In UK’s The Friend, Craig Bar­nett writes of false dichotomies between spir­i­tu­al and activist Friends and has wise thoughts on dis­cern­ment: “Most often, the Inward Guide seems to work by show­ing us not the ulti­mate des­ti­na­tion, but just the next step.”

At Friends jour­nal, Judith Apple­by writes about char­i­ta­ble giv­ing and Steven Davi­son has an ambi­tious piece tak­ing on the Quak­er covenant with cre­ation.

I had a great time talk­ing with Deb­bie Ram­sey about Dream Pro­tec­tors, her arti­cle in this mon­th’s Friends Jour­nal. Even before we hit record we were chat­ting away like old friends, despite this being the first time we’ve nev­er talked. Even­tu­al­ly we had to stop our­selves just so I could hit record and start the inter­view. Deb­bie is a retired police detec­tive who works with youth in Bal­ti­more — it’s their career dreams she’s help­ing to pro­tect — but we talked about being open in all sorts of set­tings. One of her sto­ries in the arti­cle, which she retold in the inter­view, revolves around an unex­pect­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty for min­istry that arose from a casu­al con­ver­sa­tion with a stranger on a bench. She told me it felt like “the uni­verse want­ed me to be there” to have that talk. 

It felt very much in line with the mys­te­ri­ous prompt­ings I talked about last month so of course I had to explore that with her:

Mar­tin Kel­ley: I real­ly love the old Quak­er lin­go of oppor­tu­ni­ties. An oppor­tu­ni­ty is like this kind of worship-connection-love that hap­pened spon­ta­neous­ly when you run into some­one and real­ize there’s so much more that it’s going to hap­pen here. It’s just being open to these sorts of moments where we might find our­selves on a bench next to some­one and we’re sud­den­ly deep into con­nec­tion and min­istry. It’s hard to do this in our lives now. We’re always rush­ing about, but I do try to think that some­times I need to stop and have con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple right here and now.

Deb­o­rah B Ram­sey: Yes, yes. And then as we were depart­ing he said to me, “I want to take our con­ver­sa­tion back to my wife.” So on anoth­er dimen­sion, I was at his home. He lit­er­al­ly, on anoth­er lev­el, took me to his home. Phys­i­cal­ly, I was not there, but the spir­it, and the vibra­tion, and the rhythm, and the con­ver­sa­tion, and how we relat­ed to his wife what my words meant to him. Hope­ful­ly, they would give her some com­fort. So I feel like the non-tangibles: we don’t them enough cred­it. Often­times we invite 50 or 100 peo­ple, if there’s not a large crowd, then we’re feel like we’re not get­ting any­thing across. But who’s to say that she would not say some­thing about what her hus­band told her to some­one else — or either to her son! Is it the quan­ti­ty or the qual­i­ty? It’s easy to start a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one you’re in a rela­tion­ship with, but how about a stranger? As Quak­ers, can we be so curi­ous about one another’s con­di­tion that we would take — as you say an oppor­tu­ni­ty— to just take a look? As Quak­ers we have so much oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak to con­di­tions, out of a gen­er­al con­cern and love. How can you go wrong with that?

Deb­o­rah B. Ram­sey: Guardians over Dreams. A Friends Jour­nal author chat.

Watch the full interview:

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