I became a convinced Friend the first time I walked into a Quaker meeting for worship. I was twenty-one, and I experienced the best of what Quaker worship can be. Compared with my previous experience of religion – a “stand up, sit down” experience of being “preached at” – I said to myself, “this is the real thing.” That was fifty years ago.
Be a CASA – Court Appointed Special Advocate
Our world presents us with many problems that are so large we may feel we can do little to make a difference. CASA is a program where one individual’s efforts can change a life, often lives, for the better.
2018 was a year of climate records. The fourth warmest year since the beginning of the industrial revolution, it featured intense drought and wildfires in western North America, a devastating hurricane season in the Southeast, unprecedented flooding in southern Asia, and continued loss of Arctic sea ice. It was also the year that the U.N.
The San Joaquin Valley of California is the most productive agricultural region in the world yet also has the highest levels of poverty, pollution, and hunger in the United States. This paradox did not occur by happenstance, nor should the poor be blamed for their condition. Geographies are planned and constructed; by definition, imprinted with our designs.
The stories I have heard told, graphic and heart-rending, by northbound migrants and asylum-seekers along the Arizona-Mexico border and by Latinx and indigenous campesinos in Central America, have transformed me.
In the United States, gun violence is not a mere veneer on the surface of an otherwise peaceful society, but something deep and dark, with roots in the colonization of the continent and the founding of the nation, in ethnic cleansing, enslavement and the seizure of land from Mexico.
On Father’s Day, June 17, 2018, thirty people gathered at noon for a vigil near the Naval Magazine Indian Island weapons transfer depot on Port Townsend Bay in Washington State. The depot is the largest weapons transfer facility on the West Coast.
Val Liveoak recently shared with Western Friend the text of her keynote presentation to 2018 PeaceQuest, which is online at: westernfriend.org/media/friends-peace-teams-our-history. The following is a compilation of some excerpts from that text.
