Tag Archives ⇒ kind

The Rise of Liberal Quakerism

May 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son is nerd­ing deep into Quak­er his­to­ry, specif­i­cal­ly the process in which younger mem­bers of Britain Year­ly Meet­ing start­ed for­mu­lat­ing a new kind of Quak­erism. Here’s his explana­to­ry intro­duc­tion and here is part 2:

Mean­while, mem­ber­ship dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly, as meet­ings applied dis­ci­pline increas­ing­ly rig­or­ous­ly for walk­ing dis­or­der­ly in all man­ner of ways. In 1859, a prize of one hun­dred pounds was offered by an anony­mous British Friend for the essay that best explained this decline and that offered the most promis­ing solutions

The process was any­thing but overnight. As I under­stand the his­to­ry it would be anoth­er half cen­tu­ry from the prize to a yearly-meeting-wide shift. I don’t think many Friends in Eng­land appre­ci­ate just how Evan­gel­i­cal their year­ly meet­ing has become in these years; their refusal to rec­og­nize Amer­i­can Hick­sites led to the lat­ter’s shun­ning from the world Quak­er fam­i­ly and meant mod­ernist Quak­er respons­es would evolve on large­ly sep­a­rate paths.

I won­der if British Friend William Pol­lard will make an appear­ance in Steven’s posts. I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed how Philadel­phia Hick­sites took to him despite the for­mal insti­tu­tion­al bar­ri­ers. [Update: Steven just dropped part three and there’s Pol­lard!]

The Rise of Lib­er­al Quak­erism — Part 2

Letting your life speak in digital spaces

May 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Kath­leen Wooten has some tips on min­is­ter­ing in social spaces with­out “los­ing your san­i­ty”):

Devel­op per­son­al rules: These are spe­cif­ic to you. A few of mine…. Nev­er respond to an angry mes­sage from my phone. Always open a com­put­er, sit down inten­tion­al­ly, and if pos­si­ble wait 24 hours. ON social media – this might be a short­er time frame, but still, not until I can sit and cen­ter and not speak out of anger.


Letting your life speak in digital spaces (without losing your sanity)

Let­ting your life speak in dig­i­tal spaces (with­out los­ing your sanity) 

The inter­net is a very effec­tive tool.  Con­nect­ing, shar­ing, work, social inter­ac­tions – all can and do happen…

QuakerKathleen QuakerKathleen 

I’m not sure if I’ve ever writ­ten down my per­son­al guide­lines. Some of these are gener­ic to being a good online cit­i­zen (don’t feed trolls, don’t punch down, don’t respond in anger, dis­en­gage when a con­ver­sa­tion is obvi­ous­ly run­ning in circles).

Oth­er guide­lines of mine arguably come from Quak­er val­ues. For exam­ple, in gen­er­al I won’t men­tion some­one else on a forum in which they don’t appear. I’m espe­cial­ly wary on pri­vate Face­book groups, as they can eas­i­ly become forum for detrac­tion and us/them peer pres­sure.  The Tract Asso­ci­a­tion pam­phlet on detrac­tion is real­ly a must-read. It’s actu­al­ly prob­a­bly some­thing worth re-reading every six months. Read­ers: what kind of prac­tices have you devel­oped to be a respon­si­ble Quak­er online?

Could Quakerism be the radical faith?

April 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith won­ders whether the title of Chris Ven­ables’s recent piece, “Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for?,” is fol­low­ing Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.

I’d put the dilem­ma of Quak­erism in the 21st cen­tu­ry this way: It’s not just that our trea­sures are in jars of clay, it’s that no one would even know the trea­sures were there, and it seems like they’re eas­i­er to find else­where. And how do we know that what we have are even treasures?

I gave my own skep­ti­cal take on Ven­ables’s arti­cle yes­ter­day. Smith hits on part of what wor­ries me when he says cur­rent reli­gious dis­en­gage­ment is of a kind to be immune to “bet­ter social media game or a more stream­lined church bureau­cra­cy.” These are the easy, value-free answers insti­tu­tions like to turn to.

I’m think­ing about these issues not only because of this arti­cle but also because Friends Jour­nal is seek­ing sub­mis­sions for thr August issue “Going Viral with Quak­erism.” A few weeks ago I wrote a post that referred back to Quak­er inter­net out­reach 25 years ago.

Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for?

Cast out by the Quakers, Abington’s abolitionist dwarf finally has his day

April 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A nice sto­ry on the belat­ed recog­ni­tion being giv­en abo­li­tion­ist stal­wart and polit­i­cal prankster Ben­jamin Lay up at Abing­ton Meet­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia (my first meeting!):

About 12 years ago, the Abing­ton meet­ing­house care­tak­er, Dave Wer­mel­ing, found an old sketch of Lay in a box. A short biog­ra­phy on worn brown paper was glued to back of the draw­ing. “I thought, ‘Who is this, and how can you not be talk­ing about him?’” Wer­mel­ing recalled.

I’ve long admired the sto­ry of Ben­jamin Lay. I’m not sure that the gen­er­al pub­lic read­ing these arti­cles is quite real­iz­ing that Quak­er dis­own­ment wasn’t a full shun­ning. As far as I know he con­tin­ued to be influ­en­tial with Quak­ers, for his pas­sion if not his strat­e­gy. Lay went far, far ahead of the Quak­ers of the time. His stunts were awe­some, but drench­ing year­ly meet­ing atten­ders with pig blood and pub­lish­ing books with­out per­mis­sion was going to get you unin­vit­ed from for­mal deci­sion mak­ing meetings.

I would very much hope that if any of us mod­erns were trans­port­ed back to that era, we would find the con­di­tions of human bondage so out­ra­geous that we would all go full Ben­jamin Lay: dis­rupt meet­ings, shat­ter norms, get dis­owned by our reli­gious bod­ies. If you read the his­to­ry of eighteen-century Quak­er activism in the Philadel­phia area you’ll see there were many tracts start­ing in the ear­li­est years of the Quak­er colonies. There were lots of Quak­ers who felt slav­ery was moral­ly wrong. But few felt the empow­er­ment to break from social con­ven­tions the way Lay did. But that’s kind of the nature of prophe­cy. I would be sus­pi­cious of any can­di­date for prophet that is liked by the admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies of their time. What kind of com­pla­cen­cy are we demon­strat­ing by our inac­tions today?

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​b​e​n​j​a​m​i​n​-​l​a​y​-​d​w​a​r​f​-​a​b​o​l​i​t​i​o​n​i​s​t​-​s​l​a​v​e​r​y​-​a​b​i​n​g​t​o​n​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​-​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​-​2​0​1​8​0​4​1​9​.​h​t​m​l​?​m​o​b​i​=​t​rue

Does this need to be said?

April 11, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A great piece from newish Quak­er blog­ger Josh Tal­bot on the per­son­al strug­gle to fol­low the peace tes­ti­mo­ny: Not Falling Into the Fire of My Own Ire.

Los­ing your­self to anger is pos­si­ble even with anger focused against injus­tice and cru­el­ty. You can become so focused on the tar­get of your rage. That you do not notice when you have lost sight of your goals and are only in it for the fight. Even fol­low­ing the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny of Non-Violence we need to rec­og­nize when we are no longer being Non-Aggressive.

Like many con­vinced Friends, I came to the soci­ety through activism. I had met plen­ty of peo­ple who let right­eous anger serve as cov­er for more vis­cer­al hatred. One eye-opening protest in the 90s was in a rur­al part of Penn­syl­va­nia. When one of the locals screamed the cliche of the era — “Go get a job!” — a pro­tes­tor shout­ed back, “I’ve got a job and I make more than you.” It was true even as it was cru­el and irrel­e­vant and braggy.

I did­n’t see this kind of behav­ior as much with the Friends I saw at var­i­ous protests, which is large­ly why I start­ed grav­i­tat­ing toward them when­ev­er pos­si­ble. I could see that there was some­thing in the Quak­er cul­ture and val­ue sys­tem that was able to nav­i­gate between right­eous and per­son­al anger and draw the line in dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions. I love Josh’s descrip­tion of the “Craig Fer­gu­son” method:

I ask myself. “Does this need to be said?” “Does this need to be said by me?” “Does this need to be said by me right now?” Doing this cuts down on moments of spon­ta­neous anger.

This could also describe the Quak­er dis­cern­ment method for min­istry. Maybe there’s some­thing to the care we take (or at least aim for) in that process that gives us a lit­tle more self-discipline in the heat of protest or that helps us sort through thorny eth­i­cal issues that run through our own community.

https://​quak​er​re​turns​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​n​o​t​-​f​a​l​l​i​n​g​-​i​n​t​o​-​f​i​r​e​-​o​f​-​m​y​-​o​w​n​-​i​r​e​.​h​tml

Do Friends Query?

April 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Doug Gwyn is next up on Quak­er­S­peak, this time answer­ing What is a Quak­er Query?

The Quak­er Queries are a won­der­ful inven­tion of ask­ing our­selves some sim­ple ques­tions… I’ve heard it said that through­out much of our his­to­ry, we were shop­keep­ers and busi­ness peo­ple, and we were used to doing inven­to­ry all the time. And the queries are a kind of spir­i­tu­al and moral inven­to­ry that Friends do well to keep track of.

It’s become kind of easy to make fun of queries. The clas­sic use was as ques­tions for­mal­ly asked and for­mal­ly answered in Quak­er meet­ings for busi­ness. As Gwyn says they were a form of account­ing. Local con­gre­ga­tions would go though a set list and send them to quar­ter meet­ings to sift and answer so they could in turn send it up to year­ly meet­ing ses­sions. I’ve seen this process fol­lowed at Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing if a bit tedious.

I could imag­ine the process being use­ful if for no oth­er rea­son that it gave Friends a chance to pry a bit into one anoth­er’s lives. Do all the mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty have their alco­hol use under con­trol? Are we real­ly com­mit­ted to peace in our communities?

These days a form of over-simplistic query is are writ­ten on the fly, with an implic­it “or” that I don’t always find par­tic­u­lar­ly help­ful. “Do Friends avoid the use of sty­ro­foam cups?” [or do you all hate the Earth?]. Used this way, queries risk becom­ing a list of busy­body norms to fol­lowed. We con­grat­u­late our­selves for not using paper nap­kins at a con­fer­ence we flew to.

As Doug points out, it helps to have a lit­tle humil­i­ty when it comes to queries. They’re one of the more use­ful items in the Quak­er tool­box. A good query will have some­thing to say to each of us, no mat­ter where we indi­vid­u­al­ly are in our spir­i­tu­al journey.

Spring and healing

April 3, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I was just fill­ing out my work log for March and had for­got­ten just how crazy the weath­er here in the U.S. North­east had been, with suc­ces­sive waves of nor’easters dump­ing mas­sive amounts of snow on us. It made for some great kid pic­tures but it added quite a bit of chaos to work schedules.

So it seems kind of amaz­ing there’s an April issue of Friends Jour­nal. But there is and it’s a good one I think: we look at heal­ing. The cov­er of new tree leaves back­lit by spring­time sun is sea­son­al but it also reflects the top­ic and our mood after a win­try late winter.


Healing Earth: An Ecologist’s Journey of Innovation and Environmental Stewardship

Heal­ing Earth: An Ecologist’s Jour­ney of Inno­va­tion and Envi­ron­men­tal Stewardship 

By John Todd. North Atlantic Books, 2019. 200 pages. $24.95/paperback; $17.99/eBook.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

The Seed as Quaker metaphor

March 28, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Jnana Hod­son’s blog, a look at “The Seed” as a Quak­er metaphor:

Con­sid­er­ing today’s empha­sis on indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, plu­ral­i­ty, and per­son­al psy­chol­o­gy, I believe that return­ing to the metaphor of the Seed holds the most poten­tial for fer­tile spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment and guid­ance in our own era.

I find the evo­lu­tion of Quak­er metaphors fas­ci­nat­ing. Ear­ly Quak­er ser­mons and epis­tles were packed with bib­li­cal allu­sions. I grew up rel­a­tive­ly unchurched but I’ve tried to make up for it over the years. I’ve read the Bible cover-to-cover using the One Year Bible plan (like a lot of peo­ple I sus­pect, it took me a lit­tle over two years) and have been part of dif­fer­ent denom­i­na­tion­al Bible study groups. I try to look up ref­er­ences. But even with that I don’t catch half the ref­er­ences ear­ly ser­mons packed in.

John Wool­man lived a cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions after the first Friends. We Quak­er remem­ber his Jour­nal for min­istry of its anti-slavery sen­ti­ments, final­ly becom­ing a con­sen­sus among Friends by the time of its pub­li­ca­tion in 1774. But oth­er reli­gious folks have read it for its lit­er­ary val­ue. Open a ran­dom page and Wool­man will have up to half a dozen metaphors for the Divine. It’s packed and rich and acces­si­ble. I find a kind of par­tic­u­lar Quak­er spir­i­tu­al truth in Wool­man’s rota­tion of metaphors: it implies that divin­i­ty is more than any spe­cif­ic words we try to stuff it into.

Late­ly Quak­er metaphors have tend­ed to become more ster­ile. I think we’re still wor­ried about specifics but instead of expand­ing our lan­guage we con­tract it into a kind of impen­e­tra­ble code. The “Light of Christ” becomes the “Inward Christ” then the “Inward Light” then “the Light” or “Spir­it.” We’re still echo­ing the Light metaphors packed into the Book of John but doing so in such a way that seems par­tic­u­lar­ly parochial to Friends and non-obvious to new­com­ers. A major New Tes­ta­ment theme is reduced to Quak­er lingo.

Jnana Hod­son’s prob­lem with “the seed” as metaphor is inter­est­ing: “ ‘seed,’ as such, has far few­er Bib­li­cal cita­tions than the cor­re­spond­ing com­ple­men­tary ‘light’ or ‘true’ and ‘truth’ do.” I’m not sure I ever noticed that. I like the seed, with its organ­ic con­no­ta­tions and promise of future growth.  But appar­ent­ly the few bib­li­cal allu­sions were rather sex­ist (spoil­er: it often meant semen) and lack­ing in bio­log­i­cal aware­ness. It feels like Friends are search­ing for neu­tral metaphors like “the seed” these days; we also have a lot of gath­er­ings around “weav­ing.” I cer­tain­ly don’t think we should be lim­it­ed to first cen­tu­ry images of divin­i­ty but I also don’t think we’ve quite fig­ured out how we can talk about the guid­ance we receive from the Inward Teacher.

The Seed, ini­tial­ly, is the most prob­lem­at­ic of the three cen­tral Quak­er metaphors