Trustworthy, part one: the cost of betrayal

March 4, 2019

Johan Mau­r­er on abus­es in our meetings:

As far as I know, the final set­tle­ment in that case was nev­er made pub­lic. In a larg­er sense, the “final set­tle­ment” demand­ed by God’s grace and jus­tice will nev­er be mea­sured in dol­lars, but there is some­thing sat­is­fy­ing about know­ing that mon­ey was involved: almost noth­ing slices through pious mis­di­rec­tion or sophistry like cold cash. But it’s also true that cash does­n’t cut deeply enough. 

I’m still uncon­vinced we’re all doing enough to bring day­light to skele­tons in our clos­ets or heal­ing to vic­tims. Law­suits make every­one clam up, yet they too often seem to be the only mech­a­nism for shed­ding light on the sit­u­a­tion in the first place.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​2​/​t​r​u​s​t​w​o​r​t​h​y​-​p​a​r​t​-​o​n​e​-​c​o​s​t​-​o​f​-​b​e​t​r​a​y​a​l​.​h​tml

‘My ministry is the jokes and kittens’ | The Friend

January 31, 2019

The Friend edi­tor Joseph Jones inter­views best-selling Quak­er author Brid­get Collins. One of my favorite part is the bal­ance between dis­ci­pline and wait­ing inspiration:

On a day-to-day basis my biggest strug­gle – if I’m find­ing it hard to find the words – is over whether I need to wait for inspi­ra­tion to come, or whether I’m just being lazy and under­pre­pared. Whether I’m let­ting fear or pro­cras­ti­na­tion stop me. The Quak­er method has a lot to say to that. You know, you wait in silence and if it doesn’t come then it doesn’t come. But also you have to be dis­ci­plined, and pre­pared, for that to work 

https://​the​friend​.org/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​m​y​-​m​i​n​i​s​t​r​y​-​i​s​-​t​h​e​-​j​o​k​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​k​i​t​t​ens

New eBook “Remixing Faith” Now Available

November 20, 2018

From Wess Daniels:

I have put this talk togeth­er in ebook form com­plete with lots of pic­tures and illus­tra­tions and for­mat­ting that adds to the read­ing expe­ri­ence. I want­ed to share this with all of you and make it as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble, so it is free to down­load. It should work with most modern-day eBook read­ers and apps. If that doesn’t work for you, I have also turned the talk into a down­load­able .PDF.

http://​gath​eringin​light​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​1​1​/​2​0​/​n​e​w​-​e​b​o​o​k​-​r​e​m​i​x​i​n​g​-​f​a​i​t​h​-​n​o​w​-​a​v​a​i​l​a​b​le/

This Couple Had a “Kitten Hour” at Their Wedding

November 17, 2018

This sto­ry needs no clever introduction:

“We want­ed our guests to have some­thing to do as they arrived [while] we took pic­tures with our fam­i­lies, so we planned a kit­ten hour,” Colleen told POPSUGAR. “We did a cock­tail hour with cock­tails named after our cats for the recep­tion, but the Quak­er meet­ing house we used for the cer­e­mo­ny does­n’t allow alco­hol on premis­es. I want­ed a wed­ding fal­con, but Iz vetoed that, and so we com­pro­mised on kittens.” 

https://​www​.pop​sug​ar​.com/​m​o​m​s​/​C​o​u​p​l​e​-​H​a​s​-​K​i​t​t​e​n​-​H​o​u​r​-​W​e​d​d​i​n​g​-​4​5​4​9​8​1​5​1​/​amp

At 95, Ned Rorem Is Done Composing. But He’s Not Done Living

October 23, 2018

The Times has a nice pro­file of the not-dead Pulitzer Prize com­pos­er and gay icon. The piece doesn’t men­tion his Quak­er roots (he was born in Rich­mond, Indi­ana and raised as a Friend) but an embed­ded playlist includes “Mary Dyer did hang as a flag,” a piece from his 1976 com­po­si­tion A Quak­er Read­er.

I don’t know much about Rorem or the extent or ongo­ing­ness of his Quak­er iden­ti­ty (if any­one wants to share more in the com­ments that would be great). I keep a list I call “Sur­pris­ing Unex­pect­ed Unlike­ly Quak­ers” for names peo­ple give me of famous’ish peo­ple with Quak­er con­nec­tions. Who’s your favorite unlike­ly Quaker?

Joshua Brown with straight talk on preventing child abuse

August 17, 2018

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

What gifts of the Spirit are we marginalizing?

August 15, 2018

Pow­er­ful warn­ings from Adria Gulizia about what hap­pens when a faith com­mu­ni­ty doesn’t exer­cise all of its gifts :

Even worse, when we rou­tine­ly mar­gin­al­ize cer­tain gifts, we begin to see their exer­cise as dys­func­tion­al and their absence as nor­ma­tive, rather than the reverse. When the prophet chal­lenges us with uncom­fort­able truths, rather than using our dis­com­fort as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for reflec­tion and dis­cern­ment, we tell her to tone it down, com­plain that she is “unwel­com­ing” and, if she doesn’t get the mes­sage, we run her off.

Mafias and chaos

June 19, 2018

I like this inter­view on the Ital­ian mafia by Isaac Chotin­er in Slate, “The Mafia Is More Pow­er­ful Than It’s Ever Been.”

It seems that this per­pet­u­al cyn­i­cism may be the great­est threat of our era. Is the child of irony? The grand­child of gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries? Maybe the cause does­n’t mat­ter as much as the effect.

The mob thrives on chaos. It likes chaos. It likes to be the alter­na­tive author­i­ty that you go to because you can’t get any­thing done through the legit­i­mate state. For that very rea­son, I think there’s no doubt that it pro­motes that chaos. It likes civic dis­trust. It likes cyn­i­cism. It can prof­it from that. I think the great tragedy of Italy is that, to a large extent, it’s kind of succeeded.

I think that if we want­ed to con­struct a Quak­er cri­tique of the cur­rent Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment – and the type of cor­po­ra­tized cor­rup­tion we see in Rus­sia and the pet­rostates, it would best start with the polit­i­cal cul­ture that deny basic facts, gaslight cit­i­zens with ever-changing ratio­nales, and cre­at­ing chaos that can let finan­cial huck­sters reap bil­lions. These are not gov­ern­ments based on integri­ty and fair play­ing fields.