The Wider Quaker Fellowship

1506 Race Street · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19102 · 215.241.7293
wqf@fwccamericas.org · www.widerquakerfellowship.org

November 2010

Dear Friends and Fellows,

We bring you two articles this fall: one by Dan Snyder, pastoral psychotherapist and spiritual director in North Carolina, and one by Alexie Torres-Fleming, whose ministry in the South Bronx connects youth to their faith and their communities.

Dan’s plenary address, given at Baltimore Yearly Meeting in 2009, speaks of the “Holy Restlessness” that impelled George Fox and Abraham to go in search of something—a relationship with God, an answer to the question of who God wants us to be. He encourages us to go back to our beginnings, in order to become re-created. Alexie, speaking at ‘Heading God’s Call,’ a peace conference for Friends, Mennonites and Brethren in January 2009, tells of feeling that restlessness too, and returning to the community where she had grown up, giving up a good job and comfortable lifestyle. Her work is an example of Dan’s phrase, “to run afoul of the powers that be”.

There is no single answer to that question of who God wants us to be; the answer keeps evolving, if we are paying attention. Somehow, in our busy lives, we need to find opportunities to get in touch with our restlessness, even if this means meditating on the subway or while walking on a busy city street, or listening with one ear to spoken words that are covering well-traveled ground, while listening with the other to the whispers of God.

As always, our ministry needs your donations. We are close to being ready to share with you a brand new website for the Wider Quaker Fellowship. Its searchable library contains over 150 published pamphlets that can be found by theme, author, title and more. You can donate on line here. Please give as generously as you can.

In the Light,

Judith Inskeep, clerk
for the Wider Quaker Fellowship

 

A B O U T  T H E   W I D E R   Q U A K E R   F E L L O W S H I P

The Wider Quaker Fellowship is a program of Friends World Committee for Consultation Section of the Americas. Through our mailings we seek to lift up voices< of Friends of different countries, languages, cultures and Quaker traditions, and invite all to enter into spiritual community with Friends. The Fellowship was founded in 1936 by Rufus M. Jones, a North American Quaker teacher, activist and mystic, as a way for like-minded people who were interested in Quaker beliefs and practices to stay in contact with the Religious Society of Friends, while maintaining their own religious affiliation, if any. Today, WQF Fellows live in over 90 countries, and include non-Friends, inquirers, Quakers living in isolated circumstances and active members and attenders of Friends meetings and churches. Wider Quaker Fellowship depends on the financial support of its readers to provide this service.

 

The Wider Quaker Fellowship
Friends Center, 1506 Race Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102 USA
tel: 215. 241. 7250, email: wqf@fwccamericas.org