We Know

November 6, 2024

Trump is back. He won clean­ly and quick­ly this time, report­ed­ly final­ly win­ning the pop­u­lar vote. I think a lot of this is the glob­al back­lash against incum­ben­cy fol­low­ing the dis­lo­ca­tions and infla­tion of Covid but it’s also yet anoth­er data point in the twenty-first cen­tu­ry rise of strongmen.

The future is pret­ty clear. Trump has been telling us what he’ll do and there’s lit­tle rea­son to think he won’t do it. With Con­gress, the Sen­ate, and the Supreme Court under his con­trol and the GOP in full alle­giance, there’s noth­ing to stop Trump from reshap­ing the Unit­ed States in his image. Sup­pres­sion of polit­i­cal oppo­nents, the dis­man­tling of the reg­u­la­to­ry state, and a pull­back from inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty agree­ments will all be imme­di­ate actions. Ukraine is screwed. The Mid­dle East is like­ly to get even worse, as if that’s pos­si­ble. The Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion­ists will be par­doned and embold­ened to focus their atten­tion on who­ev­er they deem to be domes­tic trai­tors. Lim­its on the police or mil­i­tary will be lift­ed. We’re going to get our own Russia-like class of unreg­u­lat­ed oli­garchs, with Musk first in line. There’s like­ly to be some sur­pris­es — mem­bers of Trump’s whis­per­ing class some­times have dif­fer­ent goals and he him­self not sys­tem­at­ic enough to always fol­low through on his stat­ed log­ic. But the big pic­ture is clear. And the effects will be rip­pling for decades.

This time we know what we’ll get. Trump’s shown us over and over that he’s a crook, a liar, a misog­y­nist, a racist, and an lover of strong­men. Vot­ers have seen that and decid­ed this is what they want. As things start to fall apart they’ll blame oth­ers for the col­laps­es. It’s all as pre­dictable as it is sad. 

Dave Karpf’s “What the future looks like from here” seems pret­ty spot on:

What I find myself star­ing at is the future. What will these next few years look like? Where, prag­mat­i­cal­ly, can we go from here? And the answers are all pret­ty bleak.

This is, effec­tive­ly, the end of the Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry. We’ll still have an impor­tant glob­al role, because the dol­lar is still the world­wide reserve cur­ren­cy and also we have nuclear weapons and a mas­sive mil­i­tary. But we’re going to aban­don Ukraine and NATO. The inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions that we built in the last cen­tu­ry — inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions that gave the Unit­ed States a first-among-equals advan­tage — will all with­er away.

David Hunter’s “There is hope” talks a lot about trust­ing our­selves and one anoth­er and set­tling in for the long haul.

Trust-building starts with your own self. It includes trust­ing your own eyes and gut, as well as build­ing pro­tec­tion from the ways the crazy-making can become internalized. 

This also means being trust­wor­thy — not just with infor­ma­tion, but with emo­tions. That way you can acknowl­edge what you know and admit the parts that are uncer­tain fears nag­ging at you. 

I hope you all take care of your­selves. It’s going to be a long ride. Remem­ber to love your neigh­bors no mat­ter who they vot­ed for. We’re all hurt, com­pli­cat­ed peo­ple. Give grace, be the mod­el of love you want to see in the world.

Miracles with Diane Allen

November 5, 2024

Crop­well Meet­ing had a nice pro­gram on mir­a­cles last week­end. Diane is local­ly famous for natives past a cer­tain age because of her ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence in Philly TV back in the day. She gave a great talk. Every­one was hushed and atten­tive through­out, with gasps Olof aston­ish­ment at some of the profiles.

Cropwell hosts Halloween family outreach event again

October 30, 2024

My meet­ing host­ed anoth­er Hal­loween event ear­li­er this week. When we did it in 2022 we arranged to have fly­ers dis­trib­uted by the home­own­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion of devel­op­ment behind us but we missed the Octo­ber mail­ing dead­line this time. So a few mem­bers fly­ered in the neigh­bor­hood and it worked! Some­one saw it and shared it on a par­ent chat for the near­by ele­men­tary school. A few further-off peo­ple came because of the Face­book event, which frankly sur­prised me.

What do you want to see in Friends Journal?

October 23, 2024

From our email newsletter:

“We have themes mapped out for our (most­ly) month­ly issues through the end of 2025, and we’re already think­ing about what comes next. What top­ics would you like to see cov­ered from a Quak­er perspective?

Here’s a list of themes since 2012. Maybe you’ve got a sub­ject we’ve nev­er addressed. Maybe you see some­thing we cov­ered a decade ago and could look at with fresh eyes. Email us with your suggestions!”

I’m actu­al­ly the one who is com­pil­ing sug­ges­tions so if you’re get­ting this as part of the Quak­er­Ran­ter newslet­ter you can just hit reply with your ideas.

A Future Vision of Friends

October 22, 2024

Craig Bar­nett, in his Tran­si­tion Quak­ers blog, talks about the future of Quak­erism in the UK. Here’s a snip­pet but go read the whole thing:

There is like­ly to be an even larg­er num­ber of peo­ple whose most reg­u­lar engage­ment with oth­er Quak­ers is online, per­haps sup­ple­ment­ed by retreats, camps or oth­er in-person events. There will almost cer­tain­ly be a broad range of Quak­er activist groups and net­works focussed on par­tic­u­lar con­cerns such as the cli­mate emer­gency, migra­tion and peace. Along­side this, I antic­i­pate a greater diver­si­ty of forms of Quak­er prac­tice, belong­ing and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, with most Friends hav­ing a much loos­er con­nec­tion to area meet­ings and Britain Year­ly Meet­ing as a whole. In oth­er words it looks much more like a move­ment than one mono­lith­ic organisation.

I think a lot of this is rel­e­vant to Friends in North Amer­i­ca and not only because of some shared cul­ture. For bet­ter or worse, the inter­net is decou­pling spir­i­tu­al­i­ty from geog­ra­phy. Blogs and mag­a­zines, pod­casts and YouTube chan­nels are all acces­si­ble from any­where. Covid taught us all how to use Zoom and the con­tin­ued avail­abil­i­ty of online wor­ship have led iso­lat­ed Friends (or Friends frus­trat­ed by local, in-person options) to wor­ship from anywhere.

I’m intrigued by Craig’s anal­o­gy to the orga­ni­za­tion and of west­ern Bud­dhism though I think we still need to focus on local wor­ship. Part­ly because of the inter­net, peo­ple are seek­ing in-person, live com­mu­ni­ties but we have to be ready to receive them. Craig talks about the need to pro­vide reli­gious edu­ca­tion — to be able to answer what we believe — and sup­port for fam­i­lies and children.

Radical Quaker Benjamin Lay

October 10, 2024

I don’t share every new Quak­er­S­peak video (you can sub­scribe on the web­site or direct­ly on its YouTube chan­nel). But this new one on Quak­er rabble-rouser and abo­li­tion­ist Ben­jamin Lay is par­tic­u­lar­ly well-done. Its base is an inter­view with Mar­cus Redik­er, the his­to­ri­an who has done more than any­one to pop­u­lar­ize the seventeenth-century Friend. But it also splices in cool ani­ma­tions and inter­views with some mod­ern Friends. It came out real­ly well. Con­grats to Christo­pher Cuthrell.

And Who Are Our Friends?

October 4, 2024

The Octo­ber Friends Jour­nal is out. A lit­tle teas­er from my open­ing col­umn:

Are we all just bad Quak­ers? I don’t think so. I had so many con­ver­sa­tions with Friends over the years in which they judged them­selves against semi-mythical “real Quak­ers.” I sus­pect we often find our great­est Quak­er authen­tic­i­ty in the messi­ness that fol­lows faith­ful­ness. Some of the most fas­ci­nat­ing Friends in the past, fig­ures such as Ben­jamin Lay and Pub­lic Uni­ver­sal Friend, were so far ahead of their time that they couldn’t fit into the Quak­er main­stream of their day.

The Good Samar­i­tan who stopped to help a wound­ed trav­el­er was prob­a­bly made late for what­ev­er appoint­ment he was rush­ing to. He might have lost busi­ness with his detour; he cer­tain­ly lost mon­ey on the sup­plies he used to treat the wounds and on the mon­ey he gave the innkeep­er. But he was clear-sighted enough to know that the inward com­mand­ment to help his neigh­bor was more impor­tant than any of these world­ly concerns.

Making the Quaker World Accessible

October 3, 2024

I’m excit­ed to see that The Quak­er World is final­ly avail­able as a paper­back at a more afford­able $50. Pub­lished in 2022, this is a rich tome put togeth­er by my friends (and fre­quent Friends Jour­nal col­lab­o­ra­tors) Wess Daniels and Rhi­an­non Grant. Clock­ing in at over 500 pages, there are a lot of great con­trib­u­tors. I’ve been excit­ed about it even though I’ve not been able to read it — the hard­cov­er was $250. Ear­li­er this year I whined about the exor­bi­tant cost of the new Quak­er his­to­ries and am glad that some com­bi­na­tion of prod­ding and eco­nom­ic forces has made this one more acces­si­ble. You can read Windy Cool­er’s FJ review of The Quak­er World and order it from the pub­lish­er.