Tag Archives ⇒ focus

Never Having Set Foot in the Meetinghouse

March 5, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Yohannes “Knowl­edge” John­son is a mem­ber of Bulls Head — Oswego Meet­ing even though he has nev­er set foot in the meet­ing­house. He has­n’t because he’s been a guest of the New York State prison sys­tem for almost forty years (mur­der and attempt­ed mur­der in 1980). John­son talks about how he cen­ters and par­tic­i­pates despite the walls and bars sur­round­ing him:

Cen­ter­ing is always a wel­come chal­lenge, for, as one would expect, prison can be a noisy place and com­pet­ing con­ver­sa­tions can be over­whelm­ing. What I do is draw myself into the pic­tures and focus upon the images and peo­ple there­in. I have accom­pa­ny­ing pic­tures of places vis­it­ed by Friends and sent to me over the years with scenery that, for me as a per­son raised on the con­crete pave­ments of New York City, gives me visions of nat­ur­al beau­ty with­out the clut­ter of build­ing struc­tures and the like. 


Never Having Set Foot in the Meetinghouse

Nev­er Hav­ing Set Foot in the Meetinghouse 

When the meet­ing­house is on the oth­er side of state prison walls.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Reddit: Quakerism without Jesus

November 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Two much-discussed threads on /reddit/Quakers, the first pon­der­ing Quak­erism with Jesus, and the sec­ond — a response—argu­ing for Jesus’s cen­tral­i­ty. Both orig­i­nal posts are per­haps a bit pre­dictable but the con­ver­sa­tions go into inter­est­ing con­tra­dic­tions and dilemmas.

Also, an ear­ly plug that the Decem­ber Friends Jour­nal will focus on Quak­ers and Christianity.

Quak­erism with­out Jesus
byu/Enilorac89 inQuak­ers

Reddit AMA on American Revolutionary-era persecutions

June 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Over on Red­dit, his­to­ri­an Jason Agli­et­ti hosts an Ask-Me-Anything about eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Quak­er his­to­ry in Mary­land. There’s some good dis­cus­sion about the ways the largely-neutral Quak­er pop­u­la­tion was treat­ed in var­i­ous colonies, espe­cial­ly Mary­land, which is Agli­et­ti’s focus.

“The Friends They Loathed” was defend­ed in April 2018 and exam­ined a chap­ter of Mary­land his­to­ry that had nev­er been explored in detail before — the reli­gious per­se­cu­tion against Quak­ers dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. Despite being a his­to­ri­an of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty, I hold no reli­gious beliefs.

[delet­ed by user]
by inQuak­ers

Pareto opportunities for Friends?

June 10, 2015
· Martin Kelley

Nate Sil­ver recent­ly ran a piece on Mar­co Rubio’s pres­i­den­tial chances has used the previously-unknown-to-me con­cept of the “Pare­to fron­tier” to line up poten­tial candidates:

In eco­nom­ics, there’s a con­cept known as Pare­to effi­cien­cy. It means that you ought to be able to elim­i­nate any choice if anoth­er one dom­i­nates it along every dimen­sion. The remain­ing choic­es sit along what’s called the Pare­to frontier.

Sil­ver then fol­lowed up with a real world exam­ple that speaks to my inter­est in food:

Imag­ine that in addi­tion to White Cas­tle and The French Laun­dry, there are two Ital­ian restau­rants in your neigh­bor­hood. One is the chain restau­rant Olive Gar­den. You actu­al­ly like Olive Gar­den per­fect­ly well. But down the block is a local red-sauce joint called Giovanni’s. The food is a lit­tle bet­ter there than at Olive Gar­den (although not as good as at The French Laun­dry), and it’s a lit­tle cheap­er than Olive Gar­den (although not as cheap as White Cas­tle). So you can elim­i­nate Olive Gar­den from your reper­toire; it’s dom­i­nat­ed along both dimen­sions by Giovanni’s.

These days we choose more than our din­ner des­ti­na­tions. Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty has become a mar­ket­place. While there have always been con­verts, it feels as if the pace of reli­gious lane-changing has steadi­ly quick­ened in recent times. Many peo­ple are choos­ing their reli­gious affil­i­a­tion rather than stick­ing with the faith tra­di­tions of their par­ents. For Quak­ers, this has been a net pos­i­tive, as many of our meet­ing­hous­es are full of “con­vinced” Friends who came in to our reli­gious soci­ety as adults.

Quak­ers are some­what unique in our mar­ket poten­tial. I would argue that we fall on two spots of the reli­gious “pare­to curve”:

  • The first is a kind of mass-market entry point for the “spir­i­tu­al but not reli­gious” set that wants to dip its toe into an orga­nized reli­gion that’s nei­ther very orga­nized nor reli­gious. Lib­er­al Friends don’t have min­is­ters or creeds, we don’t feel or sound too churchy, and we’re not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about what new seek­ers believe. It’s a per­fect fit for do-it-yourself seek­ers that are look­ing for non-judgmental spiritually-minded progressives.
  • Our sec­ond pare­to fron­tier beach­head is more grad-school lev­el: we’re a good spot for peo­ple who have a strong reli­gious con­vic­tions but seek a com­mu­ni­ty with less restric­tions. They’ve mem­o­rized whole sec­tions of the Bible and might have the­o­log­i­cal train­ing. They’re burned out by judg­men­tal­ism and spirit-less rou­tine and are seek­ing out a more authen­tic reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty of reli­gious peers open to dis­cus­sion and growth.

It seems we often reach out to one or the oth­er type of “pare­to” seek­er. I see that as part of the dis­cus­sion around Mic­ah Bales’s recent piece on Quak­er church plant­i­ng–do we focus on new, unaf­fil­i­at­ed seek­ers or seri­ous reli­gious dis­ci­ples look­ing for a dif­fer­ent type of com­mu­ni­ty. I’d be curi­ous to hear if any Quak­er out­reach pro­grams have tried to reach out to both simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Is it even pos­si­ble to sucess­ful­ly mar­ket that kind of dual message?

The two-touch pare­to nature of Friends and pop spir­i­tu­al cul­ture sug­gests that meet­ings could focus their inter­nal work on being the bridge from what we might call the “pare­to entrances.” New­com­ers who have walked through the door because we’re not out­ward­ly churchy could be wel­comed into Quak­erism 101 cours­es to be intro­duced to Quak­er tech­niques for spir­i­tu­al ground­ing and growth – and so they can deter­mine whether for­mal mem­ber­ship is a good fit. Those who have come for the deep spir­i­tu­al ground­ing can join as well, but also be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ties for smaller-scale reli­gious con­ver­sa­tions and prac­tice, through Bible study groups, region­al extend­ed wor­ships and trips to region­al opportunities.

If you add charts you don't understand to blog posts, people will think you're extra smart.
If you add charts to blog posts, peo­ple will think you’re super-duper smart.

Plain like Barack

September 17, 2012
· Martin Kelley

As befits a Quak­er wit­ness, when I felt the nudge to plain­ness ten years ago, I did­n’t quite know where it would take me. I trust­ed the spir­i­tu­al nudges enough to assume there were lessons to learn. I had wit­nessed a God-centering in oth­ers who shared my spir­i­tu­al con­di­tions and I knew from read­ing that plain­ness was a typ­i­cal first step of “infant min­is­ters.” But all I had been giv­en was the invi­ta­tion to walk a par­tic­u­lar path.

After the ini­tial excite­ments, I set­tled into a rou­tine and dis­cov­ered I had lost the “what to wear?!” angst of get­ting dressed in the morn­ings. Gone too was the “who am I?” dra­ma that accom­pa­nied cat­a­log brows­ing. As clothes wore out and were retired, I reduced my clos­et down to a small set of choic­es, all vari­a­tions on one anoth­er. Now when I get dressed I don’t wor­ry about who I will see that day, who I should impress, whether one pair of shoes goes with a cer­tain sweater, etc.

Appar­ent­ly, I share this prac­tice with the forty-fourth pres­i­dent. In “Oba­ma’s Way,” a wide-ranging pro­file in Van­i­ty Fair, Michael Lewis shares the Pres­i­den­t’s atti­tude about clothes:

blank[He] was will­ing to talk about the mun­dane details of pres­i­den­tial exis­tence… You also need to remove from your life the day-to-day prob­lems that absorb most peo­ple for mean­ing­ful parts of their day. “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m try­ing to pare down deci­sions. I don’t want to make deci­sions about what I’m eat­ing or wear­ing. Because I have too many oth­er deci­sions to make.” He men­tioned research that shows the sim­ple act of mak­ing deci­sions degrades one’s abil­i­ty to make fur­ther deci­sions. It’s why shop­ping is so exhaust­ing. “You need to focus your decision-making ener­gy. You need to rou­tinize your­self. You can’t be going through the day dis­tract­ed by trivia.”

A few dis­tract­ing caveats: we can assume Oba­ma’s grey and blue suits are bespoke and cost upwards of a thou­sand dol­lars apiece. He prob­a­bly has a clos­et full of them. He has staff that cleans them, stores them, and lays them out for him in the morn­ing. You won’t find Barack wan­der­ing the aisles of the Capi­tol Hill Macy’s or the Lan­g­ley Hill Men’s Ware­house. Michelle’s nev­er run­ning things to the dry clean­ers, and Sasha and Malia aren’t pair­ing socks from the laun­dry bin after com­ing home from school. A Pres­i­dent Rom­ney’s clos­et would also fea­ture gray and blue (though his under­wear draw­er would be more uncon­ven­tion­al). When pro­to­col calls for the commander-in-chief to devi­ate from suits – to don a tux per­haps – one appears. Pres­i­den­tial plain­ness is far from simple.

The Quak­er move­ment start­ed as an invi­ta­tion to com­mon sense. Every­one could join. Ear­ly Friends were min­i­mal­ists on fire, fear­less in aban­don­ing any­thing that got in the way of spir­i­tu­al truth. In a few short years they method­i­cal­ly worked their way to the same con­clu­sions as a twenty-first cen­tu­ry U.S. pres­i­dent: human decision-making resources are finite; our atten­tion is at a pre­mi­um. If we have a job to do (run a coun­try, wit­ness God’s King­dom), then we should clear our­selves of unnec­es­sary dis­trac­tions to focus on the essen­tials. Those core expe­ri­en­tial truths have last­ing val­ue. As Jef­fer­son might say, they are self-evident, even if they still seem rad­i­cal­ly pecu­liar to the wider world.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly the kind of plain­ness that Barack and I are talk­ing about is a kind of mind-hack, its pow­er large­ly strate­gic. I’d love to see a pres­i­dent take up the chal­lenge of some hard­core Quak­er val­ues. How about the tes­ti­mo­ny against war? Eliza Gur­ney got pret­ty far in cor­re­spon­dence with Oba­ma’s hero, hon­est Abe, but even he punt­ed respon­si­bil­i­ty to divine will. The wit­ness continues.

Opening Doors and Moving on Up

February 3, 2011
· Martin Kelley

Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence has announced that Bar­ry Cross­no will be their new incom­ing Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary. Old time blog­gers will remem­ber him as the blog­ger behind The Quak­er Dhar­ma. FGC’s just pub­lished an inter­view with him and one of the ques­tions is about his blog­ging past. Here’s part of the answer:

Blog­ging among Friends is very impor­tant.  There are not a lot of Quak­ers.  We’re spread out across the world.  Blog­ging opens up dia­logues that just would­n’t hap­pen oth­er­wise.  While I laid down my blog, “The Quak­er Dhar­ma,” a few years ago, and my think­ing on some issues has evolved since then, I’m clear that blog­ging is what allowed me to give voice to my call.  It helped open some of the doors that led me to work for Pen­dle Hill and, now by exten­sion, FGC.  A lot of cut­ting edge Quak­er thought is being shared through blogs.

I thought it might be use­ful to fill in a lit­tle bit of this sto­ry. If you go read­ing through the back com­ments on Bar­ry’s blog you’ll see it’s a time machine into the ear­ly Quak­er blog­ging com­mu­ni­ty. I first post­ed about his blog in Feb­ru­ary of 2005 with Quak­er Dhar­ma: Let the Light Shine and I high­light­ed him reg­u­lar­ly (March, April, June) until the proto-QuakerQuaker “Blog Watch” start­ed run­ning. There I fea­tured him twice that June and twice more in August, the most active peri­od of his blogging.

It’s nos­tal­gic to look through the com­menters: Joe G., Peter­son Toscano, Mitchell San­tine Gould, Dave Carl, Bar­bara Q, Robin M, Brandice (Quak­er Mon­key), Eric Muhr, Nan­cy A… There were some good dis­cus­sions. Bar­ry’s most exu­ber­ant post was Let’s Begin, and LizOpp and I espe­cial­ly labored with him to ground what was a very clear and obvi­ous lead­ing by hook­ing up with oth­er Friends local­ly and nation­al­ly who were inter­est­ed in these efforts. I offered my help in hook­ing him up with FGC  and he wrote back “If you know peo­ple at oth­er Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions that you wish me to speak to and coor­di­nate with or pos­si­bly work for, I will.”

And that’s what I did. My super­vi­sor, FGC Devel­op­ment head Michael Waj­da, was plan­ning a trip to Texas and I start­ed talk­ing up Bar­ry Cross­no. I had a hunch they’d like each oth­er. I told Michael that Bar­ry had a lot of expe­ri­ence and a very clear lead­ing but need­ed to spend some time grow­ing as a Quak­er – an incu­ba­tion peri­od, if you will, among ground­ed Friends. In the first part of the FGC inter­view he mov­ing­ly talks about the ground­ing his time at Pen­dle Hill has giv­en him.

In Octo­ber 2006 he announced he was clos­ing a blog that had become large­ly dor­mant. It’s worth quot­ing that first for­mal goodbye:

I want to thank those of you who chose to active­ly par­tic­i­pate. I learned a lot through our exchanges and I think there were many peo­ple who ben­e­fit­ed from many of the posts you left. On a pure­ly per­son­al note, I learned that it’s good to tem­per my need to GO DO NOW. Some of you real­ly helped men­tor me con­cern­ing effec­tive­ly lis­ten­ing to guid­ance and help­ing me under­stand that act­ing local­ly may be bet­ter than try­ing to take on the whole world at once.

I also want to share that I met some peo­ple and made con­tacts through this process that have opened tremen­dous doors for me and my abil­i­ty to put myself in ser­vice to oth­ers. For this I am deeply grate­ful. I feel sure that some of these ties will live on past the clos­ing of the Quak­er Dharma.

Those of you famil­iar with pieces like The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion and Pass­ing the Faith, Plan­et of the Quak­ers Style know I’ve long been wor­ried that we’ve not doing a good job iden­ti­fy­ing, sup­port­ing and retain­ing vision­ary new Friends. Around 2004 I stopped com­plain­ing (most­ly) and just start­ed look­ing for oth­ers who also held this con­cern. The online orga­niz­ing has spilled over into real world con­fer­ences and work­shops and is much big­ger than one web­site or small group. Now we see “grad­u­ates” of this net­work start­ing to take on real-world responsibilities.

Bar­ry’s a bright guy with a strong lead­ing and a healthy ambi­tion. He would have cer­tain­ly made some­thing of him­self with­out the blogs and the “doors” opened up by myself and oth­ers. But it would have cer­tain­ly tak­en him longer to crack the Philadel­phia scene and I think it very like­ly that FGC would have announced a dif­fer­ent Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary this week if it weren’t for the blogs.

Quak­erQuak­er almost cer­tain­ly has more future Gen­er­al Sec­re­taries in its mem­ber­ship rolls. But it would be a shame to focus on that or to imply that the pin­na­cle of a Quak­er lead­ing is mov­ing to Philadel­phia. Many parts of the Quak­er world are already too enthralled by it’s staff lists. What we need is to extend a cul­ture of every­day Friends ready to bold­ly exclaim the Good News – to love God and their neigh­bor and to leap with joy by the pres­ence of the Inward Christ. Friends’ cul­ture should­n’t focus on staffing, flashy pro­grams or fundrais­ing hype.  At the end of the day, spir­i­tu­al out­reach is a one-on-one activ­i­ty. It’s peo­ple spend­ing the time to find one anoth­er, share their spir­i­tu­al jour­ney and share oppor­tu­ni­ties to grow in their faith.

Quak­erQuak­er has evolved a lot since 2005. It now has a team of edi­tors, dis­cus­sion boards, Face­book and Twit­ter streams, and the site itself reach­es over 100,000 read­ers a year. But it’s still about find­ing each oth­er and encour­ag­ing each oth­er. I think we’ve proven that these over­lap­ping, dis­trib­uted, largely-unfunded online ini­tia­tives can play a crit­i­cal out­reach role for the Soci­ety of Friends. What would it look like for the “old style” Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions to start sup­port­ing inde­pen­dent Quak­er social media? And how could our net­works rein­vig­o­rate cash-strapped Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions with fresh faces and new mod­els of com­mu­ni­ca­tion? Those are ques­tions for anoth­er post.

Early Friends as reference, not justification

May 23, 2010
· Martin Kelley

My response to the excel­lent Greg Woods’ If I want­ed to live by 1600s stan­dards, I would be Amish. Greg talks about the over-obsession with Ear­ly Friends and the ten­den­cy to use them as ways to accuse oth­ers of un-Quakerism. 

The aca­d­e­m­ic obses­sion with Quak­er his­to­ry is about 100 years old or so. From the begin­ning the rise of “Quak­er his­to­ry” has been tied to the argu­ments of the day. We want to boil “Quak­erism” down to it essen­tials and sep­a­rate out what is core from what was an arti­fact of 17th cen­tu­ry Eng­land. Each branch rais­es up his­to­ri­ans who argue that its church­es’ focus is the essen­tial of those ear­ly Friends.

I con­scious­ly try not to use ear­ly Friends as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. But I do use them for ref­er­ence. I think a lot of the prob­lem is we all have stereo­types about them. When I go back and read the old Books of Dis­ci­pline, I find them much more nuanced and interior-focused than we give them cred­it for. 

Greg men­tioned tav­erns, for exam­ple. It’s not that ear­li­er Friends thought every­one could­n’t han­dle their liquor. They saw that some peo­ple could­n’t and that spend­ing a lot of time there tend­ed to affect one’s dis­cern­ment and God-centeredness. They also saw that some peo­ple got real­ly messed up by alco­hol and even­tu­al­ly came to the con­clu­sion that the safest way to pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble in the spir­i­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty was to stay out. 

The obser­va­tions and log­ic are still valid. I’ve known senior mem­bers of past Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties who have had alco­hol prob­lems but we don’t know how to talk about it because we’ve decid­ed it’s a per­son­al decision. 

What I try to do is not focus on the con­clu­sions of ear­ly Friends but to drop into the con­ver­sa­tions of ear­ly Friends. As I said, the old Books of Dis­ci­pline are sur­pris­ing­ly rel­e­vant. And I love Thomas Clark­son, an Angli­can who explained Quak­er ways in 1700 and talked about the soci­ol­o­gy of it more than Friends them­selves did. It’s a good way of sep­a­rat­ing out rules from knowl­edge. When we ground our­selves that way, we can more read­i­ly decide which of the clas­sic Quak­er tes­ti­monies are still rel­e­vant. That keeps us a liv­ing com­mu­ni­ty tes­ti­fy­ing to the peo­ple of today. For what it’s worth, there’s quite a bit of main­stream inter­est in the stodgy tra­di­tions most of us have cast off as irrelevant.… 

Slim Goodbody Facebook Fan Page

November 8, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Facebook Branding: Slim GoodbodyPop­u­lar chil­dren’s entertainer/educator Slim Good­body is one busy guy: most week­days of the school year find him spread­ing the mes­sage of good health in his trade­mark body suit (“When a Body needs some­body there’s nobody like Good­body!”).

He’s been doing this work for decades now and has a vast store­house of videos, prod­ucts and fans.
Slim came to me to build a brand­ed Face­book presence. 

A typ­i­cal work­load for a Face­book brand­ing project is:

  • Set up the Page;
  • Coor­di­nate with the client for a good pro­file graphic;
  • Adding a num­ber of pho­tos and videos;
  • Help set up a post­ing strategy;
  • Pro­vide phone sup­port to answer ques­tions on best practices;
  • Give feed­back on cam­paign (like Face­book’s “Insights” stats)

For Slim, we decid­ed to rely on Face­book’s native apps as much as pos­si­ble. This became espe­cial­ly impor­tant when Face­book shift­ed it’s feed lay­out (yet again) to focus less on user streams and more on an algorithmically-determined best posts. The more inte­grat­ed your site is with Face­book, the bet­ter chance your pieces will have of show­ing up on Fan’s user streams.

We used Face­book Markup Lan­guage (FBML) to cre­ate cus­tom Page tabs for inte­gra­tion with his exist­ing online store and list­ing of tour dates. We would have liked to use FB’s Events appli­ca­tion but it does­n’t allow for the vol­ume of tour dates nec­es­sary to cov­er a busy enter­tain­er like Slim Goodbody!

See it live: www​.face​book​.com/​s​l​i​m​g​o​o​d​b​ody