Readings for Reflection: January 2011
from the Committee on Ministry and Counsel

Every Faith and Practice offers valuable advices, queries, and questions to Friends. In a month that begins a new year and includes the annual commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting statement on race from 1960, excerpted here, provides an opportunity for considering what love can do.

Brotherly Love

As Friends we believe that love is the unifying force in human relations. Let us understand what brotherly love is and what it is not. Love is not self-seeking; it is self-giving. Love does not try to make up a deficiency in that of God in another from an over-abundance of divinity in ourselves; it opens us to the divine Light in him and rejoices in it. Love does not mean agreeing on all questions of belief, values, or rules of conduct; it means accepting with humility and forbearance such differences as cannot be resolved by open and patient give and take. Love does not recreate our brother in our image; it recreates us both in relation to each other, united liked limbs of one body yet each distinctly himself.

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
Excerpt from Statement on Race
Minute 26, 1960
Faith and Practice – Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1972, p. 94


All Readings for Reflection