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On Legacy

• Authored by:
• Mary Klein

As millions of victims would attest, religious communities routinely fail to demonstrate mercy or kindness.

On Legacy (September 2024)

Zoom Fog

• Authored by:
• Nichoe Lichen

Friends who had yearned for the quiet, human-centered, mystical experience from before the pandemic had to tolerate audiovisual equipment.

On Tech (July 2024)

Western Friend Podcast

Creating Real Security

• Authored by:
• Al Thompson,
• Susan Strong,
• Leonard Joy,
• Shelley Tanenbaum,
• Sarah Hawthorne,
• James Hosley,
• Charlie Blanchard

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) recently published a pamphlet titled, Shared Security: Reimagining U.S. Foreign Policy (April 2013). At Strawberry Creek Monthly Meeting in Berkeley, California, a small group considered this pamphlet and then organized a larger meeting to talk about this topic after Meeting for Worship on September 29, 2013.  Twenty-eight people attended. For the meeting, we prepared a one-page handout with some quotes from the AFSC/FCNL pamphlet. The text of that handout is included at the end of this article. [The pamphlet is also reviewed on page 32 of this magazine. – Editor]

On Patriotism (January 2014)

Playing Violent Games in Peace

• Authored by:
• David Wampler

In his recent article, “ISIS’s Call of Duty,” Jay Caspian Kang describes similarities between ISIS recruitment films and first-person-shooter games – similarities that are likely intentional (The New Yorker, September 18, 2014). Kang’s article is one of many that play into a larger debate about the role of violent videogames and other violent media in our culture. This debate has continued unresolved for decades, and both sides often succumb to strong emotions and hyperbolic statements. I feel this leads to a shutdown in communication between groups, and that is the issue I would like to address in this article.

On Temptation (November 2014)

Faith and Sewage

• Authored by:
• Jane Mountjoy-Venning

Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi (translated into English in 1993) has been my theme book for years. While it was written with toilet trainees and their eager caregivers in mind, I have other reasons to display the book prominently in my office. I work for a program in our local health department, the program that monitors water quality in streams, lakes, and groundwater, the program responsible for ensuring that the septic systems in our county are adequately treating the sewage that flows through them. That’s where “everyone poops” comes in.

On Garbage (November 2017)

Healing with Native Peoples through Truth (abridged)

• Authored by:
• Paula Palmer

[The following text was excerpted from the keynote presentation to Lake Erie Yearly Meeting on July 30, 2021. The unabridged text is published online at: https://westernfriend.org/media/healing-native-peoples-thru-truth.]

On Freedom (January 2022)

Reckoning – Quakers and Indian Boarding Schools

• Authored by:
• Amelia Kegan

Schools don’t have graveyards. At least, that is what many believed until some gruesome recent discoveries.

On Place (May 2022)

Worship-Sharing in Its Place

• Authored by:
• Georgia Daniels

On Compassion (November 2024)