Editors’ Picks This Week

• Anthony Manousos: Reflections on the Quaker Testimonies
  One reason many Friends have lost touch with the Inward Light and rely instead on external Testimonies is that we have become too conventionally educated and “heady.” There is nothing wrong with relying on reason or on authority to some extent, according to Brinton, but they are not enough. We need the guidance of something greater and deeper than human means, something that Friends called the “Inward Light.”

• Video: A (very) brief history of Quakers
  The Young Friends of Richmond Friends Meeting in Virginia worked on this with me for six months or so, studying some of the most important moments in Quaker history and generally having a good time.

• AFSC's Madeline Schaefer interviews relative of Japanese-American F...

  I also think that Gordon’s spiritual side was key too... I don’t remember Gordon as an overtly spiritual or religious person when I was a teenager, and yet in the course of reading the letters and the diaries, I think his spirituality was definitely something that sustained him.

• Micah Bales : Why Conflict is Good For Us

  "How can I embrace those times when I find myself at odds with others, welcoming conflict as an opportunity to speak the truth in love and listen deeply to where the Holy Spirit is leading us together? "

• George Amoss Jr on the unreliability of experiential spirituality

  One result of that break is the undermining of the traditional Quaker reliance on spiritual discernment. Private revelations, including the prescriptive kind called “leadings,” are susceptible to delusion and should be subjected to group discernment, but the definition of such experiences as self-validating and therefore exempt from critical examination, a definition which the… read more

• Randy Oftedahl: An Emergent Witness for Friends?

  If the Spirit of Jesus is doing wonderful new things in the world (as Quakers have always maintained), what role might the Religious Society of Friends play in this new Movement? We were - and still are - part of those declining church numbers. Is there anything our Quaker tradition can offer to this rising chorus?

• Lucy Duncan: Growing and sharing food in community

  "I hope that we begin to understand more deeply that our treasures, whether burial grounds, meeting houses, or Quaker practice and tradition, are not ours alone—that our continued survival and relevance is connected to sharing what we know and understand with others in and beyond our communities, and to learning with and from our neighbors. "

Top On-Site Discussion

• First post, wanting to attend first meeting
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• Richmond (Va) Young Friends: A (very) brief history of Quakers
• Five Snippets
• Advices and Queries for Isolated Friends (with a traditional unders...

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