Too much politeness?

October 10, 2022

Johan­na Jack­son and I speak about the prob­lems of polite­ness and buried con­flict in Quak­er meet­ings in this week’s FJ author chat. We tried not to get too spe­cif­ic about con­flicts we’ve seen in our own Quak­er expe­ri­ences: what mat­ters is not nec­es­sar­i­ly indi­vid­ual instances (peo­ple can be jerks, this is under­stood) but a pat­tern of not rec­on­cil­ing and heal­ing that many Friends and would-be Friends have observed.

How do we reshape the cul­ture in our meet­ings to allow for more vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and healthy emo­tions and how do we heal from con­flicts that hap­pened years or decades ago but still shape our meet­ings? Johan­na’s arti­cle, Beyond Polite­ness, appears in the cur­rent issue of Friends Jour­nal.

Prison ministry, new on QuakerSpeak

October 6, 2022

New, on Quak­er­S­peak: “A Call­ing to Prison Min­istry and Antiracism Work.” Quak­er­S­peak video­g­ra­ph­er Rebec­ca Hamilton-Levy inter­views Judy Meik­le, who was ini­tial­ly struck by the phrase that tied the modern-day prison indus­try to slav­ery — “from the plan­ta­tion to the pen­i­ten­tiary” — and start­ed vol­un­teer­ing for prison min­istry at Sing Sing. It was quite the jour­ney, as she had to con­front her own White­ness and White sav­ior complex:

I’d like to name that it’s a strug­gle for me on an ongo­ing basis to wres­tle with my own inter­nal­ized racism and when I hear myself talk­ing like I have today about what my join­ery has been like, I hear myself falling into the trap of excep­tion­al­ism, like some­how I’m the good antiracist — I’m not. I stum­ble all the time, I make mis­takes. So I just want to name that and know that I am on this jour­ney mak­ing mis­takes because I want to do bet­ter, and I hope that with the guid­ance of Spir­it oth­ers will join. There are many peo­ple in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends that are already on board with this work, and it’s just my hope that oth­ers will join.

Judy wrote about her expe­ri­ences for FJ last year in “Get Thee Behind the Walls.”

New Quaker podcast from Pendle Hill

September 30, 2022

The Pen­dle Hill Cen­ter out­side Philadel­phia is launch­ing The Seed, a new pod­cast, with the first episode sched­uled to drop on World Quak­er Day. From their press release:

The podcast’s host, Dwight Dun­ston, is a West Philly-based facil­i­ta­tor, hip-hop artist, edu­ca­tor, and activist who has brought his cre­ativ­i­ty, care, and com­pas­sion to schools, com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters, retire­ment homes, fes­ti­vals, and sta­di­ums all over the coun­try and internationally.

In the open­ing episode, Dwight Dun­ston and Pen­dle Hill exec­u­tive direc­tor Fran­cis­co Bur­gos share with the audi­ence their dreams for The Seed. They wel­come lis­ten­ers into the pod­cast as an expan­sion of Pen­dle Hill’s spaces of trans­for­ma­tion, a green­house for nur­tur­ing hope­ful visions of the world that is possible. 

Dwight, also known as Ster­ling Duns, is a great choice for a host. FJ inter­viewed him back in 2015 and he’s also the sub­ject of a Quak­er­S­peak inter­view. Pen­dle Hill is a real cross­roads, bring­ing togeth­er spir­i­tu­al seek­ers and change advo­cates since its ear­li­est days. Their decades-long tra­di­tion of dai­ly wor­ship tran­si­tioned to a hybrid for­mat almost imme­di­ate­ly upon lock­down in 2020 and real­ly gave a lot of peo­ple hope in a hard time. It total­ly makes sense that they build upon their con­nec­tions to start a pod­cast. The pro­mo sounds good; I can’t wait for the launch.

The Quak­er pod­cast ecosys­tem has a been a bit touch and go over the years, with great pod­casts com­ing and going. Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing’s pod­cast is one of the few that’s still going strong (I very much rec­om­mend Hen­ry Jason’s series, “Fun­da­men­tal Beliefs of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends”). I know of two pod­cast series cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion in addi­tion to Pen­dle Hill’s. It’s an excit­ing time for Quak­er audio!

Featured on Friends Journal this week

September 26, 2022

Fin­ish­ing up the Quak­er Arts issue:

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Trans­form­ing Weapons into Art. Earl­ham’s peace stud­ies prof Welling Hall decid­ed to actu­al­ly take the para­ble lit­er­al­ly and trans­form swords — and bul­lets and com­bat knives — into some­thing new, in this case, provoca­tive art.

On Being a Quak­er Film­mak­er. Mar­tin Krafft explores that of God in the larger-than-life sub­ject of his upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary film as she strug­gles with ter­mi­nal can­cer: “The more I filmed Rachel, the more I real­ized that I was not just film­ing her health jour­ney. I was film­ing Rachel in her rich, com­pli­cat­ed, at times painful, fullness.”

Unbinding the local

September 23, 2022

It seems as if Friends are in the mid­dle of a big shift, fast-forwarded by Covid lock­downs but part of a larg­er trend.

A few weeks ago at a Quak­er meet­ing, I was giv­en a print­out for a Quak­erism class being spon­sored by anoth­er meet­ing. Noth­ing remark­able, except that the meet­ing is thou­sands of miles away and the work­shop leader thou­sands of miles from the meet­ing. Obvi­ous­ly this is all hap­pen­ing by Zoom. I’m glad to see Friends hun­gry to go deep­er into their faith, but the top­ic is one I’ve taught mul­ti­ple times and could teach in-person at any near­by meeting.

I appre­ci­ate our new Zoom oppor­tu­ni­ties. I have a busy sched­ule and love that I have the chance to attend inter­est­ing work­shops and meet Friends with­out leav­ing my house (to be hon­est, I’ve occa­sion­al­ly run errands to the gro­cery store or a kid drop-off while lis­ten­ing to a live Quak­er talk).

But what hap­pens when our pri­ma­ry Quak­er expe­ri­ence is with peo­ple who aren’t local? It’s increas­ing­ly easy to be an “at large” Friend liv­ing a busy life of dai­ly Quak­er wor­ship and far-flung work­shops all on Zoom. This is great for Friends at a dis­tance from local Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties. But what becomes of our meet­ing com­mu­ni­ties as this trend accel­er­ates? How do our ties to spe­cif­ic neigh­bor­hoods change? And what does it mean if the peo­ple in local meet­ings stop being asked to teach because of the easy acces­si­bil­i­ty of nation­al­ly known teach­ers via Zoom? Will Friends who would have been encour­aged to teach at the local lev­el be rel­e­gat­ed to the role of con­sumer? Will Quak­er lead­er­ship becomes even more con­cen­trat­ed and nation­al — indi­vid­u­als with per­son­al brands and followers?

I sus­pect the inter­est and shifts reflects needs that have been unmet by our cur­rent struc­tures. Maybe our local meet­ings aren’t that nur­tur­ing or will­ing to go deep. Many aren’t set up well for busy par­ents like myself, or for those with lim­it­ed trans­porta­tion. In the U.S. alone mil­lions of peo­ple are nowhere near a Friends congregation.