Don’t let the silence of Cincinnati Friends’ new member, Michael Rench, who says he is rarely led to speak during worship, fool you. He is a radical to the core: as a draft resister during the Vietnam Conflict, raising a black daughter in conservative Adams County, leading a march against
Cathy Barney
Beloved Community
The last weekend of July proved much more than a recording of my gifts of ministry during the Wilmington Yearly Meeting annual sessions in Maryville, TN. I expanded the depth and the breadth of my Beloved Community, completed an ancestral Quaker circle, shared a moment with younger, inspiring Quaker ministers,
Lotion for the Soul
A childhood Methodist and a longtime adult Unitarian Universalist who, most recently, was head of their membership, Pat Brown wasted no time seeking membership at Cincinnati Friends Meeting (CFM). Effects of the pandemic and a chance visit during EquaSion’s Sacred Connections (an interfaith program encouraging visits to a variety of
A Seeker Since Childhood
New Cincinnati Friends Meeting (CFM) member Dana Neal yearns to know the truth, especially spiritual truth, for herself. At five, when she asked her Missionary Baptist Sunday School Teachers where the Canaanites came from if Adam and Eve were the first people, she was shushed and told to rely on
Quaker Testimonies Echo Fondness for Church Community
The Quaker testimonies reflect new Cincinnati Friends Meeting member Kathleen Smythe’s time in East Africa as a teacher, graduate student, and researcher. “The gift that experience gave me that I find here is hospitality in the largest sense. The open, quiet space of the sanctuary and the welcoming nature of