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Finding Life with the Dead

• Authored by:
• Sarah Katreen Hoggatt

My sanctuary is my favorite cemetery. It’s easy to miss if you don’t know it’s there. Shielded by shrubbery, it runs down a slope to the river. Outside, my life is rushed and I lose the bigger picture. Inside, I walk with ghostly companions, listen to their wisdom, and find perspective.

On Place (May 2022)

Women Doing Life

• Authored by:
• Lora Lempert

An interview with Lora Lempert

On Captivity (January 2018)

New Structures, New Life

• Authored by:
• Norma Silliman

Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends (SCYMF) is a relatively new addition to the yearly meetings of Friends in the West. Many SCYMF Friends have been involved with other Western yearly meetings, formally and informally, for years, including involvement in “Convergent Friends” – a fellowship which has met occasionally for more than a decade, bringing together members of liberal “Friends Meetings” and Christian “Friends Churches.” Some of us have also participated for many years in the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women’s Theology Conferences, another opportunity for Friends from different branches to share ideas, worship, and fellowship. So, SCYMF is new, but not new.

On Conflict (January 2023)

Follow the Life (news item)

Choosing Earth, Choosing Life (news item)

Life Reflections Workshop (news item)

Transitions and Life

Finding Balance with MS

• Authored by:
• Marybeth Bland

I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) four months after I completed a 150-mile bike ride for the American Lung Association. I was thirty-one years old. Two years later, I had to stop working. Soon, I could no longer identify with anyone I knew. It seemed like everyone was either having babies or working. I was doing neither.

On Balance (May 2017)

Living Grief, Finding Connection

• Authored by:
• Mary Ann Percy

As climate disasters, species extinctions, and the relentless unraveling of the Web of Life on Earth become ever more impossible to ignore, eco-anxiety becomes ever more widespread. There’s now a name for this unique mental anguish – solastalgia – a term created by environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht in the early 2000s. Unrelenting hurricane seasons, devastating forest fires, smoke- and smog-filled air, prolonged drought, extreme heat, clear-cutting – all these can trigger solastalgia. Buddhist deep ecologist, eco-philosopher and activist Joanna Macy expresses this well in The Bestiary:

On Loss (May 2023)

Art of Life (review)

• Authored by:
• Derek Lamson

Alivia Biko’s music is important in its own right  and it’s beautiful. Beyond that, her music is important as ministry. I predict that down the road, in the bright shiny future, people will look back and talk about our generation of Christ-centered Friends in the Pacific Northwest and about the creation of our new yearly meeting, Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends (SCYMF). Biko’s outsized contribution to the creation of SCYMF will play a big part in those discussions. Articles, chapters, whole books will be written on Mike Huber and Gar Mikkelsen, Holiness and Quaker identity, medical missions and quilting missions, and, of course, LGBTQ+ participation. There will be some good, nerdy side-trips into “Quakers” versus “Friends” and “churches” versus “meetings,” and with great good luck, a special photo section with at least one shot of Peggy Morrison on her Kawasaki. Especially, people will read about Alivia Biko and listen to her album Art of Life, filled with artistry, warmth, and celebration of community and spirit.

On Freedom (January 2022)