Quakers on Wikipedia

March 27, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son on how Wikipedia describes Quak­ers—and how we might respond.

This rais­es a con­cern for me about how the Quak­er move­ment might over­see this kind of pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion of our faith and prac­tice going for­ward. In the spir­it of Wikipedia’s plat­form as a peer-to-peer project, and in keep­ing with the non-hierarchical gov­er­nance struc­tures so impor­tant to Friends, and, of course, with the guid­ance of the Holy Spir­it, I pro­pose a peer-to-peer process for the over­sight of such pre­sen­ta­tions, a long-range project of review that would hope­ful­ly include Friends with real exper­tise in the many areas of Quak­er his­to­ry, faith, and prac­tice cov­ered in this entry and what­ev­er oth­er entries we find

This relates to a long-term con­cern of mine that so much of the most pub­lic infor­ma­tion on Friends isn’t cre­at­ed by us. Wikipedia’s rel­a­tive­ly benign (there’s actu­al­ly a bit of a Quak­er process con­nec­tion) but our par­tic­i­pa­tion on social media like Face­book and Twit­ter are medi­at­ed by algo­rithms favor­ing con­tro­ver­sy. I edit Wikipedia entries a cou­ple of times a year but am also a small part of Friends Jour­nal efforts to built out Quak​er​.org to make it a use­ful, accu­rate, and pub­licly vis­i­ble intro­duc­tion to the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends.

There’s some good dis­cus­sion on Mastodon by some Wikipedia edi­tors who explain that Davi­son’s plan would be seen with some sus­pi­cion by Wikipedia. As com­menter Dan York wrote:

Wikipedia has a very strong ethos around “con­flict of inter­est” with the sense that peo­ple too close to a top­ic can’t write in a neu­tral point-of-view. There’s def­i­nite­ly val­ue in folks work­ing to improve the pages, but they need to keep these views in mind — and back up every­thing they do with reli­able sources.

Quakers on Wikipedia
Quak­ers on Wikipedia 

While work­ing on an essay on Quak­er meta­physics — what’s going on in our per­son­al mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ences, and espe­cial­ly, in…

Through the Flaming Sword Through the Flam­ing Sword 

Remembering Feisty

March 23, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Our 2 – 1/2 year old kit­ty Feisty passed away overnight after we rushed him to an emer­gency 24-hour ani­mal hos­pi­tal. He was a good kit­ty and we’re miss­ing him. He was always play­ful, ath­let­ic, and loy­al. He was also quite media-savvy. He liked chill­ing out Frasi­er in the evenings, par­tic­i­pat­ing in our Zoom calls with Theo off at col­lege, and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the kit­ty cat step block­ade with his step-siblings. 

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Feisty came to us as a lit­ter of four kit­tens born behind our garage. When the mom seemed to leave them, we took them in and nursed them back to health. There was one who was adorably pro­tec­tive, hiss­ing at us when we came to help and we instant­ly named him Feisty. Of the four one did­n’t make it, two were adopt­ed out, and one — the feisty one — we brought into our home.

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Belonging: The Community or the Institution (12/37)

March 21, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Quak­er mem­ber­ship has long been a con­tentious issue for thr past few decades (Why should some­one join? What does it mean? What lin­its should there be?) but it’s becom­ing more com­pli­cat­ed with the rise of hybrid wor­ship. Emi­ly Provance looks at thr state of mem­ber­ship and how it’s evolving.

A lot of the work done about mem­ber­ship late­ly, espe­cial­ly by young adults, has been about help­ing Friends in gen­er­al under­stand that the insti­tu­tion­al prac­tices need to change to reflect what God is doing in our communities.

Belonging: The Community or the Institution (12/37)
Belong­ing: The Com­mu­ni­ty or the Insti­tu­tion (12/37)

Some­thing real­ly inter­est­ing has been hap­pen­ing with mem­ber­ship.  In the past ten years, a num­ber of Quak­er groups…

Turning, Turning Turn­ing, Turning 

Oooh!, a Quaker zine

March 6, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Wess Daniels got a pack of Quak­er zines in the mail. That’s right, phys­i­cal paper:

A few weeks back, I got some mail from some­one I didn’t know. As I opened it, these cute lit­tle book­lets fell out, and a let­ter addressed to me: Hel­lo, Mr. Daniels. The let­ter writer, Pacif­ic North­west Quak­er Natal­ie Ram­s­land, told me a lit­tle about how she came into zine mak­ing and why she was send­ing me some of her zines.

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Wess’s pho­to of the “Fold in the Light” zine (source)

That’s very cool! I zined back in col­lege: “The Vac­u­um” ran every Fri­day for most of two years. When I was doing a non­vi­o­lence web­site in the mid-90s it seemed nat­ur­al to apply this mod­el and I acci­den­tal­ly start­ed blog­ging, com­plete with mir­ror­ing it to an email list (I wrote “Fif­teen Years of Blog­ging” eleven years ago, whoa!). Now my blog auto­mat­i­cal­ly goes out by email on Fri­days. There’s such an obvi­ous through-line between the 90s zine and my ongo­ing blog­ging (and obvi­ous­ly we have week­ly con­tent cycles for Friends Jour­nal too).

I love the idea of paper zines com­ing back though their lim­it has always been that the best dis­tri­b­u­tion is local and miss­es those of us out of the geo­graph­ic loop.

Zine-makerNatalie also has a Sub­stack, which I’ll be read­ing eagerly.

What would you like to see in Friends Journal?

February 22, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Every eigh­teen months or so Friends Jour­nal start brain­storm­ing new themes and boil them down into a list. We’re now plot­ting out themes for the spring of 2024 and beyond. Part of this process is ask­ing read­ers what they’d like to see us cov­er and if you fol­low FJ on Face­book, Twit­ter, or Mastodon, you’ve prob­a­bly seen us ask­ing there. But I would also like to hear from Quak­er Ranter readers:

What top­ics would YOU like to see Friends Jour­nal address­ing in the future?

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We’ve been run­ning themed issues for over a decade now. Check out the list of themes since 2012 or look through the archives to rem­i­nis­cence about past issues. There’s a good chance we’ve already cov­ered the sub­ject you’re inter­est­ed in, but it might be a good time for us to take a new look or a fresh spin. Leave a com­ment here or email me at martin@friendsjournal.org with any ideas you have.

25th anniversary of my NYTimes profile

February 21, 2023
· Martin Kelley

It makes me feel old to admit to a quarter-century anniver­sary for some­thing that hap­pened in my ear­ly thir­ties but 25 years ago today, New York Times pub­lished a pro­file of my work on Non​vi​o​lence​.org. Thanks to a great archive sec­tion, you can still read it on their website.

While many orgs have pub­lic rela­tions depart­ments ded­i­cat­ed to plant­i­ng sto­ries, this one hap­pened pret­ty organ­i­cal­ly. I fol­lowed Lisa Napoli’s work in what the Times then called its “Cyber­times” sec­tion (a pre­cur­sor to the less cringey “Tech” sec­tion of today) and liked her arti­cles. It was sev­en years after the first Gulf War and Pres­i­dent Clin­ton was saber rat­tling in Iraq again. I won­dered how the peace move­ment would orga­nize dif­fer­ent­ly now that the inter­net was becom­ing a real orga­niz­ing tool and I sus­pect­ed Napoli might be inter­est­ed. I shot an email and she respond­ed imme­di­ate­ly and set up an inter­view. A pho­tog­ra­ph­er came to my house and took a lot of pic­tures (includ­ing a real­ly cringey one of me play­ing a gui­tar that graced the Cyber­times front page but has not been archived, thank goodness.)

It’s espe­cial­ly fun­ny to me to see how dat­ed some of the lan­guage and ref­er­ences are.

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Circling around, and surprising nudges toward renewed ministry and plainness

February 19, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From LizOpp, back on the blog:

I have come to believe that I live my life not in a straight line from birth to death but in a series of small and large cir­cles: from birth to learn­ing; from growth to for­get­ting; from remem­ber­ing to pride­ful liv­ing; from bro­ken­ness to humil­i­ty; from deep love and con­nec­tion to sep­a­rate­ness; from despair to faithfulness.

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I too have felt cir­cles com­ing back around. Liz attend­ed last week­end’s work­shop, the first multi-day retreat I’ve led since… check notes… 2014, when R. Scot Miller got me to Kala­ma­zoo, Michi­gan, for Green Pas­tures Quar­ter­ly Meet­ing. Last year I final­ly stopped my meet­ing wan­der­ing and have set­tled down at Crop­well Meet­ing, where I get to be involved in all the sil­ly, light­weight dra­mas that occur when­ev­er a group of peo­ple come together.

There, I’ve felt my spo­ken min­istry return. I was shocked a few months ago when I stood and was giv­en words that start­ed with reflect­ing of the sounds of the leaves blow­ing against the out­side walls, ref­er­enced an atten­der who had just been sweep­ing them, cir­cled to the his­to­ry of the peo­ple who have gath­ered with­in those walls and main­tained the build­ing for wor­ship, moved side­ways into a gen­tle les­son on min­istry in the qui­etist tra­di­tion, pulled it back to Jesus’s words in the Ser­mon on the Mount, and then tied it up in a bow with prayers of thanks to our faith­ful ances­tors and to those today who con­tin­ue to sweep away the ever-returned leaves. Read­ers, let me assure you I don’t think I’ve ever giv­en such coher­ent, bal­anced min­istry and I’m not sure where it came from. But faith­ful­ness is key.

I’ve also felt the nudge to bring back some iden­ti­fi­able plain dress. For years I’ve tend­ed toward what I used to call “Sears plain“1 and dur­ing the work-from-home life I’m some­times lucky if I get through the day with­out still wear­ing my paja­mas. Over the last few weeks I’ve been adding sus­penders to my reg­u­lar clothes. Of course I’ve gone through all the old famil­iar self-questioning: Am I doing this to stand out? Am I try­ing to puff myself up? Is this what faith­ful­ness leads me? But these ques­tions are part of the process and a tug toward plain­ness often pre­cedes out­ward min­istry; in his study Quak­er Jour­nals, Howard Brin­ton not­ed that future min­is­ters often record­ed inward nudges in their teen years and became plain­er in dress to the ridicule of their peers. I’m not a teen and I doubt any­one is going to make fun of me (at least to my face) but I do feel a cer­tain seri­ous­ness of intent come over me when I over­come my nat­ur­al desire for social anonymi­ty and put the sus­penders on.