Tag Archives ⇒ love

Welcoming families in meetings

April 18, 2019
· Martin Kelley

An account of one British meet­ing find­ing space for families:

It has been the task of the whole meet­ing not just of one or two; there has been an aware­ness that what they are doing now will need to change and evolve. And there has been a care and nour­ish­ing of us as par­ents too, with our own spir­i­tu­al jour­neys and need for nurture.

I know, from talk­ing to oth­er Quak­er par­ents – and, very sad­ly, from par­ents who would love to explore Quak­erism but who have felt dis­cour­aged or unwel­comed – that we have been par­tic­u­lar­ly lucky. Lucky not because we found a Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty with a ready-made chil­dren’s meet­ing, but because we found a meet­ing will­ing and ready to wel­come, to make space, where there was a sense of glad­ness that we were there. 


Welcoming families in meetings

Wel­com­ing fam­i­lies in meetings 

How do we rejoice in the pres­ence of chil­dren in our meet­ings and nur­ture their spir­i­tu­al growth? Alistair…

Quakers Quakers 

The Lamb’s War and dietary non-violence

March 8, 2019
· Martin Kelley

On Friend­ly Fire:

I am think­ing of those pre­tend­ing com­pas­sion and love whilst con­sum­ing prod­ucts of cru­el­ty and bru­tal­i­ty. We say with St. Paul: ‘I will eat no flesh whilst the world stands, because I will not hurt my broth­er.’ All crea­tures are our sis­ters and broth­ers, as Saint Fran­cis of Assisi recog­nised cen­turies ago. 

The Lamb’s War and dietary non-violence

The freedom to seek sanctuary

November 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Lucy Dun­can at the Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Commitee:

What if, instead of char­ac­ter­iz­ing folks seek­ing home as “threats” or “invaders,” we under­stood them to be our neigh­bors, that our futures are inter­locked and that how they are treat­ed is con­nect­ed to the well-being of us all? What if we under­stood love as not con­strained by bor­ders or walls, but abun­dant, and that car­ing for one anoth­er and those most vio­lat­ed by sys­temic oppres­sion is the path­way toward lib­er­a­tion for us all? What if we, as peo­ple of con­science and faith, greet­ed the migrants at the bor­der as our broth­ers, sis­ters, and kin, opened our homes and com­mu­ni­ties to them, and greet­ed them as resource­ful con­trib­u­tors to fig­ur­ing out the plan­e­tary threats we cur­rent­ly face together? 

https://​www​.afsc​.org/​b​l​o​g​s​/​a​c​t​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​f​a​i​t​h​/​f​r​e​e​d​o​m​-​t​o​-​s​e​e​k​-​s​a​n​c​t​u​a​r​y​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​p​e​r​s​p​e​c​t​i​v​e​-​m​i​g​r​a​n​t​-​c​a​r​a​van

Being God’s Hands

October 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A sweet inter­view this week over on Quak­er­S­peak, an inter­view with Carter Nash:

I believe that peo­ple will respond to love, because I believe peo­ple respond to God. And if God is love, that is what peo­ple will respond to, is love. I think that’s the key to a lot of things and to a lot of prob­lems in the world, because if we tru­ly believe in God and we tru­ly believe that God is love as we were taught, and we act on that – and I believe that we are God’s hands here – then every­thing we do needs to be root­ed in love.

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​b​e​i​n​g​-​g​o​d​s​-​h​a​n​ds/

Sam Walton: Putting the protest back in Protestant

August 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From the Peace and Dis­ar­ma­ment Pro­gramme Manger for British Friends comes a plea for us not to be afraid of going back to Quak­er roots and chal­lenge the abuse of power.

Society’s val­ues are so often in oppo­si­tion to God’s pur­pos­es. Slav­ery used to be legal. Love between two peo­ple of the same sex was ille­gal in our life­times. Our eco­nom­ic sys­tem is based on greed and pays no heed to God’s cre­ation. Nation states exist and act for their own enrich­ment rather than loy­al­ties lying with the King­dom of Heav­en and work­ing for the enrich­ment of all human­i­ty. When being loy­al to God’s pur­pos­es runs counter to what soci­ety expects it can get pret­ty rough. There may be per­se­cu­tion, though it varies a lot: from tut­ting, telling you off for being veg­e­tar­i­an, being giv­en white feath­ers, right through to impris­on­ment, jails and the lions of the Colosseum.

Putting the protest back in Protestant

A New Creation Story

August 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A nice piece on Philadel­phia Friend O:

For O., a mem­ber of Cen­tral Philadel­phia Month­ly Meet­ing, car­ry­ing this query for pas­toral min­istry awak­ens joy in her heart. It rais­es impor­tant ques­tions: Are we trans­formed by the pow­er of love, dur­ing our bio­log­i­cal con­cep­tion as human beings? Might our lives be a mea­sure­less love sto­ry about creation?

It’s hard to cap­ture O’s per­son­al­i­ty in ASCII char­ac­ters. She’s been in a few Quak­er­S­peak videos.

A New Cre­ation Sto­ry: Embrac­ing Love

Red Hens, resistance, and love

June 29, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er weighs in on the civility-in-politics ques­tions hap­pen­ing now. He makes use­ful dis­tinc­tions between mass behav­ior and spon­ta­neous protest and then lays out the sit­u­a­tion for those of us who fol­low the Prince of Peace.

I’m con­vinced that the USA is in a kind of dan­ger that is new to most of us. But even if our worst fears turn out to be exag­ger­at­ed, the scale of pain and despair among some (and wicked glee among oth­ers) is some­thing that demands a prophet­ic and pas­toral response from all who claim to rep­re­sent Good News.

Also check out his list of eight options for respond­ing to the cur­rent polit­i­cal crisis.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​6​/​s​o​w​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​t​e​a​r​s​-​p​a​r​t​-​t​w​o​-​r​e​d​-​h​e​n​s​.​h​tml

Creativity and the Arts

June 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Hap­py first of the month. The new issue of Friends Jour­nal is up and it’s a great one: Cre­ativ­i­ty and the Arts. This is actu­al­ly the first issue on the arts since the mag­a­zine went to col­or in 2013. Here’s a bit of the intro­duc­to­ry Among Friends col­umn writ­ten by yours tru­ly:

This overt dis­trust of the arts fad­ed away a long time ago. Today, the sheer vol­ume of cre­ativ­i­ty among Friends is impres­sive. When we put out a call for this issue, we had far more sub­mis­sions than we could pos­si­bly print. A dozen more artists told us they would love to write some­thing but were too busy cre­at­ing to do so at this time. Faced with a bit of a dilem­ma, we’ve cre­at­ed a sam­pler: each of the arti­cles in these pages rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent facet of cre­ativ­i­ty among Friends.

Through­out the diverse dis­ci­plines of visu­al arts, music, writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, community-based art, and per­for­mance art, a com­mon thread harks back to the con­cerns of those ear­li­er Friends: there’s still a con­sci­en­tious­ness around art.

I’ll talk more about indi­vid­ual arti­cles as we fea­ture them but in the mean­time, feel free to leave me your ini­tial thoughts in the com­ments below. Bummed that you did­n’t write any­thing? The issue on Meet­ings and Mon­ey is look­ing for sub­mis­sions.


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