Hye Sung Francis on life and Friendly Fire
Friendly Fire doesn’t exist to build our own brand. We are not a church-planting movement. We are a bunch of poor kids who love God and people. As a collective, we hope to nurture the emerging Religious/Christian Left.
We are called to bear one another’s burdens, forgive one another, and never judge or accuse one another.
— Isaac Penington
Greg Woods is the primary mover behind this Thursday’s live panel of Quaker congressional candidates. He’s written a new post about it, Quakers & Politics Do Mix (in the 2018 Midterms)
This year’s election feel different than previous years. People are ready to do something besides just voting. Many are running for office in record numbers, for example: Scientists and Women.Another population that is running in, perhaps, record numbers in 2018: Quakers!
He’s added a lot of interesting contextual links to articles about the new types of candidates we’re seeing in the 2018 election.
To make sure you get the latest information on the live panel, sign up for the live web panel’s Facebook event. And join us at 3pm ET for our live web panel. We’ll also be continuing to update the Friends Journal announcement page.
Brian Drayton is looking at an early form of public Quaker worship, who’s various names (including “yearly meetings”) have perhaps hidden them from modern Quaker consciousness: From the Quaker toolbox: “Yearly meetings” and related
These meetings often included gatherings of ministers, and of elders (and sometimes the two together), and meetings mostly for Friends. But the public worship was carefully prepared for — usually more than one session, often over more than one day, with lots of publicity ahead of time. Temporary meeting places were erected for large crowds (the word “booth” is used, these clearly held hundreds of people.
Brian’s story reminds me of when I was a tourist in the “1652 Country” where Quakerism was born. One of the stops is Firbank Fell, where George Fox preached to thousands. Most histories call that sermon the official start of the Quaker movement.
But Firbank Fell itself is a desolate hillside miles from anywhere. There was a small ancient church there and then nothing but grazing fields off to the horizon. A thousand people in such a remote spot would have the feel of a music festival. And that’s kind of what was happening the week the unknown George Fox walked into that part of England. There was a organized movement that held independent religious preaching festivals. Fox was no doubt very moving and he might have given the seekers there a new way of thinking about their spiritual condition, but the movement was already there. I wonder if the general meetings of public worship that Drayton is tracking down is an echo of those earlier public festivals.
One of my Firbank Fell photos:
I didn’t know of Adrian Martinez before I was introduced to him in this QuakerSpeak video. He seems like quite a character (“art attack!”) but I’m intrigued at how his paintings have brought primal Quaker values into unexpected spaces like the White House (not the occupant you might guess!) and corporate America. His story of a very specifically Quaker picture being bought for a boardroom hints at messages Friends might still have for the world:
The painting I did, Meeting for Worship, I just knew was not something that was going to get sold. It was not an economic decision. It was a necessity to do, nonetheless. When I did it, I had this big show and it was immediately purchased. First one. And it’s interesting: where it went went was the boardroom of an insurance agency. The man that owned the company bought the painting because he said, “The reason I need this painting, and I need it in the boardroom, is because we need more of that in our business.”
http://quakerspeak.com/painting-for-worship/
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting highlights artists, including Signe Wilkinson and Ramona Sharples, in The Art of Persuasion:
“I was thinking about (emotion and art) recently as I was going through all my comics, and there is a rhythm that is very slow and quiet. It’s not very actiony comics that I’m drawing … because … a lot of the feelings that I am describing are melancholy, and that plays a role in the way that my comics are presented.”
Now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter.
Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; but, for that reason, it should be most our care to learn it.