overall, the book invites readers to consider how we might best live in right relationship with Spirit, people, and the Earth, extending an invitation to “ecotheology” grounded in the idea that all liberation of people and planet is connected. I want to be a part of the future that Bock envisions for Friends. She encourages Quakers to move “from our tendency as a Society of Friends in the United States to get caught up in systems that perpetuate white supremacy and ecological degradation, toward participation in the community of all life.” Her road map for the potential next steps for Friends is one that I believe to be a worthy touchstone for Quaker communities Continue Reading
Dear God, Help Me Here – by Sharlee DiMenichi – Friends Journal – March 1, 2024
When Vonnie Lynn Calland prays, she wants to speak sincerely: without acting or putting on airs. She asks God to fill in the gaps caused by her shortcomings, while “bending, yielding, and staying low” before the Divine. Lynn Calland, who is a member of Charlottesville (Va.) Meeting, has been a Quaker steeped in the tradition of silent waiting worship since the age of seven. When she first started her chaplaincy training, she did not know how to pray aloud. She adapted to vocal prayer because she realized that chaplains have to be ready to support dying people from a variety of faith traditions. Listening to the patient and their dear ones is a key part of praying for them, according to Lynn Calland. She encourages families to create a peaceful space for the dying patient and promotes a narrative of hope and agency for bereaved loved ones.… When she prays, she wants patients to feel the presence of God. She asks God to provide safety and care as well as to turn each hospital room into a sanctuary. When people are in a liminal space between life and death, they need a lot of spiritual protection Continue Reading
We Are All Held in Love – by Peter Blood-Patterson – Friends Journal – March 1, 2024
I think many Friends feel unable to pray because of uncertainty about what prayer is. Many think of prayer as talking to God or asking for specific things. I do talk to God and ask for results at times, but I’m not really sure what happens when I pray in that way. If I believe, as I do, that God knows everything about me, why name my needs to God? I believe this is because somehow God needs me to name my deepest needs in this way. There are serious problems, however, with asking God for a specific outcome that we desire or feel we need. If we ask God for something specific and our prayer is not answered, does that mean we or those we pray for or even God have somehow failed or done something wrong? When we hold someone in the Light, we are asking God to be with them and with us in our caring for them. We are asking God to help our love reach those we are praying for. God can and does respond to prayers of this kind. I don’t know whether offering such prayers changes God, but such prayers change me. Continue Reading
Restorative Justice: Insights and Stories from My Journey by Howard Zehr – reviewed by Pamela Haines – Friends Journal – March 1, 2024
Restorative justice replaces the usual questions—what laws were broken, who did it, and what do they deserve—with new ones: who’s been hurt, what are their needs, and who has obligations. Offender, victim, and community are part of a common search for a genuine solution: one that meets the requirements of justice and is based in respect, responsibility, and relationship. While our legal system focuses on minimal permissible behavior and our culture emphasizes rights over responsibilities, restorative justice offers a more comprehensive moral vision of how we should live together. This collection of essays, reflections, and photos by Howard Zehr goes beyond his well-known Little Book of Restorative Justice, published 22 years ago. Zehr is clear that he is not the “father” of restorative justice; its principles and practices have been articulated by many others from diverse traditions and perspectives. Rather, he works to articulate the best of such traditions, in a way that connects with both biblical justice and contemporary Western thought. His work at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding has created a space where wisdom can come forth, and this has sparked connections and projects throughout the world. Continue Reading
Sowing the Seeds for Corporate Climate Witness – by Pamela Haines – Friends Journal – March 1, 2024
Fifteen members of our meeting community gathered last summer to notice what we love about the earth, share several things we each feel pleased about in our lives as we face environmental injustice and climate chaos, then consider ways we might stretch to respond even more faithfully and powerfully. Those who came are already doing a wide span of activities—from recycling; to moving our households away from fossil-fuel reliance; to greening our investments; to participating with others in community projects; to lobbying our elected officials; to support of and leadership in Earth Quaker Action Team, a nonviolent climate justice group. When one person lamented the seeming insignificance of the recycling she was doing, and blurted out a wish to “plant a forest in the ghetto,” we were on to the stretches. What might we do if we had more resources, more support, more courage? Continue Reading
Welcome Home – by Moon Beiferman-Haines – Friends Journal – March 1, 2024
We awoke to a clear, blue sky and hummingbirds buzzing around our heads. Breakfast was enjoyed at a picnic table with a view of granite mountains rising up into the sky. After we ate, we packed up and drove to the park. There was a place where we could climb up to Hanging Lake. The path was just a mile and a half long and practically straight up the side of the mountain. All of us began to climb the rocky path. We came to a cool, clear stream and took a sip from it. It began snowing, and we were glad we had winter coats. We resumed our climb; it was very steep. Finally, there it was: Hanging Lake. Looking around we realized we were above the treeline. We broke up into small groups. I was alone and walked slowly to the edge of the mountain to see what I could. Deep-green pines grew on the side of the mountain. Then—wham—I felt a big thump straight into my chest! What was that? In the next moment, a voice spoke: “I am here.” I took a deep breath and realized it was God. It had to be. This experience cracked my heart open. Then all was still again. Continue Reading
Quakers Today Podcast – March 12, 2024
The Quakers Today podcast is back for our third season! Join Peterson Toscano and new co-host Miche McCall as they delve into the powerful role of Quaker testimonies in today’s society. In this month’s episode, Nathan Kleban shares valuable insights on the intersection of spirituality and social activism. Nathan discusses his work with the Alternatives to Violence Project and Right Sharing of World Resources, and explains how confronting economic injustices has become a critical step in his work with others to spur meaningful change in society. Then Lauren Brownlee talks with us about Quaker principles and the pursuit of racial equity. She explains how core testimonies like peace, stewardship, and community can serve as antidotes to the influence of White supremacy culture in Quaker meetings—and in the world beyond. We’ll also hear Lauren’s thoughts about a new book from Cherice Bock, A Quaker Ecology, which challenges Friends to deepen their relationship with nature and act on environmental stewardship. Podcast Link
Tending Sacred Ground:Respectful Parenting – by Pamela Haines – reviewed by Janaki Spickard Keeler – Friends Journal – March 1, 2024
As parents, we often long for straightforward answers to our parenting questions, but the dilemmas we face are rarely simple. Should I allow my child to play with toy weapons? How do I help my kid respond to bullying? When is it better to let my child learn from the natural consequences of her actions, and when is it better to intervene to avert disaster? Pamela Haines shares stories from her own parenting journey that model her approach of “respectful parenting.” Tending Sacred Ground rarely has direct answers or advice for the big questions, but Haines’ honesty and the intentional way she approaches each interaction help us look at the bigger picture of how to parent in a world that often does not look out for our children’s best interests. Continue Reading
Trusting God in a Season of Waiting – by Rebecca Lucas – Friends Journal – March 1, 2024
I am neither a biblical scholar on the topic of prayer, nor am I a scientific researcher of the physical benefits of prayer. I am a seeker, trying to understand close encounters I have experienced with the Divine. I have had questions most of my life. Why do my spiritual sensibilities seem out of sync with my upbringing in a nondenominational Christian church? Why do I feel a presence calling me to serve? Why am I being haunted by the healing lyrics of a particular song on the radio every time I get in the car? How do I know if the inner voice speaking to me is divine intervention, my own inner monologue, or enemies of the Light? Where is God’s voice when I need it most? I have suffered the unexpected loss of a spouse, cared for a dying parent in hospice, felt rejection and heartbreak in a relationship, and known the regret of making poor decisions and their consequences. I’ve had my fair share of being alone in the darkness shouting Why did this have to happen? or pleading Please take away this pain! In those prayerful moments of accepting that I am broken and feeling that I have lost control, my season of healing begins. Continue Reading
Carrying Light to Need – by John Calvi – Friends Journal – March 1, 2024
I’ve been asked to pray for many people. Here’s what that experience has grown into and become for me. I gather some deep quiet and stillness. Then, with all my tenderness, I bring into my awareness and consciousness a sense of the person’s essence, feel it deeply, and share my essence of calm and reverence, always listening for any messages. It’s a joining of beings, sensing another’s experience and bringing a gift of peace. It is carrying Light to need, not joining in suffering (which honors no one). The simple work of spiritual care is easily spoken, but the concentration and maintenance of an open posture is exhausting, especially while living in a noisy, popular culture of commerce rather than community.… Like sitting in meeting for worship, we can strengthen the muscles that let us be still and not hear ourselves. One’s capacity to listen without thinking comes to that quiet place of wonder and awe. That’s when prayer is most organic: it’s lots of power that only needs witness, and the meaning becomes clearer later. Continue Reading
The Fundamental Principle of Quaker Spirituality: Light in the Conscience by David Johnson – reviewed by Patricia McBee – Friends Journal – March 1, 2024
Early Quaker writings affirm that everyone is anointed by an Inward Light and endowed with a conscience that is illuminated by that Light. But we know that not everyone lives a life of compassion, integrity, and faithfulness. As David Johnson notes, “All people have the Inward Light, but some just do not notice it.” We need an operating manual for how to access that Light and to empower it to guide us. While The Fundamental Principle of Quaker Spirituality is mainly focused on, as the subtitle announces, the Light in the conscience, Johnson weaves in some basic elements of such an operating manual. Continue Reading
The Glory of God Was Revealed – by Marcelle Martin – Friends Journal – March 1, 2024
William Dewsbury, like many of those who became the first Quakers, was a spiritual seeker from childhood.… He had been disappointed by other zealous religious groups, and he asked himself, was God truly at work among these people? According to an account by Edward Smith, author of William Dewsbury c.1621–1688, Dewsbury prayed to God for clarity: “I cried mightily unto the Lord in secret, that He would signally manifest Himself at that time amongst us, and give witness to His power and presence with us.” Afterward Dewsbury witnessed some miraculous healings, and this provided him the assurance he had sought: “I can never forget the day of his great power and blessed appearance, when he first sent me to preach his everlasting Gospel. . . . And he confirmed the same by signs and wonders; and particularly by a lame woman who went on crutches. . . . Richard Farnsworth, in the name of the Lord, took her by the hand, and George Fox after, spoke to her in the power of God, and bid her stand up, and she did, and immediately walked straight, having no need of crutches any more.” This healing and others witnessed by Dewsbury were for him outward signs of God’s blessing on the Quaker message and ministry. They corresponded to the inner confirmation he had already received, and this provided a joy and courage that stayed with him even during subsequent long years of imprisonment. Continue Reading
Jon Fosse: “To Me, Writing Is Listening” – an interview by Sharlee DiMenichi – Friends Journal – February 29, 2024
Last October, Norwegian author and playwright Jon Fosse was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. When we learned he has Quakers in his family, and attended meeting for worship for a time himself, our curiosity was piqued—even more so when he told Friends Journal staff writer Sharlee DiMenichi during a recent Zoom interview that, even after formally converting to the Catholic Church, “I experience the mass very much like a Quaker meeting.” In this excerpt from that conversation, Fosse talks about what initially drew him to Quakerism: “I left the Norwegian Lutheran Church as soon as I could, at 16, because I thought it was rubbish. I couldn’t stand it. And then I didn’t belong to any kind of—I had no religious connection. But I knew about the Quakers, and I read more about them and I learned about them. But as a young man, I called myself an atheist. What changed my way of thinking about it was, in fact, my own writing. Where does it come from? When I think about other writers and composers, the music of Bach, where does it come from? How can you explain that in a materialistic way? No, you can’t. Then that spiritual space, or what you call it, opened up for me…. And then it wasn’t that long to come to this kind of understanding of the concept of Inner Light and to reach God, through science in a way. To me, it was and it is obvious. It became completely obvious to me. So it is. That’s the truth for me. And it still is.” Continue Reading
Being White Today by Shelly Tochluk and Christine Saxman – reviewed by Michael S. Glaser – Friends Journal – February 1, 2024
Bridget Moix, the general secretary of Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), recently wrote in a report to FCNL members: “Our Quaker faith compels us to listen deeply, respectfully and in recognition of the inherent dignity and worth of every person, including those with whom we disagree.” A core message in Shelly Tochluk and Christine Saxman’s Being White Today is very similar to what Quaker author Parker Palmer urges in his 2011 book, Healing the Heart of Democracy: we must practice making time to listen to each other’s stories if we are ever to be able to understand and meaningfully respond to people whose views are different from ours. Additionally, we must develop some profound awareness of how we are different from those whose ideas we would hope to change. Continue Reading
Escaping Oppenheimer’s Shadow – by Anthony Manousos – Friends Journal – February 20, 2024
Growing up in Princeton, New Jersey, in the early 1960s, I was best friends with Sam, who was the son of Princeton University professor Marvin Goldberger, a renowned nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, studied with Enrico Fermi, and was a colleague of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Watching the movie Oppenheimer brought back memories of this formative period of my life. Oppenheimer’s life story is profoundly tragic, as most war stories are. Nolan’s film portrays him in all his ambiguity: brilliant, full of hubris, and morally conflicted. He realizes too late that he has released the genie of mass destruction from its bottle, and his efforts to curtail the consequences of this act of hubris prove futile. I’d like to contrast this tragic and morally ambiguous story with that of the unsung heroes of the peace movement who helped to end the Cold War and reverse the arms race. Continue Reading
Brightening My Corner – by Ruth Lor Malloy – reviewed by Judith Wright Favor – Friends Journal – February 1, 2024
Quaker practices, divine directives, and innate curiosity guided Ruth Lor Malloy in her lifelong fight against racial discrimination. Now in her 90s, the author started life in a small Canadian town, the granddaughter of a Chinese concubine. After graduating from the University of Toronto in 1954 where she studied religion and had been involved with the Student Christian Movement, she traveled to Mexico to participate in a workcamp run by American Friends Service Committee. This experience introduced her to Quaker beliefs. She started going to meetings for worship once back in Toronto, and later became a member, calling Quakerism her “spiritual anchor” as she traveled the world. Continue Reading
Revelation in the Woods – by Carol Shearon – Friends Journal – February 1, 2024
I experience God the Creator most directly when I am immersed in the natural world. Surrounded by the forests, mountains, and ponds of New Hampshire, I feel awe and joy. It’s hard work to climb the high peaks: work I’ve done gladly, hiking all 48 of the 4,000 footers in the White Mountains. So the mile-and-a-half hike from the trailhead to Cole Pond, a gorgeous remote glacial pond, is literally “a walk in the woods” that I’ve done 100 times in the last 25 years. On a Thursday in late August, I needed the solitude of Cole Pond. I put my sunglasses and my thermos filled with ice water in my fanny pack and drove to the trailhead. At 2:30 p.m., I set off. Walking briskly, I inadvertently left the path. This wrong turn seemed so obvious, the path so clear, that I knew I was on the old path and decided to follow it. After about 20 minutes, I saw a downed dead tree that looked familiar, not from years ago, more likely ten minutes ago! A series of clear and surprising realizations came to me. I was not on a path. I had likely walked in some kind of circle from which I would not be able to retrace my steps. I had no idea where I was, and I’d left my phone at home. I also hadn’t told anyone where I was going. Continue Reading
Lending Their Hands – by Sharlee DiMenichi – Friends Journal – February 1, 2024
Some Quakers have a long history of helping newcomers adjust to life in a strange country. Others got involved in resettlement support in response to anti-immigrant rhetoric before and during the time of former President Donald Trump’s administration in 2017–2021. With the support of their meetings, as well as partnerships with other faith-based organizations, Quakers are lending their hands to people who have fled dire circumstances in their home countries and sought refuge in the United States. Five years ago, Ann Arbor (Mich.) Meeting got a call about a man from Guinea who collapsed due to end-stage kidney failure as he was being deported, according to Johanna Kowitz, who is a member of Ann Arbor Meeting. “The response from our meeting was, ‘How can we not do this?’” said Kowitz. Continue Reading
Dancing in the Darkness by Otis Moss III – reviewed by Lauren Brownlee – Friend Journal – February 1, 2024
Dancing in the Darkness is full of spiritual guidance that is relevant to this moment. Otis Moss III calls readers to “spiritual audacity,” and shares that we can achieve it by grounding ourselves in “courage, faith, self-love, prayer, meditation, or compassion in the belief that we are designed with purpose and agency to shift small elements in our control that may result in larger changes.” He gives us tools for our spiritual toolboxes: vulnerability, prophetic grieving, forgiveness, and “liberation listening,” which is “faith that if we will truly listen, then your liberation will be my liberation, and mine will contribute to yours.” He helps readers understand that if we implement those practices, we will continue to be able to see the Divine Light in each other, no matter how dark our world can feel. Although Moss is a pastor to a United Church of Christ community, I believe that many Quakers will feel as I do, that he is speaking to our condition. Continue Reading
Gathered Together by John Colman Wood – Friends Journal – February 1, 2024
Keeping bees is not simply a matter of taking their honey. We beekeepers have a reciprocal relationship with our bees. And bees are remarkably attentive. They know what the beekeeper does and what the beekeeper smells like. There is even science to indicate that bees recognize individual people by sight. Beekeepers also come to know the personalities of our different hives. We know the behaviors, the sounds, and even the smells of healthy and sick, strong and weak, peaceful and agitated colonies. Being together, we come in time to know each other. I have come to see my work with bees as a form of worship. Writing about bees is an opportunity to reflect on what worship means to me, and it has helped me to explain why I much prefer in-person worship over worshiping on Zoom or other virtual platforms. Continue Reading
Enlarging the Tent by Jonathan Doering and Nim Njuguna – reviewed by Patience A. Schenck – Friends Journal – February 1, 2024
Have you ever enjoyed eavesdropping on an interesting conversation? That is what reading Enlarging the Tent, the transcript of a series of discussions between two Quaker men on the topic of racial justice, is like. Jonathan Doering and Nim Njuguna explore many aspects of antiracism. One is alliance with the people directly oppressed by racism: How do we do it effectively? How do we connect with White people in denial? How do we work for diversity and inclusion among Friends without inflicting guilt or shame, which often hardens denial? How do we gain intellectual knowledge about racism without neglecting to continually examine our own attitudes and the assumptions we grew up with? We need to recognize how culture and the media reinforce certain beliefs, attitudes, and societal forces; how they are hard-wired to reinforce privilege; and how blind we can be to these factors. And how do we become comfortable with being uncomfortable? As Doering comments, antiracism is not an event; it is a lifestyle change. It’s the work of a lifetime. Continue Reading
Move Toward the Suffering – by Nathan Kleban – Friends Journal – February 1, 2024
Previously, if you asked me to share my spiritual autobiography as Friends do, I might have described a trajectory of growing up without religious or spiritual community, exploring different faith traditions, serving with various Catholic Worker communities, living in Buddhist practice centers, and eventually making my way to Quaker meetings. Spiritual practice carried a sense of cultivating healthy thoughts, speaking kindly, and loving my (immediate) neighbors. Now the narrative of participating in particular communities and working on my individual growth has shifted to recognizing and being called to work with wider material concerns, including the ecologies within which we are enmeshed. Prior to my “spiritual” life, I received an undergraduate degree in economics. Over time, my attention has moved back toward learning about topics like global debt structures and monetary policy, as they’re deeply related to material and ecological concerns.… The etymological root of the word economics means “the way to run a household,” so economics isn’t so remote from these concerns: we’re all a part of the global household, including those working the fields and incarcerated people, who are also often performing some kind of work. Continue Reading
Quaker Dreams – by Marcelle Martin – Friends Journal – February 1, 2024
Dreams predicted the beginning of Quakerism before it happened. Mary Penington was an ardent Puritan before the English Civil War. Widowed by the war in 1644, she lost faith in the various Puritan denominations and stopped attending church services. Still, she continued praying for guidance on a daily basis. In her time of grief, she had some remarkable dreams about a future religion. In one she saw Christ, in both male and female form, enter a large hall wearing plain gray clothes. Christ embraced a series of humble people, which she saw as a sign of his wisdom. Finally he beckoned her to come to him. When the Quaker movement began a few years later, it proclaimed that the Spirit of Christ can manifest itself equally in men and women. Several years later Quakers collectively began dressing in plain gray clothes. Continue Reading