Etude for Belonging: Poems for Practicing Courage and Hope
by Bethany Lee
reviewed by Lisa Graham McMinn
Curiosity sent me to the dictionary to look up “etude” before opening this poetry collection.
Etude: a short musical composition, typically for one instrument, usually designed as an exercise to improve technique or else to demonstrate... Read more.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
by Richard Rothstein
reviewed by Sasha Bley-Vroman
The GI Bill was a White guy thing. Yes, the famous law that gave so many young veterans a good start in life after World War II. Although technically, it was for all veterans, in practice, African-Americans found it impossible to get the... Read more.
In a true community we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead, our companions will be given to us by grace. Often, they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define true community as the place where the person you least want to live with lives!
– Parker Palmer (1980)
Semi-permeable membranes are essential to the flourishing of most organic life on Earth. From bacteria to civilizations, our lives exist within vibrant walls that delineate, protect, and provision us.
Religious affiliation, ethnic identity, academic discipline, pop fandom, brand loyalty . . . As social creatures, we cluster together in tents of shared identity. For each other, we reinforce what we are and what we are not. Like all social animals, humans generally do whatever we can... Read more.
Dear Friends: For the first time in thirty years, you can buy a new copy of: Arizona Quaker Jim Corbett’s book Goatwalking.
Jim was a member of Pima Meeting, and among (many) other things, co-founder of the 1980s sanctuary movement, which saved many Central American refugees’ lives, and still continues in a low-key fashion. Jim was also a philosopher, environmental/climate change seer, and wandering goatherd mystic in the Sonoran Desert.
Jim published Goatwalking... Read more.
Dear Friends, at their June 20, 2021 meeting for worship with a concern for business, Intermountain Yearly Meeting (IMYM) approved the minute below. It calls on individual Friends and monthly meetings to urge their Congressional representatives to support a bill that seeks to create a Truth and Healing Commission for the U.S. Indian boarding schools. Senator Elizabeth Warren is expected to introduce this bill before the August recess.
During discussion, Friends also suggested... Read more.
Dear Friends: In their monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings, Friends in the West are rising to the challenge of taking actions that enact equality and justice. We are reaching out to one another to learn what our various Quaker meetings are doing to support Black, brown, and Indigenous lives and to bring down the systems and structures that support White supremacy, within us and without us.
Many Friends meetings have been learning about White supremacy and anti-racism through... Read more.
