by Lee H. | Jun 20, 2025 | Meeting Life
There are conflicts in the world. And conflicts need solutions. What are the solutions?
Upon careful rumination, I have looked into my own past to find examples of conflict and how they were resolved. I came up with these questions that I asked myself. Why do people fight? What stops or ends fighting? Why is there conflict? And what causes it? How should conflicts be resolved? Why is aggression wrong? How important is peace in the world?
When I think and talk about fighting, I equate it with violence, whether physical or verbal. I think that violence occurs when humans are controlled by the wrong side of human nature, the side that is not spiritual, the side that forgets to think things through. I believe that violence is spurred by sudden anger and the attempt to gain power and control over others.
It is so easy to hate and be hostile to another, especially when they are very different from you, than to love and respect them. It is so easy to get angry and to start fighting over problems. Fighting also further marginalizes those who are marginalized and widens the gap between people when we should have solidarity and support each other.
Living as a minority in the U.S., I have felt the need to stop injustice and marginalization, which is spread by fighting. I am really thankful for attending Radnor Friends Meeting. When I grew up, even though I disliked violence, I gave the questions I asked above very little thought. Not many people taught me about conflict and conflict resolution. Once I started to attend Radnor Friends Meeting, I read about blogs by members of the meeting, which pushed me to think even more about the importance of peace and virtue, and the importance of stopping fighting and conflict. Many friends I know from the meeting are kind, loving, and caring. They follow the spirit and path of peace and not a path of fighting. In a world with much fighting and turmoil, the importance of peace and love is even more profound.
And as a conscientious objector, I try my best to support a good cause for myself and others, to stop the bigger fights from occurring.
I was taught by my mother that war is sinful in nature, as people were created equal in spiritual nature, and that harming and taking the life of another is a heinous act. Even Chinese martial arts, 武, were created to stop fighting rather than cause it, as 武 can be separated into “止” and “戈”, which mean stop and conflict, respectively.
Further reading, research, and personal experience provided more reasons for me to take my current stance that I have today, on viewing peace as a solution to conflict.
I dislike and try to avoid people who cause conflicts and show aggression. I have caused and escalated conflicts in the past and when I come to think of it, I regret what I have done. Aggression causes us to act like buffoons, and lose power and influence. I think that even though this world we live in will never be absolutely perfect, we can always try to make the best of it, and leave it better than it was, rather than think that since it will never be perfect, we should let it fall and deteriorate, then indulge ourselves in personal matters and continue to create conflict and waste.
So before choosing aggression, I think people should think things through and try to resolve conflict peacefully and spiritually. I support peace as a solution to conflict.
When we support each other and our differences, we can accomplish great things.
Written by Shangwen, Attender of Radnor Friends Meeting.
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Peace pole photos courtesy of Shangwen. Banner photo by Peter Steiner 🇨🇭 1973.
by steve.olshevski | Feb 3, 2023 | Meeting Life
Working with Temple University – Engineers Without Borders (EWB), fellow Quaker Christopher Fantozzi is currently working on an important sanitation project for the small indigenous community of Nueva Jerusalen, Ecuador. The community has no sewage facilities and is forced to rely solely on open defecation, which is causing contamination of the nearby stream and river they use as their drinking water source. The Temple team is evaluating several options including the installation of compost toilets in each home, which would be a sustainable, appropriate technology that could significantly improve the quality of life of the entire community.
All of these efforts are completely volunteer based and funded, and additional financing is greatly needed to cover the project’s costs for travel and materials. Please consider supporting these efforts with a tax-deductible donation if you are able.
For more information, please contact Christopher Fantozzi at: [email protected]
Tax deductible donations can be made at:
https://support.ewb-usa.org/give/84031?#!/donation/checkout
by steve.olshevski | Mar 25, 2022 | Meeting Life
EQAT (Earth Quaker Action Team) presented on Wednesday, April 20th at Radnor Meeting on how Vanguard is driving the Climate Crisis. They explained the links between large financial banks and the investments that drive Climate Change, with Vanguard being a major investor in fossil fuels. That same week, EQAT conducted their monumental week-long march from Chester PA to Vanguard Headquarters in Paoli to draw attention to this issue.
EQAT has been an iconic Quaker Group that embodies our values through direct peaceful action. Since their founding in 2010 by George Lakey and other committed Quakers they have focused on direct action campaigns that connect the changes we need to make in the world with those Corporations that can make those changes. After a 5-year campaign, EQAT convinced PNC Bank to stop funding the environmentally devastating mountaintop removal mining practices in West Virginia.
by steve.olshevski | Jan 17, 2022 | Meeting Life
Many members of the Society of Friends worship God in places that have been appropriated by force from indigenous peoples. What challenges arise when they try to do that, and how do Friends respond to these challenges? This forum was led by Cherice Bock and gave us a chance to reflect on these issues. Cherice Bock is a Friend who lives in Oregon on the traditional lands of Kalapuya (now part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde). She is an adjunct professor of eco-theology at Portland Seminary and she leads Oregon Interfaith Power and Light at the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon. Cherice holds an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary. She is a doctoral candidate at Antioch University of New England. The forum was held on April 3rd.
by steve.olshevski | Mar 3, 2020 | Meeting Life
The Peace and Social Concerns Committee presented a forum February 23 on “Taking Action to Protect Our Environment,” attended by approximately 25 Friends and Attenders. Jamie Lockard and Burt Dallas led the forum and noted the rise of environmental issues and awareness over the past 60 years. The degradation of our resources and climate change have reached a crisis stage in the current era. The focus of the forum was to identify ways in which Radnor Monthly Meeting and its members and attenders can become more aware of environmental issues and take concrete action to improve and protect our environment.
Burt noted that caring for the environment is consistent with our Quaker values, including integrity, community, equality and stewardship. He cited as one important example and action each of us can take is to consider eating a plant-based diet due to the massive resources required to raise animals for food, especially cattle. Articles were provided highlighting these facts. For example, it takes 660 gallons of water to produce the beef in one hamburger.
Jamie then led us in breaking into four sub-groups to discuss addressing environmental issues at concentric levels: (1) individually, (2) at the Meeting level; (3) locally (township and county); and (4) nationally and globally.
Each break-out group brainstormed about ideas and items for action, summarized as follows (with apologies if any of the wonderful ideas and themes not captured here):
- Individual Actions
- diet-based reduction of carbon footprint: less meat/more plants
- consult “Better World Shopping Guide,” which evaluates vendors and their focus on ecological issues
- buy locally
- choose business and products that use less packaging
- take your own reusable shopping bag, versus using disposable plastic bags
- recycle
- home composting
- switch to eco-friendly energy suppliers
- green burials
- carpool
- energy efficient appliances/lightbulbs
- turn down the thermostat
- use clotheslines to dry laundry
- use websites such as Nextdoor for recycling objects/furniture etc. rather than tossing them
2. meeting Actions
Focus on the green space that we have at Radnor Meeting, including enjoying and respecting our grounds, making more use of the grounds, sharing our grounds with the community or other faith-based groups, having an inter-faith progressive garden tour, and cleaning up a stream in our area (first day school activity?).
3. Local/Governmental level
Begin to work with other local faith-based organizations on environmental action, lobbying and legislation, including addressing such issues as maintaining open space, planting trees, recycling, better use of energy, charging stations for electric cars, litter pickup, stream cleanup, better public transportation and supporting efforts to adopt rules at housing developments to promote better environmental practices.
- National/global level
- Improving public transportation to reduce the need for cars and imagining our area with less congestion
- Supporting students from Radnor Meeting with scholarships to attend lobbying events (training the next generation)
- Providing coordination/access to national efforts such as Friends Committee for National Legislation
The entire group then reconvened and reviewed the thoughts and ideas submitted. One theme that emerged is that members of our Meeting want more information and resources to educate themselves about environmental issues so that they can act. Those at the forum strongly supported updating the Meeting website to have more information and resources about the environment and actions we can take.
We will discuss the suggested items for action at the next meeting of Peace and Social Concerns and hope to be returning to the Meeting with plans for further action in the near future. We appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm and support at the forum, and especially thank Jamie, Burt and Steve Olshevski for their hard work, insights and energy in preparing for this forum and leading our environmental efforts. We hope this will be an ongoing commitment of the Meeting.
by kfmcl119 | Sep 4, 2018 | Meeting Life
The Peace and Social Concerns committee announced contributions to the following organizations in June 2018:
- The Broad Street Ministry for the care of Philadelphia’s homeless.
- Tuition assistance for a SEGA School student in Tanzania Africa.
- The First Place Transitional Home in Ardmore that provides a temporary home for refugees in this area and helps them find more permanent placement.
- The Universal Hope Initiative is working to rebuild an apiary in western Puerto Rico that is an important source of livelihood for a community which was severely damaged by hurricane Maria.
In addition, there was a special collection in September 2017 to raise funds which we sent to Friends Live Oak Meeting to help Houston’s hurricane victims.
