What if, instead of characterizing folks seeking home as “threats” or “invaders,” we understood them to be our neighbors, that our futures are interlocked and that how they are treated is connected to the well-being of us all? What if we understood love as not constrained by borders or walls, but abundant, and that caring for one another and those most violated by systemic oppression is the pathway toward liberation for us all? What if we, as people of conscience and faith, greeted the migrants at the border as our brothers, sisters, and kin, opened our homes and communities to them, and greeted them as resourceful contributors to figuring out the planetary threats we currently face together?

https://www.afsc.org/blogs/acting-in-faith/freedom-to-seek-sanctuary-quaker-perspective-migrant-caravan

Henry Cadbury believed the Jewish people should have appealed to the German sense of justice and national conscience. Then those Germans would have stood up for the Jewish people, and prevented the Nazis from acquiring power. The death camps would not have happened.

Many probably think that is naive and could not have worked. But that is what nonviolence is about, connecting with those you are hoping to change. Listening deeply and being willing to change yourself. This is also what faith is about, believing in the presence of God today. Believing that as you listen closely you will be guided by the Inner Light. Believing somehow God will find a way.

There’s a fine line between idealistic naiveté and realistic solidarity. I’m still of the mind that Cadbury should have harbored more cynicism of what was happening as the Nazi Party grew in Germany but I can see Jeff’s point: in 1934, was the future we know inevitable?

https://kislingjeff.wordpress.com/2018/08/18/resist-not-evil-today/

Correction: I got my Jeffs mixed up in the original version of this post. This was written by Jeff Kisling.

Within the last month I became aware of the “Hometown Heroes” program. Hanging from lampposts in our downtown, and other downtown districts in the region, are banners with the pictures and names of former military personnel. I was looking at one of the banners hanging outside of my bank and I started thinking to myself. “Why is it always soldiers?

Off the top of my head I can think of plenty of other members of the community that are heros from my standpoint. Activists for justice and conscience. Civic-minded gadflies. Shopowners who provide so-called “third places” for for people to congregegate. Traffic engineers who push back against corner-cutting in safety issues. The most important heros are often everyday people who simply do the right thing when chance puts a dangerous moral dilemma right in their path.

I push back against a simple military-are-heros narratives because in times of authoritarianism the military often become the enforcers. There’s the jingoistic nonsense you hear that the military is protecting our freedom to protest. No: in most cases our liberty has been preserved by people standing up and practicing their liberty despitee intimidation by authoritarian bullies and their police forces. I have friends in the military and I respect their choices and honor their commitments. I know heros can be found throughout the enlisted ranks and in our police forces but so are scoundrels. We need to recognize hometown heroism wherever it happens and resist the mindset that it’s exclusive to state forces.

https://quakerreturns.blogspot.com/2018/05/hometown-heroes.html

“The mission of early Friends was to turn people to the light in the conscience, which would first of all show them where they’d missed the mark. If Friends today would turn our Society around, we must first turn ourselves around inwardly.” [Source]

I had hoped the idea of conscience would leap up to new writers, especially in our current political climate, and that the articles might serve as a bridge between 1960s Quaker activism and today. Sometimes our themes inspire writers and sometimes they don’t.

I’ve occasionally written Quakerranter blog posts about upcoming submission opportunities but I’d like to make it more official and post these every month from the Friends Journal website. We’re calling the feature “From the Editor’s Desk.”

I’d also like you all to share these with people you think should be writing for us, especially if they’re new writers coming from different perspectives. Diversities of all kind are always welcome.

I was a Quaker blogger (and thus writer) for many years and I worked for Friends Journal for part of that time but I only once sent in a submission before I became senior editor. Why? Was I waiting to be asked? Was I unsure what I might write about? Whatever the reason, we need to always be finding and encouraging new people. Some of the most interesting articles we’ve published started after one of our fans shared an upcoming issue topic with someone who was outside of our network. My goal with these posts is really to encourage you all to share these in emails and on your Facebook walls so we can keep expanding the Quaker writer universe.

Here’s the first one: a call for writers for the March 2018 issue on Quakers and the Holy Land.

Just a moment…

www.friendsjournal.org

Footnote: Every once in a while we’ll get some article in and I’ll sigh because I can remember a previous article that covered the same ground. When I go to look it up I realize that the earlier article was published fifteen or more years ago. We have new readers every year and it’s okay to circle around to core themes every decade or so. We also need to remember the interesting people and incidents that happened long enough ago because our collective memory is always in the process of fading. I’m a peacenik longtime Quaker so I knew Dan Seeger was the named defendant in a major landmark Supreme Court decision in the 1960s, for example, but I don’t assume most Friends knew this. It’s still a cool story. It still inspires. It’s important to keep the story alive.