When testimonies come drifting in

March 16, 2019

Steven Davi­son asked what the tes­ti­mo­ny of com­mu­ni­ty even meant or whether it was spelt out any­where. No one could answer but no ine want­ed to omit it.

I sus­pect a process may be at work sim­i­lar to the one that has made “that of God in every­one” the puta­tive foun­da­tion of all our tes­ti­monies: an unself­con­scious thought-drift in a cul­ture increas­ing­ly impa­tient with intellectual/theological rig­or, or even atten­tion of any seri­ous kind, not to men­tion care for the tes­ti­mo­ny of integri­ty. These ideas arise some­how, some­where, and then get picked up and dis­sem­i­nat­ed because they sound nice, they meet some need, and they don’t demand much. They appar­ent­ly don’t require dis­cern­ment, anyway. 

The “Tes­ti­mo­ny of Community”

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

A small break

December 13, 2018

My apolo­gies for the radio silence on this so-called dai­ly site. A fam­i­ly vaca­tion took my atten­tion away from most things Quak­er and get­ting caught up on back work is keep­ing it away a few days. I should be up to speed by the weekend.

Dur­ing that time the domain reg­is­tra­tion for Quak­erQuak­er turned due. I must have missed the del­uge of email that its domain reg­is­trar usu­al­ly sends. I’ve paid the domain bill for anoth­er two years and it should be back up for everyone.

The gray wave that wasn’t

November 7, 2018

Back in March, Friends Jour­nal and the Earl­ham School of Reli­gion co-hosted an online dis­cus­sion with six Quak­er can­di­dates for con­gres­sion­al seats. The idea and coor­di­na­tion came from the awe­some Greg Woods. I went to see just how high the 2018 “gray wave” had crested.

Spoil­ers: no wave. Four of the can­di­dates didn’t make it out of the pri­maries and a fifth was run­ning as an inde­pen­dent in a long-shot can­di­da­cy. The one can­di­date to win major-party pri­ma­ry was the awe­some Shaw­na Roberts1 of Bar­nesville, Ohio. Shawna’s one of the most down-to-earth, real, peo­ple I know and it was a lot of fun to fol­low her cam­paign. Her twit­ter feed has been a hoot:

Unfor­tu­nate­ly Shaw­na only got about 30 per­cent of the vote yes­ter­day. This elec­tion was not kind to Democ­rats in rur­al dis­tricts like south­east Ohio’s 6 and she was run­ning against an incum­bent. From my van­tage point 30 per­cent seems pret­ty good, though as my sev­enth grade math teacher used to intone in his weary bari­tone, close only counts in horse­shoes and hand grenades. 2 Still, the prospect of a Mrs Roberts Goes to Wash­ing­ton win had me hop­ing against the odds. I’d love to see her con­tin­ue to be involved: 2020 is only two years away.

Stats on everyone’s results are at the updat­ed Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics page. For any­one won­der­ing about Quak­er politi­cians, Paul Buck­ley had a nice overview of our com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship to vot­ing a few years ago.

Origins of the Check-In (Quakers)

October 31, 2018

Over on Medi­um, con­sul­tant Jim Ral­ley looks to Quak­ers for the ori­gins of the facil­i­ta­tor’s check-in:

The ‘check-in’ is a fun­da­men­tal ele­ment in the reper­toire of a facil­i­ta­tor. There’s no bet­ter way to start a ses­sion and get every­one present, and there’s no faster way to dis­cov­er what’s going on under the sur­face of a group. It’s such a sim­ple an effec­tive process tool that I fig­ured it must have a rich and well-documented his­to­ry. But it’s proved quite tricky to research, part­ly because its name is shared with the hotel and air­line indus­tries, but part­ly also, I sus­pect, because of its simplicity.

Where to start? With such a basic human process, the line through his­to­ry will sure­ly be tan­gled and con­fused. But, for the sake of start­ing some­where, I’ll start with the Quakers. 

I’ve left a com­ment on the post with miss­ing links. I’ll leave a ver­sion of it here. Reg­u­lar read­ers will pre­dict that I’ll start with Rachel Davis DuBois, the New Jersey-born Friend who put togeth­er racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion groups in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. She lat­er turned some of the process into “Dia­logue Groups” in the mid-1960s and trav­eled the U.S. teach­ing them; these evolved into mod­ern Quak­er wor­ship shar­ing and clear­ness com­mit­tees.

Those late-60s process­es were picked up by the younger Friends, who (no sur­prise) were also into anti­war activism and com­mu­ni­tar­i­an pol­i­tics. They were cod­i­fied and sec­u­lar­ized by the Move­ment for a New Soci­ety, which start­ed in Philadel­phia in the ear­ly 70s but had com­mu­ni­ties all over the West­ern world. Much of their work was focused on train­ing peo­ple in their style of group process and a lot of our facil­i­ta­tor tools these days are dis­sem­i­nat­ed MNS tools. Many MNS’ers were involved with Quak­ers and many more fil­tered back into the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends in lat­er years.

A lot of this rel­a­tive­ly recent his­to­ry has been for­got­ten. Many Quak­ers will tell you these things all date from the very start of the Friends move­ment. There’s def­i­nite­ly through-lines and echos and inspi­ra­tions through our his­to­ry but I’d love to see us appre­ci­ate Rachel Davis DuBois and the peo­ple who made some very use­ful adap­ta­tions that have helped Quak­ers con­tin­ue to evolve and (almost) thrive.

Letter of condolence from Friends General Conference

October 29, 2018

FGC’s Cen­tral Com­mit­tee is meet­ing this week­end and wrote a let­ter of con­do­lences to Pitts­burgh’s Tree of Life Syn­a­gogue, site of the recent shooting

We are deeply sad­dened by the bru­tal slay­ing and injuries to mem­bers of your com­mu­ni­ty and the law enforce­ment offi­cers who inter­vened in the attack on your con­gre­ga­tion on Saturday.
That this vio­la­tion occurred dur­ing your wor­ship togeth­er is espe­cial­ly dis­tress­ing to us. We stand unit­ed with all peo­ple of faith in pray­ing for every­one affected. 

You can read the full piece on Facebook

Friends Com­mit­tee on Nation­al Leg­is­la­tion is also shar­ing their Prin­ci­ples for Gun Vio­lence Pre­ven­tion back­grounder, a doc­u­ment that I wish was­n’t new­ly rel­e­vant every oth­er week.

What is “Clerking Consciousness”?

September 18, 2018

From the new clerk of New York Year­ly Meeting:

If all the world inter­act­ed on the basis of con­sen­sus, the world would be a far bet­ter place. But if all the world func­tioned on the basis of sense of the meet­ing, as Friends do, the world would be a very dif­fer­ent place alto­geth­er. Every­one would have full respon­si­bil­i­ty to find the best way for­ward for everyone. 

http://​www​.nyym​.org/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​w​h​a​t​-​i​s​-​c​l​e​r​k​i​n​g​-​c​o​n​s​c​i​o​u​s​n​ess

Paul Parker: 5 ways to make Quaker meeting houses work for the future

August 24, 2018

The record­ing clerk of Britain Year­ly Meet­ing looks at five ways we can keep our wor­ship spaces active and visible:

We can often get very loy­al to our meet­ing places, and I think that’s nat­ur­al. We’ve often had some of our most pro­found per­son­al expe­ri­ences there. They are impor­tant places of com­mu­ni­ty and wor­ship, and they can and do work hard for us. But our loy­al­ty to them does­n’t mean that they’re going to work for every­one, and if they’re not going to become ‘steeple hous­es’, then I think it’s impor­tant that we look at them every now and again and ask our­selves some questions. 

http://www.quaker.org.uk/blog/5‑ways-to-make-quaker-meeting-houses-work-for-the-future