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The Landscape of Sanctuary

Albuquerque Monthly Meeting is “positioned” in a cultural and political landscape, but I can no more see our position in that landscape than I can see the position of our planet in the Milky Way, or the back of my own head. I can see that our meetinghouse sits on a one-way street in a valley separating the Sandia Mountains on the east from the Mesa on the west. Ask me about the minutiae of operating a sanctuary in a Quaker meetinghouse, and I can hold forth. Ask me about our position in the political landscape, and I find myself in a vortex of questions: What is sanctuary? What is political? What is a landscape?

On Politics (July 2017)

Overcome Our Judgmentalism

Dear Editor: I read the article “Queer Quaker Kinship” with sadness (Western Friend, Nov/Dec 2017). Mainly I’m sad to be reminded of what LGBTQ people suffer, even within our own Society of Friends. But I have another sorrow as a person who has been called to encourage greater understanding among all four branches of Friends: Liberal (that’s us), Conservative, Friends Church, and Evangelical.

On Garbage (November 2017)

Being Quaker . . . Where You Are (review)

Reading Sakre Edson’s collection of interviews is an experience akin to sitting in worship-sharing with Friends whom you almost think you know already, each contemplating the query, “What kind of Quaker am I?”

On Garbage (November 2017)

Quaker With-Oneness

The Quaker community where I was raised spent a lot of time thinking about words. I remember sitting through business meetings as a child when the language of a single-sentence minute could be deliberated, revised, read back, and deliberated again more than a half dozen times before unity was reached.

On Tech (July 2024)

War Tax Conversation

To the Editor: I am delighted by the correspondence in Western Friend concerning war tax resistance. (I will use the term “refuser” in this statement. I like this fairly new way of expressing out war tax actions.) I have been a war tax refuser since 1980, and David Hartsough’s letter reflected well my own view. Nancy Haimes argues that war tax refusal is ineffective, maybe even counter-effective. She believes that we should devote ourselves to influencing Congress and to effective participation in the political system. I say that these are not either/or responses. Most of us who are war tax refusers also write and lobby our members of Congress. We demand a vast reduction in the U.S. military spending, and we yearn for and seek the passage of national legislation that would make war tax refusal legal. For information about the bill that is currently before Congress, go to peacetaxfund.org.

On Consumption (May 2013)