Letters

Dear Editor: The author of “Secrets in the Friendly Home” describes a life uncannily like the one would still be living without a late-life separation and divorce.

Dear Anonymous: This is to recognize your courage to write for the July/August issue, regarding the secret of your hidden life among Friends. Dear One, you are heard, your pain is acknowledged. You are not alone.

I do not mean to distract from your situation and, at the same time, I want ask all of us in the Society of Friends:

Dear Friends: My story, “48 Windows,” ran in Western Friend, May/June 2020. Through the readership, I received donations from twenty individuals and one Meeting – Kalamazoo Friends Meeting in Michigan. With your support, we raised about $4,000, enough for thirty windows that have now been fitted.

Regarding the July/August 2020 issue: Roni Burrows is not a member of Tempe Friends Meeting. Susan Cozzens is a member of Eastside Friends Meeting in Bellevue, WA.  ~~~

Dear Editor: Thank you to Bettina Raphael and Western Friend for the worthy tribute to the life and legacy of Olive Rush (March/April 2020).

Dear Editor: I was notified that one of our members, Sam Hays, sent you information about Alice Herz, in response to the poem that Carlos Valentin III wrote about her (“Ten Days,” Jan/Feb 2019) and regarding information I recently discovered in Detroit Friends Meeting’s old files.

Dear Friends: Quakers embrace the inward light to illuminate the dark corners of our own hearts. I have been generous and helpful and empathetic on many occasions. But an underlying selfishness has been sort of hidden there all this time. So, I want to make amends right now and admit to something I failed to do forty years ago.

Dear Editor: The article by William Ashworth of Ashland, OR, in the May/June 2020 Western Friend is a perfect example of righteous, individual fossil fuel purity that judges the rest of us gas users as sinners. No analysis on how we transition to get whole society off fossil fuels. No accounting for all the fossil fuels that went into making his Chevy Bolt EV.

Dear Editor: Thich Nhat Hahn’s Engaged Buddhism offers a worthy moment of reflection on the notion that Buddhist practice is “merely to be” (“From the Editor’s Desk,” May/June 2020).

Dear Editor: Friend Bob Langfelder is correct that my article is not a roadmap to get a whole society off fossil fuels. It was not meant to be. No map is necessary before a journey is undertaken. My purpose was to encourage Friends to undertake the journey.