Dear Editor: I am writing to thank David Albert for his article, “Gandhi’s Smile,” in the July/August 2022 issue of Western Friend. I have been studying the life and work of Barbara Deming, and Albert’s article resonated with those studies.
Dear Western Friends: Please consider joining Boulder Meeting in our Statement of Concern about the Ukraine War (7/17/2022). We adapted it from a recent letter by FCNL’s General Secretary Bridget Moix. We hope to share Friends’ profound commitment to peace widely.
The insight at the heart of nonviolence is that we live in a tragic gap – a gap between the way things are and the way we know they might be. It is a gap that never has been and never will be closed. If we want to live nonviolent lives, we must learn to stand in the tragic gap, faithfully holding the tension between reality and possibility in hopes of being opened to a third way.
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Like many Quakers, my beliefs and responses to the world have been challenged by the political chaos of recent years. It is hard for me to see children separated from their parents, public wilderness areas sacrificed to corporate interests, and the dearth of compassion or humane feelings shown by many politicians and bureaucrats.
Dear Editor:
I serve on the planning committee for an upcoming celebration of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birthday, which will be held October 11-13, 2019, at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Institute for Non-Violence at Stanford University. All Friends are encouraged to attend. For more information, look online at: kinginstitute.stanford.edu/institute/GKGI
The following text is an abridged version of a recently discovered, previously unpublished article. The full version is published online at: westernfriend.org/media/expanding-nonviolence
A lamb in a green pasture is like a kid in a candy shop, or a Friend in bookshop, or a teen at the mall, or a trader at the stock exchange. You’ll see agribusiness associates hectoring the lambs: “You’re so thin! You deserve more! Eat! Eat!” Then all the lambs will gambol around the pastures, nibbling on everything, hither and yon. But my shepherd makes me to lie down.
An article written in July 2018 and published posthumously here.
