“The world isn’t suffering from too many peacemakers. When people say, ‘but if pacifists were in charge, then x, y, z,’ I say pacifists aren’t in charge, have never been in charge, largely only even get a say in the media if they are there to be ostracised, and are not the people who have caused the wars currently tearing the world apart.”
“Jiwasa is a fundamental principle and linguistic code in the Aymara language that means ‘communal we.’ In many ways, it relates with Quaker testimonies: community, integrity, peace, and harmony with nature….”
“We totally oppose all wars, all preparation for war, all use of weapons and coercion by force, and all military alliances: no end could ever justify such means.
We equally and actively oppose all that leads to violence among people and nations, and violence to other species and to our planet.
Refusal to fight with weapons is not surrender. We are not passive when threatened by the greedy, the cruel, the tyrant, the unjust.”
“‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ does not mean greeting each other and shaking hands. It means looking one another in the eye and asking: how have we historically marginalised? How have we justified violence against women? How have we pretended to make peace by giving handouts without asking why people are in need?”
September 28-October 4, 2026: This Week’s messages are guest edited by Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) who are planning a global online meeting for worship on October 4th (World Quaker Day). The theme is Let Peace Be Among Us. The plan is to reach across many time zones from the Americas to Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Each hour of worship will be dedicated to, and hosted by, a different part of the world where prayers for peace are particularly needed. We’d love for you to join us. Register here to get involved.
“I have been out of formal education for a long time, but for me there is something biologically rhythmic about the month of September. Some cells from my childhood remember that this is a time of newness, of resettling, of intellectual excitement, though my life doesn’t follow that pattern anymore. The messages we read on Teaching & Learning this month told us we should strive to feel this way all the time, always seeking, as lifelong students of truth.”
“The objective of education is to make desirable changes in the way of living; the Quaker objective is a new way of life arrived at through spiritual experiences. The child’s creative urge is the precious stuff to release and to rely on: The best schoolmasters seem to be saying, as clearly as Quakers when they invoke the inner light, ‘The kingdom of God is within you.'”
“The prosperity and welfare of any people depend, in great measure, upon the good education of youth, and their early instruction in the principles of true religion and virtue, and qualifying them to serve their country and themselves, by breeding them in reading, writing and learning of languages, and useful arts and sciences… which cannot be effected in any manner so well as by erecting public schools for the purposes aforesaid.”
“To educate children religiously requires a quietude of mind and sympathy in their guardians, with the state of the good seed in them, which will lead rightly to discriminate between good and evil; to discover the corrupt source of many seeming good actions; and to perceive that a real innocency is the root of others….”
“Children in elementary grades and younger don’t have the same kind of definitional boundaries that adults frequently have between time for work, time for play, and time to be connected with a sense of wonder and awe. For them, work, play, and a sacred space or sense of wonder are all the same thing and it doesn’t have to be named….”
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