The following is a Vitality email sent June 20, 2025. To sign up for Vitality, click here.

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As FGC’s social media manager, I am often the first person who reads comments written on FGC spaces. And as you may recall, we received many comments last year that violated our Social Media Community Guidelines. Well, I’m happy to tell you that that trend is changing! On FGC’s social media channels, Friends have been lifting each other up lately. I’ve found a rise in three different kinds of comments: those that are personal, kind and specific.

“Our Religious Society of Friends endures as a community of friends who take thought for outward society by first taking care of one another. Friends are advised to maintain love and unity, to avoid tale-bearing and detraction, and to settle differences promptly…”

– Faith and Practice, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

Personal

A week ago, FGC posted a prayer request for a legal team. The team was defending birthright citizenship in the Supreme Court. Many Friends offered their prayers. One Friend shared: “I am on hold with the White House, and I’m grateful for the reminder to pray as I call and write!”

Truly, this is the kind of personal detail you cannot make up if you haven’t lived it. This Friend showed how activism and contemplation work together. Although they wrote personally, they didn’t overshare. They kept the comment relevant to the group and the topic at hand.

Kind

When I created the prayer request post, I made a typo on the first draft, and it went out to several thousand people. One Friend wrote back and gave me a kind correction.

She opened by saying: “Dear friends, I agree and will especially hold your legal team in the Light.” She noted my error and asked, kindly and assertively: “Could you please fix your statement to say…?” She closed with some gratitude to FGC staff.

Wow! I would love to receive feedback like this every time I make a mistake! The Friend didn’t get snarky or haughty. Instead, she spoke to me as if I were standing in the room with her.

Specific

Earlier this year, FGC posted about an interfaith picnic that ended when a security guard called the cops. The town had a local ordinance against sharing food with unhoused people. Online, many Friends had strong feelings about this. One person took the time to offer helpful context: “This is my city,” she said, “and I volunteer with an organization that feeds unhoused people every other Sunday.” She described what was changing in her town to make life even more difficult for unhoused people

This Friend invited people to think about classism and structural change. If she were standing in the room, I think that her comments would be called ministry.

So once again, let me say thank you!

Thank you for whatever part you may have played in this shift.   

Thank you for helping Quakers be more kind and more direct. Our care for one another is part of our witness to the world.

Johanna Jackson

Communications Coordinator