October 2009
Alice M Yaxley: Sustainable economy for the... →
If we experience such a leading and gathering, can our communities reach out to convince others of the joy and liberation that comes from living God’s way, in such numbers that we can choose life for…
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Inside Facebook w/5 Things Brand Managers Should... →
Excerpt: “This means significant changes are happening across the Facebook ecosystem that marketers and brands need to be aware of and account for in their products and strategies.”
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Emerging Diane: New Age Girls (and Boys), Quakers... →
I appreciate the Quaker emphasis on finding that of God in everyone, emphasizing grace over sin and understanding every person as having direct access to the light of the Holy Spirit. But if this slides into denying the existence of evil, then we become a society of Pollyannas, hoping to smile injustice away or to melt cruelty because of our radiant “patterns” of good living. Da Nile...
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Max Carter on Jon Watt's video & young adult... →
Young adult Quakers shared their deep concern that they had been shortchanged by their Friends meetings: pastoral Friends by the lack of teaching on Quaker distinctives and the testimonies; liberal…
les années on MySpace →
Dreamy psychedelica pop that mainlines straight into my musical synapses. Heard on WFMU’s Bill Kelly.
Young Adult Friends Gathering, 2010: Save the... →
We are excited to announce that University Friends Meeting is inviting Young Adult Friends (aged 18-35) from across North America to come together Friday, May 28 - Monday, May 31, 2010, in Wichita,…
LizOpp: When do newcomers learn of Friends'... →
It worries me to see new attenders, seekers, and young families come into our meetinghouses, maybe even get involved in the life of the meeting—the person’s “home meeting”—without some early…
North American Tourist Railways: PENNSYLVANIA →
Craig Barnett: Quaker Way vs Quaker Space →
This experience of Quaker Meeting as a ‘Quaker Space’ for personal reflection has largely eclipsed the more traditional understanding of a ‘Quaker Way’, which involves personal discipline, religious…
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“I’ve worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that...”
– Amy McCready, founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, For Some Parents, Shouting Is the New Spanking (NYTimes)
Inner Lighting Rudy: Old arguments against novel... →
I’ve been reading an 1806 book on Quakers, at A Portraiture of Quakerism. While at first it sounds as though Quakers at the time were against having any fun at all (music, dancing, reading novels,…
Raye: I Lovingly, Respectfully Decline the... →
In my experience, the [words of Galatians 5] are difficult if not impossible to follow unless our hearts and spirits are filled - to the brim! - with the love of Christ. Some of us are filled that…
Lizopp Putting God into SPICE →
What is it we really want those who find us to understand about our peculiar faith tradition? How can we share the fabric of Quakerism and not just a few of its individual threads?
The Limits of the Real Time Web →
Beth Kantor’s nonprofit blog has an good article asking about the possibilities for real-time web interaction and asks whether it’s possible for the web to let someone be in two places at…
mil gracias: Andean Friends writing their stories →
We noted that while most of Quaker writings have come from the global North and West, we can take inspiration from this history and step up now to take our turn. It’s time to hear from Friends in…
John Stephens remembering when "Satan" entered... →
The scope and nature of this challenge came into even clearer focus during Tom’s deployment with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq. In the blog that he began after he arrived in Baghdad, Tom…
Eileen Flanagan on the Book Give Away... →
So, what would be a Quaker approach to the book give away? Well, we historically don’t engage in raffles (a topic that comes up every year or so at our children’s Quaker school). In any case, one of…
Deep Thoughts Michael: Earthly politics vs... →
Friends are now at a crisis… We can conform to political culture… liberal Friends siding more and more with the democrats, Orthodox/evangelical more and more with the republican Religious right. We…
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NYTimes: Sabotage from the Future? →
A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.
Kevin Roberts: The Preacher and the Eternal Now →
We live our lives like passengers on a train, always in motion, always seeming to hurry on to somewhere else, but in truth never leaving our compartments, riding along to our destinations in the…
LizOpp's story of God's instruction →
So when people find out that I grew up on the east coast but have been living in the midwest since 1985, they often ask me, “Why’d you move to the midwest?” And I tell them: God brought me here.
Manousos: Simplicity and Peace (in the Meeting) →
I wish I could say that this simple form of worship never leads to conflict, but I must be honest and admit that people in Meeting sometimes get upset about the vocal ministry. When you allow people…
Social Class Jeanne on the Quaker influence on... →
I wish I could say that this simple form of worship never leads to conflict, but I must be honest and admit that people in Meeting sometimes get upset about the vocal ministry. When you allow people…
Emerging Diane: The importance of we... →
We can help dispel the false constructions of Christianity used to uphold privilege and oppression by building churches and meetings that continue to enact the Biblical stories of equality,…
“Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it. Is it all that it can be? No....”
– Senator Olympia J Snowe on the Health Bill. Snowe was the only senator of the 23-member committee to vote against party lines.
Chad on mobile Friends in the middle →
In this modern world, as people begin to marry and move due to work or calling, I find it compelling to look at how Quakerism is working with those less geographically rooted members in terms of…
Forbes.com magazine considers Quaker business... →
If their methods sound eccentric, consider this: In centuries past, Quaker meetings produced decisions that shaped the course of capitalism. Given the poor-quality decisions emerging from corporate…
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Forbes.com magazine considers Quaker business... →
If their methods sound eccentric, consider this: In centuries past, Quaker meetings produced decisions that shaped the course of capitalism. Given the poor-quality decisions emerging from corporate conference rooms these days, a revival of Quaker methods may be long overdue.
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LA Quaker: Does Pres. Obama deserve the Nobel... →
As the chair of a group of people of diverse faiths who have been meeting since 9/11 to promote justice and peace, I agree with President Obama that the Peace Prize is a “call to action.” We hope it will encourage and challenge him not only to fulfill his promises, but to go further. It is not enough to withdraw troops from Iraq, he should also have an exit strategy for promptly...
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Wess: Unexpected Visitors →
There is no way to really be prepared for each circumstance. I can only be present in that moment and listening for the Light of Christ there and then. I learned that I need to be open and compassionate and willing to “do to the least of these,” and that bureaucracies can certainly be helpful at times but are often just a distraction from us doing the work ourselves.
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Emerging Diane: What if we would have Christ rule... →
What if we, wildly, radically, impossibly, behaved as if —“as if”—isn’t that what faith is?— the whole story were true and not pick out the parts that allow us superiority? The extraordinary move is to recognize that the seeming impossible might be real because that is to recognize that the world and the universe as we know them might be more...
I know it's science but it just feels like another... →
And the Friends Nobel Peace Prize vote goes to...
And for those wondering, this year’s U.S. Quaker nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize was Gene Sharp, whose exhaustive list of nonviolent strategies and case studies is must-reading for any campaigner.
And for those wondering about the “Quaker vote,” Friends won the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize en masse for post-war relief work. Friends were represented by what was then called the...
Sergey Brin: A Library to Last Forever →
I for one have been thrilled with the out-of-print work I’ve found on Google Books and I’m glad they’re figuring a way past the lawyers and institutional inertia to make them accessible again.
But the vast majority of books ever written are not accessible to anyone except the most tenacious researchers at premier academic libraries. Books written after 1923 quickly disappear...
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LA Quaker Anthony on Howard Brinton's 20th Century... →
Good stuff from Anthony Manousos:
Perhaps the most important innovation in this work is its systematization of the Quaker social “testimonies.” Until the publication of Guide to Quaker Practice, there was no consensus about what Friends’ social testimonies were. Howard surveyed this jumble of advices and distilled them into four distinct and memorable social testimonies—simplicity, peace,...
Converting Julie's ancient computer to Linux. If...
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Emerging Diane: Pain and the (Quaker?) world →
Shouldn’t all of us with commitments to religious communities feel at least a smidgeon of hope, a soupcon of joy, and a large serving of humility because we are at least one tiny step closer to solving the world’s problems? Shouldn’t we embrace our pain and the pain of being in our communities and become the change we want to see? Are we being called, through our pain, to a...
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Friend in Need Heather on bringing waiting to the... →
I can’t pretend to be in control. I can’t pretend that I know what I’m doing when I don’t. All I can do is prepare the best I can, and show up open to whatever happens. All I can do is hold that tiny bit of Light that I have been given and shine for all I am worth.