Community

While Friends have always been concerned with the well-being of Quaker communities, THE TESTIMONY OF COMMUNITY was first articulated in 1952, building on the long-standing tradition of caring for others. Community is a shared experience in which we listen deeply, trusting others and ourselves to be, collectively, a working body where deep respect, empathy and love for all come to be.

At Friends Seminary, community is the field in which we practice the other testimonies. Our testimony of community goes beyond welcoming, caring for and serving others in the School and wider community—though it includes those actions. In community, we enter into a deeply creative tension between the inner guide of the individual and the wholeness of the community. The work of holding that tension strengthens individuals and the community, and grounds the growth of both.

How are the different divisions of the School working together as a community?

How can we, as a community, be aware of and respond to people who don’t feel part of the community?

How can we build a brave community of belonging for all?

JANET SCOTT, 1980

“We know ourselves as individuals, but only because we live in community. Love, trust, fellowship, selflessness are all mediated to us through our interdependence. Just as we could not live physically without each other, we cannot live spiritually in isolation. We are individually free but also communally bound. We cannot act without affecting others and others cannot act without affecting us. We know ourselves as we are reflected in the faces, actions, and attitudes of each other.”

ISAAC PENINGTON, 1667

“Our life is love, and peace, and tenderness; and bearing one with another, and forgiving one another, and not laying accusations one against another; but praying for one another, and helping one another up with a tender hand.”