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I'm a big user of both Del.icio.us, the social bookmarking system (it powers QuakerQuaker and the daily posts of links) and Twitter, the "micro-blogging" system that puts mini-messages into Quaker Ranter (currently with a brown woodsy boxes). They both serve different purposes for me and have different styles. Well, I just realized I had written a Deli.icio.us post in a Twitter style.

I was bookmarking a new post by Dave the "Quaker Agitator," who's looking for help writing a small grant. I left a minor comment and bookmarked the post in Del.icio.us. I try to do that for most comments so that I can go back later and see if any interesting conversation took place in the meantime. This time though I made an appeal for readers directly through the Del.icio.us description: "The Quaker Agitator is looking for help writing a small grant. Any Ranter readers able to lend a hand?" I did this knowing that a few hundred sympathetic readers will see this tomorrow morning when the links go up. It's probably a moot point as the Quaker Agitator has a much larger audience of sympathetic readers.

But stylistically it's an example of a culture of a new media form starting to change an older form. This is a common phenomenon in this fast-moving Web 2.0 world. Whether my Del.icio.us style will adapt or not I don't know. It's just an observation for now.

Tags: twitter, del.icio.us, web 2.0, styles,

Long in the works, my O'Reilly Media-published "Web 2.0 Mashups and Niche Aggregators" is available. The title could sort of be boiled down to "hey this QuakerQuaker.org thing has become kind of neat" but it's more than that. I wax lyrical about the different kind of aggregator community sites and I throw a new tongue-twister into the social media arena: "folksonomic density" (Google it now kids and you'll see the only references are mine; a few years from now you can say you knew the guy who coined the phrase that set the technosphere on fire and launched Web 3.0 and ushered in the second phase of the Age of Aquarius, yada yada).

A hundred thank you's to my fine and patient editor S. (don't know if you want to be outed here). I've been an editor myself in one capacity or another for fifteen years (I've sometimes even been paid for it) so it was educational to experience the relationship from the other side. I wrote this while living an insane schedule and it's amazing I found any time at get all this down.

As luck would have it I've just gotten my design site at MartinKelley.com up and running fully again, so I hope to do some posts related to the PDF in the weeks to come. In the meantime, below is the marketing copy for Web 2.0 Mashups and Niche Aggregators. It is available for $9.99 from the O'Reilly website.

Web aggregators select and present content culled from multiple sources, playing an important taste-making and promotional role. Larger aggregators are starting to compete with mainstream news sources but a new class of niche and do-it-yourself aggregators are organizing around specific interests. Niche aggregators harness the power of the internet to build communities previously separated by geography or institutional inertia. These micro-communities serve a trend-setting role. Understanding their operation is critical for those wanting to understand or predict cultural change and for those who want to harness the power of the long tail by catering to niches.

Twitter's become the messaging system for software services to reach their customers when the system goes down. So what happens when Twitter itself goes down?!?

If any of the Quaker readers here are stuck in the Twentieth Century with old dial-up modems, could you check an alternate QuakerQuaker site and see if it works for you:

http://mob.quakerquaker.org/

Same content, just mostly text. I could trim it down more but not without more work. This is a quickie job, just running the current content through an alternate template.

Over on my design blog I've just posted an article, Banking on reputations, which looks at how the websites for high-profile cultural institutions are often built without regard to natural web publicity--there's no focus on net culture or search engine visibility. The sites do get visited, but only because of the reputation of the institution itself. My guess is that people go to them for very specific functions (looking up a phone number, ordering tickets, etc.). I finish by asking the question, "Are the audiences of high brow institutions so full of hip young audiences that they can steer clear of web-centric marketing?"

I won't belabor the point, but I wonder if something similar is happening within Friends. It's kind of weird that only two people have commented on Johan Maurer's blog post about Baltimore Yearly Meeting's report on Friends United Meeting. Johan's post may well be the only place where online discussion about this particular report is available. I gave a plug for it and it was the most popular link from QuakerQuaker, so I know people are seeing it. The larger issue is dealt with elsewhere (Bill Samuel has a particularly useful resource page) but Johan's piece seems to be getting a big yawn.

It's been superseded as the most popular QuakerQuaker link by a lighthearted call for an International Talk Like a Quaker Day put up by a Livejournal blogger. It's fun but it's about as serious as you might expect. It's getting picked up on a number of blogs, has more links than Johan's piece and at current count has thirteen commenters. I think it's a great way to poke a little fun of ourselves and think about outreach and I'm happy to link to it but I have to think there's a lesson in its popularity vis-a-vis Johan's post.

Here's the inevitable question: do most Quakers just not care about Friends United Meeting or Baltimore Yearly Meeting, about a modern day culture clash that is but a few degrees from boiling over into full-scale institutional schism? For all my bravado I'm as much an institutional Quaker as anyone else. I care about our denominational politics but do others, and do they really?

Yearly meeting sessions and more entertainment-focused Quaker gatherings are lucky if they get three to five percent attendance. The governing body of my yearly meeting is made up of about one percent of its membership; add a percent or two or three and you have how many people actually pay any kind of attention to it or to yearly meeting politics. A few years ago a Quaker publisher commissioned a prominent Friend to write an update to liberal Friends' most widely read introductory book and she mangled the whole thing (down to a totally made-up acronym for FWCC) and no one noticed till after publication--even insiders don't care about most of this!

Are the bulk of most contemporary Friends post-institutional? The percentage of Friends involved in the work of our religious bodies has perhaps always been small, but the divide seems more striking now that the internet is providing competition. The big Quaker institutions skate on being recognized as official bodies but if their participation rate is low, their recognition factor small, and their ability to influence the Quaker culture therefore minimal, then are they really so important? After six years of marriage I can hear my wife's question as a Quaker-turned-Catholic: where does the religious authority of these bodies come from? As someone who sees the world through a sociological/historical perspective, my question is complementary but somewhat different: if so few people care, then is there authority? The only time I see Friends close to tears over any of this is when a schism might mean the loss of control over a beloved school or campground--factor out the sentimental factor and what's left?

I don't think a diminishing influence is a positive trend, but it won't go away if we bury our heads in the sand (or in committees). How are today's generation of Friends going to deal with changing cultural forces that are threatening to undermine our current practices? And how might we use the new opportunities to advance the Quaker message and Christ's agenda?

One thing I love about the internet and blogs is that they're opening up discussions in the Quaker world. Information and dialog that was once confined to a small group of insiders is opened up to what we might only-half jokingly label "the laity." The latest few entries to QuakerQuaker show this in operation.

Last month's annual sessions of Baltimore Yearly Meeting (the regional body for Friends those parts) were marked by an important report from its representatives to Friends United Meeting, an international body of Friends that Baltimore belongs to but has a complicated relationship with. Attendees at the yearly meeting session heard the report, of course, and news trickled out in various ways (one visitor IM'ed me that day with the briefest sketch).

Enter the internet. At some point Baltimore put the report up on their website. The information was there but there's no opportunity for discussion as the BYM website has no commenting feature. I posted the report up to QuakerQuaker and within a few hours, Johan Maurer was on top of it. Johan used to be the chief executive of Friends United Meeting and a wide experience with Friends from across the Quaker theological and cultural spectrum. He's also an active blogger and he posted a reply, What is really wrong with FUM, part two: the Baltimore YM report, that I find particularly useful. His blog has comments. I've put Johan's post up on QuakerQuaker and we now have a forum to try to tease apart the range of issues in the Baltimore report: leadership, theology, international relations, etc. How cool is that?

PS: I linked to the Wikipedia articles on Baltimore and Friends United Meeting. Has anyone else noticed Wikipedia makes a much more accessible introduction to Quaker bodies than their own websites?

I've moved the Quaker Blog Watch material to a new website, QuakerQuaker.org. It's more-or-less the same material with more-or-less the same design but the project has become popular enough that it seems like a good time to send it off on its own. I hope to find ways of making it more collaborative in the near-future.

You can subscribe to the QuakerQuaker Watch via Bloglines or to the daily email by following the links. If you're already following the Watch in a subscription reader, you should change the source of the feed to http://feeds.quakerquaker.org/quaker if you don't want to miss out on any future innovations. If you have the Watch currently listed in your blog's sidebar you won't have to change anything.

At some point when the dust of the move has settled (and I have the new Quakerfinder.org launched as part of my FGC work), I'll take a moment to wax philosophical about the evolution of this project and will toss out a few ideas about where it might go in the future. In the meantime, let me know if anything is broken, confused or grammatically mangled.

A kind of retrospective history of the project is available on the quakerquaker thread of the Ranter.

Just a quick note to everyone that I haven't posted more lately. It's a busy time of the year. I've had my hands full keeping up with articles and links to the Christian Peacemakers.

I've also been doing some freelance sites. One is launched: Quakersong.org, the new online home of Annie Patterson and Peter Blood of Rise Up Singing fame. It's just the start to what should soon be an interesting site.

Geek-wise I've been interested in the Web 2.0 stuff (see this Best Of list of sites, link courtesy C Wess Daniels). I've talked about some of this back in June but it's getting more exciting. In the Fall I was asked to submit a proposal for redoing the website of a Quaker conference center near Philadelphia and it was all Web 2.0-centric--maybe too much so as I didn't get the job! I'll post an edited version of the proposal soon for the geeks out there. Some of the new tech stuff will undergird a fabulous new Quakerfinder.org feature that will allow isolated Friends to connect to form new worship groups (to launch soon) and even more is behind the dreams of a new Quakerbooks.org site.

In the meantime, I encourage everyone to order On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry, the new book by New England Yearly Meeting's Brian Drayton (it arrived from the printers yesterday). It's being billed as a modern day version of "A Description of the Qualifications" and if it lives up the hype it should be an important book for the stirrings of deepening faithfulness we've been seeing among Quakers lately. While you're waiting for the book to arrive in your mailbox, check out Brooklyn Rich's Testing Leadings post.

Alice the Public Quaker writes a beautiful post reminding us that we don't need to cut straight to the cross:

It's struck me recently that living the life of Christ doesn't mean going straight for Holy Week and the cross. I think He had 30 years of living inside love's power before he took that walk. I know that I'm only just starting to understand Love's power, so maybe I shouldn't be too hasty for it to take me to healing the sick and transforming the earth.

Josh talks about his personal experience wrestling with how his Baltimore Yearly Meeting would address Friends United Meeting policies on sexuality:

My inner Sanhedrin has been debating the issue for what will be 3 years this August. At first, the consensus of my inner counsel was "String the bastards up!", but that diluted to having BYM leave FUM. That then faded to us "Teaching them a lesson" somehow, but staying involved. This course of change from "String 'em up" to "Teach 'em a lesson" occured in just ONE WEEK! After my inner Sanhedrin was allowed to season, it became more divided.

Update: a few days ago I linked to a blog by Naaman the Ex-Leper. He grew up as a Friend in Baltimore Yearly Meeting but now describes himself as a "universalist-turned-conservative-Christian." I'm always interested in stories of why Friends leave our religious society and there was some good back-and-forth about whether a more strong-articulated Quakerism might have kept him in (no, which is fair enough). He's followed up with a very thoughtful post explaining why he thinks true Christian Universalism is impossible. I don't agree but reading it is a good reminder of how carelessly we liberal Friends sometimes apply the concept of universalism and how it too often comes to mean an abandonment of all judgements theological (he links to an interfaith FGC pamphlet that I've never found terribly convincing). I would venture that Naaman has engaged and wrestled with Quakerism a more than a lot of us still within it, which perhaps is the norm for thoughtful leavers.

And for those that haven't noticed the shuffling of furniture that's been going on here, the nonviolence.org/Quaker page is now a Quaker "links blog," with sidebar photos and bookmarks pulled from various "social" networks (join one and add your stuff!). There's an RSS feed so you can easily keep up with the the posts I find interesting.

Summer visitations got an early start last month when the Northeast US Quaker blogroll converged in my back yard with no agenda to follow and no epistle to write.Front row: James, Jeffrey and visitation ringleader Amanda. Back: Ryan, Rob, Me, Theo and poor blogless Christina.

Well since Kwakersaur is inaugurating the I don't have anything to post meme, I'll chime in that I don't either. Actually I've written two and half essays but realized they're both really for myself. This is how it happens sometimes. I've long noticed this phenomenon in fully-formed verbal ministry that I know I'm not supposed to deliver and it feels as if such restraint is sometimes healthy on the blog. The message will reappear in other forums I'm sure, most likely next month's Gathering workshop with Zachary Moon.

In the meantime, there's been fresh talk about plain language and dress this week by Johan Maurer, Claire Reddy and the Livejournal Quakers. Russ Nelson's started a Planet Quaker blog aggregator (which includes Quaker Ranter: thanks!). LizOpp talked about field testing her upcoming Quaker identity Gathering workshop at Northern Yearly Meeting sessions and Kiara's talked about being field tested by Liz at this year's NYM sessions (how cool is that?!).

I've been geeking out on Del.icio.us, the "social bookmarking" system and on the esoteric concepts of tags, the semantic web and folksonomies. Two weeks ago I would have laughed at these neologisms but I'm beginning to see that there's something in all this. The only outward form the regulars will see is a more accurate "Related Entries" selection at the bottom of posts (thanks to Adam Kalsey) and better visibility in selected Technorati entries (which will get less me-centric as I finish tagging my own back posts).

And of course we're tilling the field, planting a garden, putting up laundry lines and otherwise thoroughly enjoying the first Spring in our new house. It's bedtime, off to read the radically folksonomic adventures of Sam and My Car (it's pure tags: "My name is Sam." "This is my car." "I love my car." I'd worry that not-so-baby Theo is getting too excited by combusion engines if he weren't even more excited by "dia-di-calschht" aka the "bicycle" Papa rides off to work on.)

To the best of my knowledge this is the first Quaker Google Maps hack, showing the meetinghouses of downtown Philadelphia. Click on the thumbtacks for details; click on the satellite view for a cool view! Like much of the web it looks much better in Firefox. Hack courtesy of the extremely experimental MyGmaps, data from Quakerfinder.org. Here's my short list of Google Map Hacks.

Although I love Quakerfinder, it should be noted that Google does almost as good a job listing area "Friends Meetings" via their "local search" feature.

For those that might not have noticed, I have an article in the latest issue of the awkwardly-named FGConnections: Witness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings. Astute Quaker Ranter readers will recognize it as a re-hashing of The Lost Quaker Generation and its related pieces. Reaction has been quite interesting, with a lot of older Friends saying they relate to what I've said. It's funny how so many of us feel a sense of isolation from our own religious institutions!

I've been asked to write a piece for another publication. I'm mulling doing something around Gifts and Mentorship, built around some of the observations in It's my Language Now. It would be the positive "rolling up the sleeves" response to the FGConnections article. What do you all think? If we could get a message out to larger Quakerdom, what we want it to be?

The Public Quaker writing about prayer

Prayer is one constant thing for me, a reliable base. When am I having epistemological doubt about everything, I do know that is good for me to pray.

A month ago LizOpp posted a interest FAQ on her worship group which is well worth reading. Last week she followed it up with a very chew-worthy post on Theological unity and spiritual diversity (which adds new ground to the territory we've been exploring here on Quaker Ranter on Non-Theism and Loving God).

Quakerspeak is the new blog by a high-school Friend I met last week in Oregon. Whew, is she on fire!:

I never really thought much about how I was sort of bottling up all my theological and spiritual contemplations; suddenly I feel like I'm pouring it all out on the table and examining it all.. well, except that I've been examining it all. I'm trying to better apply my sprituality to my daily life and interactions without losing sight of myself; I'm trying to figure out where it all fits into my own life without trying to alter my personality or ways of being.

Beppe's just started a new series with a post, The Troubles with Friends Part 1. This first installment focuses on our fear of judgementalism. Speak on, bro!

So why didn't I get the memo that April is "Don't Blog About Quakerism Month"? On Monday Beppe said he was taking a hiatus from Quakerism. On Tuesday, Amanda confided to us that she's having a midblog crisis. Wednesday has Kwakersauer's announcement that his blog is under deconstruction.

I'm looking around here and I'm getting a little nervous. The Contrarian Quaker started things on Third Month 31, posting a thoughtful piece on those of us who have been expressing doubts lately. Since then a number of Quaker bloggers have gone quiet: The Brooklyn Quaker, Quaker Dharma and Can You Believe Johan have gone almost a week into April without a post. Gulp!

Public Quaker Alice is still with us, she posted three days ago. Just Curious James checked in on April Fool's Day (but he's talking about British Evangelicals--uh-oh!). LizOpp checked in on the third and Kenneth Sutton has had two posts in April (go Kenneth!).

Still I have to wonder if someone else is planning to take the fall on Thursday? I feel like I'm in one of those bad haunted mansion mystery movies: the lights go out, a scream shatters the night and there's one less guest at the hotel. I'm still here. Has anyone seen the butler lately?

Update: Beppe has talked more about the practices and motivations of Quaker blogging.

Liz Oppenheimer has posted an extraordinary account of how Friends transmitted Quakerism to her over time. I find myself at a loss of words to sum it up--you have to read it for yourself and I strongly recommend you do. Here's just the merest snippet:

It took me years to understand that there was much, much more to Quakerism than just meeting for worship... I had yet to understand the concepts of corporate discernment or Gospel Order or waiting on the Spirit for guidance. None of my peers or spiritual friends at the time were talking with me about this stuff; and I have no recollection of anyone making the Quaker decision-making process more explicit at the time.

Liz will be offering a workshop at this year's FGC Gathering. The description sounded great but if this post is anything like the sharing that will go on in that workshop, then you'll want to be there.

In a similar vein, the Contrarian Quaker explains I'm not here to be seen by men. I'm here to worship God; "New people, as they walk in, are met with smiles and introductions but by their second or third visit they end up standing in the midst of a gabbing throng completely ignored after meeting for worship... I simply decided that I was here to worship God."

I've occasionally thought of Beppeblog's Joe Guada as my blogging Quaker doppleganger. More than once he's written the post I was about to write. And more than one important article of mine started as commentary to one of his insightful articles.

So I'm worried that he's written the first of a multipart article asking Is it time to leave Quakerism. I'm worried not just that Quakerism would lose a bright Light, etc., etc, but because I know that now I'm going to have to publicly mull over the question that's a constant background hum that I try not to think about.

• Simple Church asks why we don’t remember the future like we do the past. "What we need to recognize and own for ourselves is our future in Christ and eternity largely depends on our ability to remember the 'Future..."
• On the same morning I took a three hour bike-train-train-car commute to visit Middletown Meeting, Kwakersaur wrote an ode to sleeping in: "This fine First-Day morning I will practice that most ancient of spiritual practices: nesting."
• The New York Times reports on a growing number of religion-oriented blogs, many of them irreverent and contrarian. Irreverent? Contrarian? We here at Quaker Ranter haven't seen any irreverent religions blogs
• Quaker Dharma shares a true story: "A man walks into his church. In the course of conversation with his pastor, he shares that his son has become Quaker. His pastor smiles broadly and retorts, 'What committee is he on?'" (The post that follows is even better, so click that link!)
• Update: Rich the Brooklyn Quaker has a great-looking post on prophetic ministry that I can't wait to read!

Regular readers of Quaker Ranter will be familiar with Liz Oppenheimer's frequent comments. My replies and email correspondence with her have inspired more than one blog posts. I've long known her through Friends General Conference work and through the workshops she often leads at the FGC Gatherings. She's been exploring the conservative Quaker tradition over the last few years and is now writing a blog called The Good Raised Up.

Quaker Jane has been a regular on the Plain and Modest Dress group and now has beautifully-designed website that includes some interesting plain dress resources.

Alice Morningstar is another Plain group regular who's now the "Public Friend" (site since closed), writing about both Quakerism and biology; see her post Why It is Essential to Publish Now (via archive.org) for why she's public.

Lorcan is starting to get worried that I've never mentioned him here. He's part of a flourishing New York City Quaker blogging group that includes Amanda's Of the Best Stuff and Rich the Brooklyn Quaker, who's coined the term The New Plain to describe the renewed interest in Quaker plain dress that I've been trying to catalog on this site.

Over a new-to-me blog called The Quaker Dharma there's a post calling for us to The Let Our Light Shine Brightly. He makes some very good points like "It’s worth explaining what Quakerism is" and "true outreach is an act of spiritual hospitality." He also tells a few stories. Here's one about passionate younger religious he's known:

I came to Quakerism from Buddhist study. I also worked for an international Buddhist organization for two years. These are experiences for which I am deeply grateful. Teachings for which I am deeply grateful. I saw twenty something year olds who took Buddhist ordination vows and shaved their heads. This was deeply moving and was a joy to share their sense of union at having committed to a path. These kids were flying to India to take teachings. The commitment level was unbelievable. Some of them went on month long silent retreats. Quakerism, especially now, in these times could speak to many. Unfortunately we hide it and thousands and thousands of people in their twenties and thirties go without a spiritual home.

Interesting short post from Kwakersaur about the different ways Friends have related to God circa 1660, 1950 and today. A snippet

[The first generation of Friends'] language lacked the me-an-Jesus kind of spirituality that marks the 1955 minutes and characterizes a lot of Christian spirituality of today. For early Quakers -- and I suspect early Christians -- it was not so much Jesus as a friendly affable fellow who loved us in a warm and comfy positive-strokes-I'm-OK-You're-OK kinda way.

Came across a fascinating read today: Anabaptist Hermeneutics: A Summary. When I left college with my philosophy degree I was sick and tired of terms like hermeneutics and while I'm still sceptical, if you can get past the academic-speak of Stuart Murray William's article, you'll be well rewarded.

Here's a couple of new-to-me blogs I've been reading lately.

The Contrarian Quaker's last post was about the Conservative Statement of Faith. He's also post a recent letter to the Friends Journal.

Kwakersaur is a Canadian Friend. He recently wrote about Quaker ecclesiology, citing Avery Dulles' Models of the Church, which is what Elizabeth Cazden uses in her recent pamphlet, Fellowships, Conferences and Associations (my post, pamphlet).

Finally, a warm welcome to Amanda's new blog Of the Best Stuff But Plain. She's part of the extended Quaker Ranter family. Here's just a taste from the first post on her new blog:

It feels a bit daunting to me, and very presumptive of me as a brand new, and yet unlisted Friend, to say that we have to be prepared to defy even the Tribe of our Meeting or the Tribe of Quakers, but I know without a doubt it is true. We might not even have to leave our meeting or our Society to shoulder our cross and follow Jesus beyond the gates, because it is already very apparent to me that both bodies are already efficiently subdivided into many different camps and cliques. Sometimes my conversations with Friends can feel as if I'm rushing extremely civilized fraternities and sororities. I can already feel myself wanting to choose a surname for myself among the different factions. Hicksite? Wilburite? Hmm? We need to be brave enough to stand outside of every one of them. The city to come will be built on new, uncharted land, and the great people to be gathered will meet each other on the journey there, not around the campfire.

A few new blogs to check out.

Over at Icthus, there's an interesting post by vaughnthompson that includes this:

If you're a Christian who was nurtured in protestant fundamentalism and you're between the ages of 25-40 chances are that her story is simlar to your own. Indeed, there is a generation of Christians who feel the need to "re-discover" for themselves historic Christianity. Two of the places that this generation of Christians seem to be turning is 1- the "liturgical" churches (Anglican, Catholic, & Orthodox) and 2- the "Emergent" churches (who borrow many of their practices from the liturgical churches).

I've wondered many times whether Friends could also be a place for these seekers. The Icthus post is a review of a new blog called Feminary, written by someone who calls herself a "socially liberal theologically conservative inclusive tolerant feminist Episcopalian." If that description isn't enough to get you to check out her site I don't know what will!

PS: I've recently been rewriting last month's Quaker Testimonies piece.

Johan has a great post about Quaker evangelizing in Russia that really applies to Quakers reaching out anywhere. My favorite paragraph:

I personally have a hard time with hobbyist Quakerism, especially when defined in terms of ultrafinicky prescriptions of how "we" do things, "our" special procedures and folkways, or anything else that detracts from Jesus being in the center of our community life. How can we present something so stilted and crabby and culturally specific as an answer to spiritual bondage? It is just another form of bondage!

Two posts on Beppeblog for folks to check out: An intro to 'Members One of Another', a fairly new pamphlet by Tom Gates, and a followup post, Meeting as a Place of Acceptance

Over on my main Nonviolence.org blog I link to Punkmonkey's great post, refusing to get political, where he talks about why Christian pacifism is more than simply anti-war activism. Oh how I wish more Quakers knew this! I like Punkmonkey's blog a lot. He's also recently written about what it would mean to be a missional community of faith:

a missional community of faith is a living breathing transparent community of faith willing to get messy while reach out to, and bringing in, those outside the current community

Amen brother. The whole post is great. I love his critique of check-writing churches (perfectly applicable to most peace and social concerns committees I've seen). He also hits something I see a lot: Meetings that are "welcoming and excluding" in their cliquishness: "small groups of people who seem friendly, and welcoming but in actuality are not welcoming." Punkmonkey's not Quaker but Bebbeblog's Joe Guada is and I started reading his posts next. There I found a really interesting counterpoint: Can I be a (fill in the blank here) & be a Quaker, too?. Joe's post also talks about identity, praxis and superficial half-welcoming. He quotes a friend who's not joined Quakers:

Yes, I know that everyone has the Inner Light. Yes, I remember how uncomfortable it is to be looking for a group and to feel left out (though it's not as uncomfortable as feeling like you're part of the group, getting deeply involved and then finding out that you're a bad fit because people weren't telling you up front that you didn't fit).

Lots of great reading in all this!

I put a link to it on my guide to Quaker blogs about a month ago, but I just want to say how much I enjoy Daddy Zine, a funny little blog about nothing much in particular. The main protagonist is "Daughter L" but the whole family makes appearances. The lastest entry is about "Mister Pepsi," Daddy's own father and almost the entire post is made up of delightfully loopy asides like this one, a story told

"Every morning [the principal] goes in there and he has one of those fancy coffees and he sits there and he drinks his coffee and everything is very neat and clean and did I mention there's a lighthouse theme? That's what the wallpaper is: lighthouses. There's pictures of lighthouses up all over the place and he sits there and he drinks his fancy coffee and whenever we had a staff meeting or conference in the past few months, I have made sure that after I leave there's always one empty Pepsi can left tucked away somewhere in that room."

Julie, my wife, has just started a Yahoo group called “PlainAndModestDress”:http://www.nonviolence.org/cgi-bin/axs/ax.pl?http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PlainAndModestDress. Here’s her description:

bq. This group is for Christians interested in discussing issues of religious plain and modest dress. It is not necessary to have grown up in a plain or modestly dressing group. We are especially interested in the experiences of those who have come to this point as a sort of conversion or a “recovery” of tradition that has been lost. Traditional Catholics, Anabaptists, conservative Quakers, and other Christians welcome here. Theological points and demoninational differences are open for discussion (not argument), as are the specifics of what type of plain dress you have been called to. Discussion of headcovering is also allowed here, as are gender distinctions in dress. We may also share prayers for one another, as well as the challenges we face in trying to live in obedience to the Lord. This is not a forum in which to discuss the validity of Christianity—no blaspheming allowed.

There is much to be said about plain dress. This is not an easy witness. It forces us to deal with issues of submission and humility on a daily basis—just try to go to a convenience store and not feel self-consciously set apart. Explaining this new ‘style’ to one’s more worldly friends can be quite a challenge. These are eternal issues for those adopting plain dress and I laugh with comradeship when I read old Quaker journal accounts of going plain.

Even so, I have a bit of trepidation about a newsgroup on plain dress. I don’t want to fetishize plain dress by talking about it too much. The point shouldn’t be to formulate some sort of ‘uniform of the righteous,’ and adoption of this testimony shouldn’t be motivated by peer pressure or ambition, but by a calling from the Holy Spirit—this is the crux of what I understand Margaret Fell to have been saying when she called pressured plainness a “silly poor gospel”. (I should say that some non-Quaker do dress more as an identifying uniform, which is fine, just not necessarily the Quaker rationale).

But like any outward form or testimony (peace, Quaker process, etc.), taking up plain dress can be a fruitful course in religious education. I think back to being seventeen and bucking my father’s wish that I attend the Naval Academy—my “no” made me ask how else my beliefs about peace might need to be acted out in my life. It became a useful query. Plain dress has forced me to think anew about how I “consume” clothing and how I relate to mass marketing and the global clothing industry. It’s also kept me from ducking out on my faith, as I wear an indentification of my beliefs.

So “join the plain dress discussion”:http://www.nonviolence.org/cgi-bin/axs/ax.pl?http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PlainAndModestDress or take a look at the ever-growing section of the site called “Resources on Quaker Plain Dress”:/Quaker/plain_dress.php, which includes “My Experiments with Plainness”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000080.php, my early story about going plain.

A few months ago a Yahoo search stumbled across this gem: Using Weblogs for Spiritual Journaling (Rich Text Format), a paper written by Ruth Mason for a British conference of Friends. This really gets at one of the reasons I publish Quaker Ranter:

"Weblogs offer the opportunity for Quakers to publish to the web from their personal perspectives, rather than institutionally or corporately as on, for example, a yearly meeting website. By showing how Quakerism sits within our individual lives – as well as showing all the other ‘hats' we wear in being our selves – weblogs may provide a unique outreach tool. As the wealth of existing weblogs attest, the weblog journal is about recording the everyday, the detail of our lives: an alternative and a supplement to the generic monolithic identities as pacifists or social campaigners which may be the main images those outside of Quakerism have of us."

See also: Friends use of the Internet , a list of resources from the British Quaker techie brigade, led by John Wragg (the contact for the site). I was lucky enough to meet John at last year's British Yearly Meeting sessions though I wasn't lucky enough time to read the volumes of material he had prepared on Quaker IT use. My impression was that British Friends have engaged in more thoughtful deliberation of internet use and have a certain fondness for high-concept sites (online meeting for morship anyone?), while we Americans have the edge on the practical "beating Amazon at their own game" sites, like Quakerbooks.org. Maybe this is just me stereotyping, but the different mindset is part of the reason I like listening in on the British internet discussions.

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