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SPICES and Human Population Growth

• Authored by:
• Richard Grossman

Friends are not known for large families. However, it is my experience that many members of the Religious Society of Friends are like most people in the USA – we are generally unaware of the connections between what we hold dear and the growing number of people in the world. Human population growth is an “elephant in the room,” which we typically avoid or ignore.

On Needs (May 2015)

Everything is Connected (abridged)

• Authored by:
• Peterson Toscano

Excerpts from the keynote presentation to North Pacific Yearly Meeting; July 27, 2017; University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington

On Home (September 2017)

On Tricks

• Authored by:
• Mary Klein

A sense of belonging is a blessing. Whether we are animal, plant, bacterium, fungus, or protozoan, each of us has a place in our biosphere. If perfect justice existed, every creature would enjoy a feeling of belonging in whatever place it found itself. But actual creation is riddled with imperfection, trial and error, justice and injustice, an ocean of darkness flowing beneath the ocean of light.

On Tricks (May 2021)

On Words

• Authored by:
• Mary Klein

Language is a technology, a means of employing experience-based knowledge for practical purposes. Words are torches that beam from mind to mind, prompting individuals to turn their attentions in the same direction and to coordinate their efforts for survival. Many species rely on communication systems in this way. Homo sapiens, however, is a species that seems to have undergone a freakishly powerful cognitive mutation about 70,000 years ago. We became enabled then to speak of fictions.

On Words (November 2021)

The Ground from which Miracles Spring

• Authored by:
• Anna Fritz

I didn’t want to join the committee. As a “released Friend,” my role is to follow the leadings of my music ministry out in the world, freed from responsibility for the business of Multnomah Monthly Meeting. But I have found myself reckoning lately with a firehose of Spirit blasting a message through me that has nothing to do with songs or cello. In September 2021, this message came out in an epistle, which was published October 30 in Western Friend’s weekly email newsletter. This epistle, “Returning to the Body,” arose from my experience serving on Multnomah’s ad-hoc committee concerned with the question of how to worship in this age of pandemic. [See: https://westernfriend.org/returning-body]

On Freedom (January 2022)

Abortion and Community

• Authored by:
• Richard Grossman

“Community” is central to Friends’ faith and practice, and of course, it is central to all of humanity. Life starts with a community of two – the mother and her infant. A baby’s community grows as she grows. Eventually it may include her father, other siblings, and many others.

On Healers (September 2023)

Letter of Dismay

Celebration of World-Beyond-War Billboard

Thomas Markey

Artificial Intelligence and Earthcare