I urge you to read everything this man writes! "She drives me crazy. I tell her we’re not Christians. She says Christmas has nothing to do with Christianity. I tell her Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ. She asks, 'Who?'"

The original Nepo Baby

What makes someone a Quaker? 🤔 Join Sweet Miche and me as we consider the journey of convincement and belonging. We review Awakening the Witness: Convincement and Belonging in Quaker Community by Matt Rosen, a new @pendlehillusa.bsky.social pamphlet about #QuakerBeliefs #SpiritualAwakening

Jasson had a life-changing encounter with God. It led him to follow Jesus. He is now a minister in an Evangelical Friends Church. @friendsjournal.org What do Quakers Believe? 🤔 Quakers Today Podcast #Quakers #FaithJourney #spiritualawakening friendsjournal.org/podcast/quak...

I am a former Evangelical. For this episode, I spoke with Jasson Arevelo, an Evangelical Quaker from El Salvador. We explore the differences between Unprogrammed Quaker Meetings in North America and Evangelical Friends Churches in Central America. #Quakerbeliefs

From period products to art, see how young men joined in a meaningful project. Watch the clip and listen here: p2sontoscano.blogspot.com/2025/12/grav... #GravitationalPull #Podcast

"This new narrative happens to also cleave closer to many indigenous Americans’ oral histories. For example, the Tlingit people maintain that their ancestors were a seafaring people, who came to today’s Alaska by boat."

Seen in NYC earlier today

It seems that southern Africa provided an ecological refuge where people adapted successfully for more than 200,000 years – without other hunter-gatherer groups coming in from elsewhere.

‘Suddenly the inner thoughts of power are projected onto the screen in everyone’s hand – all the drivelling banalities, the selfishness, the contempt for others, the lack of interest in anything the world has to offer except personal gain.’ T.J. Clark on Trump. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Seneca observes, “Nihil honestius otio quam quod ex labore venit.” English: “No leisure is more honorable than that which follows from work.” (De Brevitate Vitae 14.1)

Have you ever had something speak to your condition but you’re not exactly sure how or why? The short story by @petersontoscano.bsky.social in the most recent Friends Journal did this. I need more, Peterson!

"I’d love to share a writing exercise I learned from a scientist I consulted with often while writing Held. This is an exercise a biology teacher once gave her, and she now gives her students." Kathryn shares a reading exercise that I will try today (even though it is -11 C today 🥶 )

This ep not only reveals some of the mysteries of Quaker worship, but it also provides a template for creating a seeker-friendly worship experience. Oh, and Ted Lasso, Dorothy Gale, and Gumby make cameo appearances! Listen to Quakers Today wherever you get podcasts. Or visit quakerstoday.org

The new episode of the Bubble & Squeak podcast spans period poverty, climate poetry, and an interplanetary ritual for Earth’s next North Star. It’s a journey. Gravitational Pull: From Period Products to Our New North Star p2sontoscano.blogspot.com/2025/12/grav...

Please welcome Eliot S. Ku, who brings a short story, “Any Way That The Damage Doesn’t Show,” about one hellish night for an ER doctor facing an embarrassment of patients at unlikelystories.org/content/any-... #fiction #smallpress #litmag

"I'm gonna get through this world, I'm gonna work in this world, I'm gonna walk in this world, I am gonna talk in this world, I'm gonna clean up this world, I'm gonna leave this world behind, the best I can." ~ Woody Guthrie

He also described as "blatant misinformation" Trump's repeated claims that South Africa was committing "genocide against Afrikaners" - descendants of Dutch settlers - and confiscating land from white citizens.

No one can take that away from us, nor the forty-plus years of organizing, demanding, and caring for each other when institutions would not. No one can erase World AIDS Day or our collective efforts to end the epidemic #WAD2025

December 1. 2025. World AIDS Day. For those gone and for those who fought so the rest of us could live. We remember you.

Be fruity and submit!

Why, yes, we publish on holidays, and have something very cool to share with you today. R.S. Nelson is back, with her essay on living in fear, fighting for change and America as an abused spouse, “My Mother’s America,” at unlikelystories.org/content/my-m... #Thanksgiving #America #smallpress #litmag

Throughout history, people have tried to frighten the masses into believing the world will end, plunging us all into eternal torment. In Christian circles, this is often associated with "the Rapture." Quakers (usually) don't get caught up in these panics—why not? quaker.org/2025/11/24/y...

"M and L are products of the Age of Anxiety, and commensurately insufferable because of it. They are the type of liberals that conservatives love to mock, because their contradictions outweigh their certainties by a factor of hilariousness. But as annoying as they may be, they are relatable."

The conference marked an unprecedented moment in the history of international organisations — the US, as a nation central to an organisation’s creation, had declined to participate in its deliberations.

After a wrongful detention, 33 days behind bars, a judge’s fateful intervention and a community-wide campaign to secure his release, Ruperto was free.

He was shot in the head and body with pepper balls as he was praying outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Broadview, Illinois, in September, according to a video captured that day.

Lili Wood Pres de La Chapelle, 2022 Gouache on paper 20 x 26 cm

Have you sat in silent worship and had your mind spin out of control? I can totally relate. Centering is not always peaceful; sticking with it has enriched me. Listen to Quakers Today podcast as we demystify the internal experience of "waiting worship." www.quakerstoday.org @friendsjournal.org

What do you believe now that you didn't believe before encountering Quakerism? (our latest Quakers Today monthly question!) Share a comment or leave a voicemail: 317-QUAKERS (317-782-5377) www.quakerstoday.org

Surendra Tamang was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease while doing construction in Qatar. He spent 6 years toiling in temps as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Today, he spends 12 hours a week in the clinic for his dialysis treatment. “I would like to work,” he said, “but it’s not possible.”

Longtime Unlikely contributor John Grey is back, with two poems on speckled ducks, falling angels, and Laos in 1986 at unlikelystories.org/content/ange... #poetry #litmag #smallpress

Writing is essential to helping me think clearly. Hear the entire conversation youtu.be/qpUE0lK033g?... youtube.com/shorts/vURHc... @friendsjournal.org

We cover a lot of ground on this episode and help demystify the Quaker worship experience

"Thank you, Butterball Turkey, for the word, butterball, which I repeat all day butterball, butterball, butterball because it helps me swallow the bones of genocide. Thank you, dark meat, for being so juicy (no offense, dry and fragile white meat, you matter too). " youtu.be/UNu4KTmKKts?...

Thanksgiving in the Plantationocene by Craig Santos Perez A Reading by the Author youtu.be/UNu4KTmKKts?...

How do you say the hard things with love? What can elders bring to our lives, and how do we recover from a childhood without them? This conversation is rich, honest, and full of wisdom. open.spotify.com/episode/6tnw...

"For as long as she can remember, Ruth has felt like ‘an imposter among human beings’. Part of her longs to make herself smaller, humbler, more obedient; another part rolls her eyes at the hypocrisies of religious life."

8 Quaker Orgs release Statement Saying Genocide Is Occurring in Gaza They call for a permanent ceasefire & for Palestinians to have full access to humanitarian aid. They advocate for a complete weapons embargo & freezing the assets of settler militias. www.friendsjournal.org/eight-quaker...

"If forest fires were coming, the team at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (lacma) would probably go straight for their version of Monet’s “Water Lilies”, or works by Cézanne and Picasso."

"Using a working definition of love that tells us it is the action we take on behalf of our own or another's spiritual growth provides us with a beginning blueprint for working on the issue of self-love." --bell hooks

"There's no such thing as a born writer. It's a skill you've got to learn, just like learning how to be a bricklayer or a carpenter." ~ Larry Brown

HUGE congratulations to Rabih Alameddine for his well-deserved win of this year's National Book Award for fiction!! 😍 He thanked his psychiatrist, drug dealers, and "all gastrointestinal doctors." "...I wouldn't have been able to write a single word in the last 10 years without their help..."

"Blessed with godlike intelligence, he brings destruction upon his world. He and his men cause climate change (through a bag full of winds); harm native species (like the Cyclops); and rashly adopt bleeding-edge technology like the Trojan horse (which causes a lot of bleeding)." #bitofastretch 😜

Gumby as a Quaker icon? Hear us out.
 Curiosity + kindness + imaginative compassion = a surprisingly perfect combo.
 Catch this short clip from “Quakers and the Mystery of Worship.”
 www.friendsjournal.org/podcast/quak... @friendsjournal.org

What do you MEAN when you say other people are able to wait at a traffic light for two minutes without having a full-blown existential crisis?

"The white liberal must see that the Negro needs not only love but also justice..." MLK

"It is important for the liberal to see that the oppressed person who agitates for his rights is not the creator of tension. He merely brings out the hidden tension that is already alive." -MLK

Join the PAC! Come to give blood or platelets through Dec. 7 for an exclusive pair of Red Cross x PAC-MAN socks and a custom Red Cross x PAC-MAN GASHAPON® — a limited one-of-a-kind collectible capsule toy — both while supplies last. Book your appointment now: rdcrss.org/3X1cieE