A Quaker’s View of Gendlin’s Philosophy by Harbert Rice reviewed by Fred Koster
This book asks: How does our Quaker process help us seek the Light Within and “That of God in every person”? Harbert Rice of Reno Monthly Meeting (PacYM) answers this... Read more.
Cosmic Pockets
by Joann Renee Boswell
reviewed by Paul Jolly
If I knew nothing of Joann Boswell’s life, I would still enjoy her new book of poetry, Cosmic Pockets. It tugs at a reader’s elbows and whispers, “Are you ready for an adventure?” As the text on the front cover says, the book is written “for sci-loving skeptical mystics, mothers, feminists, all... Read more.
In the Land of the Grasshopper Song
by Mary Ellicott Arnold and Mabel Reed
reviewed by Catherine Anderson
In 1908, Mary Ellicott Arnold and Mabel Reed, life partners from the age of sixteen, traveled from their home in New Jersey to the Klamath River area of Northern California, known locally as “the Rivers.” They went as field matrons for the then-named Office... Read more.
Dearly beloved Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by; but that all, with a measure of the Light, which is pure and holy, may be guided: and so in the Light walking and abiding, these things may be fulfilled in the Spirit, not in the letter, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.
– The Elders at Balby (1656)
Dear Editor: To “The Parable of the Bowls” by Debbie Townsend in the September/October 2020 Western Friend, I would add this:
The 4th woman whose bowl was broken picked up the pieces and took them to her friend, the potter, and said, “Would you please make another like this one?” And the potter was happy to do so!
– Pat Wolff, Orange Grove Friends Meeting, Pasadena, CA (PacYM)
Dear Friends: In the last edition of Western Friend, the last paragraph of the “Daily Justice and Injustice” article was incomplete — I had not gotten my final edit back to Mary in time. So please consider this to be a correction to that article, which I call “WWJWD: What Would John Woolman DO?”
“And so, as Friends, we are called to move beyond the politics of delay and division, beyond the rhetoric of hatred and scapegoating. We are called to work diligently for real reform of the... Read more.
Dear Friends: Drought and forest fires all over the West. Two simultaneous hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. The North Pole going ice-free. Each summer hotter than the summer before.
Do you think we might have something to do with climate change? That is not a question that precludes religion. The Bible is full of instances where God punishes the human race for its sins. Noah’s flood is an obvious example. We are often told that various things happening to us are God’s punishment for... Read more.
