Keeping up with Friends

Our latest resources

We’ve put out many new resources since our last issue of Quaker Concern:

A note from CFSC’s General Secretary Jennifer Preston

Recently, more and more people have been telling me their desire to avoid the news. It’s a sentiment I can understand. Images of violence and oppression are everywhere. For some, this can be immobilizing. Last week, my friend and colleague Jane Orion Smith reminded me, “Well, as the General Secretary of Service Committee, you don’t have that option.” She’s quite right.

Watching videos of Buddhist monks on a Walk for peace that has garnered a great deal of attention lately, I found myself deeply moved. They showed such commitment to their task. And the faces of people who lined the streets to see them pass looked moved too.

Later, I stumbled across a Maya Angelou quote, “My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. Continue to allow humour to lighten the burden of your tender heart.”

The world indeed is mean. Acts of kindness are needed on all sorts of levels. CFSC’s website https://QuakerService.ca shares many resources in all of our program areas offering suggestions for engagement. And have a look at the monks.

New video series Unshackled

Lisa is a dynamic and engaging storyteller. Over the next year we’ll be sharing weekly short episodes of her explaining her experience of incarceration, what prison life is really like, the learning and transformation she went through in understanding herself as a woman of Indigenous descent, and the impacts that transformative justice and time in an Indigenous Healing Lodge have had for her.

Newest posts for Psychology Today

Does your rage change the world? This post looks at evidence about the relationship between anger and social change activism.

Feeling unheard? Here’s how to bridge gaps in everyday chats This post discusses some of the ways that conversations can get muddled and how to hear each other.

You can read these and other posts on communication and conflict issues on our Psychology Today blog.

Take action

There are several opportunities to write to elected officials today, if so led. These including calling on Canada to: follow its legal obligations and stop exporting arms to human rights abusers (yes, this is still happening), investigate Canadian complicity with the genocide in Gaza and begin to bring accountability, and support a Guaranteed Livable Basic Income (GLBI) and a Prince Edward Island demonstration project for GLBI.

For more information on each of these topics, plus possible wording for your letter, see: https://QuakerService.ca/TakeAction

Winter 2026