Discerning Peace & Social Concerns

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Advice and Queries: Discerning Peace and Social Concerns by Tasmin Rajotte and Matthew Legge, Canadian Friends Service Committee

Several Quaker Meetings have come to us to express challenges in their work on peace and social concerns. They’ve said, in effect: “We’re exhausted. We see so many problems in the world and we try to take action on too many of them. In the end, we’re left feeling frazzled and spread too thin. How does Canadian Friends Service Committee navigate this challenge? How can we decide what causes to take up?”

In response to these questions and requests for help, CFSC has written a new pamphlet. Aimed at Quaker Meetings, the pamphlet explores what discernment is, what a leading is, and how to use Quaker decision-making processes to select what peace and social justice work to take on.

The pamphlet offers many queries that may be helpful for Meetings in this process. It concludes by sharing several tools for planning and communicating about peace and social concerns. This pamphlet was published by the Canadian Yearly Meeting as part of their Canadian Quaker Learning Series.

Founded in 1931, Canadian Friends Service Committee is the national peace and social justice agency of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Canada. CFSC has a rich history of acting on Friends’ social justice concerns, with a current focus on criminal justice, Indigenous peoples’ human rights, and peace.

Tasmin Rajotte worked for CFSC between 2001-2020 in several roles. She was the representative for the Quaker International Affairs Programme, the Criminal Justice Program Coordinator, and CFSC Administrator. She co-edited the CFSC award-winning 2008 book The Future Control of Food: A Guide to International Negotiations and Rules on Intellectual Property, Biodiversity and Food Security.

Matthew Legge is CFSC’s Peace Program Coordinator. In this role he has had the opportunity to learn from Quakers from across Canada and in the US, Europe, and Africa. He collected much of the wisdom and stories he was learning from Friends

By: Tasmin Rajotte & Matthew Legge, Canadian Friends Service Committee
Year: 2022
Canadian Quaker Learning Series #13