From Black Lives Matter to Black Votes Don’t

A few short years ago our country had a great awakening about how poorly we treated people of color. Millions of people looked around and realized that Black Americans were still being treated as less worthy, less protected, less heard, and sometimes killed as if their lives carried no weight at all.

It was as if the scales had fallen from our eyes and we were able to see afresh the injustices white people had perpetrated on people of color. The “woke” metaphor was quite apt as so many of us became aware of our privilege, strived to maximize equality, minimize oppression, be anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti- homophobic.

Then came the backlash. First they mocked the language itself. “Woke” became a sneer, compassion became weakness, and equality was turned on its head. The people demanding fairness were treated as the real threat instead of the people stripping rights away. Next they targeted the institutions promoting inclusion: schools, libraries, universities, corporations, public health agencies, even churches.

And now the mask is off completely. Districts with large Black populations are gerrymandered, polling places disappear, voting rolls are purged, and now the Supreme Court has trumpeted the message: Black Votes Don’t Count!

A Time to Work Together

A small group of Meeting members met yesterday to fell a couple of large dead trees, cut them up, and move the dead wood to our burn pile. What some had called eyesores became the setting for something more meaningful: cooperation in action, as we quite literally moved tons of wood together. This remarkable collaborative effort was a powerful reflection of how working together can achieve big things.

There are many threats imperiling our future: war, climate change, nuclear weapons, and the unchecked rise of artificial intelligence. What they share is simple: none can be solved alone; every one of them demands cooperation.

We like to celebrate “healthy competition,” but much of what passes for competition today is not healthy for individuals nor sustainable for society. Just a few years ago, leaders in AI spoke of working together to build guardrails strong enough to prevent harm. That spirit has been shoved aside. In its place: speed, dominance, and a reckless drive forward. Safety be damned.

While we have had conflicts for as long as memory serves, we did not have the wars of aggression that have arisen: Russia invading Ukraine, Israel working to destroy Gaza (for which it has earned international condemnation and even accusations of war crimes against humanity), the United States invasion of Venezuela, and then working with Israel to destroy Iran. Now Israel has begun to apply the “Gaza model” to Lebanon. This is nationalist fever on steroids destroying hope for cooperation.

Now conflict threatens to widen further, fueled by nationalism and a willingness to escalate rather than restrain. Cooperation is treated as weakness and aggression as strength.

The danger of nuclear catastrophe has not disappeared. It has simply faded from our daily awareness, even as the risk grows.

And climate change, the slowest-moving crisis of all, remains the clearest example: there is no path forward without collective action. No nation can solve it alone, and none will escape its consequences.

The world has drifted away from cooperation, pulled by fear, lust for power, and short-term thinking. But this is precisely the moment when cooperation is not optional. It is the only way through.

Why Quakers, Why Now. And Why Wrightstown.

These are unsettled times. Many people feel overwhelmed by polarization, exhausted by noise, and distrustful of institutions that speak more than they listen. The Quaker tradition offers something quietly countercultural for this moment: a faith rooted in listening, conscience, and the belief that every person carries inherent worth.

At the center of Quaker practice is the conviction that truth is discovered together through careful attention, reflection, and lived integrity. Silent worship, shared discernment, and a commitment to peace and equality create space for depth without coercion and action without dogma. Historically, Friends have been early voices against slavery, war, and exploitation not because of ideology, but because listening deeply makes injustice difficult to ignore.

We were early on abolition, early on women’s equality, early on conscientious objection, early on restorative justice, and early on environmental stewardship before it had a marketing department. Not because we were clever, but because listening carefully tends to make injustice hard to ignore.

At the heart of Quaker faith is a simple claim: there is that of God, or the Inner Light, in everyone. Not just the people we like. Not just the ones who agree with us. Everyone. If you actually believe that, domination becomes impossible to justify, dehumanization collapses on contact, and violence starts looking like a failure of imagination rather than a policy option. This is not nostalgia. It is an operating system for surviving moral chaos.

Wrightstown Friends Meeting embodies this tradition in ways that matter locally. The Meeting offers an authentic community grounded in spiritual exploration, care for the Earth, and thoughtful engagement with the world. Its campus and programs reflect values that are practiced, not merely professed. This makes Wrightstown a place of credibility and welcome in a county that is diverse, educated, and seeking spaces for respectful dialogue.

The campus itself matters. A historic meetinghouse that has adapted rather than fossilized. A community that talks about care for the Earth and then installs solar panels instead of issuing a press release. A willingness to host hard conversations, mutual aid, and spiritual exploration without insisting on ideological uniformity. This is credibility you cannot fake.

The proximity of Bucks County Community College presents a natural connection. Students, faculty, and staff often seek meaning, ethical grounding, and community without rigid doctrine. Quaker worship and practice meet that need by inviting reflection, honoring questions, and encouraging responsibility to one another and to the wider world.

Anyone looking for meaning without coercion, ethics without dogma, and community without surveillance will find that Quakerism fits that brief to a tee.

Quakers are well suited for this time because they offer something increasingly rare: a way to be together that is thoughtful, humane, and hopeful without being naïve. Wrightstown Friends Meeting stands as an invitation to the surrounding community to slow down, listen deeply, and imagine how we might live with greater integrity and care.

Woke is Good

“Woke” is not a new idea, and it is not a flaw.

Long before the modern debate over wokeness, Quakers were early adopters of its core values. We recognized the abomination of slavery and spoke against it. We rejected racism. We affirmed that women’s gifts and contributions were essential to society. We understood that equality is a virtue, not a threat. We have long practiced tolerance and care for those labeled as “other.”

All of this happened centuries before the word woke ever entered the conversation.

In its modern usage, the term was embraced to describe a basic moral awareness: paying attention to injustice and refusing to ignore it, being aware of your privilege, trying to maximize equality, being anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti- homophobic. That should have been uncontroversial.

Instead, those who benefited from inequality and impunity like the billionaire class, along with racists and the openly homo- and trans-phobic, decided they were tired of being challenged. To protect their privilege and their rhetoric, they turned “woke” into a slur.

It worked only because too many people accepted the framing.

We shouldn’t.

Being woke simply means being awake to suffering, injustice, and exclusion, and choosing not to look away. That is not radical. It is moral. It is faithful. It is human.

Quakers should not apologize for this tradition. We should be proud of it.

And for those who insist this is some modern excess, it’s worth remembering that Jesus consistently stood with the marginalized, challenged entrenched power, and called out hypocrisy wherever it lived.

If that’s wokeness, then it’s been on the right side of history for a very long time.

Billionaires Against Us... and the Planet

Peace of mind has been stolen.

A tiny class of the unimaginably wealthy is tearing at the fabric that holds the world together. They undermine the international order, strip the planet of its living systems, and accelerate climate collapse for profit. This is not innovation. It is extraction. It is the plunder of a finite world. Call it what it is: violence against Gaia.

The climate math alone is damning. Oxfam’s research shows that a single person in the richest 0.1% emits more carbon in one day than someone in the poorest half of humanity emits in an entire year. While the super-rich profit from environmental destruction, everyone else absorbs the cost in floods, fires, famine, displacement, and anxiety about the future.

It is not obscene to be wealthy. Inherited wealth, stewarded with restraint and responsibility, can even be used for genuine public good. What is obscene is rapacious greed: hoarding far beyond need, externalizing harm, and treating the planet and its people as expendable inputs.

They would like us to believe they are indispensable. They are not. Their wealth depends on our labor, our systems, our tolerance. We do not depend on their excess.

They need us. We don’t need them.

Civilization vs Savagery

It seems there is a perilously thin line between civilization and savagery.

After the savagery of World War II, the international community came together to draw that line clearly—condemning wars of aggression or conquest: wars waged not in self-defense, but for territorial gain, domination, and subjugation. In doing so, the world rejected brutality as policy and affirmed restraint as the foundation of order.

For decades, our country stood at the forefront of that international commitment…

… until in the early hours of Saturday, January 3, 2026—a day that should live in infamy.

Now, the Trump administration casts off that legacy, acting as a modern-day conquistador, following in the footsteps of Vladimir Putin’s criminal enterprise in Ukraine.

Together, we must stand and proclaim—clearly and without equivocation: Not in our name.

We must relearn, yet again, a lesson written in blood across history: War is not the answer.

The Choice between Compassion and Cruelty

Every day, in ways large and small, we are confronted with a choice. Sometimes it arrives quietly—a story in the news, a neighbor in need, a policy proposal buried in legislative text. Sometimes it crashes into our lives with unmistakable force: someone suffering, someone targeted, someone pushed to the margins once again.

In those moments, the question is the same:
Will we default to compassion, or to cruelty?

Cruelty is easy. It asks nothing of us but our silence. It thrives when we look away. It disguises itself as pragmatism, toughness, “the way things are.” It is a force that narrows our world until other people’s pain becomes weightless, distant, or deserved. And history shows us—again and again—what happens when cruelty becomes policy: families shattered, rights stripped, communities terrorized, democracy hollowed out from within.

Compassion, by contrast, is deliberate. It requires attention. It requires willingness. It asks us to recognize that the people who suffer are not abstractions or inconveniences but human beings with stories and worth. Compassion expands the world; it reminds us that our fates are linked and that dignity is not a scarce resource to be rationed.

To choose compassion is not to be naïve or weak. It is to stand firmly in the belief that justice is possible, that harm is not inevitable, and that our shared humanity matters more than anyone’s hunger for power. Compassion is courage, practiced daily.

Right now, across this country, cruelty is being marketed as a governing philosophy. Policies that rip apart families, target the vulnerable, erase whole communities, and punish the poor are not accidents—they are choices. And so our choices matter too.

When we see suffering, do we turn the page?
When we see injustice, do we rationalize it?
When we see leaders wield cruelty as a weapon, do we shrug, or do we resist?

We cannot control every event, but we can control our response. And in a time when cruelty is becoming organized, compassion must become organized too.

The future will be shaped by the choices we make in moments exactly like these. May we choose the path that widens the circle, eases the burden, and affirms the humanity of those who have been told they are expendable.

May we choose compassion. Every time.

When faced with the suffering and injustice in our path, will we default to compassion or to cruelty?

Caring about the 'Least of These'

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” It is a call to active compassion—a reminder that our faith is measured by how we treat the most vulnerable among us.

The sick, the hungry, and the poor are being brought to their knees by cuts to Medicaid,  and the SNAP program.

Latino communities no longer feel safe going to work, or even walking down the street.

Muslim families in America, long scapegoated by white Christian Nationalists, face renewed hostility and the threat of violence for their faith—despite the Constitution’s clear protections.

And the false claim that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion harm society has been amplified by Project 2025.  In truth, when those with privilege commit to equality, we all flourish.  A more just nation enriches everyone.

We can recognize our privilege in order to reflect soberly on those who have been pushed to the margins. In recent months, our social order has been jolted. Privileged white men have risen even higher in a shaken hierarchy, while many others have slipped further down.

Same-sex couples—those joyfully married and those longing to be—are unsettled as Christian Nationalists within Project 2025 openly contemplate dismantling their legal rights. Trans people are being written out of existence by policies that deny their identities, restrict their healthcare, and attempt to legislate them out of public life.

The Measure of a Nation Is How It Treats Its Most Vulnerable.

A Call to Conscience

From Friends Committee on National Legislation:

H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” is misleading in name. It marks the U.S. federal government’s deliberate rejection of the basic pillars that support strong communities: access to food, healthcare, economic opportunity, and responsible stewardship of our environment. We call on Congress to honor the Light within all of God’s creation and reject this path. 

The bill proposes the largest reduction to nutrition assistance in the nation’s history, punishing parents already navigating low wages, rising costs, and childcare gaps. Instead of relief, it offers a maze of bureaucratic red tape—just to feed their children. An estimated three million adults would lose this critical lifeline, and one million children would face a greater risk of hunger. And yet the bill offers nothing to ease the burden of working families. 

It rips health care from nearly 14 million people—many just above the poverty line, many already managing chronic illness. And the bill’s tax provisions favor those already thriving. Major investments indulge the war industry. Everyday people will shoulder the consequences.

Poverty is a calculated public policy decision.

Flowers at Meeting for Worship

Flowers are frequent attenders at Meeting for Worship. A vase of azaleas or buttercups or hyacinths garlanded with Queen Ann’s Lace or flocked with Golden Rod claims privilege of place on a table or ledge, where everyone can see it and hear it declaiming its truth. The language of flowers pertains as much to being as doing. It aspires and inspires, clear-eyed as a day’s-eye daisy. It’s a language Friends particularly want to listen to, to listen for, even to grow fluent in. Its syntax emanates in brilliant colorations. To see flowers speak is to hear them shine, and when a soul hears them it can’t help but see them true, the way Moses both saw and heard the great I am. When a table is bedecked with blossoms and trumpet bells, the eyes hear what they see, they follow its meaning. Every flower is a given flower, but most flowers come without tags, beaming at us, waving a little.  We want to know who the giver is.

Written by Terry Culleton