Messages

  • Children are creatures of the present moment

    “Living in the present moment in radical trust opens us up to discover God’s longings for our lives. Children are creatures of the present moment. ‘It’s mine and I want it now!’ They can be fierce in their desires. In their gentler moments, they guide us to see things we’re in too much of a hurry to notice. They ask us to set aside our work to read to them or leave off our plans to hear their latest knock-knock joke. They want to climb that tree, walk in the woods or wade in the creek. Not tomorrow, today. How much room do we make in our lives for our children’s plans? How much space do we leave for the unexpected?”

  • From a young Friend: Believe in children

    “Quakers want to give youth the chance to explore and know their potential. They also want them to have the confidence that they need. When adults give youth the opportunity they also expect the best from them, by this I mean they should believe in them, encourage them, share with them, trust them.”

  • Parenting as prayer

    “When I go up to kiss my sleeping children and linger with them, in quietness and love, that is prayer. There is a wordless unity of God, myself, my children, a sense of gratitude and reverence, awareness of my need for strength, shame for my failings, a promise to try again.” 

  • Children and Quakerism

    May 2026: Quaker community is intergenerational, and welcoming children of all ages into our spiritual community is a joy. This month has messages for parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, teachers, members of worshipping communities – anyone who spends time with children. We read about the joy children bring, caregiving through hard times, how children experience spirituality, and knowing when to step back to allow children to grow into their wholeness.

  • What is unique about Quaker parenting?

    “Quakers are good at respecting the rights of the individual, knowing they are human beings at all ages – not acting as if they become so at some point in their lives. Whilst, as older, supposedly wiser, people, we have suggested, refused or insisted – we always explain; even if, in desperation, that’s been ‘Because I’m the parent – trust me!’ There are boundaries and rules set from a mutual expectation of trust and reasonableness.”

  • Children have a divine spark

    “Something of God comes into our world with every child that is born. There is here with the newborn child a divine spark, a light within.”

  • Stories of Quaker prophets

    “When many of us hear the word ‘prophecy’, we imagine fortune tellers and future predictions, but true prophetic witness is not about predicting what will happen tomorrow. It’s about an absolute inability to tolerate what is happening today.”

  • The world is depending on us

    “I am called into this moment, and I don’t know what I’m called to do, but the notion that there is a great need and the world is depending on us is something I feel in my bones.”

  • What to do when you’re uncomfortable with conflict

    “I know that a lot of Friends feel uncomfortable with conflict, so it’s a question of being willing to take the risk. And one of the great things about taking the risk is that you will inspire others to take a risk, and they, in turn, will inspire others to take a risk.”

  • The transformation we so desperately need

    “I choose to believe God is calling us to intimacy these days, to be intimate and provocative. In a way, we are reaching for the soil of each other’s souls. And when we reach for that soil, how are we tilling the field of the soul in order to awaken the seeds of […] a better world than the one we’re living in? But [we must] also be able to hold the pain and the sorrow and the sadness and the grief that we’re not there yet. We’re not there yet.”

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