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That of God in Research In the September/October 2018 issue of Western Friend, “On Children,” I wrote about my experiences as a Child Protective Services (CPS) social worker. Much of what I described about investigating child abuse concerned “control.” For example, my Quaker practices of listening in silence and discernment helped me “learn the rules so you can break them properly,“ as the Dalai Lama recommends. “The rules” in this case were Washington State’s Child Protection Laws and the policies of CPS, which attempt to control the behavior of parents by enforcing norms to restrict physical discipline of children and to achieve minimum levels of care. Those enforcement structures are the stick. The carrots used to control families are the programs that CPS offers to help them, as well as the refuge in foster homes that CPS offers to children when parents fail. Unfortunately, social workers can cause harm when they fail to use judgment and discernment in applying the laws appropriately in each unique situation. As Parker Palmer so beautifully describes, one of the paradoxes of life is that both control and spontaneous creativity are necessary for human flourishing.

On Control (July 2019)

Universal Access to All Knowledge Thanks to a grant from San Diego Friends Meeting, Western Friend was able to hire the Internet Archive to produce electronic copies of virtually all issues of Western Friend and its predecessor publication, Friends Bulletin, going back to 1929. Those documents can now be found at: archive.org/details/westernfriend, and they will also be available on the Western Friend website soon.

On Media (September 2016)

Tempe

Quaker Worship and Fellowship Online

Online Meeting for Worship, hosted …

Reunión en Español

Reunión de adoración y convivencia en línea y español
Online …

Times of worship:

6:00 PM Pacific

Live Oak (Salinas, CA)

Quaker Worship and Fellowship Online

Online Meeting for Worship, hosted …

Times of worship:

11:00 AM Pacific

Mountain View (late)

Quaker Worship and Fellowship Online

Online Meeting for Worship (late), …

Apple Seed (Cotati, CA)

Quaker Worship and Fellowship Online

Online Meeting for Worship
hosted …

Berkeley

Quaker Worship and Fellowship Online

Online Meeting for Worship, hosted …

Big Island

Quaker Worship and Fellowship Online

Online Meeting for Worship
hosted …