Yearly Archives ⇒ 2008

Holiness and Quakerism

September 4, 2008
· Martin Kelley

Just got Car­ole Dale Spencer’s Holi­ness: The Soul of Quak­erism in the mail. There’s been some blog­ger buzz around it and I’m glad to check it out for myself. I can tell right off the bat that I’m prob­a­bly not going to be con­vinced by her argu­ments. Flip­ping through the index (the place to start any book like this) I see she makes three scant ref­er­ences to tradition-minded “Con­ser­v­a­tive” Friends. That’s not a good sign, but she’s far from the first mod­ern his­to­ri­an to quar­an­tine this branch to the footnotes. 

I’ll cut her some slack because she’s trav­el­ing an inter­est­ing route. She’s spend­ing a lot of time talk­ing about the Methodist and Holi­ness influ­ences in Friends – John Wes­ley him­self direct­ly is indexed eigh­teen times. If you look at the peo­ple who defined mod­ern 20th Cen­tu­ry lib­er­al Quak­erism, folks like Rufus Jones (28 index ref­er­ences), you find that these influ­ences were very strong. They still are, even if they go unac­knowl­edged. And many of the issues Spencer is trac­ing are still with us and con­tin­ue to be rel­e­vant even as some of us are talk­ing up the pos­si­bil­i­ties of a new renewal/revival movement.

A first look at the Google Chrome browser

September 2, 2008
· Martin Kelley

screen-shotMy Twit­ter fol­low­ers will know I’ve been slight­ly obsessed by Google’s new brows­er, Chrome, since word leaked that it was going to be released today (Tues, Sept 2). I’ve been hit­ting reload on the down­load site fair­ly obses­sive­ly. A few min­utes ago my per­sis­tence was reward­ed and I’m writ­ing to you all from the new brows­er (here’s the offi­cial release announce­ment).

Why a New Browser?!?
Before I begin, let me rec­om­mend the Google Chrome online com­ic book for those with tech inter­ests. Google does a good job explain­ing why they’ve joined the brows­er wars. At first glance it seems a need­less move: they already fund much of the devel­op­ment on the open source Fire­fox brows­er. But Fire­fox, like Microsoft Inter­net Explor­er and every oth­er brows­er, is built around cer­tain assump­tions about how browsers process appli­ca­tions. Google is start­ing from scratch and think­ing about the brows­er as an oper­at­ing sys­tem run­ning increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed appli­ca­tions (like Gmail). Chrome sep­a­rates mem­o­ry process and inter­net per­mis­sions in new ways.
Obvi­ous­ly, Google is going after Microsoft (the ini­tial release of Chrome is Win­dows only) – not just its brows­er but its Vista oper­at­ing sys­tem as well. With the expan­sion of high speed inter­net access and so-called “cloud com­put­ing,” func­tions that used to require stand-alone clients can now be han­dled inside the brows­er. Email has prob­a­bly become the most wide­ly adopt­ed brows­er appli­ca­tions but you can also do things pho­to edit­ing and video record­ing through the brows­er. Google knows that once an appli­ca­tion is run­ning inside a brows­er, the oper­at­ing sys­tem does­n’t mat­ter. Gmail works equal­ly fine from Vista, Mac OS X, or Lin­ux.
It is in Google’s strate­gic inter­est to advance the state of brows­er tech­nol­o­gy and they do that with Chrome. But it is in the inter­est that every­one have access to these lat­est inno­va­tions and that all browsers can run the most sophis­ti­cat­ed appli­ca­tions Google engi­neers can put togeth­er. So Chrome is open source and Google invites oth­er browsers to incor­po­rate many of its features. 
First Thoughts on the Product:
The down­load was quick and easy (of course).
I was sur­prised that when installing it only offered to import my MS Inter­net Explor­er book­marks. My most com­plete and up-to-date book­mark list is in Fire­fox (synced among my oper­at­ing sys­tems by the excel­lent Fox­marks exten­sion).
I went pret­ty imme­di­ate­ly to Gmail. Google says they’ve rewrit­ten a lot of the back­ground ren­der­ing code from scratch and I was expect­ing to see instan­ta­neous load­ing. Frankly, it seemed to load as quick­ly as it does in Fire­fox. Any appar­ent speed increase isn’t imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous (this is a tes­ta­ment to how fast they’ve man­aged to get it to load in all browsers).
speed-dialThe inter­face is very sim­pli­fied: few but­tons, tabs up top, no sta­tus bar. There’s a lot of sur­pris­es here, like an auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed page with thumb­nails of your most fre­quent­ly vis­it­ed sites (see image, right), an idea bor­rowed from Opera browser’s “Speed Dial” fea­ture (avail­able through to Fire­fox users through the Speed Dial exten­sion).
gmail-as-app
You can also “Cre­ate appli­ca­tion short­cuts” which turn ser­vices such as Gmail into client-like appli­ca­tions that sit on your desk­top (screen­shot right). Open them up from here and the nor­mal loca­tion bar and brows­er but­tons are gone.
There’s a lot more to explore here. It’s obvi­ous that Google has put a lot of thought into this. I’m not going to dis­miss any fea­ture or odd­i­ty too quick­ly. They helped a lot of us rethink how we orga­nize email using a sin­gle “Archive” fold­er instead of the elaborately-maintained fold­er hier­ar­chy. Google actu­al­ly have put out a num­ber of half-baked and under-supported ser­vices (Froogle and Google Check­out come most imme­di­ate­ly to mind) but it’s clear that the Google Chrome brows­er is a very seri­ous ini­tia­tive by the company.
Will I Use It?
The big ques­tion, right? Actu­al­ly, I won’t use it much for now. For one thing, I’m a Mac user. I have a Win­dows XP vir­tu­al machine run­ning most of the time cour­tesy of VMWare’s Fusion. I’m sure Google has set a high pri­or­i­ty to make Mac OS X and Lin­ux ver­sions of Chrome – they’re whole strat­e­gy rests on this being woven into the brows­er lin­gua fran­ca that keeps Microsoft­’s Vista at bay, remem­ber?, but until that time Chrome won’t be my nat­ur­al first choice.
But I’m also going to miss my Fire­fox exten­sions. I for­got that the web has lots of ads (Adblock Plus). And I don’t like the extra clut­ter of Gmail with­out Bet­ter Gmail 2 (just the “Folders4Gmail” fea­ture of the lat­ter saves my eye more scan­ning time than any speed tweak Chrome deliv­ers). And these days the Web Devel­op­ers Tool­bar, Last­pass, FireFTP exten­sions are pret­ty essen­tial to my work day.
But if a native Mac ver­sion was released? And if Fire­fox exten­sions start­ed being rewrit­ten for Chrome? I just flipped back to my reg­u­lar brows­er to check some­thing and even after an hour with Chrome, Fire­fox felt so heavy and clunky. It is pos­si­ble to see Chrome could a seri­ous con­tender for my attention. 

The real world’s competition this week is on the streets of Georgia

August 11, 2008
· Martin Kelley

To Amer­i­can eyes the news of the esca­lat­ing war in the Cau­ca­sus nation of Geor­gia almost reads as farce: a break­away region of a break­away region, tanks rolling to main­tain con­trol of… well, not that much real­ly. We won­der how it could be in either Rus­sia or Geor­gia’s inter­ests to pick a fight over all this? Why does it seem like Rus­si­a’s de fac­to leader-for-life Vladimir Putin is still fight­ing the Cold War? And what must be going through the mind of Geor­gia’s Pres­i­dent Mikheil Saakashvili to be taunt­ing the giant to its north?
But the farce turns to weari­ness as we real­ize just how famil­iar this all is. Tiny eth­nic enclaves with cen­turies of ani­mosi­ties and well rehearsed sto­ries of atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted by the oth­er set fight­ing by the break­down of an empire that had uneasi­ly unit­ed them in repres­sion. Change a few details and we could be talk­ing recent con­flicts in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Rwan­da, the Sudan, Palestine/Israel and Iraq. Blood mon­ey from the drug trade, from oil bil­lions and human traf­fick­ing add fuel to the fire. We’ve been fight­ing these same wars since at least 1914. Why haven’t we learned how to stop them?
Seri­ous­ly: oth­er­wise strong economies col­lapse under the chaos that these ter­ri­to­r­i­al wars bring. Most of the wars seem to be fought in mar­gin­al areas and all sides would be bet­ter off if the politi­cians stopped wor­ry­ing about these con­test­ed ter­ri­to­ries and just focused on build­ing a econ­o­my attrac­tive to inter­na­tion­al trade.
Why has­n’t the world learned the mech­a­nisms to end these con­flicts before they erupt into open war­fare? Where is the polit­i­cal will to end this class of war once and for all? Dis­ease and ter­ror­ism are the invari­able fruits of these con­flicts and strike us all across nation­al bound­aries. The “inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty” needs to be mean more than impres­sive chore­og­ra­phy and a few thou­sand ath­letes in Bei­jing. This week’s real gold met­al will go to the lead­ers that can tran­scend macho pos­tur­ing and weak-willed apol­o­giz­ing and get those Russ­ian tanks out of Georgia.

Doink Doink/Chunk Chunk/Bomp Bomp

August 4, 2008
· Martin Kelley

blankblankAs the evi­dence accu­mu­lates on the Follieri/Galante church-for-beach-house devel­op­er scan­dal, it’s become some­thing of a par­lor game around the kitchen table to spec­u­late on who will play all the char­ac­ters in the upcom­ing mini-series. It’s only a mat­ter of time real­ly. We’ve got a glam Euro­trash huck­ster, a Hol­ly­wood actress, the Sopranos-like mob vice pres­i­dent, Bill Clin­ton shady deal­ings with his all-but-pedophile drink­ing bud­dies – and of course the Dio­cese of Cam­den’s Bish­op Galante and at least one dioce­san priest with a fond­ness for play­ing dress-up. It will only become more truth-is-stranger-than-fiction when a few more details work their way from open secret to FBI doc­u­men­ta­tion and NY Post headlines. 

So while it’s not a sur­prise, there is a cer­tain sat­is­fac­tion in the lat­est media rumor that “Law & Order” is plan­ning one of their clas­sic “ripped from the head­lines” drama­ti­za­tion of the scandal:

Raf­fael­lo’s arrest was and still is the buzz in New York City’s social circles.…He was the ulti­mate con man; hand­some, rich, smooth and with a celebri­ty girl­friend to make him seem legit. I’m sure this will be the highest-rated Law & Order episode next season.

There’s enough angles to this sto­ry to fill an entire sea­son of tele­vi­sion so we don’t know how promi­nent the Bish­op’s part will be. But L&O cre­ator Dick Wolf grew up an altar boy at St. Patrick­’s cathe­dral in New York and the L&O cos­tume depart­ment has more cler­i­cal out­fits that Raf­fael­lo Fol­lier­i’s clos­et. Wolf rarely miss­es the chance to throw a priest into the script. Whole sea­sons of the show were devot­ed to ripped-from-the-headlines pieces on the priest/bishop sex abuse scan­dal in the ear­ly 2000s and I’m sure a follow-up look at the web of finan­cial fraud fueled (or at least jus­ti­fied) by the set­tle­ment pay­outs would be a big rat­ings hit.

I just wish Lennie Briscoe was still around to make the col­lar. BOMP BOMP.

Is it Convergent to talk about Convergence?

July 25, 2008
· Martin Kelley

Warn­ing: insid­er Quak­er con­ver­sa­tion to follow.

Over on her blog Robin M has a great post look­ing at the Con­ver­gent Friend con­ver­sa­tion now. It’s kind of State of the Con­ver­gent Friends report. It’s very good and well worth a read and makes me won­der again where exact­ly I stand.

Even though I was around at the ges­ta­tion and birth of the term, and even though it orig­i­nal­ly referred to a small group of blog­gers who I all love, I go back and forth between using and refus­ing to use the label. I don’t feel the need to always be explic­it­ly “con­ver­gent.” Some­times I can just embody the spir­it of it, which as a renew­al move­ment is real­ly just the same old spir­it of Quak­erism, which as its own renew­al move­ment is the same old spir­it of Chris­tian­i­ty, with is just that spir­it which ani­mates the world. 

See: it’s too easy to throw up terms as a defense shield or as a way of boost­ing our­selves. I know I’m prone to this trap. I’ll say “I’m doing this as a [Con­ver­gent Friend/Quaker/Christian]” as if that explains any­thing, as if care­ful lis­ten­ing to the Holy Spir­it isn’t all the author­i­ty that any of us needs.

I think a cen­tral part of the con­ver­gent expe­ri­ence is step­ping out­side of the insti­tu­tion­al box­es and walk­ing into the dis­com­fort zone of our brand of Friends – ask­ing the thorny ques­tions and point­ing out the incon­ve­nient ele­phants. If “Con­ver­gent Friend” ever set­tles down into a set def­i­n­i­tion and annu­al rit­u­als (like a Gath­er­ing inter­est group?), we’ll see our own brier patch­es take root along those incon­ve­nient pathways.

I’ve noticed Friends with bright ideas brand and sell them­selves, and have won­dered to myself how freely the gospel spir­it is mov­ing after ten years of Gath­er­ing work­shops and Pen­dle Hill work­shops. I’m not so much purist that I don’t under­stand that some­times those of us led to the min­istry have to push through doubts and present things we’ve promised to present even if we’re not in the best mood (pray­ing that we find that groove). But I’ve also sat through com­mit­tee meet­ings that felt like the Bill Mur­ray movie Ground­hog Day, where I look around and real­ize the same peo­ple have been sit­ting in the same room hav­ing the same con­ver­sa­tion for twen­ty years, and every­one is just so tired and the feel­ing is they’re all read­ing a script and would want to be any­where but where they are.

A friend­ly amend­ment to Convergent

Just the last thing is that for me if our work isn’t ulti­mate­ly root­ed in shar­ing the good news then it’s self-indulgent. I don’t want to cre­ate a lit­tle oasis or hip­py com­pound of hap­py peo­ple. Friends aren’t going to go to heav­en in our politically-correct smug­ness while the rest of the world is dying off. It’s all of us or none of us. If we’re not active­ly evan­ge­liz­ing <lib­er­al trans­la­tion: shar­ing the spir­i­tu­al insights and gifts we’ve been giv­en />, then we are part of the prob­lem. “Con­ver­gence” is Quak­er lin­go. When we say it we’re turn­ing our back to the world to talk amongst our­selves: a use­ful exer­cise occas­sion­al­ly but not our main work. 

I’ve been read­ing a lot of seek­er blogs where Quak­ers are men­tioned and I’m struck by how so many of the words we rou­tine­ly use in our blogs and self-statements are total­ly alien to others. 

It may be too late to throw a switch on the quickly-gathering-steam train that is the “Con­ver­gent Friends” express. But here’s my friend­ly amend­ment: Con­ver­gent Friends need to be ready to get out of the Quak­er con­fer­ence cen­ters and need to be ready to put aside the Quak­er arcana we’ve accu­mu­lat­ed over the years. If all we’re doing is sit­ting around talk­ing to room­fulls of Quak­ers in our hopeless-inaccessible lin­go then we’re fool­ing our­selves that any real renew­al is happening.

Frankly, I have no idea what this would look like. I’m as clue­less and scared by the pos­si­bil­i­ties as most of y’all. I just know we need to do it. Even if I had all the trav­el mon­ey and time in the world (I have nei­ther), I don’t know if I’d have enough moti­va­tion to get to the next Bar­nesville / Greens­boro / Rich­mond / New­berg / wher­ev­er con­fer­ence (I just real­ized I’m rein­forc­ing my last Quak­er post!). I love meet­ing oth­er Friends and I soooo miss see­ing oth­er Friends in my cur­rent rel­a­tive iso­la­tion. But. But. I wish I had a bet­ter end­ing to this post. I guess I’ll just throw it out to the com­ments: what are we being called to do to send this work into the world?