Pain and loss produce chaos. Chaos can have gentle beginnings, such as an inner tug deep within our souls that awakens us to the realization that the life we are now living is not fulfilling. Chaos can also begin in more dramatic ways—the death of a loved one, divorce, the
Welcome Bill Williams
As a new member of Cincinnati Friends Meeting, I appreciate the opportunity to introduce myself. I am a historian and a writer. I have taught in Ireland and Germany, as well as at several American universities. My last position was with the Union Institute and University here in Cincinnati. Although
A Closing Remark of My Own
I’m sitting on a little hill and gazing down on the Milford valley below. A small town of multi-colored buildings lies before me. Motorized traffic winds its way up and down the road between Wooster Pike and Main Street. Various birds are calling to whomever will listen to them while
Pulling the Trigger
I was nine when Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down, yet I understood the wrongness. Wrongness in a time of many wrongs and deaths: JFK; RFK; Malcolm X; the Vietnam War. But a man of peace, a minister? A man simply doing as Jesus would to free his marginalized
A Query for Our Divided Times
Early Quakers developed the process of asking questions—queries—as a way of taking moral and spiritual inventories of themselves, as tools for discerning spiritual challenges within their spiritual and secular communities. We at Cincinnati Friends Meeting pose our queries on an ongoing basis—when we gather for Centering Down to guide us