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Spring is a Marching Band

Faith and Discernment in Times of Crisis

• Authored by:
• Amy Cooke

When our lives and organizations go according to plan, decisions flow naturally from our commitments. We experience little controversy. Our friends and families don’t question the direction we are headed. We don’t spend our days agonizing over choices.

On Mixture (November 2018)

Quaker With-Oneness

• Authored by:
• Eric Muhr

The Quaker community where I was raised spent a lot of time thinking about words. I remember sitting through business meetings as a child when the language of a single-sentence minute could be deliberated, revised, read back, and deliberated again more than a half dozen times before unity was reached.

On Tech (July 2024)

Hybrid Meeting - A Dramatic Rendition

Who Left their Dishes in the Sink?

• Authored by:
• Julia Thompson

I began exploring my spiritual path through Buddhist meditation in my early twenties. Since that time, I have attended five weeklong, silent, Buddhist retreats. These were pivotal to my spiritual growth and developing self-awareness. My last one was in December, and I realized two things. First, to be in silence is a practice that gives me the space and grounding I need to seek authentic wholeness and to strive to align my life with a higher purpose. Second, I realized that because I knew no one at these silent retreats, I was essentially surrounded by strangers, and I left with unsettling feelings of emptiness. In the last decade, I have grown to love the continuous community of Quakers. Recently, I have been feeling more guided to keep my spirituality contained within Quakerism, as it is my home.

On Home (September 2017)

Preserving a Meaningful Life on Earth

• Authored by:
• Natalie Ramsland,
• Carol Reilley Urner

An interview with Carol Urner by Natalie Ramsland

On Weapons (January 2019)

On Vision

• Authored by:
• Mary Klein

As Kenneth Boulding summarized in 1979, certain “Quaker distinctives” have held steady from the beginning: 1) faith in the presence of a universal call to perfectibility in all Life, 2) a profound unwillingness to use threat, even for supposedly good ends, 3) a passion for veracity, even in minute particulars of language, and 4) a sense of being upheld by grace, a thing not under human control, but responsive to human need. Boulding especially underlined the importance of veracity, “It is the utter abandonment of deceit in any form which lies at the very heart of the Quaker way of life.” (However, he also added, “[Veracity] does not necessarily imply not being in error.”)

On Vision (January 2021)

Soul Force

• Authored by:
• Jonathan Stoll

This summer, MC Stoll and DJ Cole dropped the first track of our new album, Soul Force Ones (SF1s). It’s not music (though an SF1s spoken-word album is in development), but it’s recorded to a sort of spiritual harmony. What does that mean?

On Relevance (March 2021)

Dignity and Civic Life

• Authored by:
• Kevan Insko

We can envision a universal parameter of dignity for individuals: Each person is owed fundamental respect simply by virtue of being human. We can also appreciate the importance of ensuring dignified treatment of the myriad of groups that comprise our society, and in particular, those that have been exploited, marginalized, and disempowered. For Friends, the importance of human dignity rests on a strong spiritual basis:

On Dignity (July 2023)

Information Technology for Our Testimonies

• Authored by:
• David Bantz

Information technology can and should be part of Friends’ work.

On Tech (July 2024)