Growing and Nurturing Our Relationships

My editorial colleagues will tell you that you never can predict quite how an issue of Friends Journal will coalesce. The issue themes we set forth in advance are often quite general. We have a monthly staff meeting dedicated to brainstorming a variety of possible approaches to the upcoming topic, and we think of authors known to us to whom we might reach out. We pose questions that we are curious about. And we put out a call to the community and a deadline for potential authors to get in touch with ideas or submissions. After the deadline passes, we make our selections for the issue. Sometimes at this point, we find we have, more or less, what we expected. Other times, though, the articles that pique our interest the most are decidedly not what we would have expected. This issue, on the theme of “Relationships,” is one of the latter group.

One piece, “True to Your Word,” is by a Quaker who writes anonymously about integrity and polyamory: loving and committed relationships with more than just a pair of partners. The author encourages readers to consider polyamory and non-monogamy as patterns that Quakers ought to embrace as possibilities within our conceptions of marriage—just as many Quaker communities have, especially in recent decades, come to embrace the validity and right process of blessing marriages between partners who share the same gender. I could have expected that we’d receive a submission like this for the Relationships issue, and I suspect readers will find it intriguing, if not provocative.

Nancy L. Bieber’s “A Love Letter to My Meeting,” on the other hand, is not a format that would have occurred to me, but it is a delight. Nancy reflects on the ways her feelings for her Quaker community have changed, been challenged, and matured over their years of commitment together.

Other features consider the relationships Friends have with chosen family, and even how a relationship with Quakerism was passed down through time from a great-great-grandparent and revivified. I appreciated Mary Linda McKinney’s article on Quaker “eldering” as a relationship. One of the great gifts my Quaker community has given me is that it is abundant with elder Friends (who may or may not be older than I in a temporal sense). I deeply value the presence of Quakers my parents’ age or older, a family that grows and changes, and I resonate with the call that echoes throughout this issue for readers to attend to the faithful nurturing of our relationships with one another as part of our community.

As I write this column, I am preparing to travel to the 2024 World Quaker Plenary in early August in Johannesburg, South Africa. My colleagues Christopher and Sharlee and I are looking forward to encountering Quakers from around the globe and bringing back to Friends Journal readers and QuakerSpeak audiences some of the things we’ve learned and people we’ve met. It occurs to me just now that my Quaker family is going to feel a lot larger after this experience! Here’s to growing and nurturing our relationships.