Sup­port­ing younger Friends in an out­reach effort, by Kris­ten Cole:

A few weeks before the show, one of the adult orga­niz­ers made an announce­ment about the upcom­ing show at the rise of meet­ing for wor­ship. He explained, “We did a real­ly rad­i­cal thing. We asked our teens what they would want to do if they could orga­nize an event for young peo­ple. And they told us. And we lis­tened.” At a time when we are deeply engaged in con­ver­sa­tions about the direc­tion of Quak­erism, it’s pow­er­ful to be remind­ed that build­ing toward our future might be eas­i­er to achieve if we open our hearts and minds and lis­ten to the next generation.

Read more at Find­ing the Divine in a Mosh Pit. This is from the March edi­tion of Spark, New York Year­ly Meet­ing’s pub­li­ca­tion, which focus­es on the arts this issue.

Be sure to scroll to the bot­tom of Cole’s arti­cle for a dis­claimer about the mosh pit (spoil­er: there was­n’t one). It made me won­der if kids still mosh. Wikipedia dates the prac­tice to 1980. I’m sure some do, as we live in an age of ever­green sub-genres. The avail­abil­i­ty of music and video on-demand and the abil­i­ty to quick­ly orga­nize com­mu­ni­ties via app make every era eas­i­ly acces­si­ble. I’ve lost track of how many 80s revivals we’ve gone through.

But con­certs these days are so medi­at­ed by cell phones. Even I find myself tak­ing it out when the first chords of a favorite song start up. And even if you your­self resist, oth­ers will have their phones out video­ing you. I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by the videos of high school kids from the 1980s that some­time get post­ed on YouTube. They’re so unfazed by the cam­era, which would have been some bulky Hi8 cam­corder, prob­a­bly because they fig­ured no one would actu­al­ly ever look at the footage. It’s hard to imag­ine the wild aban­don and non-self-consciousness of 1980s mosh­ing when you know any awk­ward move you make might show up on Tik­tok or Ins­ta the next day.