Search

This article was written on behalf of North Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Peace and Social Concerns Committee: Kate Hunter (Clerk), Tom Ewell, Cims Gillespie, Rose Lewis, Steve Willey, and Ruth Yarrow.

Margaret Fisher’s reminder of the “traditional Quaker testimony on abstinence from alcohol” is also a reminder of the diversity of the world of Friends. Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice mentions the general concern of addictions, particularly those that are harmful to others. Serving alcohol at Meeting gatherings is not to be done, and Friends should always provide alternatives when they serve alcohol to guests in their homes. Pot is not explicitly addressed in Faith and Practice. So I see that this testimony has a few hairs that can be split.

Quaker Perspectives in Higher Education

Dear Editor: I want to thank Kat Northrup for her article, “Race and Quakerism,” in May/June 2018 Western Friend. She has articulated very well my own observations and concerns. I was struck by this comment: “[The] uncomfortable feeling of disingenuous tokenism . . . is a hard feeling to avoid, unless one is already familiar with how highly the Quaker community values honesty.” I think in this case, Northrup is letting Quakers off the hook too easily. Valuing honesty is not the same as being honest. My range of Quaker experience is limited, but I have observed many who are quick to find the mote in another’s eye and maybe slower to examine their own (sometimes unconscious) biases and motivations. I wonder sometimes if, when we speak of “diversity,” we mean we want to be with people just like us, only with different color skins. Those of us who have found a spiritual home in a Quaker faith community want to share it. But can we share it with those who do not have the same social and political concerns that we have? Can those of us who identify as Christians, as followers of the teachings of Jesus, feel comfortable talking about our relationship with God and Scripture?

“There’s nothing wrong with dating a black guy,” blonde-haired, blue-eyed Julie Boyle said to her friends in our seventh-grade classroom. “My cousin is dating one, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Adults learn best through well-managed conflict, especially in multicultural groups, says George Lakey, one of the most prominent practitioners of satyagraha – the force of truth as the universe arcs toward justice. Originally published in 2010, this second edition of Lakey’s pathbreaking book appears to be aimed at college and university instructors, but it brims with insights for educators of adults in many other settings: training for social justice and social service work, professional and technical training, and even religious education that values experience as well as book learning. Our best efforts as Friends take the form of leading each other toward truthful insights through respectful, cooperative arguments over ideas. George Lakey shows us how to follow this leading.

Sierra Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends (SCYMF) is only a few years old. Not that long ago, most of us were members of Northwest Yearly Meeting (NWYM). After a lengthy conflict, we were informed that we no longer had a place at the family table. To its credit, NWYM chose to acknowledge that we’d made a contribution to the yearly meeting – sometimes over many generations – and decided to share some of their accumulated wealth with us. We won’t know the dollar amount until next year, but for a fledgling yearly meeting with few expenses, whatever we receive will seem like a windfall.

[This article was excerpted from a more detailed original, which is published online at: https://westernfriend.org/media/concepts-god-or-not]