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Self-Respect

Dear Editor: When my “article” called Pride was edited to appear as a “letter,” I felt an essential something was missing. Someone once remarked “You must be very proud of your children.” I responded, “No. For them I feel love, respect, enjoyment, sympathy. Not Pride, which I have long understood as the deadliest sin.”

On Family (September 2014)

A Field Guide to Evil

Whether we talk about it or not, we hold strong views about evil. So I’d like to share with you some vocabulary about evil that I’ve learned, which can allow us to describe evil a little more accurately than we usually do, especially when our feelings get roused up. I’m not interested in catastrophic evil or cosmic evil. I’m interested in the day-to-day stuff – the times I forget to say thank-you or the times I take a shortcut and inadvertently hurt somebody else who doesn’t take the shortcut.

On Temptation (November 2014)

Resisting the Temptation to Polarize

I want to start with a story of a “popcorn meeting.” This is a type of Meeting for Worship that most Friends dread – full of distractions and superficial messages – including messages that are purely political, purely personal, or even incomprehensible – messages that actually seem to block us from finding a deeper Unity together.

On Temptation (November 2014)

The Struggle for Truth

Dear Friends: 9/11 does not go away. It is with us on a daily basis, and it has changed our character as a nation. It has been the rationale for unending war, the sacrifice of civil liberties, the creation of a surveillance state, and a litany of radical changes in US behavior at home and abroad.

On Knowing (March 2015)

Quakers and the Forced Assimilation of Native Americans

An interview with Paula Palmer

On Difference (July 2015)

The Light Within, Then And Now - Review

Rex Ambler is a British theologian, teacher, and writer. In several previous small volumes, he has made major contributions to Friends’ theology (for example, The End of Words) and spirituality (Light To Live By). The Light Within: Then and Now (Pendle Hill Pamphlet 425, 2013) extends that precedent.

On Difference (July 2015)

Focus and Immersion in Present Experience

Waiting for sunrise on a desert morning this March, my focus came to the inward Truth only. I had walked in darkness with a quiet dog to a saddle between two hills in the middle of the Mojave Desert Preserve. In wild lands, especially in dry lands, I find less cumber between God and me. I can feel a presence in my middle. With Light arriving, I reflect on my feelings and what I’m led to do. Guidance from the Holy is clearer in these times of presence.

On Play (September 2015)

Work Not in Vain

Lloyd Lee Wilson’s words to Pacific Yearly Meeting, July 14, 2015; Walker Creek Ranch, Petaluma, California; as reported by Western Friend

On Play (September 2015)

The Economy of Unknowing

As an economist, I study and teach about money, markets, and the economy. Given that I have been on this professional journey for nearly half a century, something makes me feel that I should have it all pretty much figured out by now. But I don’t. In some ways, I know less now than I once did. Perhaps this is good. Perhaps some unknowing is just what we need to improve our understanding of what the economy is and how it should work.

On Money (November 2015)

The Original Quaker Peace Testimony

My paternal grandfather was a stern, strait-laced Ohio Quaker. My father, his eldest son, lived out most of those values in his own life, including the traditional Quaker repudiation of armed conflict. Yet at the outset of WWII, the youngest son of the family – my Uncle Clinton – chose to join the Army. My father evidently tried to dissuade his younger brother from joining the Army. In the summer of 1942 as Clinton was undergoing basic training in California, he responded to my father’s concerns with these words:

On Countries (January 2016)

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