In The Land Knows the Way, Ricardo Levins Morales draws on nature, culture, and history in finding the way toward liberation. The work is intersectional in every way: we have much to learn from both nature and each other, and we are strongest together.
"Palliative care patients who are still seeking a cure are often in the desperate throes of an ego tantrum," Carl Magruder says. "The ego clings to life, frantically insisting it is inviolate, immutable, immortal, when it is really just terrified."
As a chaplain, Carl saw many people through this.
"There is nothing in my background to suggest that I would become a world traveler & a humanitarian," says Brandy Witthoft. Yet she's spent much of her life working overseas, including 17 years with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)... until Elon Musk gutted that agency.
"The good news is that God is on our side and will destroy what is oppressing us," @benwildflower.com writes at @sojo.net. "Will we follow this savior in destroying sinful carceral logic and structures or acquiesce to the forces of evil that build partition walls and concentration camps?"
Weaving together history, family and personal narrative, and legal analysis, Rebecaa Nagle tells a vital story about North American Native peoples’ quest for recognition and sovereignty.
In Caravaggio's painting, Jesus bares his chest and, grabbing Thomas by the wrist, guides his finger into a gaping wound in his lower abdomen. Two other apostles stand behind Thomas, looking over his shoulder at the wound.
Then Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”
In this week's "Look to the Light" message, we look at John 20:27 in the original Greek and find something much heavier than "doubt."
quaker.org/2026/04/06/d...
"Grown from an English town
the size of four oxgangs, farmed
through generations, spreading
through Cheshire where good
John Sharps, is convicted, in 1679,
of crimes against the state—his 'moral
failure' a repeated refusal to attend
the Church of England..."
—from "We Believe in Trees"
All bloody principles and practices, as to our own particulars, we utterly deny; with all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever; this is our testimony to the whole world.
A new book by Patricia R. Powers describes many aspects of Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s attempts to act in conscience in relation to Indigenous peoples.
"Quakers talk about integrity in a variety of ways—honesty, fair dealing, not swearing oaths, plainspokenness—but seldom in terms of what engineers mean when they speak of structural integrity."
For Nat Case, though, that's the very essence of integrity: "the sense of coherence & holding together."
"I think Quakers remind the rest of Christianity that words are insufficient," says Lloyd Lee Wilson: "that there is something beyond words, something beyond intellectual constructs... [something] vital about this Christ who lived 2,000 years ago and who we say we encounter today in our worship."
Speaking from our most tender place can make us feel vulnerable, but it is there that Spirit resides.
Early Friends knew we were all flawed people struggling to live up to and within the Light. They confessed their shortcomings and shared their struggles, knowing the community can bring strength.
A painting of Mary Magdalene at the door to Jesus's tomb, where two figures, dressed all in white, stand facing her. She is shocked and frightened, nearly collapsing to the floor.
While the apostles hid, Mary Magdalene stayed by the empty tomb.
Her spiritual mentor had been arrested and made to suffer a gruesome public death. Now, not even his body remained for her to mourn, and two strangers stood in his tomb, asking her why she was crying.
quaker.org/2026/03/30/w...
Today is the Trans Day of Visibility. On November 20, however, the lives of recently deceased trans people are recognized through the Trans Day of Remembrance. Staff writer Sharlee DiMenichi spoke with members of Lake Erie Yearly Meeting who convened an online vigil for this purpose last November.
"We have to accept transgender people within the Quaker community in Kenya," writes George Busolo Lukalo, a pastor at Friends Church in Nairobi. "The church needs to find ways of identifying such people within the meetings, loving, and accepting them."
What brilliant timing - a new QuakerSpeak video about Margaret Fell: quakerspeak.com/video/margar...
#WomensHistoryMonth #Leadingthechange #WomeninLeadership
Margaret Fell was a judge's wife in mid-seventeenth century England. One day, a traveling minister named George Fox came to her home at Swathmoor Hall. During his stay, he asked Margaret to reflect on what she knew about God—was it all things other people had told her, or did she know God directly?
"It was a rainy Saturday morning when I met with two Quaker women at Stony Run for my clearness committee," Erica Burns writes. "I wasn’t exactly sure what would come out of my meeting with them, but I knew I had nothing to lose by participating."
G. K. Chesterton once said, “It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.” With that in mind, Andy Stanton-Henry shares three Quaker-themed variations on a popular joke format and explores what they reveal about our faith and practice.
Oops! Mary Dyer was NEARLY executed in 1659; the Puritans spared her life at the last minute & kicked her out of the colony. If they'd hoped to scare her, they failed—she came back in the spring of 1660, telling them to repeal their law or execute her according to its demands. They chose the latter.
A color illustration of Mary Dyer being led down a Boston street to her place of execution. She is flanked by two armed men, with drummers in front and behind her. People stand and watch solemnly from the side of the road.
Puritans in Massachusetts viewed the Quakers as so powerful a threat to their colony that they passed a law forbidding Friends within their borders upon pain of death. Mary Dyer kept coming back, "willing to suffer, as her Brethren did," and was publicly executed in 1659.
quaker.org/2026/03/23/g...
The Wikipedia page on Ann Lee, the first leader of the Shaker movement in 18th-century North America, says that she grew up in a Quaker family. That didn't sound right to Tim Gee, so he did some research... here's what he found!
"The more research I conducted about Quaker contributions to the gay rights movement," says Brian T. Blackmore, "the more stories about my queer Quaker ancestors emerged." Friends like Josiah P. Marvel, who led an organization in post-war Manhattan that assisted men arrested for homosexual activity.
Yurii Sheliazhenko, a Friend and the general secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, is being held by Ukraine's military conscription authority, the Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support.
How does the Quaker peace testimony inform your personal relationships? And how has it helped you to experience what George Fox called the life & power that takes away the occasion of all wars?
Last summer, we heard from several Friends about the role the peace testimony plays in their daily lives.
For transgender, nonbinary, or intersex Friends, the journey toward truth has often required courage in the face of misunderstanding, silence, and sometimes violence. But it has also revealed the presence of Spirit in the most intimate and transformative ways.
For Catherine Wald, Gunilla Norris’s poems "bring to mind the experience of holding and sharing a message in meeting for worship: something, perhaps, of few words but expansive and resonant, holding the promise of new insight for those who hear them."
"He’s maybe 5. Thrashing, crying
post-op. Three nurses, mom, grandma
wrestle and grab to subdue, soothe,
remove the nasty IV needle in his hand..."
—from "Recovering Boy" by Gay Norton Edelman
Jack Holloway plays his electric guitar on the altar of Old First Reformed Church in Brooklyn while, off to the side, a Despair Sanctuary crew member monitors the sound.
“Sing and rejoice, ye children of the day and of the light,” George Fox told his fellow Quakers, “for the Lord is at work in this thick night of darkness that may be felt.”
Feeling helpless in the face of evil is understandable—but it shouldn't be the end of the story.
quaker.org/2026/03/16/t...
🎧 In a special, extra-large episode of the Quakers Today podcast, @petersontoscano.bsky.social introduces listeners to LGBTQ+ individuals living their truth with integrity within their spiritual communities.
Join us at the Quakers Today website—or wherever you find your favorite podcasts!