Today is the 4th of July. As we celebrate, let’s remember that our country has been at war for nearly a decade. Throughout this long and costly war, we’ve been told that “freedom isn’t free.” We’ve been told that freedom has a price. And we’ve been told that the price of freedom is paid by soldiers and bullets and bombs.

An idea that gets repeated over and over starts to sound like common sense. After you eat your lunch, wait thirty minutes to go swimming. Don’t put your eggs in one basket. Certain phrases are so ubiquitous, they can start to seem self-evident. But no matter how many times we hear it, it’s simply not true that war is the price of every freedom.

As Americans, we should do a better job of remembering our own history.

Great sermon by Quaker pastor Mike Huber of West Hills Friends Church.

Hicks was a Quaker painter from the 19th century. What I am struck by in this painting is that the peaceable kingdom includes all of creation, the earth, the trees, the children, the colonialists, the native Americans and the beasts of the field.

We have hosted other Friends during the year; we especially remember the Daniels Family who spent Easter with us. Wess Daniels did a research paper on us for his doctoral degree at Fuller. He presented his paper at Guilford University and Guilford ordered a couple of F and P’s - that’s how it went this year.  Wess is now pastor at Camas Friends in Northwest Yearly Meeting and we feel we had a part in wooing his family up to the Northwest.

While researching Freedom Friends in 2008-2009 for one of my tutorials I went through the details of their "State of the Church reports" since their inception. So I was happy to read this year's, and even more honored to be included in it. Keep up the faithful ministry.

And yes, guilty as charged for having a hand in us being in the Northwest. ;)

Very Interesting discussion about what some conscientious objectors came across in the 1940s and what they did about it.

"Violence happens any time we violate the integrity of the other." (HT @jrrozko)