Isaac Smith: Good soil

August 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

An obser­va­tion on the soil of God’s work — us:

For many of us, our predica­ment today seems most like the soil with the thorns: We want to draw clos­er to God and walk in God’s ways, but there is so much bad news, so many oblig­a­tions, so many dis­trac­tions. We can be led astray, some­times with­out even know­ing it. The founder of our move­ment, George Fox, once said that “what­ev­er ye are addict­ed to, the Tempter will come in that thing; and when he can trou­ble you, then he gets advan­tage over you, and then ye are gone.” We can be addict­ed to many things: not just, say, alco­hol or gam­bling, but ideas, both about the world and about ourselves. 

Alone, none of us can do much to change the world. But we can allow our­selves to be instru­ments of peace, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, love. It’s easy to get stuck and tempt­ing in those times to get defen­sive or look toward oth­ers. I’ve found the old Quak­er take on “The Tempter” to be per­son­al­ly very use­ful. I’ve learned to ques­tion and go inward when­ev­er I feel too much pride in some­thing or find myself part of a group that seems self-satisfied with its work. 

Good soil

Creeds and stories

August 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith was going to write some­thing about creeds:

I had been kick­ing around writ­ing some­thing on the uses and abus­es of creeds in the Quak­er tra­di­tion, but then I dis­cov­ered that Ben Wood had writ­ten a fair­ly defin­i­tive ver­sion of that essay already. So read that instead.

Ben’s 2016 piece on Quak­ers and creeds is def­i­nite­ly worth a read. I checked my records and I must have missed it at the time, so I’ll share it now. He goes deep into the kinds of creeds that Penn and Bar­clay gave in their writ­ings but also what the ear­li­er Chris­t­ian creed-makers were com­ing from. He also comes to today. Here’s a taste:

we can­not be creed-makers before we are story-preservers and story-tellers. We can­not hope to resolve dif­fer­ences unless and until we dig down into our own Quak­er sto­ry; unless we come to terms with its pow­er and impli­ca­tions. At least part of our sense of spir­i­tu­al malaise is a ret­i­cence to engage with the depth of the Quak­er tale. Part­ly that ret­i­cence is about a lack of teach­ing min­istry among Friends. We haven’t giv­en each oth­er the tools to become skill­ful read­ers of our own nar­ra­tive. We have assumed that peo­ple can just ‘pick this stuff up’ through a mys­te­ri­ous process of osmo­sis. This has led to a frag­men­ta­tion of under­stand­ing about the mean­ing and impli­ca­tions of Quak­er grammar.

In my world, talk of creeds has sprung up recent­ly fol­low­ing the Quak­er­S­peak video of Arthur Larrabee’s nine core prin­ci­ples of unpro­grammed Friends. His prin­ci­ples seem fair­ly descrip­tive of main­stream Lib­er­al Friends to me, but pre­dictably enough the video’s com­ments have peo­ple wor­ried about any for­mu­la­tion: “Espous­ing core beliefs — no mat­ter how well inten­tioned — risks intro­duc­ing a creed.” One of my pet the­o­ries is that the mid-century truce over the­ol­o­gy talk that helped Quak­er branch­es reunite (at least on the U.S. East Coast) has stopped working.

Quak­ers and Creeds

Jessica Hubbard-Bailey: The Future Is Accessible

August 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The pro­duc­er of the Young Quak­er Pod­cast looks back at the lessons of their much-publicized silent podcast:

At almost 3,000 down­loads and count­ing, the pod­cast could be con­sid­ered one of the biggest Quak­er meet­ings ever held. In the after­math of the media excite­ment, I began to try and unpick what had made this meet­ing so suc­cess­ful that Quak­ers and non-Quakers all over the world had ven­tured to par­tic­i­pate in it. The con­clu­sion I came to was its accessibility.


The Future Is Accessible

The Future Is Accessible 

A silent pod­cast goes viral and points to ways to share Quakerism.
Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Steven Davison: What does God want?

August 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Why are we silent? How do we know what God (how­ev­er defined) wants?

Wor­ship, at least in the tra­di­tion­al under­stand­ing, is all about ser­vice — giv­ing God what God wants/requires. You can tell what a com­mu­ni­ty thinks God wants by look­ing at their wor­ship service.

Wor­ship

New Jersey Transit wastes our time again

August 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I just came back from what was billed as a kind of hearing/information meet­ing on New Jer­sey Tran­sit’s planned shut­down of the Atlantic City Line. At least two of us had tak­en this seri­ous­ly enough that we had writ­ten 500-word state­ments (here’s mine) but as soon as I walked into the Atlantic City rail sta­tion this morn­ing at 8am, I real­ized that this was just a pro-forma, dis­or­ga­nized PR appearance.

The chief exec­u­tive of New Jer­sey Tran­sit, Kevin Cor­bett 1, was there telling us the same list of excus­es for the shut­down they’ve been telling us, name­ly, that this is about Pos­i­tive Train Con­trol (PTC) test­ing 2. At least I think he was. NJT appar­ent­ly does­n’t believe in micro­phones. I squeezed as close­ly as I could in the amor­phous crowd of maybe 100 pas­sen­gers who had turned up but I still could only make out a few words. Near­est Cor­bett were video cam­eras whose spot­lights lit up his face. Maybe I can watch the news tonight and hear the meet­ing that I drove forty min­utes to attend3.

I did hear repeat­ed invok­ing of “PTC” but no of those words were admis­sions or mea cul­pas about the long-simmering labor prob­lems that have led to train crew short­ages. Because NJ Tran­sit’s man­age­ment have been behind tar­gets for train­ing new crews, and because engi­neers have been leav­ing for better-paying jobs on Amtrak and Metro North, there aren’t enough crews to run all of its lines and also do PTC test­ing. The eas­i­est fix to the labor short­age is to just shut down the least polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed train line and rede­ploy its crews to NYC-bound trains. We’re told this is a tem­po­rary fix but what if the man­age­ment prob­lems hir­ing, train­ing, and retain­ing crews con­tin­ues to bot­tom out?

After half an hour of this, Tran­sit police found portable line mark­ers so that pas­sen­gers could line up to talk to Cor­bett. There were many pas­sen­gers I rec­og­nized from my 15 years of com­mut­ing this line and I stood try­ing to hear them but again, to no avail. It was clear he was just giv­ing the line.

Near­by was a table with sched­ules. I was pret­ty unhap­py but I asked them a spe­cif­ic ques­tion 4. At least the Tran­sit employ­ee said she did­n’t know and would look into it. She even wrote “Far­ley” on a pad of paper. I guess my trip was­n’t total­ly wasted.

If you’re a South Jer­sey local affect­ed by all this, there’s a peti­tion to sign. My friend Joseph (bicy­cleri­i­ights on Twit­ter) has also done a great job writ­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of vision­ary South Jer­sey tran­sit reform. Update: Also, Nore­ast­er­N­ick did a much bet­ter job get­ting to the front of the line and chal­leng­ing Cor­bett. His video is great.

Remembering David McReynolds

August 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I’m sad to hear of the pass­ing of the indomitable David McReynolds, who I knew most­ly through his work with the War Resisters League. I first got to know him when I was work­ing for New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers but got more expo­sure when I start­ed Nonviolence-org back in the mid-90s and trav­eled up to NYC more fre­quent­ly as a mem­ber of WRL’s board.

I got to pub­lish a won­der­ful series of David’s paci­fist writ­ings online in that era when the web was becom­ing a thing. I also remem­ber stay­ing at his place on at least one of those vis­its and get­ting to meet one of his beloved felines. His inter­ests were far more wide-ranging than the aver­age activist’s and he was always ready to chal­lenge group-think ortho­dox­ies with an intel­lec­tu­al rig­or I deeply appreciated.

I often found myself dis­agree­ing with David (and I got the dis­tinct impres­sion he could get pret­ty unbear­able at times), but he helped me see the con­se­quences of my choic­es in a way that kept me honest.

I think I still look beyond my answers more read­i­ly because of con­ver­sa­tions in David’s apart­ment. For all my qualms with Face­book, I’ve been grate­ful that it brought me back into David’s orbit in recent times and I will miss his com­men­tary and discussions.


David McReynolds, Socialist Activist Who Ran for President, Dies at 88 (Published 2018)

David McReynolds, Social­ist Activist Who Ran for Pres­i­dent, Dies at 88 (Pub­lished 2018) 

His paci­fist work spanned decades and sev­er­al wars, and he twice ran for the White House as an…
www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com

Jeff Kisling: Resist not evil today

August 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

When look­ing back to Nazi Ger­many in the 1930s are we so sure God Could not have found a way?

Hen­ry Cad­bury believed the Jew­ish peo­ple should have appealed to the Ger­man sense of jus­tice and nation­al con­science. Then those Ger­mans would have stood up for the Jew­ish peo­ple, and pre­vent­ed the Nazis from acquir­ing pow­er. The death camps would not have happened.

Many prob­a­bly think that is naive and could not have worked. But that is what non­vi­o­lence is about, con­nect­ing with those you are hop­ing to change. Lis­ten­ing deeply and being will­ing to change your­self. This is also what faith is about, believ­ing in the pres­ence of God today. Believ­ing that as you lis­ten close­ly you will be guid­ed by the Inner Light. Believ­ing some­how God will find a way.

There’s a fine line between ide­al­is­tic naiveté and real­is­tic sol­i­dar­i­ty. I’m still of the mind that Cad­bury should have har­bored more cyn­i­cism of what was hap­pen­ing as the Nazi Par­ty grew in Ger­many but I can see Jef­f’s point: in 1934, was the future we know inevitable?

https://​kisling​j​eff​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​8​/​1​8​/​r​e​s​i​s​t​-​n​o​t​-​e​v​i​l​-​t​o​d​ay/

Cor­rec­tion: I got my Jeffs mixed up in the orig­i­nal ver­sion of this post. This was writ­ten by Jeff Kisling.

Joshua Brown with straight talk on preventing child abuse

August 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Joshua Brown, a well-known Friends pas­tor now down in North Carolina:

Most year­ly meet­ings rec­om­mend that every­one who works with young peo­ple should have a back­ground check. Most local meet­ings I have been a part of resist this, say­ing that “But we know that per­son – they have belonged here for years!” Requir­ing a back­ground check feels to some Friends like an inva­sion of pri­va­cy, or that it goes against the open­ness and trust which they val­ue in a Quak­er meeting.

I have per­son­al­ly known of three respect­ed Friends who turned out to be ser­i­al child rapists. Two were pil­lars of their meet­ing. None of the peo­ple in the month­ly meet­ing knew learned about it because of out­side legal action and investigations.

There were times when these indi­vid­u­als were around my chil­dren, though I was near-enough near­by that I’m not wor­ried any­thing hap­pened. Still, one of the cas­es involved rapes in a camper in the perpetrator’s back­yard and I remem­ber my eldest think­ing it looked cool and try­ing the door han­dle. We also had a close call with a Boy Scout leader and respect­ed local his­to­ri­an whose file was pub­lished when an Ore­gon judge ordered the nation­al BSA to release decades of secret pedophile records.

One the affect­ed meet­ings in par­tic­u­lar is near and dear to me heart and have some warm and faith­ful Friends. I know it was a shock and ongo­ing trau­ma for them that this hap­pened in their com­mu­ni­ty. I under­stand that we were all a bit naive about these mat­ters 10 and 20 and 30 years ago. But we’ve all been edu­cat­ed about just how com­mon this is and just how charm­ing pedophiles can be.

Even recent­ly, I’ve had peo­ple assure me their Friends meet­ings are safe and that they don’t need to do back­ground checks. I make a men­tal note to avoid those meet­ings. We are not immune. And we are not mag­i­cal­ly bet­ter about dis­cern­ing this stuff than any oth­er faith community.

Straight talk on pre­vent­ing child abuse