Tag Archives ⇒ meeting

Nancy Bieber loves her meeting

September 13, 2024
· Martin Kelley

Nan­cy has an arti­cle in the cur­rent issue of Friends Jour­nal called “A Love Let­ter to My Meet­ing.” With a title like that, it could be over­ly sap­py but I found it ten­der and deep, a reflec­tion on her chang­ing roles and relationships.

In the video inter­view we talk about nav­i­gat­ing con­tro­ver­sies—a fight over car­pets in the past and strug­gling with wild­ly diver­gent atti­tudes around COVID poli­cies more recent­ly. I was most inter­est­ed in how she’s changed over the years. How do you go from a new­com­er still try­ing to under­stand Quak­er lin­go to a pil­lar of the meet­ing, the kind of per­son who steps in when some­thing needs to be han­dled (the short answer is that this hap­pens over time).

A Love Letter to My Meeting: Nancy Bieber Author Chat
A Love Let­ter to My Meet­ing: Nan­cy Bieber Author Chat 

A Quak­er author chat. Nan­cy L. Bieber’s “A Love Let­ter to My Meet­ing” appears in the Sep­tem­ber 2024…

YouTube YouTube 

As an edi­tor I often trim away bullet-point “lis­ti­cles” in arti­cle. They often feel like they’re a rem­nant of the out­line the author used to con­struct the sto­ry. Noth­ing is lost if I select them a delete. But Nan­cy’s list at the end real­ly felt like the mes­sage I think many of us could take to heart when tem­pers run high:

  1. Stick around. It gets bet­ter, and you help make it happen.
  2. Love any­way, and for­give. It’s the only way.
  3. Nur­ture each oth­er ten­der­ly, and lis­ten to each oth­er. We are all car­ri­ers of Truth.
  4. Know that the Spir­it is present and will trans­form us as we are open.

Links

May 2, 2024
· Martin Kelley

In 2020, online wor­ship went from a fringe nov­el­ty to a mass phe­nom­e­non. It’s def­i­nite­ly an option that’s here to stay and British Friends have now inte­grat­ed one online wor­ship group ful­ly into the month­ly meet­ing struc­ture (has any oth­er year­ly meet­ing done this already?). It’ll be fas­ci­nat­ing to see how this con­tin­ues to develop.

I was remiss in shar­ing the March Quak­ers Today pod­cast, which looked at Quak­ers, Birds, and Jus­tice. Friends have long been espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in the nat­ur­al world. One of the inter­vie­wees is Rebec­ca Hei­der, who wrote A Quak­er Guide to Bird­watch­ing in last mon­th’s issue of FJ.

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 

“We tried that back in 1937”

March 22, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er tells the sto­ry of a Friends meet­ing that was able to turn engrained pat­terns and opaque deci­sion­mak­ing around:

I don’t want to exag­ger­ate the ease of the tran­si­tion. I remem­ber an elder­ly Friend who opposed a pro­pos­al to hold busi­ness meet­ings at anoth­er time than the Sun­day school hour. She argued — and I think this is near­ly ver­ba­tim — “We tried that back in 1937 and it did­n’t work.” As much as I want­ed to laugh out loud, I had to acknowl­edge that her entire his­to­ry at the meet­ing exem­pli­fied self­less service. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​3​/​t​r​u​s​t​w​o​r​t​h​y​-​p​a​r​t​-​f​o​u​r​-​c​h​u​r​c​h​e​s​-​c​h​o​i​c​e​s​.​h​tml

Another Quaker(ish) president?

March 4, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Because the Quak­er pres­i­den­tial track record is so dis­tin­guished (Her­bert Hoover, Richard Nixon) maybe it’s time to put anoth­er Quak­er into the Oval Office. John Hick­en­loop­er, for­mer gov­er­nor of Col­orado and raised in the Philly sub­urbs, has thrown his hat into the ring.

Back in 2010 he told the Philadel­phia Inquir­er he and his wife were reg­u­lar meet­ing atten­ders liv­ing “Quak­er val­ues” but when Friends Jour­nal reached out to him a few years ago it sound­ed like he no longer iden­ti­fied as a Friend.


John Hickenlooper Says He Is Running in 2020, Citing a ‘Crisis of Division’ (Published 2019)

John Hick­en­loop­er Says He Is Run­ning in 2020, Cit­ing a ‘Cri­sis of Divi­sion’ (Pub­lished 2019) 

The for­mer Col­orado gov­er­nor joins a crowd­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic field. Even in his home state, there is skep­ti­cism that…

www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com

Letter of condolence from Friends General Conference

October 29, 2018
· Martin Kelley

FGC’s Cen­tral Com­mit­tee is meet­ing this week­end and wrote a let­ter of con­do­lences to Pitts­burgh’s Tree of Life Syn­a­gogue, site of the recent shooting

We are deeply sad­dened by the bru­tal slay­ing and injuries to mem­bers of your com­mu­ni­ty and the law enforce­ment offi­cers who inter­vened in the attack on your con­gre­ga­tion on Saturday.
That this vio­la­tion occurred dur­ing your wor­ship togeth­er is espe­cial­ly dis­tress­ing to us. We stand unit­ed with all peo­ple of faith in pray­ing for every­one affected. 

You can read the full piece on Facebook

Friends Com­mit­tee on Nation­al Leg­is­la­tion is also shar­ing their Prin­ci­ples for Gun Vio­lence Pre­ven­tion back­grounder, a doc­u­ment that I wish was­n’t new­ly rel­e­vant every oth­er week.

Why Do Quakers Worship in Silence?

October 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Catch­ing up with last week’s Quak­er­S­peak, which was a great one with Lloyd Lee Wil­son explain­ing how Quak­er silence is dif­fer­ent from indi­vid­ual meditation:

From the exte­ri­or, there may not appear to be very much dif­fer­ent between a group of indi­vid­u­als doing indi­vid­ual med­i­ta­tion or indi­vid­ual con­tem­pla­tion in the same room and a group of Quak­er wor­ship­ing togeth­er. But there are a num­ber of things that are, as we expe­ri­ence them, dif­fer­ent. One is that these prac­tices that have as their goal achiev­ing still­ness of mind or per­fect qui­et or single-pointed aware­ness, as a goal, are actu­al­ly quite dif­fer­ent from what we are attempt­ing and achiev­ing in meet­ing for wor­ship. For Friends, this point of still­ness is only a way sta­tion, and we pass though that. It is not our goal, but it is how we get to a point of encounter with God.
 
http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​w​h​y​-​d​o​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​w​o​r​s​h​i​p​-​i​n​-​s​i​l​e​n​ce/

Steven Davison: Prophecy and Continuing Revelation

September 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Where does new min­istry come from?

It is through prophe­cy, through con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion, that the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends moves for­ward into God’s next work for us. And we very often get our first inkling of that new truth from someone’s vocal min­istry, in a meet­ing for wor­ship, or a meet­ing for wor­ship with atten­tion to the life of the meet­ing, or in a con­sul­ta­tion or Tri­en­ni­al or world gath­er­ing or FGC Gathering,

The Impor­tance of Vocal Min­istry: Prophe­cy and Con­tin­u­ing Revelation