Tag Archives ⇒ feeling

Liberty of the Spirit

March 28, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Every once in awhile a Quak­er­S­peak video comes along that reminds me why I was blown away when I first got to know Quak­ers. Ayesha Imani talks about the first time she wor­shiped with Friends: 

I thought I had wan­dered into a group of peo­ple who actu­al­ly believed that God was able to speak direct­ly to them. I remem­ber say­ing, “Oh my God, this is Pen­te­cost!” I couldn’t believe that these peo­ple think God is actu­al­ly gll­l­l­l­lo­ing to speak to them! I’m down for this. This is where I belong. 

Most of the Quak­ers read­ing this can prob­a­bly guess where this is going – she pret­ty quick­ly got a les­son in the unwrit­ten norms against exu­ber­ance at many Quak­er meet­ings, the rules that pre­vent many expres­sions of wor­ship. Ayesha’s Black and many of the stric­tures on behav­ior are pret­ty middle-class white. But a lot of this isn’t real­ly about race. I’ve been led to do some very non-ordinary things at uptight Quak­er meet­ings and feel­ing incred­i­bly self-conscious over it. When I came to Friends, I loved the idea of the rad­i­cal spon­te­nae­ity of our wor­ship (any­one can min­is­ter any­time!) and the life it called us to but in prac­tice we often are crea­tures of habit, to our detri­ment. I love Ayesha’s talk of “exper­i­ment­ing with free­dom” and the “lib­er­ty of the spir­it.” I real­ize my sto­ries of non-ordinariness are all over a decade old. I wish I felt more of that lib­er­ty again.

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​h​o​w​-​d​o​e​s​-​c​u​l​t​u​r​e​-​i​n​f​l​u​e​n​c​e​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​w​o​r​s​h​ip/

Keeping cradle Quakers

February 8, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Rhi­an­non Grant asks: what’s the oppo­site of a Rumspringa?

So my ques­tions for Quak­ers are: How do you ensure that adults are trust­ed to be adults even if they are under 30? How do you make sure that peo­ple are giv­en oppor­tu­ni­ties to take respon­si­bil­i­ty with­out feel­ing that they must per­form espe­cial­ly well because they are rep­re­sent­ing a whole demographic? 

Here in the U.S., the trick to get­ting on nation­al com­mit­tees while young (at least when I was try­ing it in my 20s) was hav­ing a well-known mom. As some­one who kept knock­ing and kept get­ting turned away it blew me away when I heard Quaker-famous off­spring com­plain how they were always being asked to serve on com­mit­tees. But then I real­ized it was the same tok­eniz­ing phe­nom­e­non, just in reverse.

So our work isn’t just look­ing around a room and tick­ing off demo­graph­ic box­es, but real­ly dig­ging deep­er and see­ing if we’re rep­re­sen­ta­tive of multi-dimensional diver­si­ties. And if we’re not, the prob­lem isn’t just that we aren’t diverse (diver­si­ty is a fine val­ue in and of itself but ulti­mate­ly just a crude tool) but that we have unex­am­ined cul­tur­al prac­tices and selec­tion sys­tems that are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly turn­ing away peo­ple from com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion and service.

Keep­ing cra­dle Quak­ers by mak­ing room to lean in?

A Racially Diverse Society of Friends?

January 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

The Jan­u­ary issue of Friends Jour­nal is online. I wrote the intro this month so I’ll just quote myself:

In recent years, a num­ber of Black Friends Jour­nal con­trib­u­tors have shared heart­break­ing sto­ries of not feel­ing wel­come in Quak­er cir­cles. As we planned this issue, we self-consciously added a ques­tion mark to the end of its title — “A Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends?” The choice of punc­tu­a­tion hints at a cer­tain weari­ness — are we real­ly still ask­ing this? — along with the sug­ges­tion that maybe many Friends are con­tent enough with the sta­tus quo that they might sim­ply answer “no” to a call for diversity. 


Racially Diverse Society of Friends (January 2019) Archives - Friends Journal

Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends (Jan­u­ary 2019) Archives — Friends Journal 

Jan­u­ary 2019: A Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends? Full Issue Access Fea­tures: Are We Ready to Make the…

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Quaker Jazz

April 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week’s Quak­er­S­peak inter­views musi­cian Colton Weath­er­ston. I love the way he relates the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion of jazz musi­cians to Quak­er worship:

Espe­cial­ly artists and musi­cians, we often don’t have the same point of view or even the same back­ground. Each of us will bring a lot of bag­gage into the meet­ing of the musi­cians and we have to build trust with each oth­er and peo­ple need to feel free to express their ideas as a soloist with­out feel­ing told by the leader how exact­ly to play — we have to work it out as an ensem­ble. And I think that’s very true with meet­ings also.

Those with long mem­o­ries might remem­ber that I inter­viewed Chad Stephen­son after he made a com­par­i­son between new jazz tra­di­tion­al­ists and Con­ver­gent Friends at the 2009 Ben Lomond con­fer­ence (I believe he wrote an expand­ed ver­sion for the Spir­it Ris­ing Quak­er anthol­o­gy but I can’t find a link).

Early “photo of summer” candidate

July 6, 2017
· Martin Kelley

I writ­ten many times before that I like to find fam­i­ly pho­tos that encap­su­late a feel­ing — a time and place, a moment in our col­lec­tive lives. A few weeks ago I caught this shot, which I think will be one of my favorite pho­tos of this summer.

Tech­ni­cal note: this was only pos­si­ble with a water resis­tant phone, as I would not have dared wade out into a pool with pre­vi­ous phones. The 3D bokeh effect is cour­tesy of the iPhone 7 Plus “Por­trait” mode. It’s not per­fect: zoom in and there’s some dis­tor­tion around his left arm, both at the top where it fuzzes around the mid back­ground of the slide and on bot­tom where there are arti­facts in the con­trast with the far back­ground of the fence line. But I’m still pleased and amazed at how well the 3D imag­ing works.

Normcore and the new-old Quaker plain

March 18, 2014
· Martin Kelley

In the last few weeks, the fash­ion seg­ment of the Inter­net has gone all a‑buzz over new term “Norm­core.” Nor­mal, every­day, cloth­ing is appar­ent­ly show­ing up in down­town Man­hat­tan — gasp! Like many trendy terms, it’s not real­ly so new: back in the nineties and ear­ly oughts, Gap ruled the retail world with posters show­ing celebri­ties and artists wear­ing t‑shirts and jeans avail­able at the local mall store. “Norm­core” is just the lead­ing edge of the utterly-predicable 20-year fash­ion indus­try pen­du­lum swing.

It also per­haps sig­nals a cul­tur­al shift away from snob­bery and into embrac­ing roots. One of the most pop­u­lar posts on the New York Times’s web­site last year cel­e­brat­ed region­al accents (appar­ent­ly Philadel­phi­ans are allowed to talk like Philadel­phi­ans again).

An ana­logue to this fash­ion trend has been occur­ing among Friends for a lit­tle while now. The “New Plain” dis­cus­sion have revolved around reclaim­ing an atti­tude, not a uniform.

If you read the old Quak­er guide books (called “Books of Dis­ci­pline” then, now more often called “Faith and Prac­tice”), you’ll see that unlike oth­er plain-dressing Amer­i­can groups like the Amish, Quak­ers did­n’t intend their clothes to be a uni­form show­ing group con­for­mi­ty. Instead, plain­ness is framed in terms of inte­ri­or moti­va­tions. Avoid­ing fash­ion trends helped Friends remem­ber that they were all equal before God. It also spoke to our con­tin­u­ing tes­ti­mo­ny of integri­ty, in that Friends were to dress the same way in dif­fer­ent con­texts and so vouch­safe for a sin­gle identity.

When I began feel­ing the tug of a lead­ing toward plain­ness it was for what I began call­ing “Sears Plain,” indi­cat­ing that I wore clothes that I could find in any box store or mall. I devel­oped a low-maintenance approach to fash­ion that freed up my time from shop­ping and the morn­ing dress­ing rit­u­al. Mod­ern plain­ness can lessen the temp­ta­tion to show off in clothes and it can reduce the over­all wardrobe size and thus reduce our impact on the envi­ron­ment and with exploit­ed labor. But all this is noth­ing new and it nev­er real­ly dis­ap­peared. If you looked around a room of mod­ern Quak­ers you’ll often see a trend of sar­to­r­i­al bor­ing­ness; I was sim­ply nam­ing this and putting it in the con­text of our tradition.

image

Over time I found that these moti­va­tions were more preva­lent in the wider cul­ture, espe­cial­ly in the min­i­mal­ist techie scene. Steve Jobs famous­ly sport­ed a uni­form of black turtle­neck, jeans, and New Bal­ance sneak­ers (explained in 2011). In a 2012 pro­file, Barack Oba­ma talked about lim­it­ing his clothes to two col­ors of suits so that he could free up his decision-making ener­gies on more impor­tant issues (I wrote about his fash­ion in “Plain like Barack”).

Non-celebrities also seem inter­est­ed in work­ing out their rela­tion­ship with fash­ion. My arti­cles on mod­ern plain­ness have always been a big draw on my blog. While my fel­low Quak­ers are some­times mild­ly embar­rassed by our his­toric pecu­liar­i­ties, out­siders often eat this stuff up. They’re look­ing for what the techies would call “life hacks” that can help them pri­or­i­tize life essen­tials. If we can com­mu­ni­cate our val­ues in a real way that isn’t propped by appeals to the author­i­ty of tra­di­tion, then we can reach these seekers.

So now that “Norm­core” is appear­ing in places like Huff­in­g­ton Post , the New York Times and fash­ion mag­a­zines, will Friends be able to talk more about it? Do we still have a col­lec­tive wit­ness in regards to the mate­ri­al­ism and ego-centricity of fash­ion marketing?

Nostalgia comes early

November 25, 2013
· Martin Kelley

One of the most famous scenes in the AMC show Mad Men comes near the end of sea­son one. Kodak has asked the adver­tis­ing firm to cre­ate a cam­paign around a new slide pro­jec­tor that has a cir­cu­lar tray. Don Drap­er presents the Carousel and gives a nostalgia-steeped pre­sen­ta­tion that use his per­son­al pho­tographs to move both the Kodak execs and the view­ers at home, who know that these semi-focused pic­tures will soon be all that left of his dis­in­te­grat­ing family.

No falling apart fam­i­ly for me, but I find myself already feel­ing nos­tal­gic for a fam­i­ly vaca­tion to Dis­ney World that doesn’t start for anoth­er six days. I’ve recent­ly been look­ing through our Flickr archive of past trips (four for me) and real­ize that they are our Carousel. The start with my fiancee tak­ing a cyn­i­cal me on my first trip. Lat­er vis­its bring kids to the pho­to­graph­ic line­up: newly-found legs to run, the joys of messy ice cream, the scare of not-very-scary rides and the big eyes of parades all run through the sets.

In less than a week we’ll start a new set. There will be two new chil­dren in this one. “The babies” are both walk­ing and tod­dling and are at their peak of baby pho­to­genic cute­ness. The old­er two are real kids now and the eldest is start­ing to show ear­ly glimpses of teenage-hood: eye-rolling, exha­la­tion of air (“uh!”) to show dis­ap­proval of incon­ve­nient parental instructions.

Icon­ic fam­i­ly pic­tures will hap­pen. Since our last vis­it five years ago, my wife’s lost her father to can­cer and my mother’s been slip­ping into the for­get­ful­ness of Alzheimer’s. As the wheel of life turns it some­how becomes more pos­si­ble to see our­selves as part of the turn­ing Carousel. Some decades from now I can imag­ine myself going through these pic­tures sur­round­ed by indulging chil­dren and antsy grand­chil­dren, exclaim­ing “look how young every­one looks!”

Theo and Francis, Dec 2008
Theo (then 5) and Fran­cis (3) zonked out after a long day in 2008. Hard to believe they were ever this cuddly.

 

Update post-trip:

There are 104 pic­tures from this trip in our pub­lic Flickr set, with one of our four kids hold­ing hands as they walk to the pool a stand­out icon­ic shot of their child­hood together:
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Georges And Trayvons

July 16, 2013
· Martin Kelley

Over on Mobtown­blues, Kevin Grif­fin Moreno cops to being George Zim­mer­man. Thank­ful­ly, he’s not: when feel­ing threat­ened in a recent sit­u­a­tion with racial over­tones, he chose to walk away, but it is worth ask­ing how dif­fer­ent we are from the char­ac­ters of this tragedy.

I nev­er had much expec­ta­tion that the tri­al of Trayvon Martin’s killer would find him guilty. A good team of lawyers can con­jure up rea­son­able doubt over most any­thing. As as Alafair Burke writes on Huff­in­g­ton, much of what Zim­mer­man did was pro­tect­ed by Florida’s insanely-crazy “stand your ground” laws. 

But even with­out that, high-profile court cas­es get so politi­cized so quick­ly that they rarely pro­vide any kind of cathar­sis, let alone jus­tice, when stacked against hun­dreds of years of racial injus­tices. And just as Zimmerman’s judge­ment was col­ored by his racial his­to­ry and bias­es, so too are ours: our opin­ions about what hap­pened that evening in San­ford, Flori­da, are much more a reac­tion to where we fall in the con­tin­u­ums of priv­i­leges than we might care to admit. 

Martin and Zimmerman, swapped races, via Whileseated.org

Priv­i­lege is unearned oppor­tu­ni­ties con­ferred by how close­ly we fit a par­tic­u­lar stereo­type. When I was in my ear­ly 20s, I was once pulled over by a police­man when I was dri­ving aim­less­ly through a sleepy town at 3 am (no good sto­ry I’m afraid: I was sim­ply bored, with insom­nia). He vis­i­bly eased up when he saw I was white, and he got almost avun­cu­lar a minute lat­er when he saw the Irish name on my dri­vers license. I know that almost-forgettable instant could have played out quite dif­fer­ent­ly if I had been black, with a Mus­lim name, per­haps, and a chip on my shoul­der because this was the fifth time that month I had got­ten detained for no good reason. 

No mat­ter what I do to edu­cate myself, I will always be George Zim­mer­man to (many) strangers on the street, just as Trayvon Mar­tin will always be a sus­pi­cious house bur­gler for being a black stranger in a hoodie. 

The work that needs to be done – or con­tin­ued, for we need to remem­ber the many times peo­ple have done the right thing – couldn’t be answered by a crim­i­nal tri­al any­way. What’s need­ed is the edu­ca­tion of soci­ety at large. 

One step is all of the con­ver­sa­tions tak­ing place on Face­book and around water cool­ers this week. Let’s talk about the fears that sub­con­scious­ly dri­ve us. For Zimmerman’s gun was only one of the trig­gers that killed Mar­tin. It was fear that gave us Sanford’s gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty and its town watch, along with our nation’s per­mis­sive gun laws and dra­con­ian legal con­cepts like “stand­ing one’s ground.” It was that potent mix of sus­pi­cion that set in motion a sit­u­a­tion that left a sev­en­teen year old kid with a pock­et­ful of Skit­tles lying dead face down in the grass. 

Can we learn to under­stand the ways we live in fear? Can we get to know one anoth­er more deeply in that place that breaks down the gates in our hearts?