Articles

Many Friends in the West today trace our religious ancestry back to the arrival of Joel and Hannah Bean in California in 1882. The monthly meeting that the Beans enlivened in San Jose eventually became the root stock of three new yearly meetings – Pacific, North Pacific, and Intermountain (to oversimplify). Thirty years earlier, Joel and Hannah had traveled with the pioneer “Bean wagon train” that relocated dozens of Beans from New England to the brand new “free state” of Iowa. The Beans... Read more.

Ann’s Story

In November 2018, my family physician, Travis Abbott, who had known me for many years, referred me for a cognitive impairment screening. It was very helpful that Dorsey accompanied me to that screening. It was helpful for her to see what happened and for her to ask questions that I did not think of. I clearly had some areas that were not so good, but I was not formally diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment until January 2020.

Since then, I have told family... Read more.

Many listeners get the wrong idea from hearing me talk about the fact that so many of us in 2023 own child slaves in the Congo, children who are mining cobalt for our electric vehicles and coltan for our cellphones, computers, and other electronic contraptions. Upon hearing this, most American slaveholders (like me) tend to think of cruel and evil plantation masters, sole proprietors who use their slaves to enhance their personal wealth. Such ideas are based on the way cotton was raised in... Read more.

The Man in the Dog Park
by Cathy A. Small with Jason Kordosky and Ross Moore
reviewed by Marybeth Webster

One day in 1982, I realized I was homeless. I didn’t own a single key! No house, no car, no bank box. I had just flown to Los Angeles from Hawaii after selling my business. I tried to rent a car. I was refused for lack of an address! But I had a rather large bank... Read more.

New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust
edited by Howard Debs and Matthew Silverman
reviewed by John Brantingham

New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust, edited by Howard Debs and Matthew Silverman, was released this April by Vallentine Mitchell, a publisher of books in the fields of Jewish, Middle Eastern... Read more.

All growth is silent. The heavenly spheres move in silence. Light spies its way in silence.

          – Joel Bean (1911)

Dear Friends: I began this year as an online participant at Southern Africa Yearly Meeting, where we explored the depths of meaning in the word ubuntu. I had some prior familiarity with the word, especially thanks to the writings of anti-apartheid leader Desmond Tutu. This event, though, gave me a more specifically Quaker insight into the profound way ubuntu is practiced by Friends in Southern Africa and beyond.  

In the Zulu language, ubuntu... Read more.