Many faiths mark the transition of young people to teenage/adult status with a special process: learning, performance or ceremony. Quakers do not have a particular tradition for doing this. Some Friends have felt a yearning to honor this transition within their...
Quaker Faith & Practice Resources
Parable of the Talents, Friends Squash Project
This article is a modern enactment of the parable of the talents, and speaks to what can be done together with the right leading. I am trying to remember the Hubbard squash seeds. Did they arrive in my childhood, sixty years ago? I am not sure. I surely remember...
The Gardener
Lydia Grace Finch brings a suitcase full of seeds to the big gray city, where she goes to stay with her Uncle Jim, a cantankerous baker. There she initiates a gradual transformation, bit by bit brightening the shop and bringing smiles to customers' faces with the...
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...
Books and Music to Celebrate Earth Day
Below is a list of some of our favorite books that are associated with Earth Day. Some books tell about people and the work that they’ve done to help the Earth. Other books share stories to appreciate our beautiful Earth. Each entry has been chosen because it has a...
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Lesson plan for the home with a book and activities. When fourteen-year-old William Kamkwamba's Malawi village was hit by a drought, everyone's crops began to fail. Without enough money for food, let alone school, William spent his days in the library — and figured...
Baseball Saved Us
Lesson plan for the home with a book, video and activities. The Japanese American concentration camp experience during World War II After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Shorty and his family, along with thousands of other Japanese Americans, have been forced to...
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...
Flowers for Sarajevo
Lesson plan for the home with a book, music and activities: Young Drasko is happy working with his father in the Sarajevo market. Then war encroaches. Drasko must run the family flower stand alone. One morning, the bakery is bombed and twenty-two people are killed....
Good People Everywhere
Lesson plan for the home with a book, video and music. Good People Everywhere is a soothing story to help children become mindful of the beautiful, caring people in their world. Each page delightfully unfolds with vibrant, engaging illustrations and endearing stories...
A is for All the Things You Are
A lesson plan for the home with a book, music and activities: A Is for All the Things You Are: A Joyful ABC Book is an alphabet board book developed by the National Museum of African American History and Culture that celebrates what makes us unique as individuals and...
Conversation Circle (March 2020) — Sustainability
Topic: Walk Gently Over the Earth: Religious Education for Sustainable Living Friends, young and old, find joy and inspiration in the natural world, yet we are challenged by a mounting environmental crisis. Friends from Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) to explore...
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...
Beyond Consensus: Salvaging the Sense of the Meeting
The author, Barry Morely, discusses three essential components in discovering the sense of the meeting: release, long focus, and transition to light, all of which are nurtured by worship. Rich stories of life experiences, especially with adolescents, illustrate the...
¡Aprobado! Una Historia Acerca de la Junta de Acuerdos
¿Cómo pueden los niños trabajar de forma cooperativa para tomar decisiones? Los niños en una junta Cuáquera necesitan decidir qué hacer con el dinero que han recaudado. Ellos conducen su propia junta acuerdos. La historia utiliza un lenguaje claro, sencillo y unas...
Approved! A Story About Quaker Meeting for Business
How can children work cooperatively to make decisions? Approved! A Story About Quaker Meeting for Business tells of a group of children who want to donate the money they earned selling hot dogs at their Quaker meeting. The story uses simple, clear language and...
Freeing the Spirit
Nominations in the Society of Friends in Theory and Practice What could be more important for any organization with a message to put across than that it should itself practice what it preaches? In this book, Roy Stephenson examines how Quakers, members of the...
The Mediator’s Handbook
The popular Mediator's Handbook presents a time-tested, adaptable model for helping people work through conflict. Extensively revised to incorporate recent practice and thinking, the accessible manual format lays out a clear structure for new and occasional mediators,...
Meeting Needs and Friends General Conference (FGC) Resources
Meeting Needs linked with FGC Resources: A Sampling (Bolded words can be put into a search engine like Google this way — “FGC clearness committees”, or "FGC outreach” for example or into the FGC search window on the website without the “FGC”) Outreach: How can we...
What is Given from the Heart
A little boy and his mother fall on hard times, but discover that they can still give heartfelt gifts. A touching story of compassion, this is the last picture book authored by one of America's best loved children's authors. "Misery loves company," Mama says to James...
The Light: A Story for December
Cultures all over the world celebrate festivals of Light, often in December. This story, told in the Faith & Play style. uses symbols of Light in a simple, profound way to introduce these festivals in Quaker religious education.
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...