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Upcoming FJ submission: “Quaker Spaces”

April 4, 2016
· Martin Kelley

I’ve been mean­ing to get more into the habit of shar­ing upcom­ing Friends Jour­nal issue themes. We start­ed focus­ing on themed issues back around 2012 as a way to bring some diver­si­ty to our sub­ject mat­ter and help encour­age Friends to talk about top­ics that weren’t as regularly-covered.

One of the Greenwich, N.J., Meetinghouses.

One of the Green­wich, N.J., meet­ing­hous­es, Sept 2009

The next issue we’re look­ing to fill is a top­ic I find inter­est­ing: Quak­er Spaces. I’ve joked inter­nal­ly that we could call it “Meet­ing­house Porn,” and while we already have some beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions lined up, I think there’s a real chance at juicy Quak­er the­ol­o­gy in this issue as well.

One of my pet the­o­ries is that since we down­play creeds, we talk the­ol­o­gy in the minu­tia of our meet­ing­hous­es. Not offi­cial­ly of course — our wor­ship spaces are neu­tral, uncon­se­crat­ed, emp­ty build­ings. But as Helen Kobek wrote in our March issue on “Dis­abil­i­ties and Inclu­sion,” we all need phys­i­cal accom­mo­da­tions and these pro­vide tem­plates to express our val­ues. Ear­li­er Friends expressed a the­ol­o­gy that dis­trust­ed forms by devel­op­ing an archi­tec­tur­al style devoid of cross­es, steeples. The clas­sic meet­ing­house looks like a barn, the most down-to-early hum­ble archi­tec­tur­al form a north­ern Eng­lish sheep­herders could imagine.

But the­olo­gies shift. As Friends assim­i­lat­ed, some start­ed tak­ing on oth­er forms and Methodist-like meet­ing­house (even some­times dar­ing­ly called church­es) start­ed pop­ping up. Mod­ern meet­ing­hous­es might have big plate glass win­dows look­ing out over a for­est, a nod to our con­tem­po­rary wor­ship of nature or they might be in a con­vert­ed house in a down-and-out neigh­bor­hood to show our love of social justice.

Top photo is a framed picture of the Lancaster U.K. Meetinghouse from the early 20th century--long benches lined up end to end, balcony. By the time of my visit, there were cushioned independent chairs arranged in a circle.
Top pho­to is of a framed pic­ture of the Lan­cast­er UK Meet­ing­house from the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry – long bench­es lined up the length of the space. By the time of my vis­it in 2003, the bal­cony was gone and the few remain­ing bench­es were rel­e­gat­ed to an out­er ring out­side of cush­ioned chairs arranged in a cir­cle sur­round­ing a round table with flow­ers and copies of Faith and Prac­tice.

But it’s not just the out­sides where the­ol­o­gy shows up. All of the clas­sic North­east­ern U.S. meet­ing­hous­es had rows of bench­es fac­ing for­ward, with ele­vat­ed fenc­ing bench­es reserved for the Quak­er elders. A theologically-infused dis­trust of this mod­el has led many a meet­ing to rearrange the pews into a more cir­cu­lar arrange­ment. Some­times some­one will sneak some­thing into the mid­dle of the space — flow­ers, or a Bible or hym­nal — as if in recog­ni­tion that they don’t find the empti­ness of the Quak­er form suf­fi­cient. If asked, most of these deci­sions will be explained away in a light-hearted man­ner but it’s hard for me to believe there isn’t at least an uncon­scious nod to the­ol­o­gy in some of the choices.

I’d love to hear sto­ries of Friends nego­ti­at­ing the meet­ing space. Has the desire to build or move a meet­ing­house solid­i­fied or divid­ed your meet­ing? Do you share the space with oth­er groups, or rent it out dur­ing the week? If so, how have you decid­ed on the groups that can use it? Have you bick­ered over the details of a space. Here in the North­east, there are many tales of meet­ings com­ing close to schism over the ques­tion of replac­ing ancient horse­hair bench cush­ions, but I’m sure there are con­sid­er­a­tions and debates to be had over the form of fold­ing chairs.

You can find out more about sub­mit­ting to this or any oth­er upcom­ing issue our the Friends Jour­nal Sub­mis­sions page. Oth­er upcom­ing issues are “Cross­ing Cul­tures” and “Social Media and Technology.”

Aug 2016: Quaker Spaces

What do our archi­tec­ture, inte­ri­or design, and meet­ing­house loca­tions say about our the­ol­o­gy and our work in the world? Quak­ers don’t con­se­crate our wor­ship spaces but there’s a strong pull of nos­tal­gia that brings peo­ple into our his­toric build­ings and an unde­ni­able ener­gy to inno­v­a­tive Quak­er spaces. How do our phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions keep us ground­ed or keep us from shar­ing the “Quak­er gospel” more wide­ly? Sub­mis­sions due 5/2/2016.

“My secretary just walked in wearing pants.… and she looks terrific!” and other mom stories

August 14, 2015
· Martin Kelley
2015-08-14 12.53.23
My moth­er’s death notice is in today’s Philadel­phia Inquirer.

Here’s anoth­er instal­la­tion of mom sto­ries, orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten for a longer obit­u­ary than the one run­ning in today’s paper.

A sin­gle par­ent, she earned an asso­ciates degree at Rid­er Col­lege in Tren­ton and worked as a sec­re­tary at a num­ber of Philadelphia-area based orga­ni­za­tions, include Wom­en’s Med­ical Col­lege and the Pres­by­ter­ian Board of Pub­li­ca­tions. In the mid-1960s she became an exec­u­tive sec­re­tary at the newly-formed Colo­nial Penn Life Insur­ance Com­pa­ny. An office fem­i­nist, she liked recount­ing the sto­ry of the day in the 1970s when the women of the office unit­ed to break the dress code by all wear­ing pant suits. A senior vice pres­i­dent was on the phone when she walked into his office and is said to have told his caller “My sec­re­tary just walked in wear­ing pants.… and she looks terrific!”

When Colo­nial Penn lat­er start­ed an in-house com­put­er pro­gram­mer train­ing pro­gram, she signed up imme­di­ate­ly and start­ed a sec­ond career. She approached pro­grams as puz­zles and was espe­cial­ly proud of her abil­i­ty to take oth­er pro­gram­mers’ poorly-written code and turn it into effi­cient, bug-free software.

In the ear­ly 1990s, she moved into her own apart­ment in Jenk­in­town, Pa. She reclaimed a short­ened form of her maid­en name and swapped “Bet­sy” for “Liz.” Dur­ing this time she became a com­mit­ted atten­der at Abing­ton Friends Meet­ing. As clerk of its peace and jus­tice com­mit­tee, she worked to build the con­sen­sus need­ed for the meet­ing to pro­duce a land­mark state­ment on repro­duc­tive rights. As soon as it was passed she said, “next up, a minute on same-sex mar­riage!” In the late 90s, that was still con­tro­ver­sial even with LGBTQ cir­cles and I imag­ine that even the pro­gres­sive folks at Abing­ton were dread­ing the thought she might put this on the agenda!

In her late 60s, she bought her first house, in Philadel­phi­a’s Mount Airy neigh­bor­hood. She loved fix­ing it up and babysit­ting her grand­chil­dren. She nev­er made any strong con­nec­tions with any of the near­by Quak­er Meet­ings only attend­ing wor­ship spo­rad­i­cal­ly after the move. When she was diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease in 2010, she took the news with dig­ni­ty. She moved into an inde­pen­dent liv­ing apart­ment in Atco, N.J. and con­tin­ued an active lifestyle as long as possible.

From concern to action in a few short months

July 1, 2015
· Martin Kelley

rooftop3A grow­ing list of sto­ries is sug­gest­ing that black church­es in the South are being tar­get­ed for arson once again (although one of the more pub­li­cized cas­es seems to be lightning-related). This was a big con­cern in the mid-1990s, a time when a Quak­er pro­gram stepped up to give Friends the chance to trav­el to the South to help rebuild. From a 1996 Friends Jour­nal edi­to­r­i­al:

Some­times a news arti­cle touch­es the heart and moves peo­ple to reach out to one anoth­er in unex­pect­ed ways. So it was this win­ter when the Wash­ing­ton Post pub­lished a piece on the rash of fires that have destroyed black church­es in the South in recent months… When Friend Harold B. Con­fer, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Wash­ing­ton Quak­er Work­camps, saw the arti­cle, he decid­ed to do some­thing about it. After a series of phone calls, he and two col­leagues accept­ed an invi­ta­tion to trav­el to west­ern Alaba­ma and see the fire dam­age for them­selves. They were warm­ly received by the pas­tors and con­gre­ga­tions of the three Greene Coun­ty church­es. Upon their return, they set to work on a plan.

I’m not sure whether Con­fer­’s plan is the right tem­plate to fol­low this time, but it’s a great sto­ry because it shows the impor­tance of hav­ing a strong grass­roots Quak­er ecosys­tem. I don’t believe the Wash­ing­ton Quak­er Work­camps were ever a par­tic­u­lar­ly well-funded project. But by 1996 they had been run­ning for ten years and had built up cred­i­bil­i­ty, a fol­low­ing, and the abil­i­ty to cross cul­tur­al lines in the name of ser­vice. The small­er orga­ni­za­tion­al size meant that a news­pa­per arti­cle could prompt a flur­ry of phone calls and vis­its and a fully-realized pro­gram oppor­tu­ni­ty in a remark­ably short amount of time.

A first-hand account of the work­camps by Kim Roberts was pub­lished lat­er than year, Rebuild­ing Church­es in Rur­al Alaba­ma: One Volunteer’s Expe­ri­ence. The D.C.-based work­camp pro­gram con­tin­ues in mod­i­fied form to this day as the William Penn Quak­er Work­camps.

Update: anoth­er pic­ture from 1996 Alaba­ma, this time from one of my wife Julie’s old pho­to books. She’s sec­ond from the left at the bot­tom, part of the longer-stay con­tin­gent that Roberts mentions.

WQW

What does it mean to be a Quaker?

September 2, 2014
· Martin Kelley

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Craig Bar­nett tries to define Friends:

“I want to sug­gest that there is a liv­ing tra­di­tion of spir­i­tu­al teach­ing and prac­tice that makes up the Quak­er Way, which is not defined by a par­tic­u­lar social group, behav­iour­al norms, or even val­ues and beliefs.”

As usu­al Craig clear­ly artic­u­lates his premise: that Friends have become some­thing of a content-less, lowest-common-denominator group that fears mak­ing belief state­ments that some of our mem­ber­ship would object to.

I agree with most of his analy­sis, though I would add some pieces. I don’t think one can under­stand what it means to be a Quak­er today with­out look­ing at dif­fer­ent types of def­i­n­i­tions. Belief and prac­tices is one part but so is self-identification (which is not nec­es­sar­i­ly mem­ber­ship). We are who we are but we also aren’t. There’s a deep­er real­i­ty in not being able to sep­a­rate Quak­er phi­los­o­phy from the peo­ple who are Quaker.

In this light, I do wish that Craig had­n’t resort­ed to using the jar­gony “Quak­er Way” ten times in a short piece. For those who haven’t got­ten the memo, lib­er­al Friends are no longer sup­posed to say “Quak­erism” (which implies a tra­di­tion and prac­tice that is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the denom­i­na­tor of our mem­ber’s indi­vid­ual the­olo­gies) but instead use the vaguer “Quak­er Way.” In my obser­va­tion, it’s most­ly a bureau­crat­ic pref­er­ence: we want to imply there is sub­stance but don’t want to actu­al­ly name it for fear of start­ing a fight. Con­tent­less lan­guage has become its own art form, one that can suck the air out of robust dis­cus­sions. A truly-vital liv­ing tra­di­tion should be able to speak in dif­fer­ent accents.

A modern-day Commonplace Book?

May 14, 2013
· Martin Kelley

blankFrom a post by Jamie Todd Rubin, “Going Paper­less: How Penul­ti­mate and Ever­note Have Replaced My Pock­et Note­book,” I’ve learned the con­cept of the “Com­mon­place Book,” which he attrib­ut­es it to Jefferson:

The notion for the “com­mon­place book” comes from Thomas Jef­fer­son, who used just such a book to cap­ture pret­ty much any­thing: pas­sages from books he was read­ing, notes, sketch­es, you name it.

Wikipedia takes it fur­ther back in its entry on Com­mon­place books. The name comes from the latin locus com­mu­nis and the form got its start in a new form of fifteen-century bound journal:

Such books were essen­tial­ly scrap­books filled with items of every kind: med­ical recipes, quotes, let­ters, poems, tables of weights and mea­sures, proverbs, prayers, legal for­mu­las. Com­mon­places were used by read­ers, writ­ers, stu­dents, and schol­ars as an aid for remem­ber­ing use­ful con­cepts or facts they had learned. Each com­mon­place book was unique to its cre­ator’s par­tic­u­lar interests.

I real­ly like this idea. I’ve been think­ing a lot about work­flows recent­ly (and lis­ten­ing to way too many geek pod­casts on my com­mute). I’ve been mud­dling my way toward some­thing like this. I’m cur­rent­ly using Ever­note to log a lot of my life but there’s scraps of inter­est­ing tid­bits that have no home. An exam­ple from half an hour ago: I was lis­ten­ing to Pan­do­ra the train when along came an unfa­mil­iar song I want­ed to remem­ber for lat­er. A Com­mon­place book would be a nat­ur­al place to record this infor­ma­tion (First Aid Kit’s Lion’s Roar if you must know, think Bon­nie Raitt steps out with Townes van Zandt for a secret assig­na­tion at a Stock­holm open mic night.)

Of course, being a twenty-first cen­tu­ry dig­i­tal native, my work­flow would be elec­tron­ic. What I imag­ine is a sin­gle Ever­note page that holds a mon­th’s worth of the bits that come along. I have some­thing sim­i­lar with a log, a sin­gle file with one line entries (lots of Ifttt automa­tions like logged Foursquare check-ins, along with notes-to-self of mile­stones like issues sent to press, etc.). I’ll start set­ting this up.

Elisabeth Olver, Artist & Painter

September 4, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Elisabeth Olver ArtistElis­a­beth is a painter and artist who spe­cial­izes in orig­i­nal acrylic paint­ings and giclee prints of nature and South Jer­sey beach scenes. Her exist­ing site was attrac­tive, but it did­n’t have online order­ing and she was­n’t able to update it herself.

We put togeth­er a fea­tures list and then went through a round of con­cept screen­shots which I built in Adobe Fire­works and Pho­to­shop (you can see our work here!). Design in hand, I built a cus­tomized Mov­able Type site. A spe­cial­ized tem­plate allows her to enter infor­ma­tion about the each piece: medi­um, theme, price and the URL to it’s image (most of which are host­ed on Flickr). Mov­able Type pulls these togeth­er into var­i­ous cat­e­go­ry and indi­vid­ual art pages, with automatically-generated Pay­pal “Buy” but­tons for avail­able pieces. We stressed search-engine vis­i­bil­i­ty so there are many cat­e­gories and they all cross-link with each painting.

Vis­it: Elis­a­beth Olver

Cornerstone Fellowship

July 28, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Cornerstone FellowshipCor­ner­stone is a rel­a­tive­ly new church plant in Smithville, Atlantic Coun­ty, New Jer­sey. They’re site is a sim­ple design built in Mov­able Type using off-the-shelf tem­plates to keep the bud­get down. The most excit­ing part of the site is the pod­cast ser­mons and the abil­i­ty to ask Bible ques­tions and make prayer requests from the home­page. I’m most hap­py to see the church using the site and updat­ing it regularly!

Pas­tor Fred Schwenger also has a new local con­nec­tion: he and a part­ner have just opened Supe­ri­or Auto­mo­tive here in Ham­mon­ton at 880 S White Horse Pike! 

Vis­it: Cor​ner​stone​Fel​low​shipOn​line​.com