I’m glad to see that Aus­tralian Friend David John­son is doing trav­el­ing min­istry in the U.S. I hope to join the wor­ship at Marl­bor­ough Meet­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia on July 28.

Doug Ben­nett wants us to redis­cov­er the tes­ti­mo­ny of equal­i­ty. I always think of equal­i­ty as being one of the new for­mu­la­tions of Quak­er tes­ti­monies brought to us by Howard Brin­ton and oth­ers in the mid-to-late twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, so I’m not such a stick­ler about defin­ing it but Ben­nett draws a dis­tinc­tion between it and equi­ty and some of the DEI work hap­pen­ing. Not sure I agree with every­thing he says but it’s an inter­est­ing perspective.

Real­ly hap­py to see Evan Welkin come in as FWCC-Americas head, fill­ing the very big shoes of my friend Robin Mohr. Evan vis­it­ed my house back in 2005 as part of a trav­el­ing min­istries project spon­sored by the Pick­ett Foun­da­tion (RIP) and mem­o­rably coined the term uberQuak­er in a guest post here on Quak­er Ranter. He’s writ­ten for Friends Jour­nal a few times, most per­son­al­ly and poignant­ly this 2014 arti­cle on addic­tion.

OMG, a pro­file of Ruth Peter­son in the New­town Patch! “Old Age is Not for Sissies” Says 100-Year-Old Ruth Peter­son. She was one of the first Quak­ers I met when I walked into the Abing­ton (Pa.) Meet­ing­house back in the late 1980s and she and her hus­band Char­lie were always so boun­ti­ful­ly sup­port­ive. When I took a year off after col­lege to get my head straight, many of the peo­ple in my fam­i­ly wor­ried about me but when I explained it to Ruth at cof­fee hour, she lit up and said “Oh, isn’t that so WONDERFUL!” Char­lie hooked me up with var­i­ous Quak­er oppor­tu­ni­ties in the area, which led to a chain of events that land­ed me my first job. This was writ­ten by Bar­bara Sim­mons and post­ed by Nor­val Reece, who does a great job let­ting peo­ple in Bucks Coun­ty know what’s hap­pen­ing with Friends.