Friends Peace Teams - Our History
Description:
Tex of Val Liveoak's keynote presentation to 2018 PeaceQuest, describing the nearly twenty-five-year history of Friends Peace Teams.
Tex of Val Liveoak's keynote presentation to 2018 PeaceQuest, describing the nearly twenty-five-year history of Friends Peace Teams.
Dear Editor: I just re-read “Beyond Enemy Thinking” by Meagan Fischer in the May/June 2018 edition. As I did so, I realized that her message about relations between LGBTI people in Latin America and non-local advocate organizations has much wider implications. My mind continually turned to how we view “others” in our country today.
A talk by the Pacific Yearly Meeting observerto the General Meeting of Friends in Mexico 2016 – in English and Spanish.
Dear Editor: Regarding your attempt at calculating the carbon offset amount mandated by your and others’ air travel (WF, Nov./Dec.,’16) I am somewhat puzzled by the whole enterprise. Yes, we all participate in the machinery of ongoing environmental degradation and the apparently accelerating pace of climate catastrophe.
Dear Friends: He said he came not to bring peace but a sword. And Fox saw the ocean of darkness before he saw the ocean of light.
When I was in high school, some friends and I snuck into a neighborhood swimming pool that was closed after dark. We tried to keep quiet, but we were having too much fun, and a neighbor called the cops. An officer showed up and calmly asked us to please leave, which we did. Those friends and I are white.
Dear Editor: It was great to read about Burton and Mary Jo Housman’s recent visit to Casa de los Amigos in Mexico City in the Jan/Feb issue. Pacific Yearly Meeting has made progress in building and maintaining ties to Friends in Mexico over the last few years.
Dear Editor: I was pleased to see Dan Clark’s article “A Friendly Approach to Partisanship” in the Jan/Feb issue. I couldn’t agree more that Friends have a great opportunity to work with all elected officials, regardless of political party. Clark writes, “. . .
About three years ago, a group of my Alaskan friends were talking about abuses suffered by citizens from unconstitutional police acts. One of us said that we need a Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission like the one that Desmond Tutu used to help South Africa recover from apartheid.
We’re tolerant of behavior by a two-year-old that would disturb us greatly if it were displayed by an adult. The behavior of the two-year-old is something we’d normally accept as natural to the condition of a two-year-old. The same behavior in an adult would challenge us to reconcile our ideas about what is natural in adult behavior with the disruptive behavior we see before us.
