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Elias Hicks

The Essential Elias Hicks

• Authored by:
• Bill Durland

Many books use the title, “The Essential So-and-So,” and here’s another. This book depicts a Quaker who proved himself essential. However, reading Elias Hicks is not “more essential” than reading, say, Fox, Penn, Mott, Dyer, or Woolman. So at the beginning of this review, I would like to suggest that Inner Light Books and Charles Martin, Publisher, consider producing more of the same, more books of this caliber that are “Essential.”

On Limits (May 2016)

Percy Hicks-Severn

Quaker Culture: Smiting Words

• Authored by:
• Elias Hicks

[When the] servant [of God] . . . is commanded to smite the rock, [he should] do so, and when to speak calmly to do so. Let the consequence be as it may. And I believe many precious gifts have been greatly marred and some lost by endeavoring to please.

On Conflict (January 2023)

Essential Teachings

• Authored by:
• Karie Firoozmand

Dear Editor: I would like to comment on the book review of The Essential Elias Hicks (May/June 2016). The reviewer has misunderstood the title as indicating that Elias Hicks was himself essential. Rather, the title indicates that the book demonstrates the essence of what Hicks believed and preached. It’s the essence of Hicks, not the opinion that Hicks was essential. Friend Paul Buckley designed his book to reveal the essence of Hicks’ ministry.

On Heritage (July 2016)

On Conflict

• Authored by:
• Mary Klein

As Friends, it matters to us that we try to listen. Those times when we are forced to admit that, in fact, we actually have not been paying attention . . . well, we want to fix it. The impulse to repair misunderstandings is commonplace. But the ability to follow through on such repair often takes more patience and humility than a person can muster on a given day.

On Conflict (January 2023)

On Knowing

• Authored by:
• Mary Klein

Last January, police in South Carolina released a sketch of a possible murder suspect, drawn by artificial intelligence, based on information from DNA found at the crime scene. No eyewitnesses and no cameras had observed the murderer’s face, yet the computer produced an approximation of it, and the authorities believe it might help them solve the crime. (Pollack, NYT, 2/24/2015)

On Knowing (March 2015)

Charting Our Way

• Authored by:
• Tockhwock,
• Geoffrey Kaiser

Tockhwock (AKA Geoffrey Kaiser) produced “The Chart” that hangs as a poster in many Quaker meetinghouses, depicting Quaker history as a tree. Beginning in the late 1960s, he revised and updated The Chart continually until 2010. During that time, he and his husband Bruce traveled widely among Friends in North America and gave lectures about Friends’ 350 years of schisms and associations. Tockhwock is a member of Appleseed Meeting in Sebastopol, CA (PYM), grew up in Gwynedd Meeting in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and was a founding member of Friends for Lesbian and Gay Concerns in 1970. He spoke with Western Friend by phone on January 23, 2014. Following are edited excerpts from a transcript of that interview.

On Time (March 2014)

On Production

• Authored by:
• Mary Klein

After frolicking around The Garden all morning, Adam and Eve were starving. They filled their bellies with the fruit of The Tree, and it gave them such a headache! The knowledge of good and evil throbs in the ever-branching tangle of nerves that is the human brain. And the Tree of Good and Evil produces both kinds of fruit.

On Production (May 2014)

Surmounting Limits in Quakerism

• Authored by:
• Anthony Manousos

When I asked Mary Klein if she would publish an article about the 2016 meeting of Friends World Committee on Consultation, she suggested that I write one for the issue on “Limits.” My initial response was: “Is she kidding?” I was grateful for her offer, but something in me bristles at the word “limits.”

On Limits (May 2016)