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Julie’s church in the news

July 13, 2007
· Martin Kelley

The Philadel­phia Inquir­er wrote an arti­cle on Julie’s tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholic church this week and even pro­duced a video that gives you a feel of the wor­ship. Because of the two lit­tle ones we try to alter­nate between her church and Friends meet­ing on First Day morn­ings (though my crazy work sched­ule over the past few months have pre­clud­ed even this). I’m in no dan­ger of becom­ing the “Catholic Ranter” any­time soon (sor­ry Julie!) but I do appre­ci­ate the rev­er­ence and sense of pur­pose which Mater Ecclessians bring to wor­ship and even I have cul­ture shock when I go to a norvus ordo mass these days. Com­men­tary on the Inquir­er piece cour­tesy Father Zuhls­dorf. That blog and the Closed Cafe­te­ria are favorites around here. Here’s a few pic­tures of us at the church fol­low­ing baptisms.

PS: I wish the Catholic Church as a whole were more open-minded when it comes to LGBT issues. That said, the ser­mons on the issue I’ve heard at Mater Eccle­si­ae have gone out of their way to empha­size char­i­ty. That said, I’ve occa­sion­al­ly heard some under the breath com­ments by parish­ioners that weren’t so char­i­ta­ble. Yet anoth­er rea­son to stay the Quak­er Ranter.

For other uses, see Light (disambiguation)

March 21, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Even though my last post was a five minute quick­ie, it gen­er­at­ed a num­ber of com­ments. One ques­tion that came up was how aware indi­vid­ual Friends are about the spe­cif­ic Quak­er mean­ings of some of the com­mon Eng­lish words we use — “Light,” “Spir­it,” etc.(dis­am­bigua­tion in Wiki-speak). Mar­shall Massey expressed sad­ness that the terms were used uncom­pre­hend­ing­ly and I sug­gest­ed that some Friends know­ing­ly con­fuse the gener­ic and spe­cif­ic mean­ings. Mar­shall replied that if this were so it might be a cul­tur­al dif­fer­ence based on geography.

If it’s a cul­tur­al dif­fer­ence, I sus­pect it’s less geo­graph­ic than func­tion­al. I was speak­ing of the class of pro­fes­sion­al Friends (heavy in my parts) who pur­pose­ful­ly obscure their lan­guage. We’re very good at talk­ing in a way that sounds Quak­er to those who do know our spe­cif­ic lan­guage but that sounds gener­i­cal­ly spir­i­tu­al to those who don’t. Some­times this obscu­ran­tism is used by peo­ple who are repelled by tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism but want to advance their ideas in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, but more often (and more dan­ger­ous­ly) it’s used by Friends who know and love what we are but are loathe to say any­thing that might sound controversial.

I’ve told the sto­ry before of a Friend and friend who said that every­time he uses the word com­mu­ni­ty he’s mean­ing the body of Christ. New­com­ers hear­ing him and read­ing his arti­cles could be for­giv­en for think­ing that com­mu­ni­ty is our reason-for-being, indeed: what we wor­ship. The prob­lem is that ten years lat­er, they’ll have signed up and built up an iden­ti­ty as a Friend and will get all offend­ed when some­one sug­gests that this com­mu­ni­ty they know and love is real­ly the body of Christ.

Lib­er­al Friends in the pub­lic eye need to be more hon­est in their con­ver­sa­tion about the Bib­li­cal and Chris­t­ian roots of our reli­gious fel­low­ship. That will scare off poten­tial mem­bers who have been scarred by the acts of those who have false­ly claimed Christ. I’m sor­ry about that and we need to be as gen­tle and hum­ble about this as we can. But hope­ful­ly they’ll see the fruits of the true spir­it in our open­ness, our warmth and our giv­ing and will real­ize that Chris­t­ian fel­low­ship is not about tel­e­van­ge­lists and Pres­i­den­tial hyp­ocrites. Maybe they’ll even­tu­al­ly join or maybe not, but if they do at least they won’t be sur­prised by our iden­ti­ty. Before some­one com­ments back, I’m not say­ing that Chris­tian­i­ty needs to be a test for indi­vid­ual mem­ber­ship but new mem­bers should know that every­thing from our name (“Friends of Christ”) on down are root­ed in that tra­di­tion and that that for­mal mem­ber­ship does not include veto pow­er over our pub­lic identity.

There is room out there for spiritual-but-not-religious com­mu­ni­ties that aren’t built around a col­lec­tive wor­ship of God, don’t wor­ry about any par­tic­u­lar tra­di­tion and focus their ener­gies and group iden­ti­ty on lib­er­al social caus­es. But I guess part of what I won­der is why this does­n’t col­lect under the UUA ban­ner, whose Prin­ci­ples and Pur­pos­es state­ment is already much more syn­cretis­tic and post-religious than even the most lib­er­al year­ly meet­ing. Evolv­ing into the “oth­er UUA” would mean aban­don­ing most of the valu­able spir­i­tu­al wis­dom we have as a people.

I think there’s a need for the kind of strong lib­er­al Chris­tian­i­ty that Friends have prac­ticed for 350 years. There must be mil­lions of peo­ple parked on church bench­es every Sun­day morn­ing look­ing up at the pul­pit and think­ing to them­selves, “sure­ly this isn’t what Jesus was talk­ing about.” Look, we have Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians com­ing out against the war! And let’s face it, it’s only a mat­ter of time before “Emer­gent Chris­tians” real­ize how lame all that post-post can­dle wor­ship is and look for some­thing a lit­tle deep­er. The times are ripe for “Oppor­tu­ni­ties,” Friends. We have impor­tant knowl­edge to share about all this. It would be a shame if we kept quiet.

Call off the search parties

March 10, 2007
· Martin Kelley

The retreat at the Carmelite Monastery was nice. Here’s some pic­tures, the first of those “long-remembered”:/if_i_dont_make_it_back.php tall stone walls and the rest of the beau­ti­ful chapel:
Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia
It was a silent retreat – for us at least. There were three talks about “Tere­sa of Avila”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_Avila giv­en by Father Tim Byer­ley, who also works with the “Col­legium Center”:http://www.collegiumcenter.org/about.php, a kind of reli­gious edu­ca­tion out­reach project for young adult Catholics in South Jer­sey (I men­tioned it “a few months ago”:https://www.quakerranter.org/teaching_quakerism_again.php as a mod­el of young adult youth out­reach that Friends might want to con­sid­er). Much of what Tere­sa has to say about prayer is uni­ver­sal and very applic­a­ble to Friends, though I have to admit I start­ed spac­ing out by around the fourth man­sion of the “Inte­ri­or Castle”:http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2.toc.html (I’ve nev­er been good with num­bered reli­gious steps!).
I’m in no dan­ger of fol­low­ing my wife Julie’s jour­ney from Friends to Catholi­cism, though as always I very much enjoyed being in the midst of a gath­ered group com­mit­ted to a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. The idea of reli­gious life as self-abnegation is an impor­tant one for all Chris­tians in an age where “me-ism”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScWdek6_Ids&eurl has become the “sec­u­lar state religion”:http://www.walmart.com/ and I hope to return to it in the near future.

Friendship even when cutting edges don’t overlap

March 8, 2007
· Martin Kelley

C Wess Daniels has a good “post fol­low­ing up the Quak­er Her­itage Day events”:http://gatheringinlight.com/2007/03/08/learning-a-new-language-while-building-a-house-reflections-on-quaker-heritage-day/ last week­end in Berke­ley. The fea­tured speak­er was Bri­an Dray­ton, a New Eng­land Friend in the lib­er­al unpro­grammed tra­di­tion who’s been doing a lot of good work around reclaim­ing traditionally-minded Quak­er min­istry (at least that’s how _I’d_ pigeon-hole him from afar, I’ve nev­er actu­al­ly met him!).

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Teaching Quakerism again

October 5, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Quakerism 101 classes at Moorestown Meeting NJGet­ting right back on the horse, I’m teach­ing Quak­erism 101 at Moorestown NJ Meet­ing Wednes­day evenings start­ing in a few weeks. The orig­i­nal plan was for the most excel­lent Thomas Swain to lead it but he’s become rather busy after being tapped to be year­ly meet­ing clerk (God bless ‘im). He’ll be there for the first ses­sion, I’ll be on my own for the rest. A rather small group has signed up so it should be nice and intimate.

For the last year I’ve been pon­der­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties of using mid-week reli­gious edu­ca­tion and wor­ship as a form of out­reach. Emer­gent Church types love small group oppor­tu­ni­ties out­side of the Sun­day morn­ing time slot and it seems that mid-week wor­ship is one of those old on-the-verge-of-death Quak­er tra­di­tions that might be worth revi­tal­iz­ing and recast­ing in an Emergent-friendly format.

Last Spring I spent a few months reg­u­lar­ly attend­ing one of the few sur­viv­ing mid-week wor­ships in the area and I found it intrigu­ing and full of pos­si­bil­i­ties but nev­er felt led to do more. It seemed that atten­ders came and went each week with­out con­nect­ing deeply to one anoth­er or get­ting any seri­ous ground­ing in Quakerism.

Reflect­ing on the gen­e­sis of a strong Philadel­phia young adult group in the mid-1990s, it seemed like the ide­al recipe would look some­thing like this:

  • 6pm: reg­u­lar reli­gious ed time, not super-formal but real and pastoral-based. This would be an open, non-judgemental time where atten­ders would be free to share spir­i­tu­al insights but they would also learn the ortho­dox Quak­er take on the issue or con­cern (Bar­clay essentially).
  • 7pm: mid-week wor­ship, unprogrammed
  • 8pm: unof­fi­cial but reg­u­lar hang-out time, peo­ple going in groups to local din­ers, etc.

Unpro­grammed wor­ship just isn’t enough (just when y’all thought I was a dyed-in-the-plain-cloth Wilbu­rite…). Peo­ple do need time to be able to ask ques­tions and explore spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in a more struc­tured way. Those of us led to teach­ing need to be will­ing to say “this is the Quak­er take on this issue” even if our answer would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly pass con­sen­sus in a Friends meeting.

Peo­ple also need time to social­ize. We live in an atom­ized soci­ety and the brunt of this iso­la­tion is borne by young adults start­ing careers in unfa­mil­iar cities and towns: Quak­er meet­ing can act as a place to plug into a social net­work and pro­vide real com­mu­ni­ty. It’s dif­fer­ent from enter­tain­ment, but rather identity-building. How do we shift think­ing from “those Quak­ers are cool” to “I’m a Quak­er and I’m cool” in such a way that these new Friends under­stand that there are chal­lenges and dis­ci­plines involved in tak­ing on this new role.

Per­haps the three parts to the mid-week wor­ship mod­el is head, spir­it and heart; what­ev­er labels you give it we need to think about feed­ing and nur­tur­ing the whole seek­er and to chal­lenge them to more than just silence. This is cer­tain­ly a com­mon mod­el. When Peg­gy Sen­ger Par­sons and Alivia Biko came to the FGC Gath­er­ing and shared Free­dom Friends wor­ship with us it had some of this feel. For awhile I tagged along with Julie to what’s now called The Col­legium Cen­ter which is a Sun­day night Catholic mass/religious ed/diner three-some that was always packed and that pro­duced at least one cou­ple (good friends of ours now!).

I don’t know why I share all this now, except to put the idea in oth­er peo­ple’s heads too. The four weeks of Wednes­day night reli­gious ed at Moorestown might have some­thing of this feel; it will be inter­est­ing to see.

For those inter­est­ed in cur­ricu­lum details, I’m bas­ing it on Michael Birkel’s Silence and Wit­ness: the Quak­er Tra­di­tion (Orbis, 2004. $16.00). Michael’s tried to pull togeth­er a good gen­er­al intro­duc­tion to Friends, some­thing sure­ly need­ed by Friends today (much as I respect Howard Brin­ton’s Friends for 300 Years it’s get­ting old in the tooth and speaks more to the issues of mid-century Friends than us). Can Silence and Wit­ness anchor a Quak­erism 101 course? We’ll see.

As sup­ple­men­tary mate­r­i­al I’m using Thomas Ham­m’s Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2003, $45), Ben Pink-Dandelion’s Con­vinced Quak­erism: 2003 Wal­ton Lec­ture (South­east­ern Year­ly Meet­ing Wal­ton Lec­ture, 2003, $4.00), Mar­ty Grundy’s Quak­er Trea­sure (Bea­con Hill Friends House Weed Lec­ture, 2002, $4.00) and the class Bill Tabor pam­phlet Four Doors to Quak­er Wor­ship (Pen­dle Hill, 1992, $5.00). Atten­tive read­ers will see echos from my pre­vi­ous Quak­erism 101 class at Med­ford Meet­ing.

Site redesign

August 30, 2006
· Martin Kelley

As will be obvi­ous to any­one see­ing this, the Quak­er­Ran­ter has been seri­ous­ly redesigned and moved off the Non​vi​o​lence​.org serv­er. I plan to talk about the tech­ni­cal under­pin­nings soon on “MartinKelley.com”:martinkelley.com. In the mean­time “email me”:mailto:martink@martinkelley.com if there’s any hor­ri­fy­ing glitches.
h3. Update, 9/1/06:
My vis­i­tor logs picked up a very inter­est­ing new Google entry for my site that high­lights the pow­er of key­words and tags that are run­ning on this new site. More over on Mar​tinkel​ley​.com in the immod­est­ly titled post “I am the King of Folksonomy”:http://www.martinkelley.com/blog/2006/09/i_am_the_king_of_folksonomy.php.

Reading John Woolman 3: The Isolated Saint

August 17, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Read­ing John Wool­man Series:
1: The Pub­lic Life of a Pri­vate Man
2: The Last Safe Quaker
3: The Iso­lat­ed Saint

It’s said that John Wool­man re-wrote his Jour­nal three times in an effort to excise it of as many “I” ref­er­ences as pos­si­ble. As David Sox writes in Johh Wool­man Quin­tes­sen­tial Quak­er, “only on lim­it­ed occa­sion do we glimpse Wool­man as a son, a father and a hus­band.” Wool­man would­n’t have been a very good blog­ger. Quot­ing myself from my intro­duc­tion to Quak­er blogs:

blogs give us a unique way of shar­ing our lives — how our Quak­erism inter­sects with the day-to-day deci­sions that make up faith­ful liv­ing. Quak­er blogs give us a chance to get to know like-minded Friends that are sep­a­rat­ed by geog­ra­phy or arti­fi­cial the­o­log­i­cal bound­aries and they give us a way of talk­ing to and with the insti­tu­tions that make up our faith community.

I’ve read many great Wool­man sto­ries over the years and as I read the Jour­nal I eager­ly antic­i­pat­ed read­ing the orig­i­nal account. It’s that same excite­ment I get when walk­ing the streets of an icon­ic land­scape for the first time: walk­ing through Lon­don, say, know­ing that Big Ben is right around the next cor­ner. But Wool­man kept let­ting me down.

One of the AWOL sto­ries is his arrival in Lon­don. The Jour­nal’s account:

On the 8th of Sixth Month, 1772, we land­ed at Lon­don, and I went straight­way to the Year­ly Meet­ing of min­is­ters and elders, which had been gath­ered, I sup­pose, about half an hour. In this meet­ing my mind was humbly contrite.

But set the scene. He had just spent five weeks cross­ing the Atlantic in steer­age among the pigs (he does­n’t actu­al­ly spec­i­fy his non-human bunk­mates). He famous­ly went out of his way to wear clothes that show dirt because they show dirt. He went straight­away: no record of a bath or change of clothes. Sto­ries abound about his recep­tion, and while are some of dubi­ous ori­gin, there are first hand accounts of his being shunned by the British min­is­ters and elders. The best and most dubi­ous sto­ry is the theme of anoth­er post.

I trust that Wool­man was hon­est­ly aim­ing for meek­ness when he omit­ted the most inter­est­ing sto­ries of his life. But with­out the con­text of a lived life he becomes an ahis­tor­i­cal fig­ure, an icon of good­ness divorced from the minu­ti­ae of the dai­ly grind. Two hun­dred and thir­ty years of Quak­er hagiog­ra­phy and latter-day appeals to Wool­man’s author­i­ty have turned the tai­lor of Mount Hol­ly into the oth­er­world­ly Quak­er saint but the process start­ed at John’s hands himself.

Were his strug­gles mere­ly inte­ri­or? When I look to my own min­istry, I find the call to dis­cern­ment to be the clear­est part of the work. I need to work to be ever more recep­tive to even the most unex­pect­ed prompt­ing from the Inward Christ and I need to con­stant­ly prac­tice humil­i­ty, love and for­give­ness. But the prac­ti­cal lim­i­ta­tions are hard­er. For years respectibil­i­ty was an issue; rel­a­tive pover­ty con­tin­ues to be one. It is ask­ing a lot of my wife to leave respon­si­bil­i­ty for our two small boys for even a long weekend.

How did Wool­man bal­ance fam­i­ly life and min­istry? What did wife Sarah think? And just what was his role in the sea-change that was the the “Ref­or­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism” (to use Jack Mari­et­ta’s phrase) that for­ev­er altered Amer­i­can Friends’ rela­tion­ship with the world and set the stage for the schisms of the next century.

We also lose the con­text of Wool­man’s com­pa­tri­ots. Some are named as trav­el­ing com­pan­ions but the col­or­ful char­ac­ters go unmen­tioned. What did he think of the street-theater antics of Ben­jamin Lay, the Abbie Hoff­man of Philadel­phia Quak­ers. The most widely-told tale is of Lay walk­ing into Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions, open­ing up a cloak to reveal mil­i­tary uni­form under­neath, and declar­ing that slave-made prod­ucts were prod­ucts of war, plunged a sword into a hollowed-out Bible full of pig’s blood, splat­ter­ing Friends sit­ting nearby.

What role did Wool­man play in the larg­er anti-slavery awak­en­ing hap­pen­ing at the time? It’s hard to tell just read­ing his Jour­nal. How can we find ways to repli­cate his kind of faith­ful­ness and wit­ness today? Again, his Jour­nal does­n’t give much clue.

Picked up today in the Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing Library:

PYM Librar­i­an Rita Var­ley remind­ed me today they mail books any­where in the US for a mod­est fee and a $50/year sub­scrip­tion. It’s a great deal and a great ser­vice, espe­cial­ly for iso­lat­ed Friends. The PYM cat­a­log is online too!

Deepening the intervisitation of Gathering

March 2, 2006
· Martin Kelley

The pro­gram for this year’s FGC Gath­er­ing of Friends went online at mid­night yes­ter­day – I stayed up late to flip the switch­es to make it live right as Third Month start­ed – right on sched­ule. By 12:10am EST four vis­i­tors had already come to the site! There’s a lot of inter­est in the Gath­er­ing, the first one on the West Coast.

Stu­dents of late-20th Cen­tu­ry Quak­er his­to­ry can see the pro­gres­sion of Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence from a very Philadelphia-centric, provin­cial body that had its annu­al gath­er­ing at a South Jer­sey beach town to one that real­ly does try to serve Friends across the coun­try. There’s loss­es in the changes (alum­ni of the Cape May Gath­er­ings all speak of them with misty eyes) but over­all it’s been a need­ed shift in focus. In recent years, a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of Gath­er­ing work­shop lead­ers have come from the “inde­pen­dent” unaf­fil­i­at­ed year­ly meet­ings of the West. It’s nice.

Joe G has been send­ing me emails about his selec­tion process (it’s almost real-time as he weighs each one!). It’s help­ful as it saves me the trou­ble of sort­ing through them. It’s usu­al­ly tough to find a work­shop I want to take. A lot of Friends I real­ly respect have told me they’ve stopped going to the Gath­er­ing after awhile because it just does­n’t feed them.

It’s a shame when these Friends stop com­ing. The Gath­er­ing is one of the most excit­ing annu­al coming-together of Quak­ers in North Amer­i­ca. It’s very impor­tant for new and/or iso­lat­ed Friends and it helps pull all its atten­ders into a wider Fel­low­ship. Inter­vis­i­ta­tion has always been one of the most impor­tant tools for knit­ting togeth­er Friends and the Gath­er­ing has been fill­ing much of that need for lib­er­al Friends for the last hun­dred years.

I’ve been hav­ing this sense that Gath­er­ing needs some­thing more. I don’t know what that some­thing is, only that I long to con­nect more with oth­er Friends. My best con­ver­sa­tions have invari­ably tak­en place when I stopped to talk with some­one while run­ning across cam­pus late to some event. These Oppor­tu­ni­ties have been pre­cious but they’re always so fran­tic. The Trav­el­ing Min­istries Pro­gram often has a won­der­ful evening inter­est group but by the time we’ve gone around shar­ing our names, sto­ries and con­di­tions, it’s time to break. I’m not look­ing for a new pro­gram (don’t wor­ry Liz P!, wait it’s not you who has to wor­ry!), just a way to have more con­ver­sa­tions with the Quak­erQuak­er Con­ver­gent Friends – which in this con­text I think boils down to those with some­thing of a call to min­istry and an inter­est in Quak­er vision & renew­al. Let’s all find a way of con­nect­ing more this year, yes?

For those inter­est­ed I’ve signed up for these work­shops: Blessed Com­mu­ni­ty in James’ Epis­tle (led by Max Hansen of Berke­ley Friends Church, Deep­en­ing the Silence, Invit­ing Vital Min­istry (20), and Find­ing Our­selves in the Bible).

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