Mysterious promptings

November 9, 2023

I must admit I’m a suck­er for a cer­tain kind of Quak­er sto­ry in which a Friend faith­ful­ly fol­lows mys­te­ri­ous prompt­ings that turn out to be life-changing. It might have been an old Bill Taber book where I read about the Quak­er min­is­ter who one day shout­ed to stop the car­riage while pass­ing a ran­dom house because she knew—knew!— that its inhab­i­tants need­ed spir­i­tu­al help (read­er, they did!). I guess it’s not unlike the uncan­ny expe­ri­ence of being about to rise to give min­istry when the per­son next to you stands and gives the same mes­sage you were about to deliv­er—whoa! The hair on the back of my neck always stands up to these stories.

This week I was read­ing the sto­ries of Paul S. Lip­pen­cott, Jr., a record­ed min­is­ter of my own Crop­well Meet­ing who lived from 1882 to 1968. I’m try­ing to under­stand the char­ac­ter of the meet­ing, and our out­go­ing clerk has told sto­ries of being a kid and lis­ten­ing to Paul’s ser­mons back in the 1960s. Some­one had got­ten an ear­ly tape recorder to col­lect Paul’s tales and pub­lished the some­what ram­bling account as Answered Prayers, a book I found at Vin­tage Quak­er Books.

The best sto­ry is the lead one. As a young man of around 30, Paul was retired in bed read­ing reli­gious books when he felt a prompt (queue ethe­r­i­al music). “After a short peri­od of prayer it became very clear to me that I should go out and gear up the horse.” Prompts came to him one after anoth­er: dri­ve west down the road a cou­ple of miles to the next town, and then: buy non-perishable gro­ceries at the store that was still open. All this was done in faith: “Until that time I had no idea where I was going to take this food,” he writes. Then a final prompt as he remem­bered “an old col­ored lady named Mar­garet Wor­thing­ton” who “lived in a cab­in by her­self” a half-mile away. He had nev­er met her but felt led to vis­it on that dark night. “I pulled up at the lit­tle one room cab­in where there was a light through the win­dow, and as I went to the door, I heard her voice pray­ing for help and food. I was there under unusu­al cir­cum­stances to answer the fer­vent prayers of a believ­ing soul.”

Yowsa!

If you want the whole sto­ry of the mys­te­ri­ous food run, it’s on the Crop­well web­site accom­pa­ny­ing a talk on the long and entwined rela­tion­ships between the meet­ing and local Black fam­i­lies. “Aunt Mar­garet” had a spe­cial tal­ent for hav­ing her prayers answered and Paul’s book has more sto­ries about her.

Paul tells oth­er sto­ries about fol­low­ing mys­te­ri­ous prompts. In one, he feels led to take a longer route back to his office after lunch. It’s the Depres­sion and on this dif­fer­ent path he runs into an old acquain­tance, now out of work and “in very try­ing con­di­tion.” He’s feel­ing bro­ken and final­ly admits to Paul that he’s con­sid­er­ing tak­ing his own life. They pray togeth­er and hope is restored. As Paul writes “There was some rea­son for me to make that short detour, even on a morn­ing when I was pressed for time. I am thank­ful that the Lord helped me to be able and alert to lis­ten to that Still, Small Voice.”

This is of course an echo of the para­ble of the Good Sama­ratan. Peo­ple of high stand­ing walked by the injured trav­el­er but it was the low­ly Sama­ratan who lis­tened and heard the prompt and the prayer, stopped their busy life, and aid­ed the trav­el­er. Jesus told the sto­ry to illus­trate the query “who is my neigh­bor.” I’m not sure I have the best ear for these kinds of prayers hang­ing out there but I’d like to try to lis­ten more.


If you’re in South Jer­sey or Philly and want to hear more Crop­well sto­ries, you’re invit­ed to vis­it this Sun­day to hon­or our out­go­ing clerk, Earl Evens. A few years ago Crop­well was down to two attend­ing mem­bers and close to being laid down when a small group led by Earl felt a prompt to try to rebuild the com­mu­ni­ty. Ear­l’s sto­ries of old Crop­well, the way he’s played host to the rebirthed com­mu­ni­ty, and his gen­tle opin­ions on Quak­er wor­ship have helped set the spir­i­tu­al DNA of our expand­ing group (five new mem­bers last year and anoth­er applied this week). I’m the incom­ing clerk and omg, these are quite the shoes to fill.

Brooklyn Friends support a youth-led outreach music and arts show

March 28, 2023

Sup­port­ing younger Friends in an out­reach effort, by Kris­ten Cole:

A few weeks before the show, one of the adult orga­niz­ers made an announce­ment about the upcom­ing show at the rise of meet­ing for wor­ship. He explained, “We did a real­ly rad­i­cal thing. We asked our teens what they would want to do if they could orga­nize an event for young peo­ple. And they told us. And we lis­tened.” At a time when we are deeply engaged in con­ver­sa­tions about the direc­tion of Quak­erism, it’s pow­er­ful to be remind­ed that build­ing toward our future might be eas­i­er to achieve if we open our hearts and minds and lis­ten to the next generation.

Read more at Find­ing the Divine in a Mosh Pit. This is from the March edi­tion of Spark, New York Year­ly Meet­ing’s pub­li­ca­tion, which focus­es on the arts this issue.

Be sure to scroll to the bot­tom of Cole’s arti­cle for a dis­claimer about the mosh pit (spoil­er: there was­n’t one). It made me won­der if kids still mosh. Wikipedia dates the prac­tice to 1980. I’m sure some do, as we live in an age of ever­green sub-genres. The avail­abil­i­ty of music and video on-demand and the abil­i­ty to quick­ly orga­nize com­mu­ni­ties via app make every era eas­i­ly acces­si­ble. I’ve lost track of how many 80s revivals we’ve gone through.

But con­certs these days are so medi­at­ed by cell phones. Even I find myself tak­ing it out when the first chords of a favorite song start up. And even if you your­self resist, oth­ers will have their phones out video­ing you. I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by the videos of high school kids from the 1980s that some­time get post­ed on YouTube. They’re so unfazed by the cam­era, which would have been some bulky Hi8 cam­corder, prob­a­bly because they fig­ured no one would actu­al­ly ever look at the footage. It’s hard to imag­ine the wild aban­don and non-self-consciousness of 1980s mosh­ing when you know any awk­ward move you make might show up on Tik­tok or Ins­ta the next day.

A more modern commission

March 7, 2019

As an East Coast unpro­grammed Friend, Quak­er mis­sion work is still a bit exot­ic. We’re used to read­ing of well-meaning nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Friends whose atti­tudes shock us today. But here’s a sto­ry of some Mid­west mis­sion work with the Shawnee in the 1970s and 80s.

Their “mis­sion” work con­sists of farm­ing, teach­ing, music and wood­work­ing and lan­guage trans­lat­ing, lots of trans­port­ing chil­dren and teens. It also involves preach­ing each week, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in funer­als, wed­dings, and oth­er tra­di­tion­al pas­toral duties, all aimed at intro­duc­ing peo­ple to Jesus.

Their “mis­sion” work con­sists of farm­ing, teach­ing, music and wood­work­ing and lan­guage trans­lat­ing, lots of trans­port­ing chil­dren and teens. It also involves preach­ing each week, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in funer­als, wed­dings, and oth­er tra­di­tion­al pas­toral duties, all aimed at intro­duc­ing peo­ple to Jesus. 

http://​www​.lib​er​al​first​.com/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​o​u​r​-​g​r​e​a​t​-​c​o​m​m​i​s​s​ion

At 95, Ned Rorem Is Done Composing. But He’s Not Done Living

October 23, 2018

The Times has a nice pro­file of the not-dead Pulitzer Prize com­pos­er and gay icon. The piece doesn’t men­tion his Quak­er roots (he was born in Rich­mond, Indi­ana and raised as a Friend) but an embed­ded playlist includes “Mary Dyer did hang as a flag,” a piece from his 1976 com­po­si­tion A Quak­er Read­er.

I don’t know much about Rorem or the extent or ongo­ing­ness of his Quak­er iden­ti­ty (if any­one wants to share more in the com­ments that would be great). I keep a list I call “Sur­pris­ing Unex­pect­ed Unlike­ly Quak­ers” for names peo­ple give me of famous’ish peo­ple with Quak­er con­nec­tions. Who’s your favorite unlike­ly Quaker?

Creativity and the Arts

June 1, 2018

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.

Quaker Jazz

April 12, 2018

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).

Edward Tufte and classical intellectual inquiry

June 27, 2016

Near the begin­ning of Edward Tufte’s Beau­ti­ful Evi­dence, he writes “My books are self-exemplifying: the objects them­selves embody the ideas writ­ten about.” The same could be true of his presentations.

On a recent Tues­day, Friends Jour­nal spon­sored me to attend one of Tufte’s one-day work­shops. He’s most well-known for his beau­ti­ful books on data visu­al­iza­tions but his work­shop touched on a num­ber of fas­ci­nat­ing top­ics. “The world is way too inter­est­ing to have dis­ci­pli­nary bound­aries,” he said at one point as he took us from music to maps to space shut­tles to magi­cians. The range was pur­pose­ful. He was teach­ing us how to think.

I esti­mat­ed a crowd of maybe 450. A large per­cent­age were low-level cor­po­rate types (I over­heard one say “I was not expect­ing that he’d bash Pow­er­Point so much”; this slack­er obvi­ous­ly hadn’t even tak­en five min­utes to skim Tufte’s Wikipedia page). There were small­er mix­es of techie, cre­atives, and design pro­fes­sion­als, some of whom were there after fawn­ing over his books for years. Bonus if you go: part of the work­shop reg­is­tra­tion fee is gratis copies of his books!

I have 13 pages of notes. Some high­lights for me:

  • The heart of much of the work­shop was crit­i­cal think­ing. Tufte dis­sect­ed var­i­ous news web­sites to take us through the ways they gave attri­bu­tion and pre­sent­ed data. He also went through stud­ies and gave var­i­ous point­ers to sniff out when ver­i­fy­ing data was being withheld.
  • “Pro­duc­ing a good pre­sen­ta­tion is a moral and eth­i­cal act.” (dit­to for being an good audi­ence mem­ber). There is a form of civic respon­si­bil­i­ty to inquiry.
  • Tufte is a big believ­er in meet­ings that begin with read­ing. The highest-resolution device most of us have is paper. Peo­ple can read 2 – 3 times faster than a pre­sen­ter can talk. By let­ting peo­ple go at their own pace they can tai­lor the pre­sen­ta­tion to their own needs.
  • Data pre­sen­ta­tion: A theme through­out the work­shop was “doc­u­ments not decks,” an empha­sis on flat, web-like pre­sen­ta­tions that allow read­ers to con­trol scrolling. He con­tin­u­al­ly called out “flat sur­faces” and mate­r­i­al that is “adja­cent in space” to give an almost the­o­log­i­cal argu­ment for their supe­ri­or­i­ty over deck-like pre­sen­ta­tions (think Pow­er­Point) that can obscure impor­tant data.
  • He urged us not to pan­der to our audi­ence: Con­sumer sites show that data can be pop­u­lar: the New York Times’s web­site has 450 links; ESPN’s has tables atop tables and yet peo­ple read these sites every day. Why can’t we have the same lev­el of data-rich acces­si­bil­i­ty in our work lives? “Have we sud­den­ly becomes stu­pid just because we’ve comes to work?” He urged the mid-level execs in the audi­ence to demand good pre­sen­ta­tions. We should push back against the low-expectations of their boss­es to ask “Why can’t we live up to ESPN?”
  • Data as beau­ty. From gor­geous maps to graph­i­cal music nota­tion (below), Tufte loves design and data that come togeth­er in beau­ty. It is amazing.

One of my favorite parts of the work­shop was an after­noon digres­sion from strict data that he intro­duced by say­ing, “It’s time for a heart to heart.” It began with a ser­mon­ette on cred­i­bil­i­ty: how to make your­self account­able and just other’s arguments.

Then he talked about how to respond when some­one chal­lenges your work. I could tell there must be a long list of per­son­al sto­ries inform­ing this part of the work­shop – lessons learned, yes, but sure­ly oppor­tu­ni­ties lost too. Tufte told us it was only nat­ur­al to respond in defen­sive­ness and anger and coun­seled us to not be too quick to dis­miss cri­tique. You’ve got to do the hard work to see whether your chal­lenger might be correct.

He remind­ed us that when we’re in a room full of peers, every­one present has been fil­tered and select­ed over the years. You should assume the room will be just as smart as you are. “How dare you think your motives are bet­ter than those of your col­leagues!” he thun­dered at an emo­tion­al crescen­do. He admit­ted that this self-doubt is a hard pos­ture to adopt. He’s polled pub­lic fig­ures he respects and even the thickest-skinned are stung by challenge.

He said he had learned to back off, go slow, and con­tem­plate when he’s chal­lenged. Just when I thought he had found some super-human abil­i­ty to ratio­nal­ly con­sid­er things, he told us it could took him three to five years to real­ly accept the valid­i­ty of dis­sent­ing views.

This was a much-needed ser­mon for me and I nod­ded along along. As some­one who pro­fes­sion­al­ly ampli­fies opin­ion, I’m often in the mid­dle of peo­ple in debate (I’ve been an actor in these con­flicts in the past, though these days I gen­er­al­ly play a role some­where between an agent and medi­a­tor). It’s good to see intel­lec­tu­al debate as a process and to remem­ber that it can take years. “This con­cludes the ther­a­peu­tic por­tion of today’s course”, he con­clud­ed, before going back to visualizations.

He end­ed by show­ing us time­less first-editions of beau­ti­ful sci­en­tif­ic works by Galileo and Euclid. He felt a gen­uine appre­ci­a­tion of being part of an intel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tion. He was a mas­ter and for this day we in the audi­ence were his appren­tices. “In life we need tools that last for­ev­er and give us clear lever­age in clear thinking.”

 

Update: appar­ent­ly some num­ber of data visu­al­iza­tion peo­ple have dis­liked his work­shops. What I found fas­ci­nat­ing­ly wide-ranging they found ram­bling. Per­haps Tufte has tight­ened his pre­sen­ta­tion or I caught him on a good day. More like­ly, I think they came look­ing for a more tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sion of data visu­al­iza­tion and was sur­prised that Tufte focused so much on crit­i­cal think­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. I have a par­tic­u­lar soft spot for quirky and opin­ion­at­ed peo­ple who don’t fol­low scripts and Tufte’s detours all made a cer­tain sense to me. But then I’m a phi­los­o­phy major turned do-gooder writer/publisher. Your mileage may vary.

The birth of soul

March 4, 2016

Via Wikipedia
Via Wikipedia

I recent­ly lis­tened to Solomon Burke’s 196 album Rock ‘n’ Soul. Def­i­nite­ly worth a lis­ten if like me he’s been off your musi­cal radar. I espe­cial­ly like Wikipedi­a’s account of how con­flicts over brand­ing and church pro­pri­ety led Burke and his record label Atlantic to coin the term “soul music.”

Almost imme­di­ate­ly after sign­ing to Atlantic, Wexler and Burke clashed over his brand­ing and the songs that he would record. Accord­ing to Burke, “Their idea was, we have anoth­er young kid to sing gospel, and we’re going to put him in the blues bag.“As Burke had strug­gled from an ear­ly age with “his attrac­tion to sec­u­lar music on the one hand and his alle­giance to the church on the oth­er,” when he was signed to Atlantic Records he “refused to be clas­si­fied as a rhythm-and-blues singer” due to a per­ceived “stig­ma of pro­fan­i­ty” by the church, and R&B’s rep­u­ta­tion as “the dev­il’s music.”

Burke indi­cat­ed in 2005: “I told them about my spir­i­tu­al back­ground, and what I felt was nec­es­sary, and that I was con­cerned about being labeled rhythm & blues. What kind of songs would they be giv­ing me to sing? Because of my age, and my posi­tion in the church, I was con­cerned about say­ing things that were not prop­er, or that sent the wrong mes­sage. That angered Jer­ry Wexler a lit­tle bit. He said, ‘We’re the great­est blues label in the world! You should be hon­ored to be on this label, and we’ll do every­thing we can – but you have to work with us.’”

To mol­li­fy Burke, it was decid­ed to mar­ket him as a singer of “soul music” after he had con­sult­ed his church brethren and won approval for the term. When a Philadel­phia DJ said to Burke, “You’re singing from your soul and you don’t want to be an R&B singer, so what kind of singer are you going to be?”, Burke shot back: “I want to be a soul singer.” Burke’s sound, which was espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar in the South, was described there as “riv­er deep coun­try fried but­ter­cream soul.” Burke is cred­it­ed with coin­ing the term “soul music,” which he con­firmed in a 1996 interview.