Johan­na Jack­son and I speak about the prob­lems of polite­ness and buried con­flict in Quak­er meet­ings in this week’s FJ author chat. We tried not to get too spe­cif­ic about con­flicts we’ve seen in our own Quak­er expe­ri­ences: what mat­ters is not nec­es­sar­i­ly indi­vid­ual instances (peo­ple can be jerks, this is under­stood) but a pat­tern of not rec­on­cil­ing and heal­ing that many Friends and would-be Friends have observed.

How do we reshape the cul­ture in our meet­ings to allow for more vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and healthy emo­tions and how do we heal from con­flicts that hap­pened years or decades ago but still shape our meet­ings? Johan­na’s arti­cle, Beyond Polite­ness, appears in the cur­rent issue of Friends Jour­nal.