On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry
by Bryan Drayton
reviewed by Susan Loucks
Quakers assert that everyone can have direct access to the Divine and that anyone can step up to or away from ministry at any time. Brian Drayton’s On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry (revised and updated) is relevant for anyone who wants to embody that... Read more.
Immersed in Prayer
edited by Michael Resman
reviewed by Margaret Kelso
Over two dozen people share their thoughts and stories about their prayer lives in this collection edited by Michael Resman. Immersed in Prayer: Stories from Lives of Prayer arose from a project of the editors of the publication What Canst Thou Say, who developed sixteen... Read more.
The insight at the heart of nonviolence is that we live in a tragic gap – a gap between the way things are and the way we know they might be. It is a gap that never has been and never will be closed. If we want to live nonviolent lives, we must learn to stand in the tragic gap, faithfully holding the tension between reality and possibility in hopes of being opened to a third way.
– Parker Palmer (2004)
[The following texts were abridged from the originals, which are available at:
https://westernfriend.org/calls-annual-sessions-2022 ]
Dear... Read more.
A person can be nice to someone in order to cheat them, but they cannot be kind to them to cheat them; that would not be kind. When Micah taught, “Do justice; love kindness; walk humbly with your God,” the lesson was not to love persons, but to love an attitude towards persons. An attitude that honors the self-respect of every creature and accepts indebtedness to the common good (and hence, indebtedness to the particular creature one is facing) – this is kindness. When engaging in acts of... Read more.
Dear Friends: In “Alternatives to Prison” (Western Friend, March/April 2022), Susan Cozzens suggests that “Quakers by and large want to live in that Light and Love that takes away the occasion of all prisons.” Taking away “the occasion of all prisons” would seem to be a prerequisite for their abolition.
However, there may always be those whose deliberate actions require them to be segregated, at least for a time, from the society at large that they have victimized. The... Read more.
Dear Friends: I’m sad that so many people – including so many “recorded Friends” – misunderstand what “membership” in a meeting means.
In the modern age, when we no longer face persecution for public expression of Quaker faith and practice, meetings no longer need to document whether or not a person who self-identifies as “Quaker” may or may not speak for us publicly.
Yes, there are people who mis-speak and claim they are speaking “Quakerism.” That is regrettable, but... Read more.
