Tag Archives ⇒ future

Letters back to the future and Quaker lingo

August 12, 2021
· Martin Kelley

Elaine Green Ves­sels of Hon­or in the House of God does some­thing inter­est­ing in this week’s fea­tured Friends Jour­nal arti­cle: she answers an epis­tle writ­ten by a trav­el­ing Friend in 1755. Samuel Fothergill wrote his let­ter from Nan­tuck­et to Friends back home at Pen­keth Meet­ing. Mod­ern Friends tend to either over-idolize or dis­miss ear­ly Friends so it’s refresh­ing to see some­one attempt­ing to engage in con­ver­sa­tion across two and a half centuries.

On Quak­er­S­peak there’s a new ensem­ble video, What Are Your Favorite Quak­er Words or Pas­sages?. Five Friends share their favorite turns of phras­es from mod­ern Quak­er lingo.

What Are Your Favorite Quak­er Words or Passages?

Hey y’all, let’s start a blog!

January 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Okay, it’s not specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er – it’s not actu­al­ly at all Quak­er – but I like the think­ing behind Why You Should Start a Blog in 2019 by Ernie Smith in Tedi­um. Long-time read­ers will know I usu­al­ly have at least a post a year in which I blog about blog­ging. This time I’ll let Ernie talk about the ratio­nales and needs for a blog­ging culture:

We could use a lit­tle momen­tum. A decade ago, as I was get­ting start­ed with this, plat­forms like Face­book took advan­tage of our desire for a sim­pler option and used it to silo up our data, lock and key. We lost an excit­ing blo­gos­phere in the midst of all of this — and the first step towards get­ting it back is by real­iz­ing that own­er­ship should be a first class cit­i­zen, whether or not we even­tu­al­ly give away those words, sell them, or keep them close to our chest. A blog that you own, that you pay the host­ing bill for? That’s the first step — a form of expres­sion that should be the future (because after all, how awe­some is it that any­one can own a print­ing press?!?) but some­how became the past.

I haven’t been updat­ing this Quak­er Dai­ly Read as much as I’d like over the last month or so. That’s part­ly the result of an ear­ly Decem­ber vaca­tion and then the chaos of late Decem­ber hol­i­days with the fam­i­ly. I’m sure I’ve missed some great posts that I should have shared but there’s also days when I run through my RSS col­lec­tion (I use Feed­ly to fol­low about a hun­dred or so blogs) and find noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly fresh or inter­est­ing. I’d love to see more of us trad­ing the Face­book dopamine-rush imme­di­a­cy for some more thought­ful writ­ing and conversation.

https://​tedi​um​.co/​2​0​1​9​/​0​1​/​0​1​/​2​0​1​9​-​i​n​d​e​p​e​n​d​e​n​t​-​b​l​o​g​g​i​n​g​-​t​r​e​n​ds/

Friend Jocelyn Bell Burnell gets Breakthrough Prize

September 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Famous­ly over­looked for a Nobel, the Quak­er sci­en­tist has won an award that she will put toward diver­si­fy­ing future researchers:

She’s being giv­en the award for her “fun­da­men­tal con­tri­bu­tions to the dis­cov­ery of pul­sars, and a life­time of inspir­ing lead­er­ship in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty,” accord­ing to a state­ment from the prize board. Bell Bur­nell told the BBC she plans to give all of her prize mon­ey to women, eth­nic minori­ties and refugee stu­dents aim­ing to become physics researchers. 

You can read more about Bell Bur­nell on her Quak­ers in the World page.

https://​www​.usato​day​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​n​a​t​i​o​n​-​n​o​w​/​2​0​1​8​/​0​9​/​0​7​/​j​o​c​e​l​y​n​-​b​e​l​l​-​b​u​r​n​e​l​l​s​-​1​9​6​7​-​n​o​b​e​l​-​p​u​l​s​a​r​s​-​b​r​e​a​k​t​h​r​o​u​g​h​-​p​r​i​z​e​-​s​c​i​e​n​c​e​/​1​2​2​0​9​3​6​0​02/

Tip of the hat to Doug Ben­nett for the sug­ges­tion and links.

Doug Gwyn on QuakerSpeak: What Does Quakerism Teach About Connecting to Nature?

September 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A new video from Quak­er his­to­ri­an Gwyn:

Con­nect­ing with nature is about more than just exer­cise or tran­quil­i­ty. As Quak­er author Doug Gwyn shares, even in the 17th cen­tu­ry, Quak­ers were con­cerned about our dis­con­nec­tion with the nat­ur­al world and what it would mean for the future.

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​w​h​a​t​-​d​o​e​s​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​i​s​m​-​t​e​a​c​h​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​c​o​n​n​e​c​t​i​n​g​-​t​o​-​n​a​t​u​re/

Paul Parker: 5 ways to make Quaker meeting houses work for the future

August 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The record­ing clerk of Britain Year­ly Meet­ing looks at five ways we can keep our wor­ship spaces active and visible:

We can often get very loy­al to our meet­ing places, and I think that’s nat­ur­al. We’ve often had some of our most pro­found per­son­al expe­ri­ences there. They are impor­tant places of com­mu­ni­ty and wor­ship, and they can and do work hard for us. But our loy­al­ty to them does­n’t mean that they’re going to work for every­one, and if they’re not going to become ‘steeple hous­es’, then I think it’s impor­tant that we look at them every now and again and ask our­selves some questions. 

http://www.quaker.org.uk/blog/5‑ways-to-make-quaker-meeting-houses-work-for-the-future

Jeff Kisling: Resist not evil today

August 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

When look­ing back to Nazi Ger­many in the 1930s are we so sure God Could not have found a way?

Hen­ry Cad­bury believed the Jew­ish peo­ple should have appealed to the Ger­man sense of jus­tice and nation­al con­science. Then those Ger­mans would have stood up for the Jew­ish peo­ple, and pre­vent­ed the Nazis from acquir­ing pow­er. The death camps would not have happened.

Many prob­a­bly think that is naive and could not have worked. But that is what non­vi­o­lence is about, con­nect­ing with those you are hop­ing to change. Lis­ten­ing deeply and being will­ing to change your­self. This is also what faith is about, believ­ing in the pres­ence of God today. Believ­ing that as you lis­ten close­ly you will be guid­ed by the Inner Light. Believ­ing some­how God will find a way.

There’s a fine line between ide­al­is­tic naiveté and real­is­tic sol­i­dar­i­ty. I’m still of the mind that Cad­bury should have har­bored more cyn­i­cism of what was hap­pen­ing as the Nazi Par­ty grew in Ger­many but I can see Jef­f’s point: in 1934, was the future we know inevitable?

https://​kisling​j​eff​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​8​/​1​8​/​r​e​s​i​s​t​-​n​o​t​-​e​v​i​l​-​t​o​d​ay/

Cor­rec­tion: I got my Jeffs mixed up in the orig­i­nal ver­sion of this post. This was writ­ten by Jeff Kisling.

Quakers in Politics Live Web Panel (March 22 2018)

March 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Back last August, Greg Woods noticed that there were some Quak­ers run­ning for U.S. Con­gres­sion­al seats. While modern-day Quak­er politi­cians are not unheard of, they’re also not par­tic­u­lar­ly com­mon and it seemed like there was a bumper crop. The idea to inter­view them took on a momen­tum, even as we start­ed to learn about more can­di­dates. It’s grown into a Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics Live Web Pan­el set to take place on Thurs­day, March 22nd at 3pm EDT. There’s six con­firmed Quak­er can­di­dates and the event is co-sponsored by the Earl­ham School of Reli­gion and Friends Jour­nal. The mod­er­a­tor will be Earl­ham Col­lege Pres­i­dent Alan Price.

The upcom­ing U.S. Con­gres­sion­al mid-term elec­tions already have at least sev­en Quak­er can­di­dates for office. How does their Quak­er faith inform these can­di­dates’ desires to run for Con­gress? What advice would they have for oth­er Quak­ers want­i­ng to run for office in the future?

It’s a pret­ty inter­est­ing bunch and I’m look­ing for­ward to lots of good ques­tions about the inter­sec­tion of faith and pol­i­tics in 2018.


2018 Quakers in Politics Web Panel (Updated Nov 2018)

2018 Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics Web Pan­el (Updat­ed Nov 2018) 

The upcom­ing U.S. Con­gres­sion­al mid-term elec­tions already have at least sev­en Quak­er can­di­dates for office. How does their…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Does our continued existence matter?

February 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I’m always hap­py when Johan Mau­r­er wades into an online dis­cus­sion, as he can often gives a steady­ing long-term view of pan­ics. He’s jumped in with per­spec­tive on the viral arti­cle of the week, Don McCormick­’s Can Quak­erism Sur­vive? from the Feb­ru­ary Friends Jour­nal.

Johan reminds us that alarms about the future of Quak­erism has long been ring­ing and draws on Joshua Brown’s warn­ings about New York Year­ly Meet­ing from 30 years ago! Lest we chalk all this up an inces­sant alarmism, Johan gives some stats about that year­ly meet­ing. Uh-oh:

7,070 (in 1955)
5,124 (in 1985)
3,241 (in 2015)

But Johan goes beyond that to ask some ques­tions that we real­ly need to sit with. For exam­ple, he asks:

Giv­en that we are a micro­scop­ic per­cent­age of the world Chris­t­ian move­ment, do we have an inflat­ed sense of our own impor­tance? Or, to put it more pos­i­tive­ly, could we rest con­tent­ed that our influ­ence on Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship will last beyond our insti­tu­tion­al survival?

This is a must-read blog for any­one any­where on the Quak­er spectrum

The Quaker movement: decline and persistence
The Quak­er move­ment: decline and persistence 

Polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al obser­va­tions in light of Quak­er dis­ci­ple­ship. Recur­ring themes: Rus­sia, peace, evan­ge­lism, blues.

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