Tag Archives ⇒ one

Painting for Worship

March 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I did­n’t know of Adri­an Mar­tinez before I was intro­duced to him in this Quak­er­S­peak video. He seems like quite a char­ac­ter (“art attack!”) but I’m intrigued at how his paint­ings have brought pri­mal Quak­er val­ues into unex­pect­ed spaces like the White House (not the occu­pant you might guess!) and cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca. His sto­ry of a very specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er pic­ture being bought for a board­room hints at mes­sages Friends might still have for the world:

The paint­ing I did, Meet­ing for Wor­ship, I just knew was not some­thing that was going to get sold. It was not an eco­nom­ic deci­sion. It was a neces­si­ty to do, nonethe­less. When I did it, I had this big show and it was imme­di­ate­ly pur­chased. First one. And it’s inter­est­ing: where it went went was the board­room of an insur­ance agency. The man that owned the com­pa­ny bought the paint­ing because he said, “The rea­son I need this paint­ing, and I need it in the board­room, is because we need more of that in our business.”

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​p​a​i​n​t​i​n​g​-​f​o​r​-​w​o​r​s​h​ip/

Only Quakerism?

March 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Over on the Quak­erQuak­er dis­cus­sions, Ore­gon Friend Kir­by Urn­er won­ders whether we need to think of our Quak­erism less an iden­ti­ty built around mem­ber­ship sta­tus and more as a way of life, No Quak­ers, Only Quak­erism:

I’d be hap­py to see a branch (fork) of Quak­erism which dis­pensed with mem­ber­ship on the grounds that there’s no way to “be” a Friend, only Friend­ly, as a mod­i­fi­er to one’s actions, as fleet­ing as the Now Moment itself. You “are” a Friend now, and again now, but it takes work to “stay in the moment” as such.  It’s a prac­tice.  You don’t get to rest on your lau­rels, as the Romans put it.  It’d be fun to see how that turned out.

 

On the State of Religious Discourse at Haverford

March 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This one only tan­gen­tial­ly skims Friends but it’s an inter­est­ing case. A inde­pen­dent stu­dent web­site at the historically-Quaker Haver­ford Col­lege decid­ed not to do a spe­cial issue on reli­gion and one stu­dent penned an arti­cle about why he dis­agrees: On the State of Reli­gious Dis­course at Haverford

Haver­ford is not immune to this plague: we too rel­e­gate reli­gious knowl­edge to a dimen­sion of the per­son­al. Con­sid­er­ing the reli­gious his­to­ry and Quak­er roots of our insti­tu­tion, this is par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling. Haver­ford sells itself as a Quak­er insti­tu­tion, and there is a sense in which this is true, as there are cer­tain tra­di­tions at Haver­ford (speak­ing out of silence, quo­rum, con­fronta­tion, etc.), and yet the school split from orga­nized Quak­erism long ago, and one need only look at the last year to under­stand that we make deci­sions as an insti­tu­tion that are quite sep­a­ra­ble from any pro­mot­ed quak­er values.

Haver­ford’s offi­cial state­ment on its Quak­er iden­ti­ty is a rather strained two sen­tences, but in recent years it’s devel­oped a Quak­er Affairs pro­gram, which is cur­rent­ly led by the awe­some Wal­ter Sul­li­van. The pro­gram’s Friend in Res­i­dence pro­gram has brought in some great Quak­er thinkers on campus.

More on this top­ic soon as Friends Journal’s May issue will ask “What Are Quak­er Val­ues Any­way?” (Some of my pre­lim­i­nary thought are here).

A Friend’s journey to BDS

March 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week’s Friends Jour­nal fea­ture is a piece by Lau­ren Brown­lee, who’s writ­ten many book reviews for us, but only one fea­ture before this (“One Drop in the Wave of Lib­er­a­tion” about the new African Amer­i­can his­to­ry muse­um in D.C.). This time she talks about one of the more con­tentious issues of our day, the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Israel and Pales­tine, but does it very much in a Quak­er context.

What make it Quak­er? Well, she shares her per­son­al sto­ry of weigh­ing the sides on the issue, going from one view­point to anoth­er until she finds one that she can own. The process of dis­cern­ment is care­ful and not lin­ear. It lis­tens to par­ti­sans with­out itself becom­ing par­ti­san. As I write in my open­ing col­umn, “Her answer may not be your answer, but we hope her mod­el of dis­cern­ment is use­ful to read­ers.” She writes:

My great­est fear is hurt­ing peo­ple, and my new friend had made it clear that the worst con­se­quence of BDS is not inef­fi­ca­cy; it is caus­ing more pain to a peo­ple who have already great­ly suf­fered. I did have the oppor­tu­ni­ty ear­ly in the gath­er­ing to voice these obsta­cles to ful­ly embrac­ing the BDS Move­ment, and in fact, we all shared con­cerns that we had heard about advo­cat­ing for the movement


A Loving Quaker Journey to BDS - Friends Journal

A Lov­ing Quak­er Jour­ney to BDS — Friends Journal 

A Friend strug­gles to find a posi­tion on the Boy­cott, Divest­ments, and Sanc­tions Movement.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Your Hand in Front of Your Face

March 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The sec­ond post of a new blog, Mus­ings of a Return­ing Quak­er, was post­ed yes­ter­day. In Your Hand in Front of Your Face, Josh Tal­bot con­nects the Gospel with the need for eco­nom­ic betterment:

Singing along with a hymn does not pay rent. Sit­ting in Silent Wor­ship revi­tal­izes your soul and con­nec­tion to the Light. How­ev­er, it does not lessen the bur­den of need­ing to eat. The ques­tion we must ask our­selves as peo­ple of faith is what can we do in order to bring these poor (lit­er­al­ly) peo­ple back to church. From my per­spec­tive as a Hick­site Friend the answer is sim­ple, to turn to the Quak­er tra­di­tion of activism.

Long­time read­ers will know I strug­gle too with how Friends can those who don’t have the lux­u­ry of Sun­day morn­ing free time. I wrote about this in a Decem­ber 2012 arti­cle in Friends Jour­nal (the only fea­ture I’ve writ­ten since becom­ing senior edi­tor). I was look­ing back to a 11-month peri­od in which I had worked the night shift in my local super­mar­ket. I’m always glad to see a new Quak­er blog and this one is promising.

https://​quak​er​re​turns​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​3​/​y​o​u​r​-​h​a​n​d​-​i​n​-​f​r​o​n​t​-​o​f​-​y​o​u​r​-​f​a​c​e​.​h​tml

March 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

That one final­ly becomes the thing he vio­lent­ly fights is a fact that Hitler under­stood, in 1933, when he said, “The great strength of the total­i­tar­i­an state is that it forces those who fear it to imi­tate it.” It would be a trag­ic thing indeed if we Amer­i­cans were stripped of our free­dom by a for­eign and aggres­sive pow­er; it is all the more trag­ic that we grad­u­al­ly and some­what unknow­ing­ly give up our free­doms, one after anoth­er, in the pur­suit of that force which we claim will guard our liberty.

— Bayard Rustin [Source]

The Quaker who lived with the CIA

March 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I usu­al­ly find sto­ries of Friends by track­ing a list of a hundred-plus Quaker-related RSS feeds. I’ll also find them being shared on Face­book or in the Red­dit Quak­ers group. For the first time ever I stum­bled on one in Twit­ter Moments. Anoth­er like­ly first: I’m link­ing to the CIA web­site. Read the sto­ry of the Quak­er paci­fist who lived with the CIA.

Mar­garet [Scat­ter­good] was far more skep­ti­cal of CIA and con­sid­ered the organization’s mis­sion to be in vio­la­tion of her paci­fist beliefs. She used her trust fund to finan­cial­ly con­tribute to anti­war caus­es. She lob­bied Con­gress to cut the US Intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary bud­gets. In the 1980s Mar­garet opened her home to San­din­istas from Nicaragua, while CIA sup­port­ed the opposition.

Invit­ing San­din­istas to her home in the mid­dle of the CIA head­quar­ters com­pound is eas­i­ly the most kick­ass Quak­er sto­ries I’ve heard in awhile. Chuck Fager also shared some of this sto­ry in a nice remem­brance in a 1987 Friends Jour­nal short­ly after she died; appar­ent­ly the land pur­chas­es in the 1940s weren’t quite so neigh­bor­ly as the CIA pub­lic rela­tions team seem to make out.

How does Truth prosper among us?

March 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

New Eng­land Friend Bri­an Dray­ton recent­ly vis­it­ed Philadel­phia and recount­ed host min­istry on the old Quak­er query, How does Truth pros­per among us?

Friends in the past used “Truth” in ways that went well beyond a sim­ple propo­si­tion or asser­tion of fact, a “truth claim,” some spe­cif­ic con­tent. “Truth” instead con­not­ed some­thing of the action and the real­i­ty of God’s work in the world, as we expe­ri­ence and try to live it.

Used by indi­vid­u­als as a greet­ing, some vari­a­tion of “How does the truth fare with thee?” can be a reminder that the friend­ships of Friends can be spir­i­tu­al­ly deep­er than “yo, whas­sup?” infor­mal­i­ty (at one point Friends would even eschew “Good morn­ing” as a greet­ing on the chance that the morn­ing might actu­al­ly not be com­par­a­tive­ly good).