Donald W. McCormick

Sometimes we are reluctant to talk about our Quakerism with friends, neighbors, and co-workers. In my (so far unpublished) research on expressing Quaker spirituality in the workplace, I interviewed one person who said that when a co-worker found out he was a Quaker, he was stunned. “I worked next to you for five years and had no idea you were a Quaker.”

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In this book, Stanford Searl writes about four Quaker martyrs who were hanged in 1659 and 1660, and about those Friends’ persecutors and other New Englanders of that time, including Searl’s ancestor Richard Waterman. Searl also expresses how all those lives affect him today.

Paranoid, a 2016 British conspiracy thriller available on Netflix, has Quakerism as one of its themes. In this eight-part series, a team of detectives investigates a murder and a deadly conspiracy. One of the detectives is a man in his sixties who becomes romantically involved with a Quaker, also in her sixties. Another character calls her a “Quaker sex bomb” (three words that are not often heard together). After the start of this relationship, the detective begins attending meeting for worship. The show presents a nuanced perspective on older adult sexuality, and portrays Quakerism sympathetically and accurately. The scenes of meeting for worship were shot in the Frandley Quaker Meeting House in Cheshire, England, and members of this meeting were used as extras. Only three reviews of Paranoid have appeared on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, but they are all positive. ~~~

In meeting for worship, we center down, listen to vocal ministry, discern authentic vocal ministry, and hold people in the Light. The practice of mindfulness helps me with all of these. Also, if it weren’t for my mindfulness practice, I probably would have had to abandon Quakerism decades ago.

Quaker Poems: The Heart Opened

Written by Peri Muldofsky