Tag Archives ⇒ lunch

Is dairy overrated?

July 7, 2012
· Martin Kelley

None oth­er than the NYTimes’s Mark Bittman sounds like a veg­an polemi­cist:

Most humans nev­er tast­ed fresh milk from any source oth­er than their moth­er for almost all of human his­to­ry, and fresh cow’s milk could not be rou­tine­ly avail­able to urban­ites with­out indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment not only sup­ports the milk indus­try by spend­ing more mon­ey on dairy than any oth­er item in the school lunch pro­gram, but by con­tribut­ing free pro­pa­gan­da as well as sub­si­dies amount­ing to well over $4 bil­lion in the last 10 years.

These aren’t new argu­ments, but Bittman presents them well, cit­ing his own expe­ri­ences. And of course it makes a dif­fer­ence that he’s a charm­ing, high pro­file Times columnist.

The Biggest Most Vibranty Most Outreachiest Program Ever

September 21, 2010
· Martin Kelley

In my twenty-plus years with Friends, I’ve seen Big Out­reach Projects come and go. I’m afraid I can’t even remem­ber most of the Great Names they had. Is there a repos­i­to­ry for their Bold Mis­sion State­ments? Videos from their Impor­tant Con­fer­ences? You’d think with all this talk of Com­mu­ni­ty and Vibrance and Roots and New­ness that the Soci­ety of Friends would be bust­ing out at the seams. Well, I thought I’d get into the act, throw my hat in the ring if you will and give you the Biggest Newiest Out­reachi­est Pro­gram Ever:

When a new­com­er shows up at meet­ing, invite them out for lunch.

I’ll leave the details up to you. Your place, a local restau­rant, sand­wich­es at the meet­ing­house, doesn’t mat­ter. Total new­com­er, some­one from anoth­er meet­ing, a old reg­u­lar who hasn’t shown up in awhile, doesn’t mat­ter. When some­one you didn’t expect shows up for wor­ship on First Day Morn­ing, say hi and invite them to a meal. What’s that? You missed it?

When a new­com­er shows up at meet­ing, invite them out for lunch.

I warn you, you might be ven­tur­ing into Quak­er Uncom­fort Zones:

  • You’ll have to talk with some­one you didn’t meet decades ago (GASP!)
  • You’ll have to prac­tice clear­ly talk­ing about your faith, not just the how’s and the who’s but the why’s (AHHHH!)
  • You’ll have learn what the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of seek­ers are actu­al­ly seek­ing (UH-OH!)

Now I real­ize this pro­pos­al is HERESY! It’s a com­plete vio­la­tion of QUAKER PRINCIPLES! Cost of the pro­gram: noth­ing. Num­ber of com­mit­tees need­ed to over­see it: zero. Mis­sion state­ment: twelve words, already writ­ten (Review with me: “When a new­com­er shows up at meet­ing, invite them out for lunch“). Plan­ning con­sul­ta­tions: none. Amount of air­fare trans­port­ing Impor­tant Friends hith­er and yon: zero. Pre­sen­ta­tions at year­ly meet­ings: none. Staff sup­port: none. Grant pro­pos­als: none. Oh but don’t get me wrong, THERE ARE HUGE COSTS! You might have to sched­ule that com­mit­tee meet­ing for anoth­er day!!! You might have to have that Impor­tant Con­ver­sa­tion with a fel­low com­mit­tee mem­ber by PHONE lat­er in the after­noon!!! You might have one hour less on First Day for all of the Crit­i­cal­ly Impor­tant Things You Have to Do. Your Face­book friends won’t be par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed when you update to say you had lunch with some­one they’ve NEVER EVEN HEARD OF!

Ran­dom cap­i­tal­iza­tion aside for a moment, I real­ize that there are Friends with a gift of hos­pi­tal­i­ty. And some of us can come out of our shells if we make a bit of effort (it’s not the most nat­ur­al thing for me either). I’ve seen a few meet­ings and year­ly meet­ings that seem to have a tal­ent for hos­pi­tal­i­ty so I know it’s pos­si­ble. But I vis­it a lot of meet­ings these days and have to report that I rarely have the oppor­tu­ni­ty for more than ten min­utes of idle chit-chat after wor­ship before everyone’s jumped in their cars. I’ve seen Friends so involved with committee-work that they don’t notice new peo­ple or notice when reg­u­lars stop com­ing. New­com­ers typ­i­cal­ly look around with a mix of hope­ful­ness and anx­i­ety at the rise of wor­ship. Hand­shakes and intro­duc­tions are help­ful; wel­come tables, brochure racks and name tags are all very good. But depend­ing on per­son­al­i­ty, shy vis­i­tors will only stick around for a few min­utes if no one engages them any fur­ther. Like all of us, they’re look­ing for a per­son­al con­nec­tion and want more than just a few ques­tions answered Wikipedia-style. Not every­one will take us up on our offer of lunch but they’ll remem­ber we offered and will be that much more like­ly to return a sec­ond time.

So, one more time, in case missed it, the most out­reachi­est pro­gram ever:

When a new­com­er shows up at meet­ing, invite them out for lunch.

Now go off and out­reach. I hear the blue­ber­ry waf­fles down the street are real­ly yummy.

The Lost Quaker Generation

September 30, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The oth­er day I had lunch with an old friend of mine, a thirty-something Quak­er very involved in nation-wide paci­fist orga­niz­ing. I had lost touch with him after he entered a fed­er­al jail for par­tic­i­pat­ing in a Plow­shares action but he’s been out for a few years and is now liv­ing in Philly.

We talked about a lot of stuff over lunch, some of it just move­ment gos­sip. But we also talked about spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. He has left the Soci­ety of Friends and has become re-involved in his par­ents’ reli­gious tra­di­tions. It did­n’t sound like this deci­sion had to do with any new reli­gious rev­e­la­tion that involved a shift of the­ol­o­gy. He sim­ply became frus­trat­ed at the lack of Quak­er seriousness.

It’s a dif­fer­ent kind of frus­tra­tion than the one I feel but I won­der if it’s not all con­nect­ed. He was drawn to Friends because of their mys­ti­cism and their pas­sion for non­vi­o­lent social change. It was this com­bi­na­tion that has helped pow­er his social action wit­ness over the years. It would seem like his seri­ous, faith­ful work would be just what Friends would like to see in their thirty-something mem­bers but alas, it’s not so. He did­n’t feel sup­port­ed in his Plow­shares action by his Meeting.

He con­clud­ed that the Friends in his Meet­ing did­n’t think the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny could actu­al­ly inspire us to be so bold. He said two of his Quak­er heroes were John Wool­man and Mary Dyer but real­ized that the pas­sion of wit­ness that drove them was­n’t appre­ci­at­ed by today’s peace and social con­cerns com­mit­tees. The rad­i­cal mys­ti­cism that is sup­posed to dri­ve Friends’ prac­tice and actions have been replaced by a bland­ness that felt threat­ened by some­one who could choose to spend years in jail for his witness.

I can relate to his dis­ap­point­ment. I wor­ry about what kinds of actions are being done in the name of the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny, which has lost most of its his­toric mean­ing and pow­er among con­tem­po­rary Friends. It’s invoked most often now by sec­u­lar­ized, safe com­mit­tees that use a ratio­nal­ist approach to their decision-making, meant to appeal to oth­ers (includ­ing non-Friends) based sole­ly on the mer­its of the argu­ments. NPR activism, you might say. Reli­gion isn’t brought up, except in the rather weak for­mu­la­tions that Friends are “a com­mu­ni­ty of faith” or believe there is “that of God in every­one” (what­ev­er these phras­es mean). That we are led to act based on instruc­tions from the Holy Spir­it direct­ly is too off the deep end for many Friends, yet the peace tes­ti­mo­ny is fun­da­men­tal­ly a tes­ti­mo­ny to our faith in God’s pow­er over human­i­ty, our sur­ren­der to the will of Christ enter­ing our hearts with instruc­tions which demand our obedience.

But back to my friend, the ex-Friend. I feel like he’s just anoth­er eroded-away grain of sand in the delta of Quak­er decline. He’s yet anoth­er Friend that Quak­erism can’t afford to loose, but which Quak­erism has lost. No one’s mourn­ing the fact that he’s lost, no one has bare­ly noticed. Know­ing Friends, the few that have noticed have prob­a­bly not spent any time reach­ing out to him to ask why or see if things could change and they prob­a­bly defend their inac­tion with self-congratulatory pap about how Friends don’t pros­e­ly­tize and look how lib­er­al we are that we say noth­ing when Friends leave.

God!, this is ter­ri­ble. I know of DOZENS of friends in my gen­er­a­tion who have drift­ed away from or deci­sive­ly left the Soci­ety of Friends because it was­n’t ful­fill­ing its promise or its hype. No one in lead­er­ship posi­tions in Quak­erism is talk­ing about this lost gen­er­a­tion. I know of very few thirty-something Friends who are involved nowa­days and very very few of them are the kind of pas­sion­ate, mys­ti­cal, obedient-to-the-Spirit ser­vants that Quak­erism needs to bring some life back into it. A whole gen­er­a­tion is lost – my fel­low thirty-somethings – and now I see the pas­sion­ate twenty-somethings I know start­ing to leave. Yet this exo­dus is one-by-one and goes large­ly unre­marked and unno­ticed (but then I’ve already post­ed about this: It will be in decline our entire lives).

 

Update 10/2005

I feel like I should add an adden­dum to all this. As I’ve spo­ken with more Friends of all gen­er­a­tions, I’ve noticed that the atten­tion to younger Friends is cycli­cal. There’s a thirty-year cycle of snub­bing younger Friends (by which I mean Friends under 40). Back in the 1970s, all twenty-year-old with a pulse could get recog­ni­tion and sup­port from Quak­er meet­ings; I know a lot of Friends of that gen­er­a­tion who were giv­en tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties despite lit­tle expe­ri­ence. A decade lat­er the doors had start­ed to close but a hard-working faith­ful Friend in their ear­ly twen­ties could still be rec­og­nized. By the time my gen­er­a­tion came along, you could be a whirl­wind of great ideas and ener­gy and still be shut out of all oppor­tu­ni­ties to serve the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends.

The good news is that I think things are start­ing to change. There’s still a long way to go but a thaw is upon us. In some ways this is inevitable: much of the cur­rent lead­er­ship of Quak­er insti­tu­tions is retir­ing. Even more, I think they’re start­ing to real­ize it. There are prob­lems, most notably tokenism — almost all of the younger Friends being lift­ed up now are the chil­dren of promi­nent “com­mit­tee Friends.” The biggest prob­lem is that a few dozen years of lax reli­gious edu­ca­tion and “roll your own Quak­erism” means that many of the mem­bers of the younger gen­er­a­tion can’t even be con­sid­ered spir­i­tu­al Quak­ers. Our meet­ing­hous­es are seen as a place to meet oth­er cool, pro­gres­sive young hip­sters, while spir­i­tu­al­i­ty is sought from oth­er sources. We’re going to be spend­ing decades untan­gling all this and we’re not going to have the sea­soned Friends of my gen­er­a­tion to help bridge the gaps.

Relat­ed Reading

  • After my friend Chris post­ed below I wrote a follow-up essay, Pass­ing the Faith, Plan­et of the Quak­ers Style.
  • Many old­er Friends hope that a resur­gence of the peace move­ment might come along and bring younger Friends in. In Peace and Twenty-Somethings I look at the gen­er­a­tional strains in the peace movement.
  • 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.”