What would it mean to reckon with our past complicity with harm?
As the world falls apart, I wonder where faith communities are? Where are White Christians, White Quakers? As my friend Lucy Duncan writes, “we as White Quakers like to think of ourselves as ahead or better than dominant culture, but we have been complicit in a system and mindset that are ubiquitous.” Recognizing the White…
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Whiteness and Quakers
[References to Quakers here pertain to White Quakers. There is little diversity among Quakers in this country.] There are several reasons I’m led to revisit this today. Our Quaker meetings have dwindling numbers of attenders. Most of those remaining are elderly and white. Many meetings do not have new people joining. I continue to hear…
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FCNL Native American updates
Following are Native American updates from the Friends Committee on Legislation (FCNL). Seeking Truth, Healing, and Right Relationship: Quakers and the Legacy of Indian Boarding SchoolsMAY 25, 2022, 5:30 – 6:30 PM Central, ONLINE FCNL and Friends advocate in solidarity with Indigenous peoples. Yet, historically, Quakers played a role in colonization and the cultural genocide…
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Dare we hope?
I was searching for a way to describe what WE experienced during OUR Buffalo Rebellion Climate Summit this weekend. A moment reminiscent of the times of the civil rights and anti-war movements which brought together thousands of people and created change. This weekend a coalition of people and organizations came together to rise to the…
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The Duty to Resist
“The Duty to Resist” is an article in a recent edition of Friends Journal, The Duty to Resist by Carlos Figueroa, Friends Journal, April 1, 2022 I had forgotten Bayard Rustin had been incarcerated for draft resistance. He joins the list of those who have written about their prison experiences such as Henry David Thoreau…
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Wicked problems and sensemaking
I have so many questions. How can the government do everything it can to increase oil production and exports, when our extinction is assured if greenhouse gas emissions are not radically decreased immediately? How could the atrocities and utter destruction have happened? In Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, United States? Wouldn’t nonviolent responses against the invasion…
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Quakers and Religious Socialism 