Quaker Life, The Best of Quaker Life 2016-2023, Spring 2023

Purchase a single copy of the Spring 2023 issue of Quaker Life: A mosaic of Friendly living on the theme of Best of Quaker Life, 2016-2023.

Seven years ago, Friends United Meeting re-imagined Quaker Life as a publication that occurred at greater length, but less frequently. We changed the format to that of a small paperback book, so it could be placed like a devotional on a bookshelf or night table, or easily fit into a purse or satchel. We took out the news items that could not be timely in a publication with months-long pauses and emphasized stories about the intersections of life and faith. We encouraged artists to send us their visual works. 

After three years, we began to choose theological themes for each issue, to assist writers and artists in finding stories in their own lives. We’ve settled on an extremely loose interpretation of each theme, but we’ve ranged broadly across the fields of faith, theology, and belief. So far, our authors and artists have reflected on grace, joy, justice, hope, peace, crisis, mercy, light, abiding, community, simplicity, listening, integrity, gentleness, stewardship, and discernment. 

In this issue, as both a sabbatical and to celebrate seven years of our mosaic of Friendly living, we’ve selected a few pieces to represent the best of Quaker Life. These choices reflect the discernment of a small number of Quaker Life staff members about the pieces that have moved us, taught us, stuck with us, over the past seven years. 
The authors in this issue range geographically from Kenya to Cuba, and from Baltimore to Newberg. Their themes range from creation to the cross. The theologies they express represent no creed, but the experiential endeavor to listen for and follow the Inward Teacher. That we chose these particular essays reflects our own characters more than any objective standard of fruitfulness; there are dozens of essays that we could have chosen—and nearly did. But in early summer 2023, as we prepared for the massive Triennial event in Nakuru, Kenya, this is what spoke to us. 

This issue of Quaker Life is Volume 7, Number 4. After seven years, we are again making some changes to our content, beginning with Volume 8, Number 1. Starting with that issue, we will no longer be including memorials in Quaker Life—either memorial minutes from Meetings or obituaries from newspapers. Instead, we will publish obituaries on our website as they are submitted. This will prevent us from falling several years behind in publishing memorials, as has happened recently when we have been challenged with very many submissions and recurring space limitations. You may continue to submit memorials and obituaries as you always have; now they will be published here: friendsunitedmeeting.org/memorials.

In the Quaker Life space previously held by obituaries, we will publish a selection of the best pictures from the previous three months of our email newsletter, the FUM E-News. The photos may not be current or timely, but they reflect the broad spectrum of Friends United Meeting in the world for those who are casual readers, or not connected to our digital publishing and therefore missing out on our news coverage. 

In the past seven years, there has been a measurable increase in the quality of the pictures that have been submitted to us, as cellphones with digital cameras, powered by artificial intelligence, have so vastly improved the picture quality available to all of us. We hope that reintroducing, in a small way, the visual representation of Friends living their faith in the world will add to the depth of spiritual experience you gain from reading Quaker Life. 

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Individual subscriptions in the US/Canada are $40/year, click here.

For group discounts, please call the office at 765-962-7573 or email your inquiry to info@fum.org.