an international network of Quaker booksellers, authors & publishers concerned with the ministry of the written word
Quakers Do What! Why? is an introduction to Quaker oddities. Based on a question and answer format, it is for anyone who has learned a fact about Quakers – perhaps only that Quakers exist – and wants to know more.
Author: Rhiannon Grant
Publisher: Christian Alternative, August 2020
ISBN: 9781789044058
Paperback, 88 pages
A Quaker Ecology: Meditations on the Future of Friends
In our best moments, Friends have been in the middle of the action around the social justice issues of each time period, discerning to the best of their abilities the direction the Inward Light leads and speaking truth to power. In our own time, climate justice can no longer be ignored if we want to have a healthy planet to live on and if we want to participate in the heart of the justice movements of the twenty-first century.
To work on climate justice requires Quakers in the United States to revisit the practices and history of the Religious Society of Friends, recognizing the ways we have been complicit in unjust land acquisition, natural resource depletion, the intersecting injustices surrounding environmental racism, classism, and gender disparities, and the impacts of globalization. This book offers a series of meditations on the Quaker ecology, both internally in our denomination as well as in our connections to the world around us. It forms an invitation to participate in an Eco-Reformation, altering the trajectory of our Society through re-membering our history and reimagining our future as participants in the community of all life.
Author: Cherise Bock
Pubisher: Barclay Press, 2022
ISBN: 9781594980343
Paperback, 114 pages
An Invitation to Quaker Eldering: On Being Faithful to the Ministry of Spiritual Nurture Among Friends
There is a yearning and a need among Friends for a book about the Quaker spiritual practice, ministry, and discipline of eldering. A new emergence of eldering, part of a continuum beginning with early Quakers, has been bubbling up to meet the needs of our times. While there is no going back to the Quakerism of yore, we do have within us the same Spirit that has always brought forth the gifts of eldering among Friends.
This book will help guide, enrich, and nourish elders, both those seasoned in the gift and those new to it. It may also open new understandings for meetings who want to encourage and support the elders among them, whether these elders are formally named or not. Each chapter ends with queries for reflection and discussion to help readers connect with their own experience and understanding. Additionally, varied stories from elders and others are included to illustrate the breadth and the depth of the experience of eldering. It is hoped that these queries and stories will lead to openings in this vital ministry for individuals and meetings.
This book has its origins in a simple yes—in fact, in many yeses over many years. It also has its roots in questions and curiosity about the Quaker history and ministry of eldering. May you say yes to developing your knowledge, skills, and experience in the Quaker spiritual practice and discipline of eldering.
About the authors
Elaine Emily’s understanding of eldering began in her earliest days of spiritual awakening and grew through her work in a variety of Christian churches with Ched Myers, an activist theologian with whom she co-founded Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries. Mary Kay Glazer began learning about Quaker eldering as a ministry at a workshop in the mid-2000s, after which Elaine Emily invited her to a small gathering of elders to tell their eldering stories.
Authors: Elaine Emily, Mary Kay Glazer
Publisher: Inner Light Books (2022)
ISBN: 9781737011279
Paperback, 240 pages
This pamphlet by Sandra Cronk is an essential text for distribution whenever the subject of oversight/support of ministry comes up in your Quaker Meeting (or any group for that matter.)
Author: Sandra Cronk
Publisher: School of the Spirit
Booklet, 44 pages
Dancing with History: A Life for Peace and Justice
A memoir of a Quaker activist and master storyteller George Lakey on his involvement in struggles for peace, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, labor justice, and the environment, whose life will be the subject of a new documentary film coming in 2022.
From his first arrest in the Civil Rights era to his most recent during a climate justice march at the age of 83, George Lakey has committed his life to a mission of building a better world through movements for justice. Lakey draws readers into the center of history-making events, telling often serious stories with playfulness and intimacy. In this memoir, he describes the personal, political, and theoretical—coming out as bisexual to his Quaker community while known as a church leader and family man, protesting against the war in Vietnam by delivering medical supplies through the naval blockade in the South China Sea, and applying his academic study of nonviolent resistance to creative tactics in direct action campaigns.
From strategies he learned as a young man facing violence in the streets to risking his life as an unarmed bodyguard for Sri Lankan human rights lawyers, Lakey recounts his experience living out the tension between commitment to family and mission. Drawing strength from his community to fight cancer, survive painful parenting struggles, and create networks to help prevent activist burnout, this book shows readers how to find hope in even the darkest times through strategic, joyful activism.
Author: George Lakey
Publisher: Seven Stories Press, 2022
ISBN: 9781644212356
Paperback, 424 pages
Human beings “must now return nature . . . into our worship. And Quaker meeting is the perfect place to make that reclamation,” writes Jim Hood in this poetic and thoughtful meditation. In celebrating the interrelationship of living beings – the ecology – of the natural world, alongside the deep interrelationships at work in a meeting for worship, Hood calls us to deepen our spiritual relationship to nature and to the Light that illuminates it. He urges us to restore this deep connectedness with nature not only for our personal spiritual health, but so we can find our way back into connectedness with a planet we have largely forgotten and abandoned. Discussion questions included.
Author: Jim Hood
Publisher: Pendle Hill (2022)
After nearly thirty years living in the Salish Sea’s San Juan Archipelago, Iris Graville felt compelled to write about the threats to its interwoven lattice of beauty, wildness, fragility, and relationship. In 2018-19, Graville served as the Washington State Ferries’ (WSF) first Writer-in-Residence on the “Interisland” route, traveling only among Lopez, Shaw, San Juan, and Orcas islands. As a result, this storytelling lover of the Salish Sea presents Writer in a Life Vest, thirty-six essays that explore climate change and endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales, while leading readers to ask questions and find resilience, inspiration, and hope.
Author: Iris Graville
Publisher: Homebound Publications (2020)
ISBN: 1953340482
Paperback, 200 pages
Quakerism: The Basics is an accessible and engaging introduction to the history and diverse approaches and ideas associated with the Religious Society of Friends. This small religion incorporates a wide geographic spread and varied beliefs that range from evangelical Christians to non-theists. Topics covered include:
– Quaker values in action
– The first generations of Quakerism
– Quakerism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
– Belief and activism
– Worship and practice
– Quakerism around the world
– The future of Quakerism
With helpful features including suggested readings, timelines, a glossary, and a guide to Quakers in fiction, this book is an ideal starting point for students and scholars approaching Quakerism for the first time as well as those interested in deepening their understanding.
Author: Margery Post Abbott, Carl Abbott
Publisher: Routledge (2020)
ISBN: 9780367191627
Paperback, 208 pages
Braving Your Way Toward Simplicity, Awakening, and Peace
Find spiritual insight for developing courage and meeting life’s broken-open, pulled-apart times for anyone seeking hope.
Daily we are asked to move toward bravery, to stretch in the direction of goodness, kindness, forgiveness, patience, and vulnerability. Yet life’s tender fragility, fear, anxiety, and our own practiced self-sabotage can derail us from growing and thriving, leaving us fractured and afraid.
Ordained Buddhist teacher and Quaker Valerie Brown invites us into the heart of compassion, insight, and courage. Filled with Quaker wisdom, mindfulness meditation practices, and portraits of real people living out simple yet life-affirming bravery, Hope Leans Forward is a guidebook for all of us who are on journeys of self-transformation, self-discovery, and spiritual discernment. Centering small, everyday acts of bravery with diverse stories from marginalized communities, Brown’s unique perspective as a Black Buddhist Dharma teacher in the Plum Village tradition and her extensive leadership experience shepherd us in navigating life’s essential questions to discover true aliveness and meaning. When we focus on cultivating clarity and discernment in our purpose, we begin to understand that we are truly connected to–and that we contribute to–a larger whole.
Written through a period of profound personal loss and in the urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement, Brown’s spiritual insight and life- and spirit-tested wisdom offers a new source for anyone seeking hope, and seeking to alleviate suffering within ourselves and our communities.
Walking in the World as a Friends: Essential Quaker Practices is a program of the Quaker Religious Education Collaborative. It looks at how essential Quaker practices weave together the individual, Quaker community and Spirit, creating a unique, vital and transformative dynamic. It addresses the question “What do we do that makes us Quaker?”
Author: Nadine Clare Hoover
Publisher: Quaker Religious Education Collaborative, 2020
ISBN: 9780982849279
Paperback, 72 pages