Thank you for the helpful links and the introduction to the Quaker blog-world. I love what I’ve read (in print) from contemporary Quakers like Parker Palmer and Richard Foster–I’m looking forward lurking on Quaker blogs.

Peace,

John

Not sure how I found your blog, but you might be interested to know that there is an entire “Quaker blogosphere” at your fingertips, and we explore some of the questions and observations you make in this post:

dressing plain

being a “hyphenated Quaker“: Jewish-Quaker, Buddhist-Quaker, etc.

what we do at Meeting for Worship

etc.

Another resource for recent posts among Friends is the website QuakerQuaker.

Nice to learn some about the Church of Latter Day Saints while doing my blog-browsing tonight.

Blessings,
Liz, The Good Raised Up

I don’t think that the quiet company of my clones would drive me forward as well as the irrepressible ferment of the UU stew.

I’ve really enjoyed the Unitarian Universalist services I’ve attended (and people I’ve met). Until I found the Quakers, I think the UUs were my top choice for a potential rebound church (they’re still a close second). I’m looking forward to visiting the Costa Mesa church in the next month or two.

I am primarily familiar with the Unitarian church which I attend (Jews, and Catholic gays and lesbians are heavily represented), the liberal Presbyterian church of my youth, and with my wife’s independent synagogue. I frequently play music for regional Episcopal churches and have several times visited the local Quakers.

I have enjoy meetings with the Friends. The congregations sounds similar, although the small meetinghouse is in a quiet area next to a park. It must be well over 150 years old. Most of them are also old friends in the secular sense. I fit in easily and have sometimes considered joining.

I have never really experienced prescriptive or hierarchical religion.

There are customs in Judaism that I follow when I am with my wife and daughter because they are my family and am respectful of them, but I am under no pressure to do so. I have a certain pride in the knowedge and comfort that I have achieved there, but I have a freedom denied to congregation members.

I often wonder what others might think of me and my congregation. Would a born again bible literalist hold hands with my gay friends while we prayed? Would a Mormon be puzzled by a public discussion of theology, where the congregation decided that two completely opposed interpretations of a point were ethically useful and should both be accepted as true? Would an observant Jew be surprized by the Mezuzah in the frame of our re-revolutionary door?

It’s hard to be comfortable in a religious environment that is either much more prescriptive or much more flexible than your own. I feel very exposed and out of my element when confronted ith the mysteries of a Catholic church, an Orthodox synagogue, or a very conservative Christian church.

It sounds like you fit in easily.

I get nervous when writing these Pilgrimage posts because there’s no way I could do any church or religion any justice within the space of even a long blog post.

Jana and I love our encounters with you and Guillermo and Sonia. We do feel like we’re fellow travelers, in many different ways–sometimes we get discouraged but then we talk to people like you and think, “they’re doing the same thing and they’re all right.”

I love Quaker history and I enjoy Quaker practice. Not sure if I like the ‘decide everything by committe’ idea, tho-it seems like it might get old when nothing can get done quickly (I am a woman of action).

But I really love our Quaker “Friends.” What an asset they’ve been to our family