Visiting new meetings online

September 23, 2022

A brand new video from Quak­er­S­peak, “What to Expect at a Hybrid Quak­er Meet­ing for Wor­ship,“ con­vinc­ing­ly high­lights the ben­e­fits of online wor­ship. As Robin Mohr says:

One of the things we’ve learned in the last cou­ple of years is that it is eas­i­er to vis­it a new Quak­er meet­ing that’s far away because of the oppor­tu­ni­ties set up through online wor­ship, and we’ve seen a lot of peo­ple go back to vis­it a meet­ing they vis­it­ed before or to be able to vis­it some­place they’ve always heard about but nev­er been to, and that has been a gift to our community. 

Featured on Friends Journal this week.

September 22, 2022

Con­tin­u­ing with Sep­tem­ber’s Quak­er Arts issue:

Art Is Pray­ing with My Whole Body.” Cai Quirk’s jour­neys as a life­long Quak­er, artist, and gender-diverse per­son are inex­tri­ca­bly linked. Cai sub­mit­ted two arti­cles to us: this text explo­ration of their work and a series of pho­tos titled “Tran­scen­dence.” We liked them so much we decid­ed to pub­lish both (one online and the oth­er both in print and online). Unbe­knownst to me, Cai also sub­mit­ted a poem, which our poet­ry edi­tor chose. When it came time to decide on a cov­er, Cai’s pho­tos stood out more than any of the oth­er selec­tions we test­ed out. I’m pret­ty sure we’ve nev­er had some­one appear in so many forms before.

It’s Not a Lux­u­ry: Eight Quak­er Artists on the Heal­ing Pow­er of Art.” Johan­na Jack­son spent time with sev­er­al Quak­er artists, ask­ing them about their art and spir­i­tu­al prac­tice dur­ing the pandemic.

Friends Journal hiring a staff writer

August 16, 2022

Want to work with me? Friends Pub­lish­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, the par­ent cor­po­ra­tion of Friends Jour­nal, Quak­er Speak, and Quak​er​.org, is look­ing for our first-ever staff writer 1. We’re look­ing for some­one with jour­nal­is­tic chops who is also famil­iar with the cir­cus that is the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends.

Friends Jour­nal will con­tin­ue to have arti­cles from every-day Friends shar­ing their min­istry and their view of Quak­er life. But with a staff writer we’ll be able to run more deeply report­ed and top­i­cal sto­ries. We’ve been com­mis­sion­ing these already. For exam­ple, in 2019 Erik Han­son report­ed on how a Quak­er school respond­ed to long-ago accu­sa­tions of sex­u­al abuse. When the coro­n­avirus lock­downs hit we com­mis­sioned a quick-turnaround sto­ry from Katie Bres­lin on how Quak­er meet­ings were respond­ing and anoth­er by Greg Woods on the then-novel con­cept of com­muning online. And for years we’ve con­duct­ed inter­views of inter­est­ing Friends who are either too busy to write or per­haps not nat­ur­al writ­ers. With only two of us in edi­to­r­i­al there have been so many times we have to say no to fab­u­lous inter­view pos­si­bil­i­ty. A staff writer will gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to include these voic­es more often.

Here’s an excerpt from the job description:

Friends Pub­lish­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, a non­prof­it Quak­er mag­a­zine and web pub­lish­ing orga­ni­za­tion, seeks a staff writer to join our team. The Staff Writer will work remote­ly, though they may occa­sion­al­ly trav­el to FPC’s Philadel­phia office or oth­er loca­tions as need­ed for all-staff activ­i­ties or to cov­er sto­ries. Trav­el is like­ly to be less than 2 weeks per year. This posi­tion reports to the Senior Editor.

You can check out the jobs page for more. If you know any­one who might qual­i­fy, please please let them know. This real­ly is a remote-friendly position!

The Nearness of God as Spirit

August 7, 2022

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I had a few min­utes before wor­ship at Crop­well Meet­ing this morn­ing and so turned to the book­case — a place you’ll often find me in in-between times at church­es of all sorts. There was a slim, dark vol­ume with no dis­cernible title on the spine, a mys­tery book. I pulled it out and it was a 1935 copy of Philadel­phia Faith and Prac­tice.

On the inside-front cov­er was the name of its orig­i­nal own­er, who had a sur­name famil­iar to any­one who has wan­dered the grave­yard out front. Near the begin­ning was a his­to­ry of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing which abrupt­ly end­ed in the ear­ly 1800s, just before the Great Schism. It’s as if his­to­ry end­ed there. Only the pub­li­ca­tion address let on to those in the know that this was the Ortho­dox Year­ly Meeting.

As I start­ed read­ing pas­sages I was struck by how well writ­ten it is. I don’t know why that should be sur­pris­ing as Philadel­phia Ortho­dox had Friends like Rufus Jones, Thomas Kel­ly, and Howard Brin­ton. I guess I wasn’t expect­ing the offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion to be free of stilt­ed nine­teenth cen­tu­ry prose.

Here’s a pas­sage from the begin­ning of its “Wor­ship and Min­istry” sec­tion that spoke to me:

Our con­cep­tion of wor­ship is based on a deep-seated faith that God is Spir­it, as Christ taught at Jacob’s well, and that man, as spir­it, can respond to Him and enter into direct com­mu­nion and fel­low­ship with Him. This faith in the near­ness of God as Spir­it sprang out of a fresh and won­der­ful expe­ri­ence of God in the lives of George Fox and the ear­ly Friends. They felt that they found Him as they walked in the fields or as they sat in the qui­et of their meet­ings and they arrived at an unwa­ver­ing cer­tain­ty of the real pres­ence of God in the lives of men, which gave them unusu­al inner strength and spir­i­tu­al power.

I appre­ci­ate that it clear­ly maps out how God and Humana inter­act, tying it with­out much arti­fice to a par­tic­u­lar pas­sage in the gospels. And then it gets real with the image of seek­ers walk­ing the fields look­ing to com­mune with God: such a human depic­tion. I’ll be check­ing out whether I have a copy of this F&P in my home library. It seems we’ll worth a read.

A ran­dom Google search while wait­ing for my fam­i­ly to pick me up from Crop­well turned up this 1922 edi­to­r­i­al in The Friend. This appar­ent­ly is the dis­cus­sion lead­ing up to the new F&P that sur­prised me!

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Mark Russ on vocal ministry

July 7, 2022

On the Wood­brooke web­site, a new piece on vocal min­istry from British Friend Mark Russ. I like the warn­ing that what might look obvi­ous to a new­com­er might not be what they think:

From a non-Quaker per­spec­tive, a group of peo­ple sit­ting in a cir­cle in silence, with any­one able to stand and speak, might look very much like a ther­a­py group. We might then inter­pret the words spo­ken in this group as being main­ly per­son­al and to a large extend pri­vate. We might see the per­son speak­ing as unbur­den­ing them­selves, shar­ing some­thing they’ve per­haps nev­er shared before, and find­ing heal­ing through this shar­ing. These words are treat­ed as some­thing pre­cious, belong­ing to the indi­vid­ual who speaks, and are treat­ed with con­fi­den­tial­i­ty by oth­ers in the group.

For those want­i­ng more, the cur­rent issue of Friends Jour­nal is all about vocal ministry.

Retro Quaker Vocal Ministry Flowchart

June 16, 2022
“Speaking into the Silence” from the August 1991 Friends Journal.
“Speak­ing into the Silence” from the August 1991 Friends Journal.

Peo­ple have been com­ment­ing a lot on this chart Friends Jour­nal shared on social media last week. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the August 1991 issue, what I love most about it is its 1990s-era flow­chart design. What would it be today — some punchy info­graph­ic per­haps? We dove into the archives because this mon­th’s issue is all about Quak­er vocal min­istry and at least two of the fea­ture arti­cles men­tion these kinds of charts.

From Paul Buck­ley:

There is a fre­quent­ly repro­duced dia­gram that graph­i­cal­ly guides poten­tial speak­ers through a series of ques­tions they are to con­sid­er when they feel an urge to rise and speak. These exam­ine whether a poten­tial mes­sage is divine­ly inspired; whether it is intend­ed for the speak­er alone or for oth­ers present; and whether this is the right time and place to deliv­er it. These resources are all use­ful, but they only address one half of the act of vocal min­istry: one that is, by far, the small­er and per­haps less impor­tant por­tion. The oth­er part is the min­istry of lis­ten­ing, and we are all called to be lis­ten­ing ministers.

From Edna Whit­ti­er:

Since the begin­ning of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, writ­ten advices have guid­ed Friends. Year­ly meet­ings’ faith and prac­tice books, Pen­dle Hill pam­phlets on vocal min­istry, and indi­vid­ual month­ly meet­ings’ “Wel­come to Quak­er Wor­ship” hand­outs have guide­lines for speak­ing or not speak­ing in meet­ing for wor­ship. In 2019, Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence even pub­lished a poster of a cir­cle flow chart with guide­lines for deliv­er­ing a mes­sage dur­ing worship.

Brent Bill has sub­se­quent­ly shared the graph­ic Whit­ti­er men­tions [link was on Twit­ter and is dead] and yes, it is very 2020’s info­graph­i­cal in design!

But I link to the arti­cles because these kinds of when-to-speak kind of charts can always become prob­lem­at­ic. As Bet­sy Caz­den replied on Twit­ter: “The peo­ple who need it least will spend the full hour obsess­ing about the flow-chart and will nev­er speak. The peo­ple who need it most nev­er will.” Just a few weeks ago I was sit­ting on a bench in Crop­well (N.J.) Meet­ing test­ing and retest­ing my moti­va­tions and lead­ings to rise and give min­istry. I gave a final breath to stand up when I heard the “good morn­ing Friends” fol­lowed by the sounds of hands slap­ping on hands in rise-of-meeting hand­shakes. Over the years I have learned not spend my whole hour obsess­ing but had not real­ized this meet­ing’s wor­ship was only 45 minutes!

Fur­ther read­ing: An Expect­ed Mir­a­cle, a 2023 post about the (often unnec­es­sary) pres­sures of Quak­er ministry.


Updating as I find more

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Chest­nut Hill Meet­ing in Philadel­phia, Pa., cir­ca 2014.
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West­min­ster Meet­ing, in Lon­don, which in turn got it from a 2015 book by Zélie Gross, With a Ten­der Hand.

The new 1808 Batsto Hiking Trail

June 5, 2022

The 1808 Hik­ing Trail from Bat­sto to Crow­ley­town on the Mul­li­ca Riv­er opened today. From a Face­book descrip­tion, it:

fol­lows a road that ran in part between Crow­ley­town – where the But­ton­wood Camp­ground is today – and Bat­sto Vil­lage more than 200 years ago. The 1808 Hik­ing Trail is lined with mas­sive, tow­er­ing Atlantic white cedars in sev­er­al places and cuts through Morde­cai Swamp afford­ing fan­tas­tic views deep into it. The 1808 Hik­ing Trail will pro­vide two new hik­ing loops from the Bat­sto Vis­i­tor Cen­ter: a 1.7 mile loop and a 7 mile loop via the Batona and oth­er con­nect­ing trails includ­ing the new Sand and Water Hik­ing Trail (0.9 miles, orange blazes) also open­ing on June 5.

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Don’t believe the mileage: I was expect­ing a 1.7‑mile loop but end­ed up on a 7‑plus-mile out and back hike!

Here’s a thread on the always excel­lent NJPinebar­rens forum on the Morde­cai trail. The swamp was named after Morde­cai Andrews, one of the ear­li­est Quak­ers on the Atlantic side of South Jer­sey, a founder of the sea­port town of Tuck­er­ton in 1699.

Here’s a great arti­cle by Gabe Coia on Morde­cai’s busi­ness empire. He was among the first Eng­lish set­tlers in Lit­tle Egg Har­bor and went about extract­ing the lum­ber resources upriv­er on the Mul­li­ca. There’s some great descrip­tions of thousand-year-old trees the size of 20-story build­ings that were tak­en down by Andrews’s teams. Update: I thought the orig­i­nal roadbed of the trail was built as part of the log­ging enter­prise but Gabe Coia emailed me that the roadbed of the 1808 Trail was built by Bat­sto own­er Jesse Richards (in 1808, sur­prise!) and post­dates Andrews’s lum­ber busi­ness in the area.

Putting a  swamp and felling all of these mas­sive trees would have been a very labor-intensive under­tak­ing. Coia’s arti­cle men­tions Morde­cai’s ties to Bar­ba­dos: “The ships would return with pro­duce, rum, and oth­er goods to replen­ish sup­plies for the com­mu­ni­ty at Lit­tle Egg Har­bor.” The Caribbean island was the first eco­nom­ic break-out star in the British New World and it was the first place where Quak­erism spread like wild­fire out­side of the British Isles. It also boast­ed an econ­o­my built almost entire­ly on mas­sive slave-labor camps, where even indi­vid­ual Quak­ers some­times owned hun­dreds of slaves. Giv­en the well-documented trade, at least some of oth­er goods Morde­cai’s ships were prob­a­bly bring­ing back were kid­napped Africans. This would have been the labor who logged impen­e­tra­ble swamps.

Geneal­o­gy sites back up my sus­pi­cions. I looked Morde­cai Andrews and slaves and found this, about his son-in-law John Math­is, who took over much of his busi­ness:

The vir­gin for­est of the sur­round­ing area pro­vid­ed tim­ber for the ships which sup­port­ed suc­cess­ful fish­ing and trade ven­tures that became the foun­da­tions for Great John’s ambi­tious land acqui­si­tion pro­gram. Math­is schooners, one of which was cap­tained by his son Daniel, engaged in the West Indies trade, swap­ping South Jer­sey lum­ber for pro­duce and oth­er goods that enabled the Math­is farms to pros­per. By the time of the Rev­o­lu­tion he had four farms in oper­a­tion con­tain­ing about 5000 acres, which were worked and cleared by slaves. Was said to be an exten­sive slave hold­er and one of the ear­li­est mer­chant smug­glers. He became one of the largest land hold­ers and one of the wealth­i­est and most dis­tin­guished men of Lit­tle Egg Harbor.

John Math­is’s son (Morde­cai’s grand­son) Mica­jah was dis­owned by Friends for refus­ing to eman­ci­pate the fam­i­ly’s enslaved Africans (he “did not then coin­cide with the rest of his soci­ety” when it final­ly adopt­ed an anti­slav­ery stance in the 1770s). He must have recal­cu­lat­ed his options by the time New Jer­sey start­ed abol­ish­ing slav­ery and repent­ed and man­u­mit­ted every­one in time to be buried in the meet­ing­house ceme­tery, natch.

All-in-all, it’s weird how so many local his­to­ries paint ear­ly set­tlers were like some kind of Ingalls-family sub­sis­tence farm­ers, liv­ing in caves and eking out hard­scrab­ble lives in the wilder­ness. I’m sure there were rough patch­es, and don’t get me wrong: I like my hot show­er in the morn­ing and would­n’t want to swap lifestyles out­side of a few camp­ing week­ends a year. But in many cas­es these fam­i­lies plant­ed them­selves in aban­doned Lenape towns con­nect­ed by well-established Lenape trails with water access to inter­na­tion­al trade, amassed title to hun­dreds of acres of land because plagues and wars had dec­i­mat­ed the locals, exploit­ed non-renewable resources like thousand-year-old forests that were only now acces­si­ble because of enslaved labor brought from 4,000 miles away. (I’ve writ­ten before about how colo­nial Quak­ers made for­tunes out of oth­er’s wars.)

Insert record-scratch sound effect: but back to a pleas­ant ear­ly June after­noon. On today’s trip, the new­ly acces­si­ble path of the trail is beau­ti­ful and a must-visit trip for any nature-lover in South Jersey.

(Post updat­ed var­i­ous times as I dug more into the Andrews/Mathis fam­i­ly tree.)

Ukraine and the dilemmas of pacifism

May 12, 2022

From Johan Maurer

But let’s say you and I have put all our eggs into the Jesus bas­ket. Aban­don­ing non­vi­o­lence is sim­ply not an option. What can we say that is dif­fer­ent from the cal­cu­la­tions of our peace-loving friends and neigh­bors who are cast­ing about for polit­i­cal solu­tions and com­pro­mis­es when evi­dence sug­gests that the aggres­sor is com­plete­ly unin­ter­est­ed in what we think of him?