Tag Archives ⇒ land

What Does the Outside Say?

March 7, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Also in Friends Jour­nal’s issue, “Out­side the Meet­ing­house,” a piece from Brad Stock­er of Mia­mi Meet­ing in Florida:

Most Friends have an under­stand­ing of the archi­tec­tur­al mes­sage that our meet­ing­hous­es express. We under­stand the sim­plic­i­ty of the struc­ture. We under­stand the rea­son there are no steeples or cross­es on the out­side and why we have clear win­dows placed so as to invite the light to enter. We are equal­ly sen­si­tive to inte­ri­or design. While we come into fre­quent, inti­mate con­tact with the meet­ing­house exte­ri­or, and the land it sits on, we may be less aware of the mes­sage they convey. 

There may be a lit­tle whiplash to talk about but­ter­fly gar­dens after the recent arti­cle on Quak­er wor­ship from prison but I like the inten­tion­al­i­ty of Stock­er’s obser­va­tions: we are always mak­ing state­ments with the care (or non-care) of our phys­i­cal space. Miami’s the kind of coastal city where cli­mate change is very much not a the­o­ret­i­cal issue and Stock­er is very involved in his year­ly meet­ing’s earth­care edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tives. The meet­ing­house grounds are a place to mod­el good stew­ard­ship; tak­ing the care to have them be invit­ing and qui­et­ly demon­stra­tive of Quak­er val­ues is impor­tant outreach.

The Doctrine of Discovery, white guilt, and Friends

November 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er starts with “it’s com­pli­cat­ed” and goes on from there. A pas­sage I find par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is his expla­na­tion of why look­ing at large-scale state-level atroc­i­ties like the steal­ing of native land or the kid­nap­ping of mil­lions of Africans is not just some­thing to be done out of guilt:

Whether you believe in an intel­li­gent Satan (along the lines of Peter Wag­n­er’s ideas) or a more imper­son­al mech­a­nism of demon­ic evil (Wal­ter Wink), we should­n’t pre­tend that such nodes just go away. Their evil per­sists. The basis for apol­o­gy and repen­tance is not white guilt or shame or any form of self-flagellation. Instead, it is to con­duct spir­i­tu­al war­fare against the demons of racism and oppres­sion and false wit­ness, to declare them off-limits in the land that we now share, so that we can con­duct our future stew­ard­ship — and make our pub­lic invest­ments— in free­dom and mutu­al regard. 

I’m drawn to the old notion of “The Tempter” as a force that leads us to do what’s per­son­al­ly reward­ing rather than moral­ly just. I think it explains a lot of inter­nal strug­gles I’ve faced, even in sim­ple wit­ness­es. As Johan says, these mas­sive injus­tices can’t just be undone but they need to be rec­og­nized for the immen­si­ty of their scale. I’ve also seen this weird way in which pro­gres­sive whites can blithe­ly dis­re­gard Native Amer­i­can per­spec­tives on these issues. Lis­ten­ing more and wait­ing for com­pli­cat­ed answers seems essen­tial in my opinion.

Anoth­er good deep-dive for Friends inter­est­ed in this is Bet­sy Caz­den’s Friends Jour­nal 2006 arti­cle, Quak­er Mon­ey, Old Mon­ey, and White Priv­i­lege. It’s one I turn to every so often to remind myself of some of our monied Quak­er norms. Johan gives a pass to William Penn but I think it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that his colo­nial ambi­tions were deeply enmeshed in at least three dif­fer­ent wars and con­ve­nient­ly served the polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions of two empires, the per­fect storm of an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a group of paci­fist idealists.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​1​1​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​a​n​d​-​n​a​t​i​v​e​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​s​-​i​t​s​.​h​tml

Making Sense of the Starbucks Incident

September 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Here’s a piece we’ve pub­lished in the cur­rent Friends Jour­nal, writ­ten by a seventh-grader from the Friends School in New­town, Pa. We reg­u­lar­ly pub­lish middle- and high-schoolers in our annu­al Stu­dent Voic­es Project but this is a gen­er­al fea­ture we pub­lished because it’s inter­est­ing and fresh and intrigu­ing. Here’s what I wrote about it in my open­ing col­umn in the magazine:

In Mak­ing Sense of the Star­bucks Inci­dent, New­town Friends School seventh-grader Anki­ta Achan­ta shows how the Quak­er val­ues she’s been taught in class­es could have defused a nation­al­ly pub­li­cized racial inci­dent in a Philadel­phia Star­bucks. It’s some­times easy to be skep­ti­cal of the Quak­er iden­ti­ty of Friends schools, but Achan­ta reflects back the pow­er­ful impact of our col­lec­tive wit­ness in these institutions. 

In Anki­ta Achan­ta’s reck­on­ing, Quak­er val­ues like integri­ty are basic uni­ver­sal val­ues of decen­cy. By claim­ing them, Friends could (and often do) eas­i­ly fall into the trap of Quak­er excep­tion­al­ism, but in Achan­ta’s piece, I see them as some­thing we put spe­cial empha­sis into. Ear­ly Friends did­n’t expect to found a denom­i­na­tion; Fox went across the land assum­ing every­one could be a Friend of the Truth, of Christ, of the Light. The lead­ing influ­ence of the Inward Light is avail­able to all and we can expect to see inspir­ing inci­dents of it in action every­where — even in viral Twit­ter videos.

Achan­ta also gave a new-to-me neologism:

As a seventh-grade stu­dent attend­ing a Friends school, I have been taught Quak­er val­ues. Although I am a Hin­du and not for­mal­ly a Quak­er, Quak­er val­ues are well aligned with my own reli­gious prin­ci­ples. I am com­mit­ted to liv­ing by them and con­sid­er myself a “Quin­du.”


Making Sense of the Starbucks Incident

Mak­ing Sense of the Star­bucks Incident 

Quak­er val­ues do not need to be mere the­o­ret­i­cal ideas.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

William Penn: commemorations and curios

July 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The 300th anniver­sary of William Penn’s death is close at hand and archivists in the British Quak­er library share a post about their col­lec­tion of Penn curios:

The archival mate­r­i­al in the Library relat­ing to William Penn includes prop­er­ty deeds relat­ing to land in Penn­syl­va­nia, such as the one pic­tured below. There are also let­ters from William Penn amongst oth­er people’s papers. One notable exam­ple, dat­ed 13th of 11th month 1690 (13 Jan­u­ary 1691, in the mod­ern cal­en­dar), is a let­ter from him to Mar­garet Fox, for­mer­ly Mar­garet Fell, telling her of the death of her hus­band, George Fox.

William Penn: com­mem­o­ra­tions and curios

It sounds like there have been lots of momen­tos made from the elm tree under which William Penn is said to have signed a treaty with the Lenape in 1683. The Penn Treaty Park muse­um has stir­ring accounts of the storm that tore the tree from its roots in 1810. There were so many rel­ic hunters hack­ing off pieces of the fall­en tree that the own­ers of the prop­er­ty own­ers hired a guard. Their solu­tion was the obvi­ous cap­i­tal­ist one: chop the remain­der up and sell it.

Accord­ing to an arti­cle on the Haver­ford Col­lege site, cut­tings of the orig­i­nal tree were tak­en in its life­time and trees have been prop­a­gat­ed from its lin­eage for a few gen­er­a­tions now. Haver­ford recent­ly plant­ed a “great grand­child” of the orig­i­nal treaty elm on its cam­pus to replace a fall­en grand­child. New­town Meet­ing in near­by Bucks Coun­ty has a great great grand­child.

The idea of Quak­er relics and trees imbued with spe­cial prop­er­ties because of a lin­eage of place­ment does­n’t real­ly jive very well with many Friends’ ideas of the Quak­er tes­ti­monies. But I’m glad that the treaty is remem­bered. The tree had served as a sort of memo­r­i­al; with its demise, a group came togeth­er to more prop­er­ly remem­ber the loca­tion and com­mem­o­rate the treaty.

Money and the things we really value

July 3, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I think I’ve already shared that Friends Jour­nal is doing an issue on “Meet­ings and Mon­ey” in the fall. While I’ve heard from some poten­tial authors that they’re writ­ing some­thing, we haven’t actu­al­ly got­ten any­thing in-hand yet. We’re extend­ing the dead­line to Fri­day, 7/20. This is a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to write for FJ.

How we spend mon­ey is often a telling indi­ca­tor of what val­ues we real­ly val­ue. Mon­ey is not just a mat­ter of finan­cial state­ments and invest­ment strate­gies. It’s chil­dren pro­gram. It’s local soup kitchens. It’s the town peace fair. It’s the acces­si­ble bath­room or hear­ing aid sys­tem. And how we dis­cuss and dis­cern and fight over mon­ey is often a test of our com­mit­ment to Quak­er values.

Here’s some of the spe­cif­ic issues we’ve brain­stormed for the issue.

Where does our mon­ey come from? A lot of Quak­er wealth is locked up in endow­ments start­ed by “dead Quak­er mon­ey” — wealth bequeathed by Quak­ers of cen­turies past.

Much of our Amer­i­can Quak­er for­tunes trace back to a large land grant giv­en in pay­ment for war debt. For the first cen­tu­ry or so, this wealth was aug­ment­ed by slave labor. Lat­er Quak­er enter­pris­es were aug­ment­ed by cap­i­tal from these ini­tial wealth sources.

In times past, there were well-known Quak­er fam­i­ly busi­ness­es and wealthy Quak­er indus­tri­al­ists. But Amer­i­can cap­i­tal­ism has changed: fam­i­lies rarely own medium- or large-scale busi­ness­es; they own stocks in firms run by a pro­fes­sion­al man­agers. If the abil­i­ty to run busi­ness­es based on Quak­er val­ues is over, is share­hold­er activism our clos­est analogue?

Many Friends now work in ser­vice fields. Fam­i­ly life has also changed, and the (large­ly female) free labor of one-income house­holds is no longer avail­able to sup­port Quak­er endeav­ors as read­i­ly. How have all of these changes affect­ed the finances of our denom­i­na­tion and the abil­i­ty to live out our val­ues in the workplace?

How do we sup­port our mem­bers? A per­son­al anec­dote: some years ago I unex­pect­ed­ly lost my job. It was touch and go for awhile whether we’d be able to keep up with mort­gage pay­ments; los­ing our house was a real pos­si­bil­i­ty. Mem­bers of a near­by non-Quaker church heard that there was a fam­i­ly in need and a few days lat­er a stranger showed up on our back porch with a dozen bags of gro­ceries and new win­ter coats for each of us. When my Friends meet­ing heard, I was told there was a com­mit­tee that I could apply to that would con­sid­er whether it might help.

Where does the mon­ey go? A activist Friend of mine use to point to the nice fur­nish­ings in our meet­ing­house and chuck­le about how many good things we could fund in the com­mu­ni­ty if we sold some of it off. Has your meet­ing liq­ui­dat­ed any of its prop­er­ty for com­mu­ni­ty service?

When we do find our­selves with extra funds from a bequest or wind­fall, where do we spend it? How do we bal­ance our needs (such as meet­ing­house ren­o­va­tions, schol­ar­ships for Quak­er stu­dents), and when and how do we give it to oth­ers in our community?

What can we let go of? There are a lot of meet­ing­hous­es in more rur­al areas that are most­ly emp­ty these days, even on First Day. Could we ever decide we don’t need all of these spaces? Could we con­sol­i­date? Or could we go fur­ther and sell our prop­er­ties and start meet­ing at a rent­ed space like a fire­hall or library once a week?

Who gets the meet­ing­house after a break-up? In the last few years we’ve seen three major year­ly meet­ings split apart, prompt­ing a whole mess of finan­cial dis­en­tan­gle­ment. What hap­pens to the prop­er­ties and sum­mer camps and endow­ments when this hap­pens? How fierce­ly are we will­ing to fight fel­low Friends over money?

What con­ver­sa­tions aren’t we hav­ing? Where do we invest our cor­po­rate sav­ings? Who decides how we spend mon­ey in our meetings?

Please feel free to share this with any Friend who might have inter­est­ing obser­va­tions about Friends’ atti­tudes toward finances!


Writing Opp: Meetings and Money (due 7/9)

Writ­ing Opp: Meet­ings and Mon­ey (due 7/9)

How do we spend mon­ey on our­selves? What is the role of mon­ey in our meet­ings? How do…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

The Quakers are right. We don’t need God

May 4, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Well-know British jour­nal­ist (tho non-Friend) weighs in on recent head­lines claim­ing British Friends are tak­ing God out of their next edi­tion of Faith and Prac­tice: The Quak­ers are right. We don’t need God

The Quak­ers’ lack of cer­e­mo­ny and litur­gi­cal clut­ter gives them a point from which to view the no man’s land between faith and non-faith that is the “new reli­gios­i­ty”. A dwin­dling 40% of Britons claim to believe in some form of God, while a third say they are atheists

The piece is sure to get every­one’s dan­der up. It feels to me as if Jenk­ins is chas­ing the head­line to advance his own argu­ment with­out regard to how his state­ment might polar­ize Friends. But this is one of the rar­er instances in which it’s worth dig­ging through the com­ments on this one; some are bet­ter than the arti­cle itself.

https://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​i​s​f​r​e​e​/​2​0​1​8​/​m​a​y​/​0​4​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​d​r​o​p​p​i​n​g​-​g​o​d​?​C​M​P​=​s​h​a​r​e​_​b​t​n​_fb

Regarding Pronouns

April 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

On Quak­erQuak­er, Kir­by Urn­er starts a dis­cus­sion on pro­nouns which is not the dis­cus­sion you might expect:

I pay a lot of atten­tion to pro­noun use. Peo­ple often say “our nuclear weapons” and/or “what we did in Viet­nam”. I don’t have any nuclear weapons, nor do my friends.

Kir­by’s lost reminds of the clas­sic “What do you mean we, white man” Lone Ranger / Ton­to joke.

Part of the deal of the mod­ern nation state and its trap­pings of democ­ra­cy is that we all own it togeth­er. The peas­antry could be lack­sidaisi­cal when they were jiat doing the bid­ding of whichev­er duke/warlord/king con­trolled the plot of land in which their ances­tral vil­lage now sat. But now we fight nation­al wars because the state is us. It’s most­ly a load of huey but it dis­arms what should be the nat­ur­al Chris­t­ian (and plain human) dis­taste for jin­go­is­tic tribalism.

http://www.quakerquaker.org/m/discussion?id=2360685%3ATopic%3A159446

The Quaker who lived with the CIA

March 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I usu­al­ly find sto­ries of Friends by track­ing a list of a hundred-plus Quaker-related RSS feeds. I’ll also find them being shared on Face­book or in the Red­dit Quak­ers group. For the first time ever I stum­bled on one in Twit­ter Moments. Anoth­er like­ly first: I’m link­ing to the CIA web­site. Read the sto­ry of the Quak­er paci­fist who lived with the CIA.

Mar­garet [Scat­ter­good] was far more skep­ti­cal of CIA and con­sid­ered the organization’s mis­sion to be in vio­la­tion of her paci­fist beliefs. She used her trust fund to finan­cial­ly con­tribute to anti­war caus­es. She lob­bied Con­gress to cut the US Intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary bud­gets. In the 1980s Mar­garet opened her home to San­din­istas from Nicaragua, while CIA sup­port­ed the opposition.

Invit­ing San­din­istas to her home in the mid­dle of the CIA head­quar­ters com­pound is eas­i­ly the most kick­ass Quak­er sto­ries I’ve heard in awhile. Chuck Fager also shared some of this sto­ry in a nice remem­brance in a 1987 Friends Jour­nal short­ly after she died; appar­ent­ly the land pur­chas­es in the 1940s weren’t quite so neigh­bor­ly as the CIA pub­lic rela­tions team seem to make out.