Forum, March 2026

The effects of angels

I saw an angel once (“Guardian and Guide” by John Andrew Gallery, FJ Feb.).

My husband, Michael, and I were driving south from our little cottage in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland. Night had fallen and it was snowing. Our car was small and simple. The roads in those parts are fairly narrow, and the one we were on was following a river valley, first on one side of the river and then on the other. I was driving at a moderate pace. We knew there would soon be a bridge crossing the river. But I would have driven straight into a snowdrift if it hadn’t been for a dark figure flashing a torch in the direction of the bridge.

I hadn’t believed in angels before that, although drawings of them decorated the church I used to attend.

I believe the Greek work angelos just means messenger. I sure got the message!

Caroline Pybus
Lewes, UK

Thank you, John Andrew Gallery, for having the courage to write openly of your spiritual and mystical experiences. The vocabulary matters much less than the experience. In the writings of early Friends, I see their acknowledgement of personal guidance from a higher source (though they may call it the Light rather than angels). It is ironic that sharing such experiences is not generally welcome among Friends, whose faith began as “experiential” knowing as opposed to doctrinal belief and tradition.

Donne Hayden
Cincinnati, Ohio

This is beautiful. I’d like to share an angel experience of my own. I do not experience it as antithetical to my Quakerism but as a divine experience complimenting my own spiritual journey. I practiced law for 23 years and although the practice was good to me, I knew all along that it wasn’t my calling. Very soon after law school, I began to feel, deep down, that I should have instead gone to seminary. I handled the cognitive dissonance by reciting to myself, over and over, the apocryphal advice from George Fox to Wiliam Penn, “Wear your sword as long as you can.”

Twenty-three years after law school, while having dinner on my own in Center City Philadelphia, I was filled with a very large energy and a voice, “Arthur, now is the time to take off your sword.” I knew, deep inside, that this was a voice from beyond, and that I could trust it without question. The next day, while driving to tell my law partner that I would be leaving the practice, the angel Gabriel appeared to me in front of the car, receding at the same speed, maybe 15 feet tall, with wings outstretched toward me. Without words he welcomed me to this new place.

Arthur M. Larrabee
Philadelphia, Pa.

A thoroughly enjoyable article. I, too, receive direction in this way. Gallery’s article resonated with my soul. I’m thankful he shared his perceptions with the rest of us.

Maggie DeTar-Lavallee
Smithville, Va.

I also feel the effect of angels, although I cannot define them as accurately as you can. I ask them for help in unravelling difficulties that I am facing. When I remember to, I also thank them for their positive influence on my life. I, too, have been led in unexpected directions and have wondered how. Your article is causing me to wonder how many other Quakers share this practice.

Kate Mellor
Poole, UK

The power of silence

The eloquence of Leticia Garcia Tiwari’s written words is matched only by the magnificence of the testament to transformation (“Silence as Refiner’s Fire,” FJ Feb.). Thank you for reminding me of the essential purpose of this refining fire that licks at me and invites me, yes, in the silence. So impactful.

Jason Weaver
Alagoa, Brazil

Thank you for this beautiful testimony to the power of silence. Your story has opened up new dimensions of silence for me.

Abigail Burford
Montclair, N.J.

What did I just read? Power. Flame. Fire. Wow.

Gabby
Applegate, Ore.

Acknowledging Friends’ work to counter hatred and racism

In “Never Too Late to Begin Repair” (FJ Jan.), authors Mary Zwirner and Gordon Bugbee ask, “Could we not have brought the gospel in the language of the Quapaw or Shawnee?”

While I am not familiar with Friends work among the Shawnee, I do know that the Friends who ministered to the Quapaw, Modoc, Seneca, and Wyandotte peoples did not work to destroy those languages and indeed employed interpreters to help present the gospel to those peoples in their own languages. The 1886 book Grand River Monthly Meeting of Friends: Composed by Indians by Jeremiah Hubbard affords us a first-hand account of Quaker religious efforts in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma. While there is much to make me cringe, I submit that dwelling only on the negative does not advance the cause of truth. Yes, we must confess past shortcomings, but also acknowledge how Friends sought to counter the hatred and racism of their day. Building right relationships is the only way forward, and I am grateful for those promoting this path.

David Nagle
Hominy, Okla.

Appreciating a beautiful and complex culture

I was glad to see Ruben Hilari Quispe’s article about his own culture, “Jiwasa, the Communal We” (FJ Jan.) I appreciate his insights into the communal nature of the Aymara, expressed in the pronoun jiwasa.

I was saddened to learn of the hurt his family experienced in their community of Walata Chico due to an emphasis in the church toward separation from the traditions of the community. I’m sorry for the part U.S. missionaries played, intentionally or not.

However, I do want to bring some balance to Quispe’s perspective. He seems to claim that all U.S. missionaries intended to squash the Aymara culture, replacing it with individualistic North American values. There is some truth to this view. Many early missionaries brought with them a presupposition that they were coming to a primitive culture that needed to be civilized. They were wrong, but this perspective took years to correct, and some of the most conservative missionaries held on to it.

But many other missionaries, invited by the Aymara Friends church to serve alongside them, learned to appreciate this beautiful and complex culture. Some learned the Aymara language. In the years between 1970 and 2000, there was a concerted effort on the part of Aymara leaders and missionaries working together to explore what it meant to be both proudly Aymara and committed followers of Jesus. The aim was to discover what a fully contextualized Aymara Friends church would look like. That movement is ongoing.

By the way, there exists a strong Aymara hymnody with over a hundred Aymara hymns written by Aymara musicians and using Aymara music. It is beloved by many believers.

I applaud Quispe’s deep concern that his people hold on to all the good and beautiful in the Aymara culture and that this be a unique part of the Friends church in the Andes.

Nancy Thomas
Newberg, Ore.

White narcissism and power with

Indigenous people enter a “power over” space and are perceived as too bold for immediately sitting down—respect—rather than standing—demand (“The Respectful Way of Life” by Glenn Morison, FJ Jan. online). White narcissism is a better descriptor for White supremacy. This may be the most important article in this issue for non-Indigenous Friends struggling with serving the Indigenous who are attuned to serve “power with.”

Margaret Wood
Wyalusing, Pa.

Getting beyond guilt and worry

I find nothing more dispiriting among us Quakers than the sort of answer I read in Don Badgely’s Viewpoint, “Concerns Regarding the Joint Statement on Genocide” (FJ Jan., Dec. 2025 online).

What is peace? For early Friends, it was a virtue of knowing Christ, to live in the spirit that takes away the occasion for war, and came in a declaration to not kill. It was not a condemnation of those acting differently. Somehow we manage—from our lofty positions perhaps—to tell other people about their testimony without asking. Peace is not peaceful when there is no justice. Peace and justice require us to grab humility and seek deeply how we can help. How does this essay help us do that? What is the testimony of the writer’s life?

The holocaust was genocide. What Palestinians have been suffering through is genocide, now most clearly so, but many Palestinians will tell you: It did not start in October 2023.

I see no recognition of our part in the domination of a people, in the lies that built that domination in that land, and I am heartsick—and remember that Jesus witnessed the domination of the Romans and what his testimony was.

It would have been more useful to hear more about why the writer objects to the idea of Gaza as “genocide,” to understand more the ground of such dismissal beyond surface grumpiness. A statement of genocide is only the first step. Can we get beyond our guilt and our worry about perfection to learn more about what we can do, and act to build better frameworks for how we will all live together? It must start with our discomfort to work together to help support those who need to craft their future of safety.

Joan Broadfeld
Chester, Pa.

The challenge of loving our enemies

To love the Light, “even when it shows us things we would rather not see,” is something I feel deeply, with terrific appreciation (“Beyond What Words Can Utter” by Thomas Gates, FJ Dec. 2025). But it’s also a great challenge, especially when I try to verbalize what it means. How can I love my enemies? How can I separate “approval” from love? Nothing is ever enough, and that’s enough? Beauty is the realization of value greater than survival?

Something about Gates’s question about meeting the Inward Christ: it occurs to me that when people say “God loves you,” it doesn’t mean much to me. “I love God because He loves me” seems empty to me. I mean, who wouldn’t love something all powerful that loves them? But this week, as I struggle with loving my enemies, I begin to see that I might love Jesus not because he loves me but because he loves his enemies.

I still feel Derrida’s “I rightly pass for an atheist.” But recently I feel something like that meeting of the Inward Christ as I consider that “Jesus wept” not because Lazarus was dead but because people needlessly make such suffering for ourselves, while the Truth and Light are in plain view, right in front of us.

Matthew Osborn
Columbus, Ohio