Tag Archives ⇒ fgc

Why would a Quaker do a crazy thing like that?

June 10, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Look­ing back at Friends’ respons­es to the Chris­t­ian Peace­mak­er hostages

When four Chris­t­ian Peace­mak­ers were tak­en hostage in Iraq late last Novem­ber, a lot of Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions stum­bled in their response. With Tom Fox we were con­front­ed by a full-on lib­er­al Quak­er Chris­t­ian wit­ness against war, yet who stepped up to explain this modern-day prophet­ic wit­ness? AFSC? FCNL? FGC? Nope, nope and nope. There were too many orga­ni­za­tions that couldn’t man­age any­thing beyond the boil­er­plate social jus­tice press release. I held my tongue while the hostages were still in cap­tiv­i­ty but through­out the ordeal I was mad at the exposed frac­ture lines between reli­gious wit­ness and social activism.

When­ev­er a sit­u­a­tion involv­ing inter­na­tion­al issues of peace and wit­ness hap­pens, the Quak­er insti­tu­tions I’m clos­est to auto­mat­i­cal­ly defer to the more polit­i­cal Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions: for exam­ple, the head of Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence told staff to direct out­siders inquir­ing about Tom Fox to AFSC even though Fox had been an active leader of FGC-sponsored events and was well known as a com­mit­ted vol­un­teer. The Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee and Friends Com­mit­tee on Nation­al Leg­is­la­tion have knowl­edge­able and com­mit­ted staff, but their insti­tu­tion­al cul­ture does­n’t allow them to talk Quak­erism except to say we’re a nice bunch of social-justice-loving peo­ple. I appre­ci­ate that these orga­ni­za­tions have a strong, vital iden­ti­ty, and I accept that with­in those con­fines they do impor­tant work and employ many faith­ful Friends. It’s just that they lack the lan­guage to explain why a gro­cery store employ­ee with a love of youth reli­gious edu­ca­tion would go unarmed to Badg­dad in the name of Chris­t­ian witness.

The wider blo­gos­phere was total­ly abuzz with news of Chris­t­ian Peace­mak­er Team hostages (Google blogsearch lists over 6000 posts on the top­ic). There were hun­dreds of posts and com­ments, includ­ing long dis­cus­sions on the biggest (and most right-leaning) sites. Almost every­one won­dered why the CPT work­ers were there, and while the opin­ions weren’t always friend­ly (the hostages were often paint­ed as naive ide­al­ists or disin­gen­u­ous ter­ror­ist sym­pa­thiz­ers), even the doubters were moti­vat­ed by a pro­found curios­i­ty and desire to understand.

The CPT hostages were the talk of the blo­gos­phere, yet where could we find a Quak­er response and expla­na­tion? The AFSC respond­ed by pub­li­ciz­ing the state­ments of mod­er­ate Mus­lim lead­ers (call­ing for the hostages’ release; I emailed back a sug­ges­tion about list­ing Quak­er respons­es but nev­er got a reply). Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing put togeth­er a nice enough what-you-can-do page that was tar­get­ed toward Friends. The CPT site was full of infor­ma­tion of course, and there were plen­ty of sto­ries on the lefty-leaning sites like elec​tron​i​ci​raq​.net and the UK site Ekkle­sia. But Friends explain­ing this to the world?

The Quak­er blog­gers did their part. On Decem­ber 2 I quick­ly re-jiggered the tech­nol­o­gy behind Quak​erQuak​er​.org to pro­vide a Chris­t­ian Peace­mak­er watch on both Non​vi​o​lence​.org and Quak­erQuak­er (same list­ings, mere­ly rebrand­ed for slightly-separate audi­ences, announced on the post It’s Wit­ness Time). These pages got lots of views over the course of the hostage sit­u­a­tion and includ­ed many posts from the Quak­er blog­ger com­mu­ni­ty that had recent­ly congealed.

But here’s the inter­est­ing part: I was able to do this only because there was an active Quak­er blog­ging com­mu­ni­ty. We already had gath­ered togeth­er as a group of Friends who were will­ing to write about spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and wit­ness. Our con­ver­sa­tions had been small and inti­mate but now we were ready to speak to the world. I some­times get paint­ed as some sort of fun­da­men­tal­ist Quak­er, but the truth is that I’ve want­ed to build a com­mu­ni­ty that would wres­tle with these issues, fig­ur­ing the wrestling was more impor­tant than the lan­guage of the answers. I had already thought about how to encour­age blog­gers and knit a blog­ging com­mu­ni­ty togeth­er and was able to use these tech­niques to quick­ly build a Quak­er CPT response.

Two oth­er Quak­ers who went out of their way to explain the sto­ry of Tom Fox: his per­son­al friends John Stephens and Chuck Fager. Their Freethe​cap​tives​now​.org site was put togeth­er impres­sive­ly fast and con­tained a lot of good links to news, resources and com­men­tary. But like me, they were over-worked blog­gers doing this in their non-existant spare time (Chuck is direc­tor of Quak­er House but he nev­er said this was part of the work).

After an ini­tial few qui­et days, Tom’s meet­ing Lan­g­ley Hill put togeth­er a great web­site of links and news. That makes it the only offi­cial Quak­er orga­ni­za­tion that pulled togeth­er a sus­tained cam­paign to sup­port Tom Fox.

Lessons?

So what’s up with all this? Should we be hap­py that all this good work hap­pened by vol­un­teers? Johan Mau­r­er has a very inter­est­ing post, “Are Quak­ers Mar­gin­al?” that points to my ear­li­er com­ment on the Chris­t­ian Peace­mak­ers and doubts whether our avoid­ance of “hireling priests” has giv­en us a more effec­tive voice. Let’s remem­ber that insti­tu­tion­al Quak­erism began as sup­port of mem­bers in jail for their reli­gious wit­ness; among our ear­li­est com­mit­tee gath­er­ings were meet­ings for suf­fer­ings — busi­ness meet­ings focused on pub­li­ciz­ing the plight of the jailed and sup­port the fam­i­ly and meet­ings left behind.

I nev­er met Tom Fox but it’s clear to me that he was an excep­tion­al Friend. He was able to bridge the all-too-common divide between Quak­er faith and social action. Tom was a heal­er, a wit­ness not just to Iraqis but to Friends. But I won­der if it was this very whole­ness that made his work hard to cat­e­go­rize and sup­port. Did he sim­ply fall through the insti­tu­tion­al cracks? When you play base­ball on a dis­or­ga­nized team you miss a lot of easy catch­es sim­ply because all the out­field­ers think the next guy is going to go for the ball. Is that what hap­pened? And is this what would hap­pen again?

Sharing our Quaker event photos

June 1, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Over on the pho­to shar­ing ser­vice Flickr, I’m notic­ing a bunch of pho­tos from this week’s Britain Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sion. One con­trib­u­tor has tagged (labelled) all her pho­tos with “britainyearlymeeting06” which means they’re all avail­able on one page. Cool, but what would be even cool­er is if every Flickr user at the event used the same tag. We’d then have a near­ly real-time group pho­to essay of the year­ly meet­ing sessions.

So this year I’m going to tag all my per­son­al pho­tos from next mon­th’s Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence Gath­er­ing of Friends as “FGCgathering06″. I invite any oth­er Flickr-using atten­ders to do the same. While I do work at FGC, please note this is not any sort of offi­cial FGC deci­sion, it’s just my own idea to share pho­tos and to see how we can use these online net­works to share and pro­mote Quak­erism. In a few weeks you’ll start see­ing entries via flickr and tech­no­rati. I’ll prob­a­bly start with a few pic­tures of the book­store truck being loaded for its cross-country trek. Update: one embed­ded below.
Blog posts:
If your blog­ging sys­tem does­n’t sup­port the use of tags, then sim­ply add this line in the bot­tom of each of your Gathering-related posts:

Update: here’s one:

Deepening the intervisitation of Gathering

March 2, 2006
· Martin Kelley

The pro­gram for this year’s FGC Gath­er­ing of Friends went online at mid­night yes­ter­day – I stayed up late to flip the switch­es to make it live right as Third Month start­ed – right on sched­ule. By 12:10am EST four vis­i­tors had already come to the site! There’s a lot of inter­est in the Gath­er­ing, the first one on the West Coast.

Stu­dents of late-20th Cen­tu­ry Quak­er his­to­ry can see the pro­gres­sion of Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence from a very Philadelphia-centric, provin­cial body that had its annu­al gath­er­ing at a South Jer­sey beach town to one that real­ly does try to serve Friends across the coun­try. There’s loss­es in the changes (alum­ni of the Cape May Gath­er­ings all speak of them with misty eyes) but over­all it’s been a need­ed shift in focus. In recent years, a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of Gath­er­ing work­shop lead­ers have come from the “inde­pen­dent” unaf­fil­i­at­ed year­ly meet­ings of the West. It’s nice.

Joe G has been send­ing me emails about his selec­tion process (it’s almost real-time as he weighs each one!). It’s help­ful as it saves me the trou­ble of sort­ing through them. It’s usu­al­ly tough to find a work­shop I want to take. A lot of Friends I real­ly respect have told me they’ve stopped going to the Gath­er­ing after awhile because it just does­n’t feed them.

It’s a shame when these Friends stop com­ing. The Gath­er­ing is one of the most excit­ing annu­al coming-together of Quak­ers in North Amer­i­ca. It’s very impor­tant for new and/or iso­lat­ed Friends and it helps pull all its atten­ders into a wider Fel­low­ship. Inter­vis­i­ta­tion has always been one of the most impor­tant tools for knit­ting togeth­er Friends and the Gath­er­ing has been fill­ing much of that need for lib­er­al Friends for the last hun­dred years.

I’ve been hav­ing this sense that Gath­er­ing needs some­thing more. I don’t know what that some­thing is, only that I long to con­nect more with oth­er Friends. My best con­ver­sa­tions have invari­ably tak­en place when I stopped to talk with some­one while run­ning across cam­pus late to some event. These Oppor­tu­ni­ties have been pre­cious but they’re always so fran­tic. The Trav­el­ing Min­istries Pro­gram often has a won­der­ful evening inter­est group but by the time we’ve gone around shar­ing our names, sto­ries and con­di­tions, it’s time to break. I’m not look­ing for a new pro­gram (don’t wor­ry Liz P!, wait it’s not you who has to wor­ry!), just a way to have more con­ver­sa­tions with the Quak­erQuak­er Con­ver­gent Friends – which in this con­text I think boils down to those with some­thing of a call to min­istry and an inter­est in Quak­er vision & renew­al. Let’s all find a way of con­nect­ing more this year, yes?

For those inter­est­ed I’ve signed up for these work­shops: Blessed Com­mu­ni­ty in James’ Epis­tle (led by Max Hansen of Berke­ley Friends Church, Deep­en­ing the Silence, Invit­ing Vital Min­istry (20), and Find­ing Our­selves in the Bible).

Related Entries Elsewhere:

Extended summers and jobs old and new

October 5, 2005
· Martin Kelley
Bicycle riders

Theo and I on the old bike this sum­mer. More pho­tos

Last Thurs­day my Francis-inspired pater­ni­ty leave end­ed – two weeks paid for by my employ­er, two weeks or so of vaca­tion time. It was good to have off though I must admit I spent more time cor­ralling two-year old Theo than I did gaz­ing into new­born Fran­cis’s eyes. I hearti­ly rec­om­mend tak­ing Sep­tem­bers off. One of my more enjoy­able tasks was the almost-daily bicy­cle rides with Theo. Some­times we went across town to the lake and it’s play­ground, Theo going up and down the slides over and over again until night­time threat­ened and I had to insist on com­ing home. Oth­er times we took long rides to local attrac­tions such as last post’s Blue Hole. The bike so sym­bol­ized our spe­cial time togeth­er that it seems almost prop­er that it was stolen from the train sta­tion on that first day of com­mut­ing, appar­ent­ly the lat­est vic­tim of my South Jer­sey town’s bike theft ring. When I walked in the door that evening, Theo came run­ning yelling “diya-di-cal!” but there was noth­ing I could do. Sum­mer’s over kid.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Live Web Coverage from FGC (not)

July 3, 2005
· Martin Kelley

23028940_2a342308d2Over on Beppe­blog Joe dreams of dai­ly web cov­er­age of the FGC Gath­er­ing [Update: link long dead]. Well, FGC’s not pay­ing its web­mas­ter (me, for now) for such ser­vice but I’ll try to sneak in a few posts between book­store cus­tomers. The book­store set-up was remark­ably easy. There was no truck cri­sis, no com­put­er cri­sis, no get­ting lost on highways.

As reg­u­lar read­ers will know, I’m lead­ing a work­shop called “Strangers to the Covenant” with Zachary Moon and this morn­ing was the first work­shop. Although it was billed as a work­shop for high school stu­dents and adult young Friend (so 15 – 35 years old), though almost all of the par­tic­i­pants are high school­ers (what does that mean?). It seems like a great bunch. I arrived about fif­teen min­utes ear­ly to cen­ter in wor­ship; two of the atten­ders came in the room and sat with me and one by one every­one came in and joined the wor­ship. I had to won­der if a group of old­er Friends would have been able to resist the temp­ta­tion to ask about each oth­er’s jew­el­ry, com­plain about the air con­di­tion­ing, etc.

Julie reports that the cafe­te­ria food is good. We’ve also been hap­py patrons of Gillie’s and Bol­lo’s Cafe.

Strangers to the Covenant

July 1, 2005
· Martin Kelley

A workshop led by Zachary Moon and Martin Kelley at the 2005 FGC Gathering of Friends.

 

This is for Young Friends who want to break into the pow­er of Quak­erism: it’s the stuff you didn’t get in First Day School. Con­nect­ing with his­tor­i­cal Quak­ers whose pow­er­ful min­istry came in their teens and twen­ties, we’ll look at how Friends wove God, covenants and gospel order togeth­er to build a move­ment that rocked the world. We’ll mine Quak­er his­to­ry to reclaim the pow­er of our tra­di­tion, to explore the liv­ing tes­ti­monies and our wit­ness in the world. (P/T)

Per­cent­age of time: Wor­ship 20 / Lec­ture 30 / Dis­cus­sion 50

 

Extended Description

We hope to encour­age Friends to imag­ine them­selves as min­is­ters and elders and to be bold enough to chal­lenge the insti­tu­tions of Quak­erism as need­ed. We want to build a com­mu­ni­ty, a cohort, of Friends who aren’t afraid to bust us out of our own lim­it­ed expec­ta­tions and give them space to grow into the aware­ness that their long­ing for deep­er spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion with shared wide­ly among oth­ers their age. Our task as work­shop con­ven­ers is to mod­el as both bold and hum­ble seek­ers after truth, who can stay real to the spir­it with­out tak­ing our­selves either too seri­ous­ly or too lightly.

Mar­tin and Zachary have dis­cov­ered a Quak­er tra­di­tion more defined, more coher­ent and far rich­er than the Quak­erism we were offered in First Day School. In integri­ty to that dis­cov­ery, we intend to cre­ate a space for fel­low­ship that would fur­ther open these glimpses of what’s out there and what pos­si­bil­i­ties exist to step out bold­ly in this Light.

Sun­day: Introductions
The most impor­tant task for today is mod­el­ing the ground­ed wor­ship and spirit-led min­istry that will be our true cur­ricu­lum this week. In a wor­ship shar­ing for­mat we will con­sid­er these questions:

  • What brought me to this workshop?
  • What did they fail to teach me in First Day School that I still want to know?

Mon­day: What is this Quakerism?
Today will be about enter­ing this ground­ed space togeth­er as Friends, begin­ning to ask some ques­tions that reveal and open. How do I artic­u­late what Quak­erism is all about? What ideas, lan­guage, and words (e.g. “God”, “Jesus” “Light”) do use to describe this tra­di­tion? Today we start that dia­logue. At the end of ses­sion we will ask par­tic­i­pants to seek out an old­er Friend and ask them for their answers on these queries and bring back that expe­ri­ence to our next gathering.

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nal and Bible
  • Present ques­tion: When some­one asks me “what is Quak­erism?” how do I respond.
  • Mar­tin and Zachary will share some thoughts on this ques­tion from oth­er Friends
  • Jour­nal­ing on Query
  • Dis­cus­sion of ideas and language.

Tues­day: The Mys­ti­cal Tra­di­tion and Gospel Order
We enter into the lan­guage and fab­ric of our Tra­di­tion at its mys­ti­cal roots. Ask­ing the ques­tions: What does God feel like? Intro­duce ear­ly Quaker’s talk about God. What does it feel like to be with God? What is Gospel Order?

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nals and Bible
  • Follow-up on pre­vi­ous day’s discussion/homework what new came into the Light overnight?
  • Jour­nal­ing on Query: When have I felt the pres­ence of God? Describe it in five senses?
  • Ini­tial dis­cus­sion and shar­ing of thoughts and ideas.
  • Intro­duce some ideas from ear­ly Friends and oth­ers on this Query. How have oth­ers (Jesus, Isa­iah, Mer­ton, Fox, Day) spo­ken of this experience?
  • Intro­duce themes of Spir­i­tu­al Prac­tice: If Quak­erism is about ask­ing the right ques­tions, how do we get into the place to hear those ques­tions and respond faith­ful­ly? We have already been incor­po­rat­ing devo­tion­al read­ing into our time togeth­er each morn­ing but we will intro­duce into the Light of Dis­ci­pline as such here. Nam­ing of oth­er prac­tices, pre­vi­ous­ly acknowl­edged and oth­er­wise, with­in the group.
  • Intro­duce ‘Spir­i­tu­al Dis­cern­ment’ themes for the fol­low­ing day’s session.

Wednes­day: The Roots of Friends’ Dis­cern­ment Tra­di­tion and the Testimonies
We delve into the archives, the dusty stuff, the stuff First Day School didn’t get to: the preach­ing from the trees, the prison time, the age George Fox was when he was first incar­cer­at­ed for his beliefs, what the tes­ti­monies are real­ly about and where they came from. Today is about tak­ing the skele­tons out of the clos­et and clean­ing house.

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nals and Bible
  • ‘Let’s talk his­to­ry’: Ear­ly Friends, the Mak­ing of The Soci­ety, and the Dis­cern­ment Tra­di­tion. [Mar­tin and Zachary may cov­er this, or we may arrange to have anoth­er Friend come and share some thoughts and infuse a new voice into our dialogue]
  • There are lots of tes­ti­monies: what are ours? Name some. How to they facil­i­tate our rela­tion­ship with God?
  • What’s up with “Obe­di­ence”, “Plain­ness”, and “Dis­ci­pline”? How do we prac­tice them?

Thurs­day: Friends in a Covenant­ed Relationship
We grow into our roles as lead­ers in this com­mu­ni­ty by con­sid­er­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties and the hur­dles in deep­en­ing our covenant rela­tion­ship. We begin with con­sid­er­ing spir­i­tu­al gifts, and then con­sid­er ques­tions around min­istry, its ori­gin and its dis­cern­ment. We will take up the task of con­sid­er­ing what our work, what piece of this respon­si­bil­i­ty is ours to carry.

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nals and Bible
  • Jour­nal­ing on the Queries: What is alive inside of me? How are my spir­i­tu­al gifts named and nurtured?
  • What are the tasks of ministry?
  • What are the tasks of eldering?
  • What are the struc­tures and prac­tices in our month­ly, quar­ter­ly and year­ly meet­ings that we can use to test out and sup­port lead­ings? How do these struc­tures work and not work. Clear­ness com­mit­tees? Trav­el­ing Friends? Spir­i­tu­al nurture/affinity groups?
  • What is hold­ing us back from liv­ing this deep­ened rela­tion­ship? What is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to this covenant and this covenant community?

Fri­day: The Future of Quakerism
We begin the work that will occu­py the rest of our lives. The par­tic­i­pants of this work­shop will be around for the next fifty or more years, so let’s start talk­ing about sys­tem­at­ic, long-term change. We have some­thing to con­tribute to this con­sid­er­a­tion right now.

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nals and Bible
  • Where do we go from here? Mar­tin will present on emer­gent church. Zachary will present some thoughts on ‘Beloved Community’.
    Many have talked about deep com­mu­nion with God and about covenant com­mu­ni­ty. Many have spo­ken our hearts and giv­en voice to the pas­sion we expe­ri­ence; now it’s on us what are we going to do about it? Where is it happening?
  • Dis­cus­sion (maybe as a fish­bowl) Where do we envi­sion Quak­erism 50 years from now? 100 years from now?

External Website: Quaker Ranter, Martin’s site.

Excitement outside fgc

June 21, 2005
· Martin Kelley

melee
The offices of Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence are across the street from the Penn­syl­va­nia Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, which is this week host­ing a biotech con­ven­tion. The streets out­side are host­ing a bit of a counter-convention led by a group named “BioDemoc­ra­cy 2005”:http://www.biodev.org/. Here are some shots from a melee out­side our front door a few min­utes ago.
*Update:* appar­ent­ly one of the police offi­cers at the cen­ter of this scuf­fle “suf­fered a heart attack and has since died”:http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/business/special_packages/bio2005/11949070.htm. I’m not even sure how to com­ment on that. From my van­tage point it cer­tain­ly seemed like the police offi­cers were using undue vio­lence. But while I was ten feet away I don’t know who threw the first punch and what exact­ly hap­pened in that sea of bod­ies. What­ev­er hap­pened, it’s quite appro­pri­ate to hold him and his fam­i­ly in our prayers.