I don’t think I ever men­tioned that the April issue of Friends Jour­nal is out. There’s a fun arti­cle com­par­ing bird­watch­ing to Quak­er min­istry. That’s the kind of claim that might nor­mal­ly make my eyes roll but the author, Rebec­ca Hei­der, makes it work! Also, a great episode of Quak­er­S­peak this week pro­files the Ramal­lah Friends School and the com­mu­ni­ty’s longterm Quak­er wit­ness under suc­ces­sive occu­pa­tion by Ottoman, British, Lebanese, and now Israeli forces.

I thor­ough­ly enjoyed Gary Shteyn­gart’s Cry­ing Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever. It’s a joy of self-depreciation, snark, care­ful obser­va­tion, wrapped in won­der­ful writing.

For the sec­ond time in ten years I did­n’t feel the New Jer­sey earth­quake. No one in my house felt this one, even though peo­ple fur­ther out from the epi­cen­ter did. I was on a rat­tling train dur­ing the 2011 earth­quake and walked about ten miles toward home after the sys­tem was shut down (but don’t wor­ry, it was a love­ly day and I stopped at mul­ti­ple hip­ster cof­fee­house and even got a hair­cut in). Clouds held out for this week’s eclipse and the fam­i­ly got a good view.

My meet­ing host­ed a fas­ci­nat­ing talk last Sun­day on efforts to sup­port restored habi­tats for clams and oys­ters in New Jer­sey estu­ar­ies. These mol­lusks sta­bi­lize the shore­line, clean the waters, and make our shores more resilient to both cli­mate change and the nat­u­ral­ly sink­ing South Jer­sey landmass.

On some­what sim­i­lar themes, I talked to Peter Blood-Patterson this week about “hold­ing in the light,” the pop­u­lar con­tem­po­rary Quak­er phrase for prayer. His arti­cle, We Are All Held in Love: Reflec­tions on the Prac­tice of Hold­ing in the Light appears in the March issue of Friends Jour­nal, the theme of which is “Prayer and Healing.”

From the video description: 

Peter Blood-Patterson dis­cuss­es the Quak­er prac­tice of “hold­ing in the light”, which involves shar­ing prayer con­cerns dur­ing meet­ings. The phrase orig­i­nat­ed in the late 1960s but became more com­mon­ly used among Friends in the 1990s. It allows com­mu­ni­ties to care for those expe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties through entrust­ing them to God’s love. Peter explores what “the light” rep­re­sents for Quak­ers his­tor­i­cal­ly and today. He also reflects on how the prac­tice has helped him release con­trol and rec­og­nize the lim­its of what he can fix.

Bonus: I dug up the first instance of “hold” with “Light” in Friends Jour­nal, a 1969 poem by Bar­bara Reynolds called Bal­lad for a Friends Meet­ing that describes an upwelling min­istry in wor­ship and sug­gests “hold­ing it to the light” as one ris­es to share it.

Last week I inter­viewed Quak­er heal­er John Calvi for a Friends Jour­nal author chat. John has long worked with trau­ma vic­tims and those suf­fer­ing from AIDS and he tells part of that sto­ry in March’s “Car­ry­ing Light to Need.” One of the parts of this that fas­ci­nates me is his shar­ing of los­ing much of his spir­i­tu­al insight after a recent ill­ness. Reg­u­lar read­ers of this blog know I love sto­ries of Friends who are able to sense prompt­ings and to have that abil­i­ty and then lose it is a piece of the mys­tery of where it comes from. I’m remind­ed of Anne E.G. Nydam’s “The Con­duits” from the Novem­ber 2022 fic­tion issue; I can’t say more with­out spoil­ers but read it and you’ll see what I mean.

The pod­cast is back for sea­son three — now with a new cohost, Miche McCall. First up, a look at Quak­ers and com­mu­ni­ty. It includes an inter­views with Nathan Kle­ban about his expe­ri­ence with inten­tion­al com­mu­ni­ties and eco­nom­ic jus­tice work and excerpts from Lau­ren Brown­lee’s recent Quak­er­S­peak video on using Quak­er tes­ti­monies to con­front white suprema­cy.

Quak­er Pod­cast — Pod­cast Explor­ing Quak­er Life & Reli­gious Beliefs 

Quak­ers Today, host­ed by Peter­son Toscano, fea­tures writ­ers, musi­cians, and thinkers who are seek­ing wis­dom and under­stand­ing in…

Friends Journal 

John Wool­man vis­it­ed my meet­ing this week­end and let me tell you, he looked good for a 300-year-old. Actu­al­ly, of course, it was a re-enactor: Charles Brud­er, of the John Wool­man Memo­r­i­al. I tried writ­ing down a bit of his min­istry as Wool­man (tak­en from Wool­man’s Jour­nal).

• In a new Quak­er­S­peak, Lynette Davis dis­cuss­es how writ­ing is a spir­i­tu­al prac­tice for her that she does in com­mu­nion with God as a cre­ative spirit.
• Friends Jour­nal is still look­ing for arti­cles about atti­tudes toward Quak­er founder George Fox as we mark the 400th anniver­sary of his birth. How do we appre­ci­ate him? Mis­use him? Ignore him? Does he unite or divide us all these cen­turies lat­er? The dead­line is March 25. Learn more here.
• A new install­ment of Windy Cool­er’s series on pub­lic min­is­ters is avail­able on the FGC web­site. This time she, Ash­ley Wilcox, and Katie Bres­lin ask How are Meet­ings and Quak­er Insti­tu­tions Sup­port­ing Pub­lic Min­istry? I’ve writ­ten about parts one and two of this series before.