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Post-capitalist, post-racialized, eco-harmony

Quakers and Changes

Christina May Taran

The Estranged Family of Friends

• Authored by:
• Andrew Bruce Secrest

Andrew Secrest was a member of both Lake County Worship Group of Redwood Forest Friends Meeting and of Berkeley Friends Church. He was a husband and father, a hospice nurse, and he followed a calling his whole adult life to bridge the gap between evangelical Friends and liberal Friends. He died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in his home in Lakeport, CA, on June 25, 2013. The text below was excerpted from the transcript of an interview that Western Friend conducted with Andrew on May 16 and May 17, 2013. Thanks to Solomon Smilack for helping with the transcription.

On Love (September 2013)

Charting Our Way

• Authored by:
• Tockhwock,
• Geoffrey Kaiser

Tockhwock (AKA Geoffrey Kaiser) produced “The Chart” that hangs as a poster in many Quaker meetinghouses, depicting Quaker history as a tree. Beginning in the late 1960s, he revised and updated The Chart continually until 2010. During that time, he and his husband Bruce traveled widely among Friends in North America and gave lectures about Friends’ 350 years of schisms and associations. Tockhwock is a member of Appleseed Meeting in Sebastopol, CA (PYM), grew up in Gwynedd Meeting in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and was a founding member of Friends for Lesbian and Gay Concerns in 1970. He spoke with Western Friend by phone on January 23, 2014. Following are edited excerpts from a transcript of that interview.

On Time (March 2014)

Lifting the Veil - Excerpts

• Authored by:
• Darcy Stanley,
• Carl Magruder

Excerpts from the keynote presentation to Pacific Yearly Meeting; June 18, 2016; Walker Creek Ranch, Petaluma, California

On Media (September 2016)

My Life on the Nuclear Brink – Review

• Authored by:
• Trudy Myrrh Reagan

Pacifists may argue that it is a bad choice to do weapons work at all. William Perry, Secretary of Defense under President Clinton, would probably argue that by leaving this job to others, the results could be far worse. Would we suspect that someone who spent his entire career in the defense industry, first as a private contractor and then as a government official, would be nuclear weapons’ biggest critic? Yet, in a 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal, Perry’s name appeared along with former Secretaries of State George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, and Senate arms expert Sam Nunn, calling for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

On Flesh (November 2016)

Partisanship and Quaker Meetings

• Authored by:
• Roena Oesting

Dear Editor: When I was a kid, I thought elections were exciting! All the speeches, the ads, the canvas voting booths going up all along the school hallways. Lately, I have come to hate election season. I find that the yelling, name-calling, anger, and general distrust of one another is distressing to me. And yes, it affects our Quaker meetings as well.

On Competition (January 2017)

The Practice of the Presence

• Authored by:
• Margaret Sorrel

Presence is something I cannot fully describe or understand, informing my life and experience even though it is beyond words. It is a grounding, a solace, a push and shove, a challenge to the status quo. My call to dwell in Presence makes me one of the “peculiar people” and may set me apart even from others who call themselves Quaker. Seeking or being open to Presence gives me hope – hope for self, for others, for the planet. It gives me a sense of knowing that what I see in the material world is only a part of Truth.

On Insight (March 2017)

Calls to the Annual Sessions 2017 – Abridged

• Authored by:
• Diego James Navarro,
• Molly Wingate,
• Warren Ostrom

On Insight (March 2017)