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Tom Hoopes: Young Families and Quakerism: Will the Center Hold?
Young families need Quakerism, and Quakerism needs young families. Where does the Religious Society of Friends stand in relation to today’s “beleaguered moms and dads”? To the extent that Quaker culture has not intentionally organized itself around the needs of young families, many people of my life stage have opted out of participation in organized Quakerism. We know this from research as well as experientially, as many Friends’ own adult children – and therefore their grandchildren –are not active in a meeting community.
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Karen Mercer: Separation & Interior Plainness
For myself, I have found that I lost interest in or disliked many things over the years. I avoid a lot of entertainments because I find them overstimulating, they are too loud, too frantic and too full of events designed to provoke physiological arousal. More recently I find the amount of rudeness, violence and sexuality disturbing. I am left feeling exhausted but restless
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Micah Bales: Is Meeting “a place for good people like us”
The kids who remained part of the Meeting’s youth group tended to be ones who struggled to find their place in other areas of their lives. Through a set of shared rituals — jazz hands, cuddle puddles, and wink — and shared cultural assumptions and behaviors, the primary purpose of the Quaker youth community becomes about supporting “people like us”… This in-group dynamic is not limited to the youth.
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Jay Marshall: What does “leadership” mean to you?
While it is true that leadership can be a troubling concept for Friends, I have come to believe that we should move beyond our old hesitations. We would benefit from fussing less about the things that can go wrong, instead investing time reflecting upon the topic and developing an understanding of leadership that can function well in our context.
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Clio on QQ: Plain Teenager: Perfectly Possible 🙂
My parents accidentally sent me to a liberal Friends summer camp not expecting me to come back hungry for faith. I missed having meeting every day. I missed the peace I felt in the meeting circle and the connection to God I found there. I used to go during free time to re-center myself and to seek a feeling I got during meeting. The best way to describe it to another person is that I was getting a hug from the Holy Spirit.
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