Grounding for Transformed Lives

Grounding for Transformed Lives: Peace and Alternatives to Violence

  • How do we help each other face conflicts with patience, forbearance and openness to healing?
  • To what extent does our meeting ignore differences in order to avoid possible conflicts?
  • What are we doing as a Friends meeting within our communities:
  1. To recognize and correct the causes of violence?
  2. To understand the impact of the global military-industrial complex on all aspects of life?
  3. To increase the understanding and use of alternatives to violence?
  4. To work toward overcoming separations and restoring wholeness?
  5. To support the constructive use of authority?
  6. To promote the sustainability of the earth?
  • Do I “live in the virtue [power] of that Life and Spirit that took [takes] away the occasion of all wars”?
  • How do I maintain Friends’ testimony that participation in war and its preparation is inconsistent with the teaching of Jesus?
  • Do I treat personal conflict as an opportunity for growth?
  • How do I face my differences with others and reaffirm in action and attitude my love for those with whom I am in conflict?


Grounding for Transformed Lives: Integrity and Simplicity

  • What is the interplay between simplicity and integrity in the life of our meeting?
  • How does our meeting embody simplicity and integrity in its structures and practices?
  • How has our meeting considered humanity’s impact on the earth’s ecological integrity and the ways in which violence and injustice exacerbate this impact?
  • How do I strive to achieve harmony between my inner and outer commitments in my spiritual journey, my work, my family and my other responsibilities?
  • Am I temperate in all things?
  • Am I open to counsel regarding addictive behavior?
  • Am I involved only with those organizations and activities whose purposes and methods complement my integrity?
  • Am I careful to speak truth as I know it and am I open to truth spoken to me?
  • Am I mindful that judicial oaths imply a double standard of truth?

Grounding for Transformed Lives: Equality and Justice

  • How does our meeting benefit from established patterns of prejudice, exploitation and economic convenience? What are we doing to change this?
  • How and how often does our meeting engage in a self-examination of its attitudes and actions regarding race, ability, gender, sexual orientation or class?
  • What steps are we taking as a meeting to inform ourselves about social injustice and ecological violence embedded in our political and economic systems?
  • What steps are we taking as a meeting to assure that our meeting and the committees and institutions under our care are respectful of the earth and its people?
  • Do I regularly examine myself for attitudes and behavior that indicate any hidden prejudice regarding race, gender, sexual orientation, disability or class?
  • How do my lifestyle choices affect—positively or negatively—the causes of justice and peace in our nation, the community of nations and the whole of creation?
  • How do I demonstrate in my way of living, and in what I teach my children, that love of God entails acknowledging “that of God in every person”?