Tag Archives ⇒ appreciate

Risking Community

April 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Gregg Kosel­ka, a post that rewards read­ing a few times: Risk­ing Community

When I look around, there is still so much hurt that needs to be processed. There are still real dif­fer­ences in phi­los­o­phy about how to build com­mu­ni­ty. Some see how much needs to rad­i­cal­ly change so that those who have been mar­gin­al­ized can tru­ly be safe and have agency, and so want to go slow­ly to build it cor­rect­ly. Some see the dam­age hav­ing no com­mu­ni­ty can bring, and want to do what they can to build some­thing as safe­ly as pos­si­ble. I hate that these dif­fer­ences are still caus­ing dam­age to our rela­tion­ships and our com­mu­ni­ties. I don’t have a solution.

I appre­ci­ate the way he tries to under­stand the flip sides of com­mu­ni­ty and insti­tu­tion­al­ism; per­haps schism could be seen as the moment they can no longer be nego­ti­at­ed. As pas­tor of one of the “most insti­tu­tion­al of insti­tu­tion­al church­es for 15 years,” he was in the cen­ter of the cen­trifu­gal forces that tore apart both North­west Year­ly Meet­ing as a whole and indi­vis­i­ble Friends church­es with­in it. From a dis­tance of 3000 miles and 150 years of diverg­ing Quak­er his­to­ry, I’m not in a posi­tion to say whether things could have gone dif­fer­ent­ly or whether indi­vid­u­als always act­ed in their best ways but I can appre­ci­ate that it there must have been a lot of impos­si­ble choic­es and no-good answers as polar­iza­tion gave way to disintegration.

Risk­ing Community

On the Web: Where’s that Power of the Lord?

June 16, 2005
· Martin Kelley

The new Quak­er Life has an arti­cle by Charles W. Heav­ilin ask­ing “Where’s the Pow­er of the Lord Now?”:http://www.fum.org/QL/issues/0506/heaviland.htm
bq. In our post­mod­ern, frag­ment­ed world, where now is the pow­er of the Lord among Quak­ers? There is a vast divide between the accounts of ear­ly Friends and that of con­tem­po­rary Friends. Most mod­ern Quak­er report­ing is per­func­to­ry — accounts with the spir­i­tu­al qual­i­ty of recipes in a cook­book. Con­ver­sa­tions at Quak­er gath­er­ings now revolve around declin­ing atten­dance or bleak assess­ments of the spir­i­tu­al shal­low­ness of soci­ety. Sel­dom, if ever, is there any men­tion of the pow­er of the Lord.
Great stuff. He gets into the way our cul­ture has neg­a­tive­ly influ­enced Friends. After you read it check out “C Wess Daniel’s”:http://gatheringinlight.blogspot.com/2005/06/i‑appreciate-article-charles-has.html com­men­tary on the article:
bq. Sim­ply put, I think we need to learn the sto­ries of the Quak­er church once again, and begin to tell them, live them, and move for­ward in this tra­di­tion that has been past down to us as one that has been formed by the Spir­it of Christ through such won­der­ful lead­ers as Fox, Fell, Bar­clay, Wool­man, etc.

Non​vi​o​lence​.org syndicated

July 20, 2003
· Martin Kelley

A lit­tle bit of house­keep­ing: There have been a few behind-the-scene changes on the Non​vi​o​lence​.org home­page this week­end. I’ve switched the blog­ging soft­ware over to Move­able­type.
The hard-core blog read­ers will appre­ci­ate that Non​vi​o​lence​.org now has an syn­di­cat­ed news feed. That means that you can now read the home­page with soft­ware like Sharpread­er, News­ga­tor, etc.
even the more-casual read­ers will appre­ci­ate that you can now com­ment direct­ly on every arti­cle. There will be oth­er sub­tler fea­tures added over time. Let me know if there are any problems.

Anna Maria’s Advice to Lovers

December 20, 1996
· Martin Kelley

Anna Maria and the Romance Round­table

We live in an age of con­fus­ing sex­u­al­i­ties and unclear gen­der lines, an age in which pro­to­cols for woo­ing beloveds have been tossed to the wind in a mad rush for some imag­ined “sex­u­al lib­er­a­tion.” Remind­ing us that romance is not dead, and that chival­ry is more fash­ion­able than ever is Anna Maria and her Romance Roundtable.

Only Date Peo­ple Who…
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…have a kines­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty (AM)
…appre­ci­ate the won­ders of dic­tio­nar­ies (J)
…are com­fort­able talk­ing about sex (K)
…like din­ers with “To Sir with Love” play­ing (J)
…are com­fort­able break­ing out into spon­ta­neous song (M)
…like to play the veg­etable game (“Moomer­ry, mel­ery, babaya”) (M & J)
…likes eye con­tact (K)
…are straight-edgers (AM)
…need to prac­tice their mas­sage lessons (Mary R)
…like to cook (MR)
…who can accom­pa­ny, or even bet­ter, join my coop house­’s stream of puns (MR)
…enchants my house­mates (MR)
…get along with house­mates (B)
…have a library card (B)
…live in your zip code (M)
…bring you break­fast in bed (B)
…use con­doms (B)
…share your gait while walk­ing (B)
…you pick up on the Cleve­land bus sys­tem (T) (go figure)

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And remem­ber a few more rules…

Try not to be too judge­men­tal (J)
Crush­es are almost 90% mutu­al (M)
Be picky (AM)

Do you have more to add? Won­der­ful. Please send mail to the Anna Maria Advice to Lovers Home­page. Spe­cial thanks to John­ny “unhung and that’s okay with us” Depp for inspi­ra­tion for this page.

Cir­ca 1996. Recov­ered via Archive​.org