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Service – A Gateway to Fulfillment

• Authored by:
• Yogi Sharma

The question of how to have a fulfilling existence during our short time on earth is especially significant in contemporary society. Many of us find that we struggle much less than our ancestors did for survival and basic necessities. We don’t have tigers chasing us, or wolves bothering us. As a result, when our short-term survival is not on the line, our prefrontal cortexes can direct their energies to questions of long-term happiness.

On Puzzles (May 2019)

On Separation

• Authored by:
• Mary Klein

The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference. The opposite of faith isn’t doubt; it’s certainty. Even though “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (Article 1 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights), human dignity is not, in fact, universally respected, but is instead routinely trampled under the urgency to build, achieve, instruct, repair, etc. People rarely exercise much patience for actions or attitudes that don’t fit into their own plans.

On Separation (November 2019)

Beauty and The Gadfly

• Authored by:
• Stanford Searl

Dear Editor:

On Debt (July 2021)

Presence and Place

• Authored by:
• Rick Seifert

When I tell people I was on Mount St. Helens on May 17, 1980, the day before the massive eruption that left fifty-seven dead, the first question they ask is, “Why?”

On Place (May 2022)

Immersed in Prayer (review)

• Authored by:
• Margaret Kelso

Over two dozen people share their thoughts and stories about their prayer lives in this collection edited by Michael Resman. Immersed in Prayer: Stories from Lives of Prayer arose from a project of the editors of the publication What Canst Thou Say, who developed sixteen queries about prayer life, which they sent to their subscribers and Quaker organizations. They ranged from “What happens when you pray?” to “What ways did you find to work around your impediments to prayer?” The sixteen queries form the structure of this book.

On Place (May 2022)

Toward a Science of Nonviolent Action

• Authored by:
• George Lakey

[The original version of this article, with footnotes and more detail, is published online at: westernfriend.org/media/toward-science-nonviolent-action-unabridged]

On Science (November 2022)

The Perception of the Heart

• Authored by:
• Laurie Lange

In our highly commercial world, the way we think of the heart’s emotional capacity is mostly limited to its role in romantic love. As wonderful as romance can be, this trivializes the heart. The heart is an organ of perception. It’s where we go to make sense of feeling states we can’t quite pin down, try as we might to encapsulate them in words.

On Perception (March 2023)