For three Wednesday evenings in January 2025, seven members of Buffalo Quaker Meeting attended via videoconference a training called Creating Anti-Racist Organizations, which was presented by the Center for the Study of White American Culture (CSWAC) and sponsored by New York Yearly Meeting. Over 140 members of New York Yearly Meeting attended the training.
Game plan for health and wellness
Buffalo Friend Patrick Finn 1935-2025
It took a while for Quakerism to grow on Patrick. His family were staunchly Catholic in a staunchly Catholic neighborhood on the Southside of Chicago. His parents required all nine of their children to attend Mass and sent them to the local parish schools. Patrick felt holiness and charity in some of the priests and nuns of his youth, but as a teen he began to grow disillusioned with the corruption, hypocrisy, and racism he saw imbedded in the Church.
Buffalo Friends sign the Apartheid-Free Community Pledge
In Meeting for Business on February 16, 2025, the Friends approved the Meeting signing the Apartheid-Free Community Pledge from American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).
Is the Collective Greater than the Individual in Quakerism?
I have learned that I cannot fully practice Quakerism by myself. It’s not just that Community is one of the central Quaker testimonies, along with Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Equality, and Stewardship. I have to practice Quakerism with a community of others, because we seek to experience Spirit collectively, a sense of unity in Spirit, and invite each other to share how Spirit is changing us and illuminating our way.
Remembering Buffalo Friends: Newton Garver (1928-2014)
Chop wood, carry water
A Quiet Quaker’s Philanthropy: Anna Jeanes
Remembering Buffalo Friends: Louise and Joe Anzalone
Wisdom of the Q’ero people
Good Stewardship among Friends
AVP Workshop Builds Community
Children of the Holy Land
Beginnings with Nurture Committee
We hope that Nurture will foster more willingness to give and receive personal support within our Quaker community. I have learned something about help and equality both through conversations within Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) and New York Yearly Meeting’s ARCH (Aging Resources Consultation Help) program. It is a form of privilege culture to project a status imbalance between those who give help and those who receive help. This is not just or healthy in terms of our humanity and spiritual practice. We receive the loving spirit from any experience in giving and receiving from the heart.
Buffalo Quakers and the Network of Religious Communities (Part 3)
Church of the Wild
In late January, seventeen Friends from Buffalo and Orchard Park Meetings met on a mild day in a Church of the Wild experience to connect with nature. Held at Sue Tannehill’s home on Tonawanda Creek, participants listened and communed with each other and the other-than-human beings in the environment. Fellowship followed with a potluck indoors
Friends Decision-Making and Clerking
Buffalo Justice and Peace Library
Buffalo and Orchard Park Friends Meetings are collaborating with Friends Peace Teams North America to start a new Buffalo Justice and Peace Library! The hope is to organize community volunteers to nurture personal relationships across diverse communities in Buffalo, as we are one of the most segregated cities in the United States. Sharing skills and knowledge goes a long way in creating just, peaceful communities and families.
Resettling one refugee family at a time
We’re a rag-tag team of over 100 volunteers named Kathy’s Happy Helpers, after our founder, Kathy E. Our two-year-old group collects home goods, then cleans and furnishes apartments for refugees. Under the direction of several Buffalo resettlement agencies, we prepare for the “strangers” that Jesus commanded us to care for, and like our name says, we do it happily.