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Deep Hope in Optimystical Times (abridged) For decades, I’ve been talking publicly about the gathering catastrophes of climate change and social injustice, and about the decline of the Society of Friends. Sounds pretty gloomy, I know. My day job as a palliative care chaplain at a large urban hospital entails sitting at the feet of those very powerful teachers named in Buddhist tradition: old age, sickness, and death.

On Cooperation (September 2022)

Hope in Dangerous Times (news item)

Deep Archive (deep archive index page)

Deep Hope in Optimystical Times (unabridged) (library item)

Deep Listening

Hope? Abyss, Faith, Kinship (abridged) I want to start with an inglorious story of protests gone by. During the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2002-2003, I was a student at Earlham College. Weekend after weekend, I traveled from Indiana to Washington, DC, for marches and protests. It seemed to be a ritual intended for building up and projecting our own sense of power as a people. I don’t remember how many weekends I made that trip. We marched through the empty corridors of large granite buildings with nobody in them, seemingly hundreds of thousands of people, yelling to the ether.

On Neighbors (September 2019)

Hope and Witness in Dangerous Times (news item)

Beloved Community (abridged)  

On Cooperation (September 2022)

Building Bridges (abridged) [The following text was excerpted from Kenya Casanova-Sales’s complete keynote talk, which is published at: https://westernfriend.org/media/building-bridges]

On Teachers (September 2020)

Uprooting Racism (abridged) My son was raised as a Quaker, but he left the meeting and joined an African American mega-church. Both our daughters were raised as Quakers, and they also left. During a retreat I attended this summer, several African American Friends told me they no longer attend their Quaker meetings because they cannot tolerate the racism they experience there on a weekly basis.

On Children (September 2018)

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