Tag Archives ⇒ meeting

Lifting up the vocabulary

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week’s fea­tured Friends Jour­nal arti­cle is Sell­ing Hope by Tom Hoopes. Hoopes is a teacher at George School, one of the two promi­nent Quak­er board­ing schools in the Philadel­phia area, and he talks about the brand­ing chal­lenges of “Quak­er val­ues” which his­toric Quak­er schools so often fall back on when describ­ing their mis­sion. We often describe these with the sim­plis­tic “SPICES” foru­mu­la­tion (Eric Moon wrote about the prob­lems over-emphasizing these). Hoopes encour­ages us to expand our language:

We can use any num­ber of descrip­tors that do not sound so haughty and near­sight­ed. I think we should con­tin­u­al­ly lift up some key pieces of vocab­u­lary that real­ly do make the Quak­er way dis­tinc­tive. Here is a brief list, to which I am sure Friends can add oth­ers: “that of God in every per­son”; “the Inner Light”; “con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion”; “dis­cern­ment”; “sense of the meet­ing”; “right­ly led and right­ly ordered”; “Friend speaks my mind”; “the still, small voice with­in”; “way open­ing”; “clerk­ing”; “query”; “wor­ship shar­ing”; “expec­tant wait­ing”; “cen­ter­ing down”; “Quak­er deci­sion mak­ing”; “Quak­er tra­di­tion”; “faith and prac­tice”; “seek­ing clear­ness”; “Quak­er tes­ti­monies”; and of course, “meet­ing for worship.”

Long­time FJ read­ers will remem­ber a much-discussed 2008 arti­cle by Hoopes, “Young Fam­i­lies and Quak­erism: Will the Cen­ter Hold?” It cer­tain spoke to my con­di­tion as a par­ent strug­gling with fam­i­ly life among Friends:

Let’s look at some hard real­i­ties fac­ing many Quak­er par­ents of young chil­dren today. They are fre­quent­ly exhaust­ed and fraz­zled from attend­ing to their children’s needs in addi­tion to their own all week long. They des­per­ate­ly need a break from their own chil­dren, and they may feel guilty about that fact. They are often asked — or expect­ed — to serve as First-day school teach­ers or child­care providers. Hence, their expe­ri­ence of meet­ing is not one of replen­ish­ment, but of fur­ther depletion.

I wish I could report that Philadel­phia Friends took the 2008 arti­cle to heart.


Selling Quakerism - Friends Journal

Sell­ing Quak­erism — Friends Journal 

The Mis­sion – Mar­ket Ten­sion Inher­ent in Quak­er Values

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Quaker Jazz

April 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week’s Quak­er­S­peak inter­views musi­cian Colton Weath­er­ston. I love the way he relates the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion of jazz musi­cians to Quak­er worship:

Espe­cial­ly artists and musi­cians, we often don’t have the same point of view or even the same back­ground. Each of us will bring a lot of bag­gage into the meet­ing of the musi­cians and we have to build trust with each oth­er and peo­ple need to feel free to express their ideas as a soloist with­out feel­ing told by the leader how exact­ly to play — we have to work it out as an ensem­ble. And I think that’s very true with meet­ings also.

Those with long mem­o­ries might remem­ber that I inter­viewed Chad Stephen­son after he made a com­par­i­son between new jazz tra­di­tion­al­ists and Con­ver­gent Friends at the 2009 Ben Lomond con­fer­ence (I believe he wrote an expand­ed ver­sion for the Spir­it Ris­ing Quak­er anthol­o­gy but I can’t find a link).

I’m not the only one who digs archives

April 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Philadel­phia Friends are so mod­est that blog posts on Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing’s web­site don’t even have bylines. Or maybe some­one for­got to fill out a field. Either way, here’s a first-person account by an anony­mous Philadelphia-area Friend in their ear­ly 60s who start­ed read­ing Friends Jour­nal archives: Some Thoughts from the 1955 Friends Journal

I select­ed the issue clos­est to my birth date and began read­ing. The dis­cus­sion of the Kore­an con­flict, of the arms race, of the Israeli-Palestinian dis­pute, could all have been writ­ten today. And for a lunch-time med­i­ta­tion, this arti­cle, on prepar­ing for meet­ing, was just the right size for read­ing over my soup and sandwich.

The New Way

March 25, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Patri­cia Dall­mann, the sounds of our wor­ship and source of our min­istry:

When I come to meet­ing, I arrive ear­ly and, a lit­tle while lat­er, lis­ten as peo­ple begin to enter the meet­ing room and set­tle in. I like to hear all the sounds: the cough­ing, the snif­fling, the shuf­fling of feet. These are cozy human sounds; there’s a warmth in hear­ing them, like sit­ting in front of a fire. And then there are the mes­sages: people’s opin­ions and ideas.

Early Quaker “Yearly meetings”

March 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Bri­an Dray­ton is look­ing at an ear­ly form of pub­lic Quak­er wor­ship, who’s var­i­ous names (includ­ing “year­ly meet­ings”) have per­haps hid­den them from mod­ern Quak­er con­scious­ness: From the Quak­er tool­box: “Year­ly meet­ings” and related

These meet­ings often includ­ed gath­er­ings of min­is­ters, and of elders (and some­times the two togeth­er), and meet­ings most­ly for Friends. But the pub­lic wor­ship was care­ful­ly pre­pared for — usu­al­ly more than one ses­sion, often over more than one day, with lots of pub­lic­i­ty ahead of time. Tem­po­rary meet­ing places were erect­ed for large crowds (the word “booth” is used, these clear­ly held hun­dreds of people.

Bri­an’s sto­ry reminds me of when I was a tourist in the “1652 Coun­try” where Quak­erism was born. One of the stops is Fir­bank Fell, where George Fox preached to thou­sands. Most his­to­ries call that ser­mon the offi­cial start of the Quak­er movement.

But Fir­bank Fell itself is a des­o­late hill­side miles from any­where. There was a small ancient church there and then noth­ing but graz­ing fields off to the hori­zon. A thou­sand peo­ple in such a remote spot would have the feel of a music fes­ti­val. And that’s kind of what was hap­pen­ing the week the unknown George Fox walked into that part of Eng­land. There was a orga­nized move­ment that held inde­pen­dent reli­gious preach­ing fes­ti­vals. Fox was no doubt very mov­ing and he might have giv­en the seek­ers there a new way of think­ing about their spir­i­tu­al con­di­tion, but the move­ment was already there. I won­der if the gen­er­al meet­ings of pub­lic wor­ship that Dray­ton is track­ing down is an echo of those ear­li­er pub­lic festivals.

One of my Fir­bank Fell photos:

A walk around the Occupy Philly encampment

October 25, 2011
· Martin Kelley

There’s a dif­fer­ent feel since I last vis­it­ed – it’s qui­eter and more lived-in. Less a protest and more a small town. Ser­vices are orga­nized and there’s less peo­ple stand­ing with signs and tak­ing each oth­er’s pictures.

I briefly sat in on the Quaker/Interfaith tent, where a meet­ing was going. I could­n’t hear much but the main issue of busi­ness was how open an inter­faith speak­er’s series should be. I did­n’t have too much time so I qui­et­ly slipped off after­wards to take more pic­tures of Occu­py. #blog

In album Occu­py Philly, 10/25 lunchtime #occu­pyphilly (7 photos)

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Part of the “Idea Wall”

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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.

Remembering George Willoughby

January 9, 2010
· Martin Kelley

There’s a nice remem­brance of George Willough­by by the Brandy­wine Peace Com­mu­ni­ty’s Bob Smith over on the War Resisters Inter­na­tion­al site. George died a few days ago at the age of 95. It’s hard not to remem­ber his favorite quip as he and his wife Lil­lian cel­e­brat­ed their 80th birth­days: “twen­ty years to go!” Nei­ther of them made it to 100 but they cer­tain­ly lived fuller lives than the aver­age couple.

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George in 2002, from War Resisters International

I don’t know enough of the details of their lives to write the obit­u­ary (a Wikipedia page was start­ed this morn­ing) but I will say they always seemed to me like the For­rest Gumps of peace activists — at the cen­ter of every cool peace wit­ness since 1950. You squint to look at the pho­tos and there’s George and Lil, always there. Or maybe pop music would give us the bet­ter anal­o­gy: you know how there are entire b‑rate bands that carve an entire career around end­less­ly rehash­ing a par­tic­u­lar Bea­t­les song? Well, there are whole activist orga­ni­za­tions that are built around par­tic­u­lar cam­paigns that the Willough­bys cham­pi­oned. Like: in 1958 George was a crew mem­ber of the Gold­en Rule (pro­filed a bit here), a boat­load of crazy activists who sailed into a Pacif­ic nuclear bomb test to dis­rupt it. Twelve years lat­er some Van­cou­ver activists stage a copy­cat boat sail­ing, an act which spawned Green­peace. Lil­lian was con­cerned about ris­ing vio­lence against women and start­ed one of the first Take Back the Night march­es. If you’ve ever sat in an activist meet­ing where every­one’s using con­sen­sus, then you’ve been influ­enced by the Willoughbys!

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The Gold­en Rule, 1959, from the Swarth­more Peace Collection.

For many years I lived deeply embed­ded in com­mu­ni­ties co-founded by the Willough­bys. There’s a recent inter­view with George Lakey about the found­ing of Move­ment for a New Soci­ety that he and they helped cre­ate. In the 1990s I liked to say how I lived “in its ruins,” work­ing at its pub­lish­ing house, liv­ing in one of its land-trusted hous­es, and get­ting my food from the coop, all insti­tu­tions that grew out of MNS. I got to know the Willough­bys through Cen­tral Philadel­phia meet­ing but also as friends. It was a treat to vis­it their house in Dept­ford, N.J. — it adjoined a wildlife sanc­tu­ary they helped pro­tect against the strip-mall sprawl that is the rest of that town. I last saw George a few months ago, and while he had a bit of trou­ble remem­ber­ing who I was, that irre­press­ible smile and spir­it were very strong!

When news of George’s pass­ing start­ed buzzing around the net I got a nice email from Howard Clark, who’s been very involved with War Resisters Inter­na­tion­al for many years. It was a real blast-from-the-past and remind­ed me how lit­tle I’m involved with all this these days. The Philadel­phia office of New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers went under in 1995 and a few years ago I final­ly dropped the Non​vi​o​lence​.org project that I had start­ed to keep the orga­niz­ing going.

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George at Fort Gulick in Pana­ma (undat­ed), also from Swarthmore.

I’ve writ­ten before that one of the clos­est modern-day suc­ces­sor to the Move­ment for a New Soci­ety is the so-called New Monas­tic move­ment – explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian but focused on love and char­i­ty and often very Quak­er’ish. Our cul­ture of sec­u­lar Quak­erism has kept Friends from get­ting involved and shar­ing our decades of expe­ri­ence. Now that Shane Clai­borne is being invit­ed to seem­ing­ly every lib­er­al Quak­er venue, maybe it’s a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to look back on our own lega­cy. Friends like George and Lil­lian helped invent this form.

I miss the strong sense of com­mu­ni­ty I once felt. Is there a way we can com­bine MNS & the “New Monas­tic” move­ment into some­thing explic­it­ly reli­gious and pub­lic that might help spread the good news of the Inward Christ and inspire a new wave of lefty peacenik activism more in line with Jesus’ teach­ings than the xeno­pho­bic crap that gets spewed by so many “Chris­t­ian” activists? With that, anoth­er plug for the work­shop Wess Daniels and I are doing in May at Pen­dle Hill: “New Monas­tics and Cov­er­gent Friends.” If mon­ey’s a prob­lem there’s still time to ask your meet­ing to help get you there. If that does­n’t work or dis­tance is a prob­lem, I’m sure we’ll be talk­ing about it more here in the com­ments and blogs.

2010 update: David Alpert post­ed a nice remem­brance of George.

August 2013 updates from the pages of Friends Jour­nal: The Gold­en Rule Shall Sail Again and Expand­ing Old Pine Farm.