Reposted from the Substack Living the Questions. Here’s a little more on Parker Palmer.

This post first appeared in Jan., 2026. I’m reposting an edited version today because Oct. 2—the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi—has been named International Day of Nonviolence by the U.N. For ten long years, my anger at MAGA-inspired violence has been in tension with my aspiration as a Quaker to live a nonviolent life. Here I reflect on how I’ve held that tension, for better or for worse.

I. I’m a Quaker, a member of the Religious Society of Friends. Most people don’t know much about us—except for the oatmeal we don’t make—so here’s a primer:

Quakerism began in the 1650s in protest against what its founders saw as the Church of England’s distortion of the Gospel. The branch of Quakerism I belong to has no clergy and no creed that one needs to sign on the dotted line. Nor do we believe that the Spirit stopped speaking when Holy Writ was locked down. We believe in “continuing revelation”—i.e., the human capacity to hear and act on the imperatives of the Spirit—and in the importance of living in ways that “take away the causes of war and all forms of violence.”

In place of a creed, Quakers aspire to live by Testimonies that reflect what we’ve learned about the values we’re called to embody: equality, peace, social justice, integrity, simplicity, community, and care for the earth. We often fall short of our aspirations, but our Testimonies have found expression in various real-world ways—evidence that nonviolence is not passivity but what Buddhists call “right action.”

Quakers were the first American religious community to oppose slavery, making ownership of enslaved people grounds for expulsion ninety years before the Civil War. Some have expressed their opposition to war by becoming conscientious objectors and war tax resisters—though COs have often served in unarmed military roles (e.g., battlefield medics), and war tax resisters normally give to charities what they withhold from the IRS. Though small in number (around 85,000 in the U.S. today), Quakers have had a disproportionate presence in nonviolent struggles against war and for racial justice, as well as relief, reconciliation and rebuilding efforts in war-torn lands. Quakers have also had a strong presence in education in the U.S. and around the world.

II. I discovered Quakerism when I was in my mid-thirties, and found it to be the spiritual home I’d been looking for. It made sense to me that every human being has direct access to the Spirit—that the first place to go when I’m in need of guidance is not to a book or an expert, but to what Quakers call “the inner teacher,” an indwelling voice of love, truth and justice.

But given what I know about my own capacity for self-deception, it also made sense that I need a community in which to test my leadings, to help me discern whether the voice I’m hearing is that of my inner light or my inner darkness.

The community I need is not one that gives me answers, but one that knows how to help me listen more deeply to the truth we all carry within. I need a community that helps me discern true from false, right from wrong, knowing that the only answers with staying power are those that come from within, not those imposed from without. That’s the kind of community Quakerism offered me.

III. Here’s the rub: in spite of fifty years of Quaker-style listening, discernment and formation in the theory and practice of nonviolence, I come close to blowing sky-high whenever I learn about the latest Project 2025/MAGA offense against everyday decency, human dignity, the rule of law, and the common good.

Fortunately, I don’t suffer from scattergun anger, the way POTUS does. My failure to be declared “winner” in each and every thing I’ve tried has not led me to kick my dog or burn down a house, let alone threaten war against a sovereign people, or imprison and deport tens of thousands of non-criminals without due process. My anger is laser-like, aimed at people like POTUS and his minions who use their power and wealth only to get more of same, hurting folks who are vulnerable, who deserve a helping hand from those of us who have more than we need.

My “anger issues” run deep enough that a few years ago, a conservative friend with whom I was having a series of “spirited” political discussions gave me a T-shirt that reads, “One Mean Quaker.” I wear those scarlet letters with un-Quakerly pride. At age 87, there may be snow on the roof, but there’s a fire in the furnace.

IV. Does anger have a place in the life of someone who aspires to nonviolence? My answer is a simple yes—and I feel no need for therapy to “fix my problem.” Truth be told, if I didn’t feel anger toward POTUS and MAGA, I’d get myself to a therapist ASAP. Becoming emotionally numb to evil leads to the death of the human heart, and I intend to keep mine alive as long as I draw breath.

By their own admission, one of MAGA’s most potent weapons is “flooding the zone with s _ _ t.” By drowning us in a deluge of merde, they want to wear us down to a point where we stop resisting. Anger can serve as a source of energy for the work we need to do, a source of stamina to help carry us through. Everything depends on our capacity to harness our anger in the service of life-giving actions instead of harboring it in ways that bring us down.

I love the old saw that “not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.” But forgiveness, I’ve discovered, is not always mine to give, especially in relation to people who have long histories of malicious acts they refuse to acknowledge, let alone atone for. Sometimes I have to pass the forgiveness baton to higher powers, as Iris DeMent does in her tragicomic song about betrayal: “God may forgive you, but I won’t. Jesus may love you, but I don’t.”

V. For me, the spiritual life is not about escaping the world’s trouble by flying up, up and away. It’s about finding the right balance of grounding and passion to stay in the fray. Anger—rightly understood, harnessed and deployed—is an emotion that keeps me grounded in reality while giving me the energy to pursue possibilities, no matter how remote.

Anger repressed can contribute to psychological breakdowns like depression, and chronic anger can contribute to bodily breakdowns like high blood pressure and heart disease. As one who has some experience with clinical depression, I have no desire to revisit that deadly state of mind.

When I get angry about the way people with power and wealth treat folks who must scramble daily simply to stay alive, it feels as if I have tapped into a vital stream of life—a stream that connects us to each other in the web of being, the ecosystem of all life. What hurts one of us hurts all of us, and feeling the hurt viscerally reassures me that I’m still in the web, holding and being held. I was in that stream when I wrote Healing the Heart of Democracy in 2011, whose title speaks for itself.

VI. Day by day, as I try to use my anger to animate actions in service of love, truth and justice, I take time to strengthen my commitment to nonviolence by listening to voices that remind me of life’s endless potentials.

I listen to nature, to music, to the poets, to trusted teachers, to people whom I regard as exemplars in leading nonviolent lives. I also continue to listen in solitude and community for what is in and out of balance within me.

I’m not up for cheap versions of“The Peaceable Kingdom,” not ready to lie down with predators still red in tooth and claw who continue to devour the vulnerable. Still, I want to live in a spirit that helps lay the ground on which we can take a step closer to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Beloved Community”—or, at the very least, the functional civil community we must create post-MAGA to keep our democracy alive.

At the same time, I like to keep my options open, taking my cues from a joke Quakers tell on themselves: A Quaker farmer owned a mule that refused to do a lick of work. Having run out of patience, the farmer went to the barn one morning, lifted the mule’s ear, and calmly delivered a message: “Friend mule, Thee knows I am a Quaker. Thee knows I will not yell or curse at Thee. Thee knows I will not throw rocks at Thee, or kick Thee, or hit Thee with a stick. But what Thee does not know is that I might sell Thee to the Baptist farmer down the road who will beat the living daylights out of Thee.”

The moral of this story is simple: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

P.S. We’re one month away from the Nov. 3 midterm elections. It’s vital that droves of us vote to make it harder for the MAGA regime to scream “rigged election,” as they always do when they lose. So please VOTE EARLY, and encourage folks you know to do the same. HERE is a list of states where you can check on the early voting options in your state.

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, September 20, 2026

It is corruption that is on my mind this morning.  Corruption.  We seem to be living in a world that is soaked in corruption:  that’s how it seems to me. 

And I can’t talk about this without straying a bit into politics.  But ultimately, my message isn’t about politics.  It’s about the human capacity for selfishness and sinfulness.

It seems like every day we read about big league corruption in the news.  Federal contracts are given on a no-bid basis, and they are given to donors of the ruling party.  Members of Congress grow wealthy on stock trades for which they have inside information.  The children of high officials take advantage of their connections to make millions — or billions — of dollars.  A foreign prince donates an expensive airplane for the president’s personal use.  Criminals are pardoned and we learn they, too, are donors to the ruling party.  This is big league corruption, on scales of money or participants that we may never have experienced before.    

When we speak of “corruption” today we generally mean a kind of theft that is accomplished by collusion and paperwork rather than by brute force.  It is theft accomplished by taking advantage of special access – taking advantage of others, not treating them equally.  It is accomplished by kickbacks and bribes, by no-bid contracts, by sweetheart deals made in darkness, by insider information, by shell corporations and by bitcoin.  It is generally what we call “white collar crime” to distinguish it from housebreaking or purse snatching.

It is mega-corruption we are seeing today  But that mega-corruption doesn’t have anything to do with us, does it?  We’re not engaged in it, we ordinary people, and we’re not benefitting from it.  We p[ay our bills; we pay our taxes.  I am talking about wrongdoing that is not what ordinary people do because ordinary people don’t deal much in shell corporations or insider trading or bitcoin.  I am talking about the corruption of those in situations of power and wealth. We’re on the sidelines.  Or are we?

How is it, I wonder, that we come to live in a time when there is so much of this big league corruption?  Why do we see so many headlines that suggest this kind of corruption?  Why now?  What conditions have allowed this big league corruption to flower?  What soil has it grown in?  I wonder about this. 

And so I find myself wondering if it is something about our ordinary, everyday assumptions and values.  Perhaps we as ordinary people have come to be too accepting of smaller, ordinary, everyday versions of these kinds of corrupt practices:  looking the other way, helping ourselves from common stores, taking gifts for favors in return, engaging in the quid pro quo, finding and not returning something that does not belong to us.  Have we brought this on ourselves? 

What do we expect of one another, I find myself wondering?  What do we expect of ourselves?  Do we expect selfish behavior or generous behavior?  Do we expect one another to be our “brother’s keepers?”  Do we hold ourselves to the standard of “the good Samaritan?” 

Speaking just for myself, I know that it is all too easy for me to slip into favoring myself, thinking first of myself, and suspecting others of always favoring themselves, thinking first of themselves.  Isn’t this the broad door to corruption, a world where everybody is just out for themself?  Something’s missing?  Someone else took it, I find myself thinking!  Only later do I find where I myself misplaced it.

How do we stop this easy drift into selfishness and corruption?

There are passages in the Bible that speak forcefully, even eloquently, about corruption.  For example In the Second Epistle of Peter, the second chapter: 

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies,  … 2 And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. 3 And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. … 19 [These false prophets] promise [the people] freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.   (2 Peter 2)

The Bible — especially the Hebrew Testament — is an assemblage of stories of the people falling away from God, and then being called back to faithfulness.  What does this falling away look like?  Is it corruption?  That’s not the word we find; “corruption” is not a common word in the Bible.  When it talks about wrongdoing, the Bible, is either maddenly specific (like Leviticus) or maddenly vague and general.  The Bible speaks much more often of “wickedness” and of “wrongdoing.”  Corruption is a word not much used. 

We do find this:  “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 

My father, a chemist during the week but also an amateur theologian on Sundays, used to note that we are commanded not be selfless but rather to love equally both our ourselves and our neighbor.  “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Not more, not less.  We are expected to love ourselves, but we are expected to love others just as much. 

That commandments is something that does not change in the Bible.  It first appears in Leviticus 19:18:

“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”

That advice is repeated by Jesus in two of the Gospels, Matthew 22:39 and Mark 12:31.  Both say roughly the same thing.  Jesus is asked, as a kind of trap, which is the most important Commandment, referring we suppose to the Ten Commandments.  And Jesus’s response doesn’t really refer to the Ten Commandments at all:

29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’  31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  There is no commandment greater than these.”

Fast forward to today.  Today we seem to live in a confusing world.  Sometimes we hear encouragement to be helpful and generous to one another.  But more often we are instructed, even encouraged or cajoled, to ‘look out for number one.’  Satisfy yourself.  Do what gives you pleasure. Let others take care of themselves.

Take precautions against those around you, we are urged, because you should expect those others to take whatever they can.  Beware the immigrant, beware the stranger, beware even your neighbor or your brother.  Is this not our daily bread?  Is this not the guidance of advertisements and influencers, of self-help books and celebrities?

And if you expect selfish behavior from others, why should you not indulge in selfish behavior yourself?  Isn’t it what is expected?

Is this not the root of the corruption I started by speaking about?  ‘Get away with whatever you can’ seems to be the watchword of the day — not just for the rich and the rulers, but (to be honest) for all of us.   Who is going to stop us?  The police?  If your taking is noticed, then do what you can to escape any consequence – lies or lawyers, or silence.  And isn’t that what we expect anyone and everyone to do?

Have we become too comfortable, too familiar with selfishness?  Have we not come to accept, even expect, selfish behavior from everyone around us, and even from ourselves?  Have we not?  How can we insist on honest and generous behavior in others if we will not insist on it for ourselves? Thinking of ourselves first and foremost may be the common way, but we are called to something better. 

Who will do this calling? How and where will be learn to “love our neighbors as ourselves”?

To some extent, we all learn by example.  Dolly Parton’s various obituaries were full of her generosity, her support for literacy efforts and for the part of Tennessee where she grew up. Her younger sister, Stella Parton, said,  “My sister was always thinking of others and if you want to honor her legacy, show more kindness, lift others up and give more of your time and resources as she continued to do to the very end.”  Do we have enough such examples or are they too rare?  Dolly was noticed because her behavior had become so rare. 

I want to close with a teaching by the Jewish sage Hillel the Elder – from a very long time ago.  Perhaps you know it.  ”If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” [From  Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), 1:14]

Who will teach us this today?  Who will teach us to turn away from a culture of everyday, everywhere selfishness?  Who can we hear teaching us “to love our neighbors as ourselves?”

Also posted on River View Friend.

Leslie Manning gave the Walton Lecture at Southeastern Yearly Meeting this year on April 24, 2026. Her message was titled “Hold Fast the Hope That Anchors the Soul.”

You can see and hear a video of the presentation HERE.

In this 2026 SEYM Walton Lecture, Leslie Manning speaks from the silence, and from her experience, on how we can find and offer hope and healing to a world in need of both — how to balance the call to Spirit-led action with the need for contemplation and reflection, and how to cultivate compassion, uphold conviction and sustain community for the long term. She hopes that we will listen together for not only “what is” but also for “what is about to become.”

As an introduction to the lecture, a group of SEYM Friends sang a Quaker chant, Mind That Which is Eternal, from Paulette Meier’s album Timeless Quaker Wisdom in Plainsong. The lyrics are taken from George Fox’ Epistle #24:

“Mind that which is eternal, which gathers your hearts together up to the Lord, and lets you see that ye are written in one another’s heart.”

During the lecture, Leslie played a portion of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 speech, Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence. (The excerpt can be heard at 38:24 of video of Beyond Vietnam.)

Before the closing silence, Leslie played Carrie Newcomer’s If Not Now.

Leslie Manning is a member of the Durham, Maine Monthly Meeting in New England Yearly Meeting. She is an interfaith chaplain working with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, a lifelong activist and a recorded minister among Friends. She aspires to “live in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occas

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, September 6, 2026

Last Sunday, when we — that is Allison, Lidia and I — were freaking out about the next day being their first day of school, we ended up at the Days Ferry United Church of Christ Sunday Service.

The Minister, Lucia, read the story about Owen and Mzee. Owen was a baby hippo rescued in Kenya after being swept from his homeland and family as a result of the tsunami in 2004. He landed at an animal sanctuary in Kenya next to Mzee, a 130 year old tortoise where he thrived, until he got to be too big to be safe around his friend and mentor.

The moral of course is that we can seek refuge and be loved by those that are vastly different from ourselves, and/or that we can provide refuge to those that are vastly different from ourselves.

The same message from each perspective.

I can relate to this story – feeling like I’m 130 years old having taken under my wing – babes. From a different culture, a different country but with all the willingness to find safety, to be nurtured and to learn. And conversely to provide companionship, play and devotion.

What did it take for the 130 year old tortoise to provide safety and respite to the young hippo?

Mzee was required to show patience to the young hippo. He wasn’t used to companionship by a hippo – He had lived decades by himself at the sanctuary – maybe, occasionally companioned by some birds. His routines were firmly in place. He ate, he bathed and generally enjoyed his solitude and contemplative life. But the young hippo was insistent, he demanded of the old tortoise and the tortoise responded with patience and a willingness to learn. Together they came up with a system of communication that entailed gentle nudges. It became apparent that the old tortoise required that they, he and Owen, eat together and finish their meal together before gently ambling off to bathe in the pond. In this way they committed to each other and were a unit, sharing their routines, compromising and companioning.

Learning from each other requires not only commitment and willingness but also general curiosity about the other. We can’t develop meaningful relationship unless we want to know about the other: their desires, their interests; what brings them joy, what makes them sad. Underpinning this curiosity must be humility. I may know my needs and interests but how am I to know another’s unless I am open to learning about them, setting aside what I think is right or true.

This seems very complicated but to Owen and Mzee it appeared instinctual.

To us humans this process of willingness, commitment and humility may have been instinctual at one point also but perhaps has become deeply buried under layers of the insistence that the mind is all important. That intellectualizing, strategizing and rationalizing is what has brought about the modern world. And that may be true but to my way of thinking, to the detriment of love.

Love has gotten buried under all the thinking. Our energy has become firmly ensconced in our brain, it has left our heart. And now, for me, it takes a concerted effort each morning to sit in stillness and direct the energy from my brain into my heart. And what a place of warmth and comfort my heart is – I’ve found. Because it is in my heart that I find God and can then make sense of what it is to be human.

Richard Rohr, the Jesuit Priest, writes from Romans Chapter 8 verse 9 the following:

The true self is the Divine Indwelling

The Holy Spirit within us.

The true self is the Divine part of us that is:

Great enough, Deep enough Gracious enough

To fully accept the human part of us.

I find the Holy Spirit within my heart. And once I do, it is as if a wave of solace washes over me. I find relaxation, stability and guidance within the opening and expansion of my heart.

And then all things are clear. I can accept that I am going to make mistakes – this leads to the humility required to ask questions, to be curious about another’s experience, another’s perspective. I can accept that others are going to make mistakes. I can accept that I am not like others and there will be others that I don’t agree with – I can accept what life has offered me despite a difference in what I thought my life’s plan was to be.

The minister Lucia raised the issue that perhaps it is fear that prevents us from being open to others – the fear rising out of lack: lack of jobs, economic stability perhaps and I would add to the list.

A lack of love.

When we do not experience the warmth and comfort of love or Spirit, our hearts close up, shut down and all the energy recedes back to the brain and thinking about material comforts. What thing can make me feel…. happy, relaxed, healthy. We can spend hours thinking about different arguments for and against, thinking about what we should say or what others ought to do, how others should act. We lose sight of our own humanity, that we were born to make mistakes – it is a vital component around the learning process.

How often have we told ourselves – “Well, I’ll never do THAT again! And so we’ve learned.

Without experiencing love within ourselves we lose sight of the expansive capacity of our hearts to provide support and comfort to others, no matter their differences.

We now live in a time we thought had long passed, we were progressing towards solving problems for the greater good of the earth and the earth’s inhabitants and perhaps we feel like we have come to a full stop and in fact are going backwards, back to rugged individualism: I’m taking mine because I’m better at thinking and strategizing and manipulating. And, for me, that is an accurate assessment.

So what are we as Friends/Quakers to do. What are we to do. And whatever we do, is it enough?

I will repeat Richard Rohr’s words – that the Holy Spirit is found within us – allowing us to fully accept ourselves (and others I would add) with grace, knowing that we are enough.

And again how do we get to that place of knowing we are enough – for me it is not by thinking it. It is by experiencing a heart full of love. And how do I get there? By asking my brain to quiet itself and directing my attention to that holy place in my chest – my heart.

It is here in my heart that I find God and I can ask, what would LOVE do? What is the most loving thing I can do in the situation.

It is not always easy or straight forward. I’ve had to make some very difficult choices in the last several weeks involving relationships that have caused me to experience a great deal of sadness. And it is here that I choose my words carefully – caused me to experience a particular thing.

I say this knowing that that thing, as an experience, is temporary.  As are all things and situations. Our life here on this planet is temporary, perhaps this planet is temporary. We don’t know. And that’s just it. We don’t know. Some things we think we know but everything is subject to change. This, perhaps, is what makes it so difficult for us now – the uncertainty. Clearly, we were fed a lot of nonsense when we were taught if we just followed a particular path, our lives, our world would turn out a particular way.

Not so – we find out, rather late in the game.

So how do we pivot. How do we manage ourselves, how do we manage our now shattered expectations about our lives and the world around us.

Let us return to our hearts, let us return the energy to our hearts and find the answers in love. What would love do?

How do we love ourselves and love others. How do we respect ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses and those around us.

How do we remain curious about others and the state of the world?

I return to Owen and Mzee. Their openness, willingness, and their commitment to their relationship, to companionship and to love.

To exude this commitment to Love and to share this commitment to Love is enough.

And the wonder of it all! If I stay the course of love where will this take me?

Summary of a message given at Durham Friends Meeting, August 9, 2026

There was much learned at New England Yearly Meeting sessions 2026.  My August 9 message was just the tip of the iceberg on the theme used at sessions – ‘Spring Forth O Well, and make us whole,’ from Numbers 21:17  on spiritual renewal and the healing sustaining power of water. 

My final words in the message were for us ‘to be the well’. 

My postscript is that you are the well, in many ways, as individuals and as a community. 

Thank you!

(Funny how a message that can take 15 to 30 minutes can be summed up in a few sentences.  🙂

Here is a LINK to recordings from NEYM’s recently completed 2026 Annual sessions.

You’ll find there the Bible Half Hours as presented by Adria DiCapua, and the Plenary given by Wess Daniels, titled The Practice of Silence as Resistance in the Age of Attention Fracking.