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Soul-Work in Community

Authored by:
Stanford Searl

[This article was abridged from a far more detailed original, available at: https://westernfriend.org/media/soul-work-quaker-complative-reading]

On Normality (July 2022)

U.S. Combat Drones – Immoral and Illegal

Authored by:
Leah Bolger

Leah Bolger is a former National Board President of Veterans For Peace and continues to serve on the VFP board. She is currently touring the U.S. to promote the work of VFP’s “Drones, Robots, and Future Weapons Working Group.” Leah has worked with Quakers on many common causes over the years, and she spoke with Western Friend by phone on January 25, 2013.

On War (January 2013)

What is the Light?

Authored by:
Todd Swanson

George Fox described himself during his early adulthood as “a man of sorrows in the times of the first workings of the Lord in me.” Shortly later, he stated, “After this did a pure fire appear in me, a spiritual discerning came into me.” By the following year, while he was 24, a major transformation had occurred, “In the year 1648, as I was sitting in a Friend’s house . . . I saw there was a great crack to go throughout the earth, and a great smoke to go as the crack went, and that after the crack, there should be a great shaking. This was the earth in people’s hearts which was to be shaken before the Seed of God was to be raised out of the earth . . . and great meetings we began to have.” He discerned the reason for this change was because “the Lord God had opened to me by his invisible power how every man was enlightened by the divine Light of Christ; and I saw it shine through all.”

On Heritage (July 2016)

Race and Quakerism

Authored by:
Kat Northrup

The first time I was confronted with my identity as a “Brown Woman” was my first trip to North Pacific Yearly Meeting (NPYM). I had never experienced such a direct external approach to my skin color before. My family celebrated my adoption day as a family holiday. We went back to India to see my heritage history, and I was raised with some Indian cultural education, but my racial background wasn’t ever the first characteristic that came to mind when examining my personal identity. The welcome I received because of my brown skin from the Quakers was both amazingly compassionate and entirely unsettling. At that time, I had only just begun to explore this part of my identity. As an extension of this experience, I began to pay more attention to race relations within the Quaker community, and the struggles of different races around the U.S.

On Expansion (May 2018)

Secret Sauce

Authored by:
Jaimie Mudd,
Daniel Mudd

Sometimes, “our world needs us to share secret delights and the secret recipes that feed our souls. This special soul food is ‘a revealing, guiding and discerning aspect of God’s presence within,’” says Doug Gwyn in Words in Time, Sink Down to the Seed (1996).

On Secrets (July 2020)

Hearing the Call: Mountain Friends Camp

Authored by:
Ana Ebi

“I wanted to create a space where more people could find that support ... to find what connects them to their own sense of their self, their goals, their values, and their spirits...Camp has been the biggest vocational project of my life so far."

On Epiphany (February 2025)

Right Sharing - Interview with Jackie Stillwell

Right Sharing - An Interview with Jackie Stillwell

Authored by:
Jackie Stillwell

Jacqueline Stillwell became the general secretary of Right Sharing of World Resources in January 2015. She is a life-long Friend with many years’ experience working with not-for-profit organizations and Quaker organizations, including twenty-two years as Head of School for The Meeting School in Rindge, New Hampshire, and four years service as the presiding clerk of New England Yearly Meeting. Jackie spoke by phone with Western Friend on April 5, 2016. The following text is an edited transcript of portions of that interview. A more complete depiction of the interview can be found in the Western Friend online library.

On Limits (May 2016)

Moving Forward Together – In A Good Way

Quaker Oaks Farm is a place where we, Darlene and Melissa, children of families from very different backgrounds, are creating new stories together. We are characters in the stories, and we are authors. The stories are about what happens when non-Native and Native people risk engaging with the uncomfortable conundrum of how to go forward together, In A Good Way, given all the injustices delivered to Native people over the centuries and which continue today. The stories are about ways that Native peoples, settlers’ descendants, and newer immigrants might co-exist in true harmony.

On Difference (July 2015)