Forsaking Diplomacy

August 10, 2006

In the New York Times, a “glimpse behind the scenes of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion’s sup­port for war in Lebanon”:www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/washington/10rice.html:
bq.. Washington’s resis­tance to an imme­di­ate cease-fire and its staunch sup­port of Israel have made it more dif­fi­cult for [US “Sec­re­tary of State”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/secretary%20of%20state] Rice to work with oth­er nations, includ­ing some Amer­i­can allies, as they search for a for­mu­la that will end the vio­lence and pro­duce a durable cease-fire.…
Sev­er­al State Depart­ment offi­cials have pri­vate­ly object­ed to the administration’s empha­sis on Israel and have said that Wash­ing­ton is not talk­ing to Syr­ia to try to resolve the cri­sis. Dam­as­cus has long been a sup­port­er of “Hezbollah”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/hezbollah, and pre­vi­ous con­flicts between the group and Israel have been resolved through shut­tle diplo­ma­cy with Syria.
p. The wars in “Lebanon”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/lebanon and “Iraq”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/iraq are caus­ing irrepara­ble harm to the U.S. image in the Mid­dle East. High-sounding words about democ­ra­cy ring hol­low when we for­sake diplomacy.

Call for Tom Fox memorials

March 17, 2006

John Paul Stephens has asked if I could help com­pile a list of online trib­utes to our Tom Fox, the fall­en Chris­t­ian Peace­mak­er for FreetheCaptivesNow.org’sTom Fox Memo­ri­als page. I’ve start­ed a list, now up on Quak​erQuak​er​.org, that I’ll keep up for a few months. Any read­ers who know of some­thing that should be includ­ed should either email me at martink-at-nonviolence-dot-org or tag it “for:martin_kelley” in Del​.icio​.us. Thanks. Here’s my list so far:

h3. See also:
* “FreetheCaptivesNow.org”:http://freethecaptivesnow.org/
* “Chris­t­ian Peace­mak­er Watch”:http://www.quakerquaker.org/christian_peacemaker_teams/ over at Quak​erquak​er​.org
* “My posts on the Chris­t­ian Peace­mak­er witness”:/martink/cpt
* “A real­ly nice page on Tom over at Elec­tron­ic Iraq”:http://electroniciraq.net/news/2302.shtml

Random updates

December 22, 2005

Just a quick note to every­one that I haven’t post­ed more late­ly. It’s a busy time of the year. I’ve had my hands full keep­ing up with arti­cles and links to the “Chris­t­ian Peacemakers”:/quaker/cpt.
I’ve also been doing some free­lance sites. One is launched: “Quakersong.org”:www.quakersong.org, the new online home of Annie Pat­ter­son and Peter Blood of _Rise Up Singing_ fame. It’s just the start to what should soon be an inter­est­ing site.
Geek-wise I’ve been inter­est­ed in the Web 2.0 stuff (see “this Best Of list of sites”:http://web2.wsj2.com/the_best_web_20_software_of_2005.htm, link cour­tesy “C Wess Daniels”:http://gatheringinlight.blogspot.com/). I’ve talked about some of this “back in June”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/i_dont_have_anything_to_say_either.php but it’s get­ting more excit­ing. In the Fall I was asked to sub­mit a pro­pos­al for redo­ing the web­site of a Quak­er con­fer­ence cen­ter near Philadel­phia and it was all Web 2.0‑centric – maybe too much so as I did­n’t get the job! I’ll post an edit­ed ver­sion of the pro­pos­al soon for the geeks out there. Some of the new tech stuff will under­gird a fab­u­lous new “Quakerfinder.org”:www.quakerfinder.org fea­ture that will allow iso­lat­ed Friends to con­nect to form new wor­ship groups (to launch soon) and even more is behind the dreams of a new “Quakerbooks.org”:www.quakerbooks.org site.
In the mean­time, I encour­age every­one to order “On Liv­ing with a Con­cern for Gospel Ministry”:http://www.quakerbooks.org/get/1 – 888305-38‑x, the new book by New Eng­land Year­ly Meet­ing’s Bri­an Dray­ton (it arrived from the print­ers yes­ter­day). It’s being billed as a mod­ern day ver­sion of “A Descrip­tion of the Qual­i­fi­ca­tions” and if it lives up the hype it should be an impor­tant book for the stir­rings of deep­en­ing faith­ful­ness we’ve been see­ing among Quak­ers late­ly. While you’re wait­ing for the book to arrive in your mail­box, check out Brook­lyn Rich’s “Test­ing Leadings”:http://brooklynquaker.blogspot.com/2005/12/testing-leadings-part‑1.html post.

It’s witness time

December 2, 2005

Hi Quak­er­Ran­ter friends: I’ve been busy today cov­er­ing the Quak­er response to the Chris­t­ian Peace­mak­ers Teams hostages. Two sites with a lot of over­lap­ping content:

  • Quak­er Blog Watch page focused on the hostages
  • “Non​vi​o​lence​.org state­ment and list of responses

Both of these fea­ture a mix of main­stream news and Quak­er views on the sit­u­a­tion. I’ll keep them updat­ed. I’m not the only busy Friend: Chuck Fager and John Stephens have a site called Free the Cap­tives — check it out.

It’s always inter­est­ing to see the moments that I explict­ly iden­ti­fy as a Friend on Non​vi​o​lence​.org. As I saythere, it seems quite appro­pri­ate. We need to explain to the world why a Quak­er and three oth­er Chris­tians would need­less­ly put them­selves in such dan­ger. This is wit­ness time, Friends. The real deal. We’re all being test­ed. This is one of those times for which those end­less com­mit­tee meet­ings and boil­er­plate peace state­ments have pre­pared us.

It’s time to tell the world that we live in the pow­er that “takes away the occa­sion for war and over­comes our fear of death” (well, or at least mutes it enough that four brave souls would trav­el to dan­ger­ous lands to wit­ness our faith).

Quaker Blog Watch by email

October 18, 2005

It start­ed when I began book­mark­ing the more inter­est­ing Quak­er posts I ran across over the course of the day. That turned into the side­bar on the “Quak­er Ranter”:/martin home­page, which then turned into the “Quak­er Blog Watch”:/quaker page. Now, as an exper­i­ment, I’m mak­ing it avail­able as a dai­ly email:

Enter your Email: 

More info here: “Quak­er Blog Watch by email”:http://www.nonviolence.org/quaker/email/
I do rec­og­nize that this site has mut­li­ple fan bases. While I was on pater­ni­ty leave a col­league emailed me to ask when I would post more pic­tures of Baby Fran­cis. I looked and saw that it had only been ten hours since I had uploaded the last pic­ture to my Flickr account. Aaayy­ee!, the dan­ger of increas­ing expec­ta­tions! Well, you can now get a dai­ly email con­tain­ing any new pic­tures of “Baby Francis”:/francis or “Big Kid Theo”:/theo: go to either of their home­pages for the sign-up form (they share one sub­scrip­tion). One small step in self-indulgent par­ent­hood, ain’t tech­nol­o­gy great?

Add Quaker Blog Watch to your site

August 16, 2005

A few months ago I start­ed keep­ing a links blog that evolved into the “Quak­er Blog Watch” (for­mal­ly at home at “non​vi​o​lence​.org/​q​u​a​ker” though includ­ed as a col­umn else­where). This is my answer to the “aggre­ga­tion ques­tion” that a few of us were toss­ing around in Sixth Month. I’ve nev­er believed in an uberBlog that would to supercede all of our indi­vid­ual ones and act as gate-keeper to “prop­er” Quak­erism. For all my Quak­er Con­ser­v­a­tivism I’m still a Hick­site and we’re into a cer­tain live-and-let live cre­ative dis­or­der in our reli­gious life.

I also don’t like tech­ni­cal solu­tions. It helps to have a human doing this. And it helps (I think) if they have some opin­ions. When I began my list of anno­tat­ed Quak­er links I called it my “Sub­jec­tive Guide” and these links are also some­what sub­jec­tive. I don’t include every post on Quak­erism: only the ones that make me think or that chal­lenge me in some way. Medi­oc­rity, good inten­tions and a famous last name mean less to me than sim­ple faith­ful­ness to one’s call.

There’s no way to keep stats but it looks like the links are being used (hours after I stum­ble across a previously-unknown site I see com­ments from reg­u­lar Quak­er Ranter read­ers!). Here’s the next step: instruc­tions on adding the “last sev­en entries of the Quak­er blog watch to your site.” I imag­ine some of you might want to try it out on your side­bar. If so, let me know how it works: I’m open to tweak­ing it. And do remem­ber I’ll be dis­ap­pear­ing for a few days “some­time soon” (still wait­ing, that kid can’t stay in there too long.)

I don’t have anything to say (either)

June 3, 2005
Some Quaker Bloggers

Sum­mer vis­i­ta­tions got an ear­ly start last month when the North­east US “Quak­er blogroll”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/Quaker_places.php con­verged in my back yard with no agen­da to fol­low and no epis­tle to write.Front row: “James”:http://curiouspenn.blogspot.com/, “Jeffrey”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000588.php and vis­i­ta­tion ring­leader “Amanda”:http://ofthebest.blogspot.com/. Back: “Ryan”:http://snorkelinglight.blogspot.com/, “Rob”:http://consider-the-lilies.blogspot.com/, “Me”:/martink, “Theo”:/theo and poor blog­less Christina.

Well since Kwak­er­saur is inau­gu­rat­ing the “I don’t have any­thing to post”:http://kwakersaur.blogspot.com/2005/06/i‑dont-have-anything-to-say.html meme, I’ll chime in that I don’t either. Actu­al­ly I’ve writ­ten two and half essays but real­ized they’re both real­ly for myself. This is how it hap­pens some­times. I’ve long noticed this phe­nom­e­non in fully-formed ver­bal min­istry that I know I’m not sup­posed to deliv­er and it feels as if such restraint is some­times healthy on the blog. The mes­sage will reap­pear in oth­er forums I’m sure, most like­ly next mon­th’s “Gath­er­ing workshop”:www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/strangers with Zachary Moon.
In the mean­time, there’s been fresh talk about plain lan­guage and dress this week by “Johan Maurer”:http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2005/06/plain-language.htm, “Claire Reddy”:http://Quakerspeak.blogspot.com/2005/06/simplicity-unfocused-thought-blurt.html and the “Live­jour­nal Quakers”:http://www.livejournal.com/community/Quakers/105292.html. Russ Nel­son’s start­ed a “Plan­et Quaker”:http://planet.Quaker.org/ blog aggre­ga­tor (which includes Quak­er Ranter: thanks!). LizOpp talked about “field testing”:http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2005/05/after-annual-sessions.html her upcom­ing “Quak­er iden­ti­ty Gath­er­ing workshop”:http://www.fgcquaker.org/gathering/workshops/work36.php at North­ern Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions and Kiara’s talked about “being field test­ed by Liz at this year’s NYM sessions”:http://wordspinning.blogspot.com/2005/05/northern-yearly-meeting.html (how cool is that?!).
I’ve been geek­ing out on “Del.icio.us”:http://del.icio.us/martin_kelley, the “social book­mark­ing” sys­tem and on the eso­teric con­cepts of “tags”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tags, the “seman­tic web”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_web and “folksonomies”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy. Two weeks ago I would have laughed at these neol­o­gisms but I’m begin­ning to see that there’s some­thing in all this. The only out­ward form the reg­u­lars will see is a more accu­rate “Relat­ed Entries” selec­tion at the bot­tom of posts (thanks to “Adam Kalsey”:http://kalsey.com/blog/2003/05/related_entries_revisited/) and bet­ter vis­i­bil­i­ty in “select­ed Tech­no­rati entries”:http://www.technorati.com/tag/Quaker (which will get less me-centric as I fin­ish tag­ging my own back posts).
And of course we’re till­ing the field, plant­i­ng a gar­den, putting up laun­dry lines and oth­er­wise thor­ough­ly enjoy­ing the first Spring in our new house. It’s bed­time, off to read the rad­i­cal­ly folk­so­nom­ic adven­tures of Sam and “My Car”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060560452 (it’s pure tags: “My name is Sam.” “This is my car.” “I love my car.” I’d wor­ry that not-so-baby Theo is get­ting too excit­ed by com­bu­sion engines if he weren’t even more excit­ed by “dia-di-calschht” aka the “bicy­cle” Papa rides off to work on.)

Net Sightings

May 2, 2005

The Pub­lic Quak­er writ­ing about prayer
bq. Prayer is one con­stant thing for me, a reli­able base. When am I hav­ing epis­te­mo­log­i­cal doubt about every­thing, I do know that is good for me to pray.
A month ago LizOpp post­ed a inter­est “FAQ on her wor­ship group”:http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2005/03/faqs-about-my-worship-group.html which is well worth read­ing. Last week she fol­lowed it up with a very chew-worthy post on “The­o­log­i­cal uni­ty and spir­i­tu­al diversity”:http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2005/04/theological-unity-and-spiritual.html (which adds new ground to the ter­ri­to­ry we’ve been explor­ing here on Quak­er Ranter on “Non-Theism”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000567.php and “Lov­ing God”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000577.php).
“Quakerspeak”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/Quakerspeak/ is the new blog by a high-school Friend I met last week in Ore­gon. Whew, is she on fire!:
bq. I nev­er real­ly thought much about how I was sort of bot­tling up all my the­o­log­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al con­tem­pla­tions; sud­den­ly I feel like I’m pour­ing it all out on the table and exam­in­ing it all.. well, except that I’ve been exam­in­ing it all. I’m try­ing to bet­ter apply my spritu­al­i­ty to my dai­ly life and inter­ac­tions with­out los­ing sight of myself; I’m try­ing to fig­ure out where it all fits into my own life with­out try­ing to alter my per­son­al­i­ty or ways of being.
Beppe’s just start­ed a new series with a post, “The Trou­bles with Friends Part 1”:http://beppeblog.blogspot.com/2005/05/trouble-with-friends-1-too-much-of.html. This first install­ment focus­es on our fear of judge­men­tal­ism. Speak on, bro!