Western Friend logo

Search

A search result that only shows a person’s name often links to a list of articles written by that person.

Prayer

I don’t know if you are real and I don’t want to be fooled anymore, letting myself be born into beliefs that are both wrong and profoundly harmful – two-edged sword slicing my insides as it tears stranger into enemy.

On Control (July 2019)

A Gathering of Spirits (review)

Consider the major events of the first half of the Twentieth Century: two world wars, the Great Depression, Jim Crow, women getting the vote. What was happening in the Society of Friends in America during this time? That is the subject of A Gathering of Spirits: The Friends General Conferences 1896-1950, by Douglas Gwyn, as seen through the records of twenty-seven biennial conferences put on by the Friends General Conference (FGC), an organization born of the efforts of seven liberal-progressive yearly meetings. These conferences evolved into annual events in 1963, were renamed “FGC Gatherings” in 1978, and continue to convene annually, primarily on the East Coast. Gwyn uses the minutes, themes, and other available documents from each conference from 1896 to 1950 to trace FGC’s organizational development, to document the evolution of the social and political concerns of this group of American liberal Friends, and to provide a glimpse into the wider cultural influences that may have contributed to this evolution. He includes these wider cultural influences “… partly as a corrective to many Quaker histories that are written as if nothing came before Friends and nothing else was going on around Friends.” (p. xx)

On Control (July 2019)

Tom Friendly, A Fantasy

On Monday night, I went to bed fretting about how very little we old people in retirement communities are able to do about all the problems of this world.

On Neighbors (September 2019)

We Are All One

Like many Quakers, my beliefs and responses to the world have been challenged by the political chaos of recent years. It is hard for me to see children separated from their parents, public wilderness areas sacrificed to corporate interests, and the dearth of compassion or humane feelings shown by many politicians and bureaucrats. I have found myself being pulled into adversarial attitudes that I know I do not believe in.

On Separation (November 2019)

Conflict or Pseudocommunity

Quaker Voluntary Service (QVS) is an eleven-month service program for people aged 21-30 who are ready to enter into an experiment in community centered on Quaker values. Fellows have full-time social justice employment and participate in an intentional program of spiritual deepening. We are in our eighth year and have houses in Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, Portland OR, and Minneapolis. I served as a Fellow in Boston in 2016-2017, and since then, I have been on staff as the Recruitment Coordinator and am engaged in equity work.

On Mediation (January 2020)

Olive Rush and Her Legacy

In 1966, the small Quaker meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was bequeathed its current home, the historic house and garden of the painter Olive Rush. It is already an unlikely occurrence for a Quaker meeting to have a patron, and even more so, for the benefactor to be an artist, given Friends’ long history of disparaging the arts as frivolous and vain. Thus, Santa Fe Meeting’s relationship with our “patron” is unique and has been a source of pride, as well as of controversy.

On Art (March 2020)

Peace through Pieces

Several years ago, a co-worker gave me a little book entitled Things I Learned about God from Quilting. I laughed, and thought I could have written this book. So, here are a few of the things I’ve learned and a story or two.

On Art (March 2020)

Mary Dyer’s Hymn (1st review)

In this book, Stanford Searl writes about four Quaker martyrs who were hanged in 1659 and 1660, and about those Friends’ persecutors and other New Englanders of that time, including Searl’s ancestor Richard Waterman. Searl also expresses how all those lives affect him today.

On Art (March 2020)

John Woolman’s Remedies for a Disease

Until a century ago, the term “consumption” referred to the disease we now call tuberculosis (TB). The understanding was that the illness consumed the lungs, which was why people got a persistent cough and eventually coughed up blood. “Consumptive” people were often sent to sanatoriums in the hope of healing and to prevent the spread of the disease to others, but most died. There was no effective medical treatment until the mid-twentieth century. TB is now rare in the United States though it is still a problem in many poorer countries, including Honduras, where I live. At the same time, another type of disease called “consumption” has fully infected wealthy countries like the U.S. and is quickly spreading to other parts of the world. This is the disease of consuming too many products. I am afraid that, without adequate treatment, this illness will continue to consume individuals and societies until all good qualities in our cultures die.

On Wealth (May 2020)