Below is an excerpt of a message delivered by ESR student Leigh Eason at West Elkton Friends on  November 11, 2012:

Change is so very uncomfortable, that many times we just stay with what we have, even when we know it isn't working for us.  Take the state of Quakerism, for instance. Today in the United States of America the number of people in the Religious Society of Friends has dropped almost 25% in less than thirty years. Using 2002 data, we dropped from about 121,000 to about 92,000 members. If we are to survive for the next generation, it is paramount that we begin doing certain things that were set out by our founders and certain things that are adaptations and new ways of expressing our beliefs. In essence, we have to be willing to change, to live into our testimonies, and to put on a new self that meets the needs of our society. To use an old phrase, we have to be willing to adapt “so as to speak to thy condition.”

There is a program on The Learning Channel called "What Not to Wear." Friends of the fashion-challenged submit names to the producers along with reasons they feel their friends need a fashion makeover. What occurs to me when I watch it is that people have specific reasons they dress in certain ways. Choices of behavior, even selections of clothing, have specific triggers in the brain. Even when they get to the part in this television program where the contestants go shopping, change is hard.  But so much of this is like the scripture in Colossians 3, because we hang onto anger and all the memories associated with it, foul language and how cool it makes us feel, the statement it makes about us, we think.  We hang onto our memories of trauma and refuse to heal.  And we hang onto old ways of worship, old ways of organizing, old ways of doing things, because like those nasty ugly sweats, they give us comfort and makes us feel we can move about freely in our bad-looking world.

You can read the entire message here: http://esrquaker.blogspot.com/2012/11/what-not-to-wear.html