Windy Cool­er has a new arti­cle on the Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence web­site, What is a Quak­er Pub­lic Min­is­ter? Windy’s been research­ing the con­cept of pub­lic Friends this year, inter­view­ing peo­ple about their under­stand­ing and experiences. 

The star­tling lack of sup­port for many pub­lic min­is­ters as agents of cre­ativ­i­ty and growth is part­ly because many Friends are unfa­mil­iar with the term “pub­lic min­is­ter” and uncer­tain how to sup­port their work. Addi­tion­al­ly, a mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the tes­ti­mo­ny of equal­i­ty, which often leads comfort-seeking elders to crit­i­cize or “cut down” those who stand out among us (referred to as the “tall pop­pies” by Mar­ty Grundy in her 1999 Pen­dle Hill pam­phlet of the same name), caus­es many Friends attempt­ing pub­lic min­istry to encounter hos­til­i­ty or apa­thy in their local meet­ings. Even in cas­es where a faith and prac­tice doc­u­ment out­lines the prac­tice, it remains large­ly taboo in lib­er­al Quak­erism to seek a minute acknowl­edg­ing the gifts of min­istry, much less more sub­stan­tial support.

Windy inter­viewed me as part of her research. If “pub­lic Friend” means some­one who is vis­i­bly tak­ing on a teach­ing role for Friends, then I’ve been one since my mid-20s when I start­ed putting togeth­er mail­ing lists and web­sites orga­niz­ing young adult Friends (YAFs in Quak­er speak); this even­tu­al­ly branched out into blog­ging, host­ing a social net­work, lead­ing work­shops, and giv­ing talks now and then. The longe­tiv­i­ty gives it a cer­tain author­i­ty, I sup­pose, as have my pro­fes­sion­al roles with Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions (though of course on my blog I’m only speak­ing for myself).

But this belies just how inde­pen­dent, dare I say ranter­ish, this process has been. I know how pub­lic min­istry should work, but it has­n’t ever worked out that way for me. Even now, I don’t have a spe­cial des­ig­na­tion or sup­port for my vol­un­teer Quak­er work. 

I should note that I once had a brush with insti­tu­tion­al legit­i­ma­cy. When I applied for a grant from the Clarence and Lil­ly Pick­ett Endow­ment for Quak­er Lead­er­ship, they required a sup­port let­ter from my meet­ing and Atlantic City Area Meet­ing pro­vid­ed me with one. It was­n’t a record­ing minute, per se, and did­n’t come with any fol­lowup sup­port but it was some­thing. The Pick­ett fund specif­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed younger Friends. It’s a small world so I know a lot of oth­er recip­i­ents and many had inter­est­ing sto­ries about going their meet­ings for sup­port let­ters. In ret­ro­spect, forc­ing a gen­er­a­tion of twenty-something active Quak­ers to get these let­ters might have been the Pick­ett fund’s most impor­tant lega­cy (it closed down in 2019).

Full dis­clo­sure and mea cul­pa to say that I’ve nev­er asked for for­mal meet­ing sup­port. I have a ten­den­cy to land at small, min­i­mal­ly orga­nized meet­ings that don’t have any expe­ri­ences of sup­port­ing min­istries. It always felt like it’d be too much of a push to ask an over­bur­dened small group to take on one more responsibility.

I know some larg­er Quak­er meet­ings have more for­mal sup­port struc­tures in place, with clear­ness and sup­port (some­times now called anchor) com­mit­tees sup­port­ing their pub­lic Friends. I’m a bit jeal­ous but also have been told by Friends in these posi­tions that they some­times still feel some­what rogueish and alone. Of course maybe this is just how it is. Did peo­ple like John Wool­man and Joshua Evans real­ly feel ful­ly sup­port­ed by their meet­ings as they trav­eled about? And did they have now-forgotten con­tem­po­raries who felt the “tall pop­pies” effect and elect­ed to stay home? Ben­jamin Lay comes to mind as some­one who had to min­is­ter with­out sup­port. Windy writes:

While it’s true that many of our famous his­toric pub­lic min­is­ters were dis­liked in their time and praised in ours as if they rep­re­sent our own actions, it is incon­ceiv­able that these lead­ers could have trav­eled, spo­ken, and effect­ed change in their quest for right rela­tion­ship with­out robust sup­port. It is some­thing of a mir­a­cle then that so many dynam­ic Friends today are attempt­ing to do just that out of love for who we are and can be and we are tread­ing water with all the faith in the world that the under­tow of the sta­tus quo will not over­come us.

FGC promis­es this to be the “first of four short essays in a series on pub­lic min­istry in the lib­er­al tra­di­tion.” Glad to see FGC explor­ing this work. In the ear­ly 2000s they did impor­tant work with the Trav­el­ing Min­istries Com­mit­tee¹, which did a lot to re-legitimate the idea of min­istry among Lib­er­al Friends. Windy also gives a shout-out to the he Quak­er Lead­er­ship Cen­ter, which I know is doing good work around these ques­tions too.

What is a Quak­er Pub­lic Minister?

Johan Mau­r­er on retir­ing from the news cycle: “There is some­thing in me that resists the idea of unplug­ging, as if I am some­how let­ting human­i­ty down if I give up, for a time, my obses­sive atten­tion to the deeds and mis­deeds of the Pow­ers That Be. How much worse off every­one would be if I with­held my awe­some influ­ence for good!”

Speak­ing of Ben­jamin Lay and retire­ment, the Abid­ing Quak­er blog looks at how Ben­jamin Lay’s “cri­tique of and then retreat from soci­ety” fits with chap­ter 15 of the Gospel of Mark, which recounts Jesus’s tri­al and execution. 

It’s the first of the month, which means a new issue of Friends Jour­nal is avail­able. Decem­ber’s issue looks at Stew­ard­ship as a Tes­ti­mo­ny. There have also been break­ing arti­cles this week: Rashid Dar­d­en’s review of the new Net­flix biopic on Bayard Rustin, Lucy Dun­can’s reflec­tions on Gaza, and our roundup of the news of the three Ramal­lah Friends School grad­u­ates shot last week­end in Ver­mont.

Matt Rosen on trav­el­ing in the min­istry in Britain. “Since Friends rarely trav­el in the min­istry in Britain, part of the min­istry has to be explain­ing this prac­tice. That’s a joy for me, because I believe that the trav­el­ling min­istry is a vital wit­ness to our con­nect­ed­ness as a year­ly meet­ing and a live option in the twenty-first cen­tu­ry.” Matt also has an arti­cle on gospel order in this week’s The Friend.

The sto­ry of the first for­mal Quak­er protest against slav­ery—and the repeat­ed­ly lost orig­i­nal document. 

On Friends Jour­nal, Lynn Gazis has a short sto­ry on a teenag­er try­ing to under­stand the con­trac­tions of her quar­ru­lous Quak­er grand­moth­er and Anne E.G. Nydam is back with a retelling of an old Greek sto­ry. Mary Ann Downey reflects on why it’s hard for her to ask for help.

A new Quak­er­S­peak comes Thursday.

Brent Bil­l’s fic­tion is fea­tured this week over at Friends Jour­nal. A Trip to Ami­ty revolves around a grumpy min­is­ter whose sur­prise come­up­pance fea­tures a les­son in for­give­ness and the pow­er of laugh­ter. Brent and I talked about the sto­ry, the first in his new col­lec­tion, “Ami­ty: Sto­ries from the Heart­land,” in this week’s FJ Author Chat. You can buy the book at Quaker­books of FGC or from Bren­t’s own web­site.

Crop­well meet­ing’s clerk decid­ed to step down this month (he’s turn­ing 88 and thought it a good time!). We had a nice cel­e­bra­tion for him on Sun­day. A few years ago the meet­ing had dwin­dled down to two reg­u­lar mem­bers; on some Sun­days, only one of them would show. He assem­bled a group to help bring it back from the brink of being laid down with a sucess­ful open house in 2021 and since then we’ve had six new mem­bers join. 

We had a whole process planned to select a new clerk but it turned out that I was the only one who said I’d con­sid­er the role (maybe not so uncom­mon a phe­nom­e­non in small meet­ings?). I’ve joked that I’ll have it back down to two mem­bers by the end of next year, but in all seri­ous­ness I’m hop­ing we’re blessed with keep­ing the momen­tum going. 

Hon­or­ing Earl

You want some mag­ic? I’d been curi­ous about this five-minute baguette recipe since it made the social media rounds a few weeks ago and have made it twice in the last week. It real­ly is super quick to mix and the results are heav­en­ly: crispy on the out­side and chewy on the inside. Bakery-quality bread from a nor­mal kitchen oven with four ingre­di­ents and almost no work. 

RIP Tum­blr, more or less. Such a battered-about social net­work, even Automat­tic could­n’t bring back the mag­ic. I had­n’t know their plans to fed­er­ate Tum­blr with Mastodon were dropped with­in 48 hours of the first announce­ment. Via Kot­tke.

New York Year­ly Meet­ing’s Spark mag­a­zine has an issue on the peace tes­ti­mo­ny. I need to work my way through but Nadine Hoover’s “Peace is Pos­si­ble,” Joseph Ole­jak’s “Peace Wit­ness Fatigue,” and Don Bad­g­ley’s “Peace Be with You” look good. Let me know in the com­ments if you rec­om­mend others. 

Fic­tion month con­tin­ues at Friends Jour­nal, and this week we have two gems: Michael Soi­ka gives a har­row­ing tale of the life of a East­ern Euro­pean coal-mining fam­i­ly in West Vir­ginia on the brink of ruin (the AFSC cameo is legit). A mod­ern Friend appears in Vic­ki Winslow’s ten­der sto­ry of a Quak­er min­is­ter work­ing through grief and get­ting an unex­pect­ed les­son in open doors and ready food.

Also, do you have some­thing to say about Quak­er prayer and heal­ing? Sub­mis­sions are open for the March Friends Jour­nal (due Dec. 18). Please for­ward this link to any­one who might be interested.