Call off the search parties

March 10, 2007

The retreat at the Carmelite Monastery was nice. Here’s some pic­tures, the first of those “long-remembered”:/if_i_dont_make_it_back.php tall stone walls and the rest of the beau­ti­ful chapel:
Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia
It was a silent retreat – for us at least. There were three talks about “Tere­sa of Avila”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_Avila giv­en by Father Tim Byer­ley, who also works with the “Col­legium Center”:http://www.collegiumcenter.org/about.php, a kind of reli­gious edu­ca­tion out­reach project for young adult Catholics in South Jer­sey (I men­tioned it “a few months ago”:https://www.quakerranter.org/teaching_quakerism_again.php as a mod­el of young adult youth out­reach that Friends might want to con­sid­er). Much of what Tere­sa has to say about prayer is uni­ver­sal and very applic­a­ble to Friends, though I have to admit I start­ed spac­ing out by around the fourth man­sion of the “Inte­ri­or Castle”:http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2.toc.html (I’ve nev­er been good with num­bered reli­gious steps!).
I’m in no dan­ger of fol­low­ing my wife Julie’s jour­ney from Friends to Catholi­cism, though as always I very much enjoyed being in the midst of a gath­ered group com­mit­ted to a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. The idea of reli­gious life as self-abnegation is an impor­tant one for all Chris­tians in an age where “me-ism”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScWdek6_Ids&eurl has become the “sec­u­lar state religion”:http://www.walmart.com/ and I hope to return to it in the near future.

If I don’t make it back.…

March 9, 2007

Monastery entranceTomor­row Julie and I are going on an all-day Lenten retreat at a Carmelite Monastery on Old York Road in Philadel­phia. She’s giv­en me creedal cheat sheets in case I feel led to read along, as I have to fake it on any­thing past the The Lord’s Prayer.
The monastery has forty-foot tall stone walls all around and is locat­ed a few blocks from where I grew up (pic­ture cour­tesy the “monastery’s organ­ist’s webpage”:http://home.att.net/~lucycarroll/page5.html) and it was a place of some intrigue. When­ev­er we would dri­ve by I’d press my face against the car win­dows think­ing maybe I’d catch a glimpse of a nun swing­ing her­self over the wall in an escape attempt. Need­less to say I was­n’t brought up Catholic or even Catholic-friendly and so did­n’t real­ize how ridicu­lous this imag­in­ing of mine was. Still, I’ve prob­a­bly nev­er passed the monastery as an adult with­out tak­ing a quick peek at those walls. In twelve hours I enter them myself!
Julie’s gone on the retreat a num­ber of times (it’s usu­al­ly women-only) and has always been released to my con­nu­bial arms at end’s day. Still, just in case some­thing hap­pens, y’all know where to look! The kids are going to be with Julie’s sis­ter and their cousin and should have a good time.

Vacation from reality

December 5, 2006

Okay, yes it’s insane to go on a vaca­tion when one is unem­ployed. But logis­ti­cal­ly, it’s the best time to go: no jug­gling work sched­ules, no fin­ish­ing up projects before you go, no tak­ing cell phone calls from har­ried col­leagues. Julie had saved up the mon­ey and start­ed plan­ning a get­away this sum­mer and reser­va­tions were all in place when I sud­den­ly found myself out of a job. We could have can­celed but Octo­ber brought us more than our share of dis­ap­point­ments and we decid­ed to go for it. Three guess­es where we are:
Walking right down the middle of Main Street USA Walking right down the middle of Main Street USA Walking right down the middle of Main Street USA Disney family
h3. More photos:

www.flickr.com


See “all the WDW photos”:http://flickr.com/photos/martin_kelley/tags/wdw2006/

Uh-Oh: Beppe’s Doubts

March 9, 2005

I’ve occa­sion­al­ly thought of Beppe­blog’s  Joe Gua­da as my blog­ging Quak­er dopple­ganger. More than once he’s writ­ten the post I was about to write. And more than one impor­tant arti­cle of mine start­ed as com­men­tary to one of his insight­ful articles.

So I’m wor­ried that he’s writ­ten the first of a mul­ti­part arti­cle ask­ing Is it time to leave Quak­erism. I’m wor­ried not just that Quak­erism would lose a bright Light, etc., etc, but because I know that now I’m going to have to pub­licly mull over the ques­tion that’s a con­stant back­ground hum that I try not to think about.

Update: just to prove my point, my com­ment to Joe’s post was more inter­est­ing that my post point­ing to his post. Here’s the com­ment I just left there:

There was one day in wor­ship a few years ago right around the time when my wife Julie decid­ed to leave Quak­erism when I had this odd vision. I imag­ined us as boul­ders the front edge of a water­fall. Thou­sands of gal­lons of water swept over us every day, erod­ing and scar­ring our sur­face and under­min­ing the frag­ile base we were on. When Boul­der Julie final­ly dis­lodged and fell off the precipice of Quak­erism, I real­ized that one of the rocks that had held me in place was now gone and now there was going to be even more water and pres­sure try­ing to push me off.
I say this because you’ve become one of my blog­ging rocks, some­one who con­firms that I’m not a total nut­case. If you went over the edge I’d have to reassess my sit­u­a­tion and at least take a peek down myself. At the very least I’m going to have to blog about why I’ve stayed so long. I’m sure this is only part one to my com­men­tary on these issues…

FGC Gathering Workshop

January 29, 2005

This fall Zachary Moon and I put togeth­er a work­shop pro­pos­al for the 2005 Gath­er­ing, which has been approved: “Strangers to the Covenant” is the title and here’s the short description:

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. We’ll con­nect with his­tor­i­cal Quak­ers whose pow­er­ful min­istry came in their teens and twen­ties and 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 pow­er of the tes­ti­monies and our wit­ness in the world.

This was very much an “as way opens” process. At the 2004 Gath­er­ing I felt sad that there weren’t more work­shops that I’d like to attend. And obvi­ous­ly I have a long-standing con­cern to sup­port younger Friends. But I was­n’t sure if I had the skills to han­dle this. One piece of dis­cern­ment was lead­ing the Quak­erism 101 class at Med­ford Meet­ing: I knew I would have most of the ses­sions under my belt by the time the work­shop sub­mis­sion dead­line came around and I hoped I’d have a feel whether I actu­al­ly like lead­ing workshops!

The Med­ford expe­ri­ence was sur­pris­ing­ly good, even on weeks where I could have been bet­ter pre­pared. I learned a lot and gained con­fi­dence in “teach­ing” Quak­erism to Med­ford’s class of very weighty, expe­ri­enced Friends.

Still, the Gath­er­ing work­shop sub­mis­sion dead­line was loom­ing and I had no spe­cif­ic top­ic in mind. Julie, my wife, was get­ting a lit­tle sus­pi­cious whether the work­shop would hap­pen or not. I knew that the most impor­tant thing was attract­ing the right mix of eager, curi­ous par­tic­i­pants and that for me the top­ic was almost sec­ondary. Still: a focus and top­ic is impor­tant, yes.

The week before the dead­line, I attend­ed the FGC Cen­tral Com­mit­tee meet­ing in New Wind­sor, Mary­land, as a staff­per­son. In a lunchtime dis­cus­sion I learned that my friend Zachary Moon was also con­sid­er­ing lead­ing his first work­shop. As soon as we sat down and start­ed talk­ing it seemed like the obvi­ous thing to do. The dis­cern­ment to co-lead this took two a half sec­onds or so, but of course this quick process was built on the thought, prayer and dis­cern­ment both of us had already been giv­ing the mat­ter. I’ve found that when I’ve laid the ground­work for a deci­sion, things can often move supris­ing­ly quickly.

The work­shop has devel­oped dif­fer­ent­ly than I sus­pect­ed. The most sig­ni­cant piece is its age lim­i­ta­tion: it’s for high school and adult young Friends only, mean­ing it’s par­tic­i­pa­tion is lim­it­ed to 15 to 35 years olds. I’ve always been a lit­tle wor­ried about con­struct­ing youth ghet­tos but I think it will work in this case. I apol­o­gize in advance to those Quak­er Ranter read­ers who might like to take it but can’t because of age (I’m too old myself, after all!). There will be many oth­er chances to spend time at Gath­er­ing and Zachary and I are only a part of a shift that’s been hap­pen­ing at the FGC Gath­er­ing over the last few years.

The Passion of Uncomfortable Orthodoxies: Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ”

February 24, 2004

Mel Gib­son’s movie _The Pas­sion of Christ_ is a chal­lenge for many mod­ern Quak­ers. Most of the rich metaphors of co-mingled joy and suf­fer­ing of the ear­ly Friends have been dumbed-down to feel-good clich­es. Can the debate on this movie help us return to that uncom­fort­able place where we can acknowl­edge the com­plex­i­ties of being fer­vent­ly reli­gious in a world haunt­ed by past sins and still in need of con­vic­tion and comfort?

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Signs of Hope

November 26, 2003

I think I some­times appear more pes­simistic than I real­ly am. Here are some of this week’s rea­sons for hope.
* Being in touch with Jorj & Sue and Barb and Tobi because of these writ­ings (could the “Lost Generation”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000147.php be mud­dling towards a new coalesence?)
* A small flur­ry of recent talks and pam­phlets about redis­cov­er­ing tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism: Mar­ty Grundy’s 2002 lec­ture _Quaker Trea­sure: Dis­cov­er­ing The Basis For Uni­ty Among Friends_, Paul Lacey’s _The Author­i­ty Of Our Meet­ings Is The Pow­er Of God_ , and Lloyd Lee Wilson’s “Wrestling With Our Faith Tradition”:http://www.ncymc.org/journal/ncymcjournal3.pdf (PDF)
* Tony P. say­ing he was griev­ed that Julie has left the Soci­ety of Friends and car­ing enough to talk to her. Thank you.
* A fly­er I saw this week­end, writ­ten by PYM Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion staff. It was a list of what they thought they should be doing and it was real­ly pret­ty good (why don’t they’d print this in _PYM News_ , it’s much bet­ter than their boil­er­plate entries this issue). Even more I hope the work does take a move in that direction.
* Thomas Ham­m’s The Quak­ers in Amer­i­cablank, which just came in yes­ter­day. It’s per­haps a lit­tle too intro­duc­to­ry but we need a good intro­duc­tion and Ham­m’s the one to write it. His book on Ortho­dox Friends, Trans­for­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erismblank is amaz­ing­ly well researched and essen­tial read­ing for any involved Friend who wants to under­stand who we are. He’s work­ing on a com­pan­ion his­to­ry on the Hick­sites, which is very much needed.

Are Catholics More Quaker?

November 16, 2003

I guess folks might won­der why the son of the Quak­er Ranter is get­ting bap­tized in a Roman Catholic church…

[box]An updat­ed note before I start: I don’t want this to be seen as a cri­tique or put-down of any par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­u­als but to point out what seems to me to be a pret­ty obvi­ous larg­er dynam­ic with­in Quak­erism: our reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams have not been doing a very good job at trans­mit­ting our faith to our young peo­ple. One mea­sure of such pro­grams is how many chil­dren we retain as actively-participating adults; by such mea­sures I think we can say Quak­ers are failing.

And, a few per­haps obvi­ous dis­claimers: 1) there are deeply faith­ful peo­ple who grew up in Young Friends pro­grams; 2) there are reli­gious ed instruc­tors who are wor­ried about the mes­sage we’re giv­ing our young peo­ple and fret as I do; 3) there are a lot of mem­bers of the RSoF who just don’t think teach­ing dis­tinct­ly Quak­er faith­ful­ness is impor­tant and would­n’t agree that there’s a problem.

I don’t think it’s use­ful to read this with­out also look­ing to my ear­ly arti­cle, The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion, which mourns the friends I’ve seen drop out of Quak­erism (many of them “birthright,” i.e., born into Quak­er fam­i­lies), and We’re all Ranters Now, which argues that our soci­ety of seek­ers needs to become a soci­ety of find­ers if we are to be able to artic­u­late a faith to transmit.
[/box]

On June 30, 2000, Julie and I met at a nation­al gath­er­ing of Quak­ers. Four­teen months lat­er we were mar­ried at the Wood­stown Friends Meet­ing­house under the care of the Atlantic City Area Friends Meet­ing. Rough­ly four­teen months lat­er, when the sparkles in our eyes were meet­ing with an approv­ing nod from God and our baby was con­ceived, I was co-clerk of Atlantic City Area Meet­ing and Julie was clerk of its Out­reach Com­mit­tee. Ten months lat­er, our infant son Theo was bap­tized at Mater Eccle­si­ae Roman Catholic Church in Berlin, N.J. It’s Julie’s new church; I myself remain Quak­er, but with­out a Meet­ing I can quite call home. What happened?

I don’t want to try to speak for Julie and why she left Friends to return to the faith she was brought up in. But I do have to tes­ti­fy that the rev­er­ence, spir­it and authen­tic­i­ty of the wor­ship at Mater Eccle­si­ae is deep­er than that in most Friends Meet­ing­hous­es. It’s a church with a lot of mem­bers who seem to believe in the real pres­ence of Christ. A dis­claimer that Mater Eccle­si­ae is unusu­al, one of the few church­es in the coun­try that uses the tra­di­tion­al Tri­den­tine Mass or Roman Rite, and that it attracts ardent fol­low­ers who have self-selected them­selves, in that they’re not going to their local parish church. I don’t think it’s the Catholi­cism alone that draws Julie – I think the pur­pose­ful­ness of the wor­shipers is a large piece. Despite all the dis­trac­tions (chants, Latin, rote con­fes­sions of faith: I’m speak­ing as a Friend), the wor­ship there is unusu­al­ly gath­ered. But more: there’s a ground­ed­ness to the faith. In a one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion the priest explained to me the ways he thought Quak­erism was wrong. I was­n’t offend­ed – quite the con­trary, I loved it! It was so refresh­ing to meet some­one who believed what he believed, (Hey, if I did­n’t believe in the degen­er­a­tion of the Roman Catholic Church or the emp­ty pro­fes­sions of hireling priests, I might join him. I also feel com­fort­able pre­dict­ing that he would wel­come my joust­ing here.)

What I can talk about is my mis­giv­ings about the prospect of rais­ing up Theo as a Quak­er in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. The weak­est ele­ment of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends is its chil­dren’s reli­gious edu­ca­tion. This is some­thing I’ve seen man­i­fest­ed in two dif­fer­ent kinds of ways: con­tent and results.

Quak­ers have remark­ably few expec­ta­tions of their chil­dren. It’s con­sid­ered remark­able if old­er chil­dren spend a whole ten min­utes in Meet­ing for Wor­ship (I’ve heard adult birthright Friends boast that they’ve nev­er sat through a whole hour of Quak­er wor­ship). Quak­ers are obsessed about lis­ten­ing to what chil­dren have to say, and so nev­er share with them what they believe. I’ve known adults birthright Friends who have nev­er had con­ver­sa­tions with their par­ents about the basis of their faith.

Quak­er reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams often for­go teach­ing tra­di­tion­al Quak­er faith and prac­tice for more fad­dish beliefs. The base­ment walls of the Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing youth cen­ter is paint­ed over with danc­ing gods, while of the big events of the Young Friends’ annu­al cal­en­dar is a “Quak­er sweat lodge”. A cul­ture of touch and phys­i­cal­i­ty (“cud­dle pud­dles”, back­rubs) is thought charm­ing and immod­est dress is con­sid­ered a sign of rebel­lious indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. Quak­er schools pub­lish brochures say­ing Meet­ing for Wor­ship is all about “think­ing, with God giv­en lit­tle notice.” When Quak­ers want to have “inter­gen­er­a­tional” wor­ship, they feel they have to pro­gram it with some sort of attention-keeping play­time activ­i­ty (Mater Eccle­si­ae echoes Quak­er tra­di­tion here: “inter­gen­er­a­tional” means chil­dren sit­ting through and par­tic­i­pat­ing in Mass with the adults).

Too many of the peo­ple my age and Julie’s who were brought up at Friends are igno­rant of basic Quak­er beliefs and are unaware of Quak­er tra­di­tions (FUM, EFI, Con­ser­v­a­tives) out­side the easy-going East Coast lib­er­al­ism they were raised in. For them being a Friend is act­ing a cer­tain way, believ­ing a cer­tain brand of polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy and being part of a cer­tain social group. Too many Young Adult Friends I’ve known over the years are cliquish, irre­li­gious, and have more than their share of issues around inti­ma­cy and sexuality.

Don’t get me wrong: these kids are often real­ly good peo­ple, chil­dren to be proud of, doing great things in the world. Many of them are open-hearted, spiritually-sensitive, and in deeply ground­ed rela­tion­ships. But only a very few are prac­tic­ing Quak­ers. And when I look at the reli­gious edu­ca­tion they get, I can’t say I’m sur­prised. If I were to raise Theo as a Quak­er, I would have to “home school” him away from most of the reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams offered local­ly. When all the kids scram­ble out of wor­ship after ten min­utes I’d have to say “no” and tell him to keep sit­ting – how weird would that be?

Theo has a bet­ter chance of shar­ing the tra­di­tion­al Quak­er val­ues of the pres­ence of Christ, of Holy Obe­di­ence, and of bear­ing the cross by being raised as a Catholic in a tra­di­tion­al­ist church. It’s more like­ly he’ll turn out Quak­er if he’s bap­tised at Mater Eccle­si­ae. Julie and I will be teach­ing him rev­er­ence by exam­ple. I’ll share my Quak­er faith with him. I’m sure he’ll par­tic­i­pate in Quak­er events, but con­scious­ly, selec­tive­ly, guard­ed­ly (in the old Quak­er sense).

If Friends believe they have a faith worth holdling, they should also believe they have a faith worth pass­ing on. Do we?

Related Reading

  • Beck­ey Phipps con­duct­ed a series of inter­views that touched on many of these issues and pub­lished it in FGCon­nec­tions. FGC Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion: Lessons for the 21st Cen­tu­ry asks many of the right ques­tions. My favorite line: “It is the most amaz­ing thing, all the kids that I know that have gone into [Quak­er] lead­er­ship pro­grams – they’ve disappeared.”
  • I touch on these issues from the oth­er side in The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion, which is about the twenty- and thirty-something Friends that have drift­ed away