Tag Archives ⇒ freedom

The Cycles of War

September 11, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Twenty-two years ago I was on my hon­ey­moon, whale watch­ing off the coast of Maine, obliv­i­ous to the world. My wife and I had stopped in a cute lit­tle mar­ket when a few snip­pets of words broke through my con­scious­ness from the radio play­ing in the back­ground. I first noticed the hushed solem­ni­ty of the NPR hosts, then dis­joint­ed words: plane, crashed, tow­ers.

Like every­one, we quick­ly pieced togeth­er the hor­ror hap­pen­ing in real time: sec­ond plane, jumpers, col­lapsed. I was pub­lish­ing Non​vi​o​lence​.org then, a peace por­tal, and felt I had to say some­thing, any­thing, so I rushed to the pub­lic com­put­er at the local library. There was a queue of wor­ried patrons want­i­ng to mes­sage loved ones. In a few moments I typed out some rushed words:

Today’s ter­ror­ist attacks are sim­ply hor­ren­dous, thou­sands of inno­cents might well lose their lives. Most impor­tant now is to sit patient­ly, to pray and to not call for mas­sive indis­crim­i­nant attacks that might only kill thou­sands more. Our char­ac­ter as a nation is being test­ed now. We must pray and heal and not respond in a hatred that will only fuel the cycle of war, glob­al injustice

We know how that turned out. Three thou­sand dead in New York and West­ern Penn­syl­va­nia, fol­lowed by hun­dreds of thou­sands in West­ern Asia. Decades of wars in Afghanistan. A sec­ond war in Iraq prompt­ed by the flim­si­est and most unlike­ly of excus­es. Today, after all the blood, those coun­tries are hos­tile and unsta­ble. Yet two of the coun­tries co-responsible were U.S. allies, are still U.S. allies. The 9/11 attacks was planned and large­ly exe­cut­ed by Saud­is; Osama bin Laden was final­ly found liv­ing out in the open in Pak­istan in an upper class com­pound a short walk from the gates of the coun­try’s mil­i­tary acad­e­my. I’m glad we did­n’t invade Sau­di Ara­bia and Pak­istan but it makes one won­der what the oth­er wars were meant to accomplish.

This week many peo­ple are gath­er­ing to remem­ber 9/11, as they should. It was a hor­rif­ic attack. It struck our sense of safe­ty and fueled night­mares and tears. But when do we as U.S. cit­i­zens gath­er to think about how we react­ed? When do we remem­ber hun­dreds of thou­sands who have died since 9/11 in the name of ret­ri­bu­tion and a fear­ful revenge we’ve called free­dom?

Somberly dressed men astride horses

October 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Colonial-era Quak­ers weren’t all saints when it came to oppos­ing slav­ery but there are some moments we afford to look back to with a smidge of pride. In 1783, a del­e­ga­tion from Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing walked into the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress to make good on all that “cre­at­ed equal” language.

Prince­ton vil­lagers and mem­bers of the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress beheld the arrival of an unusu­al del­e­ga­tion of somber­ly dressed men astride hors­es. They had come from Philadel­phia to raise an issue that the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress did not wish to address: the plight of half a mil­lion Amer­i­can res­i­dents — one-fifth of the peo­ple — who had been lis­ten­ing to mem­o­rable words about inalien­able rights and how Amer­i­ca would ush­er in a new age of free­dom and jus­tice, but who were con­demned along with their chil­dren to life­long slav­ery. The four men car­ried a parch­ment titled “The Address of the Peo­ple Called Quakers.” 

The author, Gary Nash, has a book out about Wal­ter Mif­flin, one of the four, which Friends Jour­nal reviewed this April.

As I recall, the transat­lantic slave trade went into over­drive in the new­ly inde­pen­dent Unit­ed States. If the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress has lis­tened, the com­plex­ion and char­ac­ter and his­to­ry of the U.S. would be far different.
 
https://​paw​.prince​ton​.edu/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​m​o​m​e​n​t​-​n​a​s​s​a​u​-​h​all

March 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

That one final­ly becomes the thing he vio­lent­ly fights is a fact that Hitler under­stood, in 1933, when he said, “The great strength of the total­i­tar­i­an state is that it forces those who fear it to imi­tate it.” It would be a trag­ic thing indeed if we Amer­i­cans were stripped of our free­dom by a for­eign and aggres­sive pow­er; it is all the more trag­ic that we grad­u­al­ly and some­what unknow­ing­ly give up our free­doms, one after anoth­er, in the pur­suit of that force which we claim will guard our liberty.

— Bayard Rustin [Source]

Decline and persistence, part two

March 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

So much to chew on in Johan Mau­r­er’s Decline and per­sis­tence, part two. Find a good chair and take the time to read.

Friends the­ol­o­gy strips away all irrel­e­vant social dis­tinc­tions, giv­ing us the poten­tial for rad­i­cal hos­pi­tal­i­ty, but that requires us to neu­tral­ize elit­ist sig­nals of all kinds with a hunger to taste heav­en’s diver­si­ty here and now. If it takes a whole new con­ver­sion to give us the nec­es­sary free­dom and emo­tion­al range in place of old class anx­i­eties, so be it.

http://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​3​/​d​e​c​l​i​n​e​-​a​n​d​-​p​e​r​s​i​s​t​e​n​c​e​-​p​a​r​t​-​t​w​o​.​h​tml

Should We Torch Our Meetinghouses?

July 6, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Burn­ing down the meet­ing­house is a metaphor for the true free­dom that we find when we renounce all the things that we put before God. What would it look like for younger Friends to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for lead­er­ship with­in our Year­ly Meet­ings, not wait­ing for per­mis­sion or validation?

Together in the Truth
Togeth­er in the Truth 

There­fore, since we are receiv­ing a king­dom that can­not be shak­en, let us give thanks, by which we…

lambswar.blogspot.com lamb​swar​.blogspot​.com

Aggregating our Webs

June 16, 2005
· Martin Kelley

On Beppe­blog, Joe talks about start­ing a clear­ness com­mit­tee [link long gone]to assist him with his strug­gles with Friends. But he also touch­es on some­thing I’ve cer­tain­ly also expe­ri­enced: the impor­tant role this elec­tron­ic fel­low­ship has been playing:

Just the oth­er day I real­ized that I felt more com­fort­able being a Friend since not attend­ing Meet­ing on an ongo­ing basis. My ongo­ing “e‑relationships” via the blo­gos­phere has helped me stay “con­nect­ed”. Observe how pleased I respond­ed to Liz’s recent post (the one that I quot­ed in the post before this one). It’s as if I’m starv­ing for good fel­low­ship of some kind or another.

There’s even more talk about internet-mediated discernment/fellowship in the “com­ments to his followup.

Giv­en all this, I’m not sure if I’ve ever high­light­ed a “vision for an expand­ed Quak­er Ranter site” that I put togeth­er for a “youth lead­er­ship” grant in Third Month:

I’ve been blessed to meet many of my [age] peers with a clear call to inspired min­istry. Most of these Friends have since left the Soci­ety, frus­trat­ed both by month­ly meet­ings and Quak­er bod­ies that did­n’t know what to do with a bold min­istry and by a lack of men­tor­ing elder­ship that could help sea­son these young min­is­ters and deep­en their under­stand­ing of gospel order. I would like to put togeth­er an inde­pen­dent online pub­li­ca­tion… This would explic­it­ly reach out across the dif­fer­ent braches of Friends and even to var­i­ous seek­er move­ments like the so-called “Emer­gent Church Movement.”

As I’ve writ­ten I was select­ed for one of their fel­low­ships (yea!!) but for an amount that was point­ed­ly too low to actu­al­ly fund much (huh??). There’s some­thing in the air how­ev­er. “Quak­er Dhar­ma” is ask­ing sim­i­lar ques­tions and Russ Nel­son’s “Plan­etQuak­er” is a sometimes-awkward auto­mat­ed answer (do its read­ers real­ly want to see the ultra­sounds?). I’m not sure any of these com­bo sites could actu­al­ly work bet­ter than their con­stituent parts. I find myself unin­ter­est­ed in most group blogs, aggre­ga­tors, and for­mal web­sites. The invi­did­ual voice is so important.

And don’t we already have a group project going with all the cross-reading and cross-linking we’re doing. Is that what Joe was talk­ing about? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found some new inter­est­ing blog­ger and went to post a wel­come in their com­ments only to have found that Joe or LizOpp had beat­en me to it. (Some of us are to the point of read­ing each oth­er’s minds. I think I could prob­a­bly write a great Beppe or LizOpp post and vice-versa.) Is this impulse to for­mal­ize these rela­tion­ships just a throw­back to old ideas of publishing?

Maybe the web’s form of hyper­link­ing is actu­al­ly supe­ri­or to Old Media pub­lish­ing. I love how I can put for­ward a strong vision of Quak­erism with­out offend­ing any­one – any put-off read­ers can hit the “back” but­ton. And if a blog I read posts some­thing I don’t agree with, I can sim­ply choose not to com­ment. If life’s just too busy then I just miss a few weeks of posts. With my “Sub­jec­tive Guide to Quak­er Blogs” and my “On the Web” posts I high­light the blog­gers I find par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing, even when I’m not in per­fect the­o­log­i­cal uni­ty. I like that I can have dis­cus­sions back and forth with Friends who I don’t exact­ly agree with.

I have noth­ing to announce, no clear plan for­ward and no mon­ey to do any­thing any­way. But I thought it’d be inter­est­ing to hear what oth­ers have been think­ing along these lines.