Healing the World
Articles
Abortion and Community
Nuclear Waste and States Rights
What Friends Bring to Politics
A few other Oregon Quakers and I were in an online book group. We read We Cry Justice: Reading the Bible with the Poor People’s Campaign. This book consists of fifty-three essays, each just two or three pages long, each including Scriptural references. It’s by and for people who are working towards more dignity for poor people – by challenging the ways that our institutions keep people in poverty. This book makes one thing clear to me – local government policies and actions have been major drivers of economic inequity throughout the history of our nation, especially in terms of housing inequality. It also seems clear to me that this level of democracy – the local level – is a critical place for us to work to make a positive impact on these issues.
Dignity and Civic Life
Spiritually Clean – A Social Laundromat Ministry
Global Blue-Green Zone for COP28
My Slaves
Living Grief, Finding Connection
Martyrs for Conscience’s Sake
In Solidarity with Migrants
Can You Believe?
The Commodification of Quakers
What Friends Can Bring
New Structures, New Life
Community v. Crisis
Peace – One Yard at a Time
Palestine, October 2022
Compassionate Listening in Alabama
Persistence
Please Do Not “Believe in” Science
Scientific and Moral Reasoning
Toward a Science of Nonviolent Action
[The original version of this article, with footnotes and more detail, is published online at: westernfriend.org/media/toward-science-nonviolent-action-unabridged]
Botany on an Endangered Planet
Uplifted in Witness Together
Positively Quaker
Widening the Welcome
Three Numbers
It’s OK to Talk about Quakerism
Individual and Collective Anti-Racism
Reckoning – Quakers and Indian Boarding Schools
Two Quakers Living with the Military
A Place to Work for Peace and Justice
Loving Earth Project
9th Street Ministries
Nurturing Integrity on Colonized Land
Now or Never
Alternatives to Childbearing
A Search for an Honorable Bank
Alternatives to Prison
The Search Committee
Foundations for Choices
Healing with Native Peoples through Truth (abridged)
Freedom, Fraternity, and Friends (abridged)
Are We Ready for Anti-Racism?
Delights and Downfalls with Words
23rd-Century-Ready Quaker Institutions
Unfamiliar Arid Country
Quakers for Abolition Network
Richmond Anti-Draft Declaration of 1948
The Long-Term Project of Anti-Racism
Friends, Racial Justice, and Policing
Pay Vaccines Forward with COVAX
DIY Divestment
An Invitation to COP26
Bitcoin: A Consideration for Friends
Spiritual Service through Showing Up
Towards Peace in Yemen
A Puzzling Grave in a Quaker Cemetery
Faith on the Border
An Unfinished Revolution
Wisdom at One with the Earth
The Quaker Spa
Off the Shelves
In a Quaker Minute
Vaccines and Community
Integrity Investment
Bridging the Generational Divide
Speaking Truth
Anti-Racist Giving
Vision for the Day to Be
since funding is first
Rules of Engagement
Abolish the Police
Get Out of the Way
This Is the Work
Evolution of The Peace Testimony
Daily Justice and Injustice
Epistle of the Friends of Color Retreat 2020
An FCNL Education in Civic Engagement
International Friends School
Racism, Housing, and Cities
The Face Under The Face
Secrets in the Friendly Home
The Messy Ethics of Giving
Why do Quakers soft-pedal the importance of financial giving? It’s true, our unprogrammed meetings don’t need as much as conventional churches since they typically lack paid staff and large buildings. But beyond those differences, we seem to be quite uneasy in even bringing up the topic.
48 Windows
Fulton & Larkin
Frontline Housing for Healthcare
Gasoline and Leadings
Poetry Heals
Craftivism
Conflict or Pseudocommunity
Better than a Club
Non-Adversarial Communication
Testimonies of Separation
A New Story for Earth
Haregewoin’s Wail
Gossip, Friends, and friends
Expanding the Concept and Practice of Nonviolence (abridged)
Tom Friendly, A Fantasy
Making Peace a Reality
Black. Christian. Anarchist.
Where Have All the Flowers Gone? *
Two Quaker Observers to COP24
A Progressive Water Policy Platform
“Tell Our Story.”
Dispatch from the Edge
Minute on Immigration
Quakers and Gun Violence
Locking the Gates of War
A Brief History of Friends Peace Teams
Bullet Points
Gun Control and/or Civil War?
Nineteen Children
#MeToo and Quaker Men
The Long View
Faith and Discernment in Times of Crisis
White +
Child Protective Services
A Girl with Vision and Resolve
Two Views of One Quaker Workplace
A Great Place to Work
Unite for Dignity and Respect
Loving Stolen Land
Beyond Red and Blue
Towards a Quaker View of Love
[The author chose the title of this article to honor the ground-breaking 1963 pamphlet from Friends in England, Towards a Quaker View of Sex.]
Beyond Enemy Thinking
Journeys through Faith and Time
Daily Practice
Song Powers a Movement
I learned about the power of nonviolence and nonviolent action in the spring of 1960, while participating in sit-ins at lunch counters in Maryland and Virginia with African American fellow students at Howard University. Most Saturdays we would go to a People’s Drug store, sit down at a lunch counter, get arrested, and then sing freedom songs in our jail cells all weekend.
The Airtight Cage of Poverty
Prisoners Transforming Prisons
Freed from Crushing Poverty in Bolivia
Fifty Years of Right Sharing
Faith and Sewage
Chickens on the Cheap
Stewardship of Stuff
A New Thing Springs Forth
Queer Quaker Kinship
Emancipation without Freedom
Run for Public Office!
Resistance, Resilience, and Restoration
Spiritual Reconstruction
Trapped in the Temporary
Look into their Faces
A Lesson for Three Characters
Quaker PopOffsets
Tangible
Quaker Light in Australia and New Zealand
Native Voices and Quaker Choices
Snowflakes
A Different Gender Story
Recovering Innocents
Quakers and Standing Rock
From Competition to Compassion
Cooperation & Competition - A Nordic Balance
Fleshing Out
The Seventh Person
Finding Truth in the Time of Hysteria
The Joy, The Mary Dyer Story (excerpt)
Desire for Connection in Guatemala
Setting Limits on Fossil Fuels
Rich People Won’t Eat It
Religion and Politics
Ministry of the Wolf
My Quest to Change the Education System
Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Cookies
A Cuba Testimony
Reconciliation in Eastern Africa
Voluntary Poverty Has to Be a Choice
Public Banking – Friendly Values
The Price of Lettuce
Sticking Out Like Sore Thumbs
Raising Quaker Voices about Race
Moving Forward Together – In A Good Way
Not the Final Word
SPICES and Human Population Growth
Simple Acts, Basic Needs
Quakers, Climate, and Money
Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation in Alaska
Talking the Walk of Peace
Between Two Civilizations
A Friendly Approach to Partisanship
Playing Violent Games in Peace
Justice Reform Begins with Understanding
Love Always Protects
The Man in the Yellow Plaid Shorts
With a Concern for Being Thirteen
Attending to the Intersections of Oppression
Alarmed
Reluctantly Facing an Inconvenient Truth
Nuclear Waste, One Million Years from Today
The Miracle of Friendly Water
Taking Time to Ask, “Why?”
Healing Our Nation’s Oldest Wounds
Creating Real Security
Transcending Borders
Draft Counseling Across the Divide
How to Sell a Quaker
The Wrong Kind of Silence
Facing Gullibility
Caring for Young Adult Friends
Love the Prisoner
If We Don't Build it
Forty Years of Progresa in Guatemala
Of Quakers and Corporations
If Animals Could Talk
Consume Less
The Great March for Climate Action
Yes Free Lunch
Whose Needs?
Garage Sale Spirituality
Weighty Friends and Quaker Pharisees
Rekindling the Fire
Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping
The War at Home
Dear IRS: A Quaker Journey with War Tax Resistance
What Do You Say … To a Trauma Survivor?
Planting Seeds of Community
Karen Grizez watched as a mother, holding her hungry infant, received a cup of goat’s milk from a member of the local women’s group.
The Seeds of Gun Violence
At times, addressing the scourge of gun violence in the United States can feel impossible, especially when we seem to hear of a new violent incident every day.
Feeding People in Gaza
I began my work in the Middle East in 1990 with a New York Times op-ed, “Small Lights in the Darkness.”
Friends House Celebration
Forty years ago, College Park Quarterly Meeting established the Friends Association of Services for the Elderly (FASE).
Clerks’ Calls to Annual Sessions 2024
The following excerpts are from complete texts found on corresponding “event” pages on this website.
Earth Justice Worship
My most powerful worship experience of the last decade took place on a chilly morning last November, on a folding chair outside Vanguard headquarters in Malvern, PA.
A Certain Naïveté
I’ve been visiting men in federal prisons for forty years and have shared time with nearly 200 men.
In the Twilight Zone
Several years ago, I sat in the jury pool for a federal trial that promised to be lengthy.
Information Technology for Our Testimonies
Information technology can and should be part of Friends’ work.
Generations of Technologies and Quakers
We are in a liminal period, a transitional time between the information technology and the artificial intelligence.
Quaker Corporate Experience Online
Likely the greatest impact of technology on Quaker corporate experience has been online technology in our meetings for worship.
A Case for Yet Another Committee
New technologies have the potential to strengthen our communities.
Talk, For Heaven’s Sake
There are situations in which the confines of worship sharing strike me as neither necessary nor helpful.
A Testimony of Compassion
The line was clearly drawn. Etched in hate. Etched on the right and on the left. The date was August 12, 2017. The location, Charlottesville, Virginia.
How Quaker Climate Advocates Can Reframe ‘National Security’
Climate change presents a major threat to American security. But we cannot be discouraged or intimidated by the government’s inaction.
Dreams and our Faith in Action
Keep notes on the dreams, nudges and glimmers that become evident with this attunement. This at-one-ment where the eternal now becomes available for us who have cultivated the ears to hear and the eyes to see, the hearts to feel and the belly to know.
Hearing the Call: Mountain Friends Camp
“I wanted to create a space where more people could find that support ... to find what connects them to their own sense of their self, their goals, their values, and their spirits...Camp has been the biggest vocational project of my life so far."
Epiphany or Desperation: An Experiment for a Quaker Gathering
We came to unity on this query: How can our faith practice prepare us and sustain us during this difficult time?
Fundraising as Vocation
“Fundraising is, first and foremost, a ministry…It’s a way of announcing our vision and inviting other people into our mission.” Henri Nouwen, A Spirituality of Fundraising
How Can We Keep From Singing?
When I sing with Friends who sing, I find my way to the same still small place that I reach in a mostly silent Meeting for Worship.
Adam’s Mushrooms: an interview with Adam DeLeo
It took a couple of years, obviously, to build it up to something substantial, which was a terrifying time because I was all in. Suddenly, I had to make something happen of it. There wasn't a plan B per se, neither of us have college degrees.
‘The Inner Light Is Aqueous’
"As a Californian transported to the East Coast for college, I learned about the differences in how rivers have historically been treated and capitalized on across the country was eye-opening. Growing up in inland California, my perception was that rivers are dammed and their water is stored and used for irrigation. The concept that so many rivers on the East Coast flow freely to the ocean was mind-boggling for me."
River Dreamscape
Each morning, we would pack up, leaving nothing but footprints for the breeze to erase. I felt profoundly human and small, journeying through a land of unimaginable beauty and power.
Salmon River Trail: Hiking to Live
My Quaker heritage taught me the healing power of creative meditation and movement. Hiking with Griffin’s spirit has kept me alive.