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Grounding for Transformed Lives

  • Grounding for Transformed Lives: Peace and Alternatives to Violence
    • How do we help each other face conflicts with patience, forbearance and openness to healing?
    • To what extent does our meeting ignore differences in order to avoid possible conflicts?
    • What are we doing as a Friends meeting within our communities:
    • 1) To recognize and correct the causes of violence?
    • 2) To understand the impact of the global military-industrial complex on all aspects of life?
    • 3) To increase the understanding and use of alternatives to violence?
    • 4) To work toward overcoming separations and restoring wholeness?
    • 5) To support the constructive use of authority?
    • 6) To promote the sustainability of the earth?
    • Do I “live in the virtue [power] of that Life and Spirit that took [takes] away the occasion of all wars”?
    • How do I maintain Friends’ testimony that participation in war and its preparation is inconsistent with the teaching of Jesus?
    • Do I treat personal conflict as an opportunity for growth?
    • How do I face my differences with others and reaffirm in action and attitude my love for those with whom I am in conflict?
  • Grounding for Transformed Lives: Integrity and Simplicity
    • What is the interplay between simplicity and integrity in the life of our meeting?
    • How does our meeting embody simplicity and integrity in its structures and practices?
    • How has our meeting considered humanity’s impact on the earth’s ecological integrity and the ways in which violence and injustice exacerbate this impact?
    • How do I strive to achieve harmony between my inner and outer commitments in my spiritual journey, my work, my family and my other responsibilities?
    • Am I temperate in all things?
    • Am I open to counsel regarding addictive behavior?
    • Am I involved only with those organizations and activities whose purposes and methods complement my integrity?
    • Am I careful to speak truth as I know it and am I open to truth spoken to me?
    • Am I mindful that judicial oaths imply a double standard of truth?
  • Grounding for Transformed Lives: Equality and Justice
    • How does our meeting benefit from established patterns of prejudice, exploitation and economic convenience? What are we doing to change this?
    • How and how often does our meeting engage in a self-examination of its attitudes and actions regarding race, ability, gender, sexual orientation or class?
    • What steps are we taking as a meeting to inform ourselves about social injustice and ecological violence embedded in our political and economic systems?
    • What steps are we taking as a meeting to assure that our meeting and the committees and institutions under our care are respectful of the earth and its people?
    • Do I regularly examine myself for attitudes and behavior that indicate any hidden prejudice regarding race, gender, sexual orientation, disability or class?
    • How do my lifestyle choices affect—positively or negatively—the causes of justice and peace in our nation, the community of nations and the whole of creation?
    • How do I demonstrate in my way of living, and in what I teach my children, that love of God entails acknowledging “that of God in every person”?