Since the beginning of the Religious Society of Friends, we have found “the Light” to be a helpful way of talking about the Divine. Today, we often speak about “the Light within” and “holding each other in the Light,” but not all Friends know that the image of the...
Centering Resources
Deepening Church Life
This curriculum enables Friends to explore central tenets in the shared life of a Friends Meeting. Topics include: Quaker faith as an adventure in direct, ongoing guidance by Christ shaping the work of the church today. Deepening worship — ways we allow Christ to...
Walking in the World as a Friend
"What do we do that makes us Quakers?" Follow how essential Quaker practices weave together the individual, Quaker community and Spirit, creating a unique, vital and transformative dynamic. The 15 short, free videos are great discussion starters. You can purchase...
My Mandala: What is Your Spiritual Journey?
This experiential curriculum uses mandalas to help children learn about their past and current connection to the Divine and to their faith community. Can be taught in one or more lessons. From the author… "In 2017, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions...
Family Worship Pamphlet
What a challenge our form of worship is for children! Even if you just consider the visuals — "still forms on every side" — it looks like a room full of adults either falling asleep or being punished with a time out. How can we help our children feel the depth, the...
Quiet
Lesson plan for the home with book, videos and activities. The author reminds us that mindfulness‚ "being quiet, still, and present with one another" is a very special thing. Everything is in such a hurry, busy as busy can be. The birds are flying so fast, the...
Centering Tools: Mandalas
"It all starts with stopping," says author Beth Collea, as she describes how the practice of coloring mandalas helps young children settle. Links are provided to websites with free, printable mandalas from the simple to the intricate. This tool is useful for family...
Despair, Hope and the Great Turning
Anxiety about the state of the world is common among young Friends. From the widely acclaimed Powell House Youth Program, this experiential retreat curriculum provides a safe place to voice the fear that burdens so many who seek to live with awareness and...
Settling Routine
We use this settling routine from Ann Arbor (MI) Friends Meeting with all our kids, sometimes omitting a line or two. It's important to have chairs an appropriate height for all children so their toes can touch the floor. Sitting on the floor with knees bent and feet...
Quaker Worship, Faith and Practice
Perfect for newcomers, this brief pamphlet captures the essence of unprogrammed Quaker worship, our faith and practice, and testimonies. By permission of the author, the document is downloadable at no cost. Quaker Worship, Faith and Practice Excerpt on unprogrammed...
Listening Spirituality, Volume II: Corporate Spiritual Practice Among Friends
"This volume examines the ways in which our communal practice in meeting and other gatherings is a spiritually formative influence on us, both as individuals and as a corporate body. Our communal practice is also an expression of the transformed life we seek to lead...
Listening Spirituality, Volume I: Personal Spiritual Practices Among Friends.
This volume of personal spiritual practices, located within the context of Quaker spirituality, formations and transformation, if the first part of a longer work on Quaker spiritual formation. An important part of the underlying vision, however, is that personal...
Beyond Majority Rule: Voteless Decisions In The Religious Society Of Friends
This book is based on Michael J. Sheeran’s doctoral work in the Dept. of Politics at Princeton University. A Jesuit priest, he spent two years (1973—75) conducting interviews, reading, and observing the actual decision-making of the Quakers. Sheeran was convinced...
Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey
Our Life is Love describes the transformational spiritual journey of the first Quakers, who turned to the Light of Christ within and allowed it to be their guide. Many Friends today use different language, but are still called to make the same journey. In our time...
A Testament of Devotion
Since its first publication in 1941, A Testament of Devotion has been universally embraced as a truly enduring spiritual classic. Plainspoken and deeply inspirational, it gathers together five compelling essays that urge us to center our lives on God's presence, to...
Silence and Witness: The Quaker Tradition
This is a meaty and inviting introduction to Quaker thought and spiritual life. The detailed examination of discernment about when to speak in meeting and other leadings is worth the cover price. His chapter entitled 'The Facing Bench' lifts up well selected...
A Guide to Faithfulness Groups
This book explains what faithfulness is and how it can be cultivated by a community that practices ways to listen inwardly together for divine guidance. Above all, this book is a guide to faithfulness groups, a practice that holds great potential for supporting...
Deepening Meeting Life
This curriculum enables Friends to explore central tenets in the shared life of a Friends Meeting. Topics include: Quakerism as an adventure in direct, unmediated, ongoing guidance by Spirit. Exploring our faith with each other. Deepening worship — how we can...
Religious Education for the Home and Small Meeting
This is an idea packet assembled for families and small meetings who seek to educate children in Quaker faith and practice. Originally published in 1986, this is a treasure trove, worthy of adaptation and revision given that most Quaker meetings still face these...
Spirit Rising — Young Quaker Voices
Spirit Rising celebrates, critiques, questions, and reflects on the Quaker faith experience. Writing and visual art by teenage and young adult Quakers from around the world and across the theological and cultural spectrum of the Religious Society of Friends give...
New Children of the Light
Read interviews with sixteen millennial Quakers describing who they are and who they want to become. New Children of the Light can serve as a window into the lives and minds of young people coming of age in the twenty first century. It is common to hear about the...
Busy Box
A Busy Box can be kept on hand should children arrive at a small meeting with no formal religious education program. For Meetings with an RE program, the Busy Box is useful to help young Friends quietly join Meeting for Worship before or after the lesson. Friendly...
Being Present — Worship Bowl Lesson
A lesson on being present and how we bring our whole selves to waiting worship in the meeting. Download/view lesson plan here.
Discovering Our Faith Through Worship Sharing
This booklet offers opportunities for individual, family and all-meeting study of the foundations of the Quaker faith. It offers a way to welcome new attenders by drawing out the faith that is already within them while respecting where each is on their spiritual...