Messages of Peace in Times of War
When the apostle Paul sent letters of greeting to the communities he nurtured, he began with a message of grace and of peace. Part of my role as general secretary of Friends World Committee for...
View ArticleNo Time but This Present
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in New York, where I was working as director, was asked about our global affairs priorities now that the Cold War...
View ArticleQuakers Must Take a Position on Abortion
Lady Bracknell: I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing. —The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (1895) As Friends, we make decisions by consensus. At...
View ArticleQuakers, Indian Boarding Schools, and Indigenous Justice Today
In 1819, the United States enacted a series of policies that led to the creation of Indian boarding schools across the nation. The stated purpose was educational assimilation. But in practice, the...
View ArticleLove Is the Way to Peace
Friends, it breaks my heart when I hear someone ask us to hold in the Light and pray for a certain country, party, faction, or candidate. We can’t hold just one side of a war or one kind of politician...
View ArticleForgiveness, Trust, and Safety
Over the past three years, my local Quaker meeting has supported a man who, in 2012, was convicted on federal charges of crossing state lines to solicit sex from a minor female. In this instance, he...
View ArticleBaking Cookies for the Revolution
I used to carry around in my wallet a little picture of Vedran Smailović. He was the cellist who became famous for playing Tomaso Albinoni’s “Adagio in G Minor” (actually probably composed by Remo...
View ArticleSpeaking Up for Palestinian Rights Now
The horrific events and war crimes in southern Israel and Gaza committed since October 7 by both Hamas and the State of Israel have sent shock waves of anguish and grief around the world. People of...
View ArticleQuakerly Gadflies
Most definitions of the word gadfly make people like me sound like pests, but that’s not how I see it. I will allow that what we do may be irritating to recipients of our attention. But we’re useful....
View ArticleSowing the Seeds for Corporate Climate Witness
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...
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