Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker meetings

Liberty of the Spirit

March 28, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Every once in awhile a Quak­er­S­peak video comes along that reminds me why I was blown away when I first got to know Quak­ers. Ayesha Imani talks about the first time she wor­shiped with Friends: 

I thought I had wan­dered into a group of peo­ple who actu­al­ly believed that God was able to speak direct­ly to them. I remem­ber say­ing, “Oh my God, this is Pen­te­cost!” I couldn’t believe that these peo­ple think God is actu­al­ly gll­l­l­l­lo­ing to speak to them! I’m down for this. This is where I belong. 

Most of the Quak­ers read­ing this can prob­a­bly guess where this is going – she pret­ty quick­ly got a les­son in the unwrit­ten norms against exu­ber­ance at many Quak­er meet­ings, the rules that pre­vent many expres­sions of wor­ship. Ayesha’s Black and many of the stric­tures on behav­ior are pret­ty middle-class white. But a lot of this isn’t real­ly about race. I’ve been led to do some very non-ordinary things at uptight Quak­er meet­ings and feel­ing incred­i­bly self-conscious over it. When I came to Friends, I loved the idea of the rad­i­cal spon­te­nae­ity of our wor­ship (any­one can min­is­ter any­time!) and the life it called us to but in prac­tice we often are crea­tures of habit, to our detri­ment. I love Ayesha’s talk of “exper­i­ment­ing with free­dom” and the “lib­er­ty of the spir­it.” I real­ize my sto­ries of non-ordinariness are all over a decade old. I wish I felt more of that lib­er­ty again.

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​h​o​w​-​d​o​e​s​-​c​u​l​t​u​r​e​-​i​n​f​l​u​e​n​c​e​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​w​o​r​s​h​ip/

Kindertransport survivors call for routes to sanctuary for child refugees

November 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

At an 80th anniver­sary of the UK kinder­trans­port pro­gram (which we read about a few days ago), sur­vivors and Friends call for wider sup­port for today’s refugees and asy­lum seekers:

Helen Drew­ery, Head of Wit­ness and Wor­ship for Quak­ers in Britain, wel­com­ing all to Friends House, said, “We are pleased to be host­ing an event which hon­ours all those – includ­ing Quak­ers who put the Kinder­trans­port into effect. Their endeav­ours are being echoed today by near­ly 100 Quak­er meet­ings across Britain which have iden­ti­fied them­selves as Sanc­tu­ary Meet­ings and are sup­port­ing peo­ple who have fled from dan­ger in their home coun­tries. We are glad that these Meet­ings and the peo­ple they are sup­port­ing are rep­re­sent­ed at today’s event. We join them in press­ing for more safe passages.” 

http://​www​.ekkle​sia​.co​.uk/​n​o​d​e​/​2​7​200

Ministers, elders, and overseers

October 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Jnana Hod­son, a list­ing of three types of offices in tra­di­tion­al Quak­er meetings:

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, Quak­er meet­ings rec­og­nized and nur­tured indi­vid­u­als who had spir­i­tu­al gifts as min­is­ters, elders, or over­seers. These roles could be filled by men or women, and their ser­vice extend­ed over the entire congregation. 

Many Friends have dropped the term “over­seers” in recent years, out of con­cern for how the word is so asso­ci­at­ed with slav­ery. As I under­stand it, ear­ly Friends’ use of the word came from its use as an Eng­lish trans­la­tion for Episko­pos in the New Tes­ta­ment. They con­sid­ered them­selves to be re-establishing ear­ly Chris­t­ian mod­els. For exam­ple, Acts 20:28:

Take heed there­fore unto your­selves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you over­seers, to feed the church of God, which he hath pur­chased with his own blood. 

Bible trans­la­tions that were geared toward a Catholic audi­ence tend­ed to stick to Latinized words and went with “bish­op” over “over­seer.” Quak­ers wor­ried about the con­no­ta­tion of the word could pro­pose that we just start nam­ing bish­ops. It’s not as nut­ty as it might seem, as there are anabap­tist church­es who use the term to talk about roles with­in indi­vid­ual church­es. Of course, some­times name changes also mask changes in the­ol­o­gy and I noticed that some of the more lib­er­al Quak­er meet­ings dropped “over­seer” with a speed which they are not oth­er­wise known for. Friends today are a lot more indi­vid­u­al­is­tic than Friends were when our insti­tu­tions were set up — there are many good rea­sons for this in our his­to­ries. But I do hope we’re con­tin­u­ing to find ade­quate ways to notice and care for our members.
 

We need all three – and more

Jessica Hubbard-Bailey: The Future Is Accessible

August 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The pro­duc­er of the Young Quak­er Pod­cast looks back at the lessons of their much-publicized silent podcast:

At almost 3,000 down­loads and count­ing, the pod­cast could be con­sid­ered one of the biggest Quak­er meet­ings ever held. In the after­math of the media excite­ment, I began to try and unpick what had made this meet­ing so suc­cess­ful that Quak­ers and non-Quakers all over the world had ven­tured to par­tic­i­pate in it. The con­clu­sion I came to was its accessibility.


The Future Is Accessible

The Future Is Accessible 

A silent pod­cast goes viral and points to ways to share Quakerism.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Barking up the family tree

May 10, 2018
· Martin Kelley

There’s a num­ber of com­mon gate­ways for seek­ers to dis­cov­er Quak­ers – activism is a com­mon one (see last week’s Quak­er­S­peak inter­view with Lina Blount), as is plain dress (my posts on the top­ic are my most pop­u­lar), as is child­hood expe­ri­ences at Quak­er schools.

But a big gate­way is geneal­o­gy. Over the years I’ve got­ten count­less emails and phone calls from excit­ed new­com­ers who start off the con­ver­sa­tion with details of their fam­i­ly tree (when I used to answer the Quaker­books phone, I would let these folks go for about two min­utes before gen­tly inter­ject­ing “wow that’s fas­ci­nat­ing!, do you wan­na buy a book?!?”)

One fas­ci­nat­ing fac­toid in this week’s Quak­er­S­peak video comes from Thomas Hamm:

If your fam­i­ly arrived in the Unit­ed States before 1860, there’s prob­a­bly a 50 – 50 chance that you have a Quak­er ances­tor somewhere.

Quak­er Meet­ings should­n’t try to be the gath­er­ing spots for prodi­gal fam­i­ly reunions. The ear­ly Quak­ers were strangers to one anoth­er, join­ing togeth­er because of the fire of their con­vic­tions. Ours is a liv­ing, breath­ing, ever evolv­ing spir­i­tu­al prac­tice. Still: we are also a group­ing of peo­ple. We look for belonging.

The longer I’m with Friends, the more I think ours is a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty that draws strength from the ten­sion of para­dox­es. I have a soft spot for the old Quak­er fam­i­lies. If Jesus brings some of the new peo­ple in through Beliefnet quizzes or Ances​try​.com search results, well, maybe that’s okay.

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​h​o​w​-​t​o​-​r​e​s​e​a​r​c​h​-​y​o​u​r​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​a​n​c​e​s​t​ry/

Quakers acting badly

August 11, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Friends don’t have a par­tic­u­lar­ly good track record with regards to con­tro­ver­sy. There’s no rea­son we need to pre­tend to be talk­ing his­tor­i­cal­ly. We’ve had two major year­ly meet­ings break up in this sum­mer (meet Sierra-Cascades Year­ly Meet­ing and North Car­oli­na Fel­low­ship of Friends), with at least one more “at bat” for some future long hot summer.

Con­tro­ver­sies flare up in many places. Friend Sa’ed Atshan just broke his media silence to talk about the can­ce­la­tion of his talk at Friends’ Cen­tral School in Feb­ru­ary and the sub­se­quent walk-outs, fir­ings, and lit­i­ga­tions. The con­tro­ver­sy around Avis Wan­da McClinton’s dis­own­ment by Upper Dublin Meet­ing con­tin­ues to incense large num­bers of Philadel­phia Friends, with fuel to the fire com­ing from the role that the Undo­ing Racism Group does or doesn’t have in the year­ly meet­ing struc­ture. Last year a major­i­ty of Friends of col­or boy­cotted pub­lic events at the FGC Gath­er­ing over frus­tra­tion at the site selec­tion process and the under­ly­ing issues extend to oth­er Quak­er venues.

The most-commented recent arti­cle in Friends Jour­nal is “It Breaks My Heart” by Kate Pruitt from the online June/July issue. Many read­ers relat­ed to her sense of alien­ation and loss. Two com­ments that hit me the hard­est were:

Not all Friends are found in Quak­er Meet­ings. You’re bet­ter off with­out your meeting.

Gone now is the hope… of find­ing com­mu­ni­ty among Quak­ers. To be frank, why both­er? There’s plen­ty of bro­ken­ness right where I am.

And I get enough “Why I’m leav­ing Friends” man­i­festos in my email inbox every month that I could turn it into a reg­u­lar Friends Jour­nal column.

It seems to me that are a num­ber of under­ly­ing issues that tie these con­tro­ver­sies togeth­er. What do we do when a group of Friends starts act­ing in a man­ner that seems con­trary to our under­stand­ing of Quak­er tes­ti­monies and prac­tices? How do we bal­ance love and judge­ment when con­flict aris­es among us? When do we break out of Quak­er nice­ness? Maybe even more chal­leng­ing, how do we main­tain our integri­ty and account­abil­i­ty when con­tro­ver­sy breaks us into camps will­ing to engage in exag­ger­a­tion? And just what do we say when the out­side pub­lic only gets half the sto­ry or thinks that one side is speak­ing for all Friends?

So this is a plug for sub­mis­sions for Decem­ber’s Friends Jour­nal.  The theme is “Con­flict and Con­tro­ver­sy” and the sub­mis­sion dead­line is Sep­tem­ber 9. We’re not look­ing for blow-by-blow accounts of being mis­treat­ed, and we’re not ter­ri­bly inter­est­ed (this time) in man­i­festos about Quak­er cul­tur­al norms. I’m less inter­est­ed in spe­cif­ic issues than I am the meta of dis­cern­ment: How do indi­vid­u­als or small groups of Friends move for­ward in the heat of con­tro­ver­sy. What do we do when the easy solu­tions have failed? How do we decide when it’s time to break out of Quak­er nice­ness to lay down some truth — or time to kick the dust off your san­dals and move along?


Write For Friends Journal - Submit Writing For Quaker Publication

Write For Friends Jour­nal — Sub­mit Writ­ing For Quak­er Publication 

Friends Jour­nal is an inde­pen­dent mag­a­zine serv­ing the entire Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. We wel­come arti­cles, poet­ry, art,…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

“My secretary just walked in wearing pants.… and she looks terrific!” and other mom stories

August 14, 2015
· Martin Kelley
2015-08-14 12.53.23
My moth­er’s death notice is in today’s Philadel­phia Inquirer.

Here’s anoth­er instal­la­tion of mom sto­ries, orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten for a longer obit­u­ary than the one run­ning in today’s paper.

A sin­gle par­ent, she earned an asso­ciates degree at Rid­er Col­lege in Tren­ton and worked as a sec­re­tary at a num­ber of Philadelphia-area based orga­ni­za­tions, include Wom­en’s Med­ical Col­lege and the Pres­by­ter­ian Board of Pub­li­ca­tions. In the mid-1960s she became an exec­u­tive sec­re­tary at the newly-formed Colo­nial Penn Life Insur­ance Com­pa­ny. An office fem­i­nist, she liked recount­ing the sto­ry of the day in the 1970s when the women of the office unit­ed to break the dress code by all wear­ing pant suits. A senior vice pres­i­dent was on the phone when she walked into his office and is said to have told his caller “My sec­re­tary just walked in wear­ing pants.… and she looks terrific!”

When Colo­nial Penn lat­er start­ed an in-house com­put­er pro­gram­mer train­ing pro­gram, she signed up imme­di­ate­ly and start­ed a sec­ond career. She approached pro­grams as puz­zles and was espe­cial­ly proud of her abil­i­ty to take oth­er pro­gram­mers’ poorly-written code and turn it into effi­cient, bug-free software.

In the ear­ly 1990s, she moved into her own apart­ment in Jenk­in­town, Pa. She reclaimed a short­ened form of her maid­en name and swapped “Bet­sy” for “Liz.” Dur­ing this time she became a com­mit­ted atten­der at Abing­ton Friends Meet­ing. As clerk of its peace and jus­tice com­mit­tee, she worked to build the con­sen­sus need­ed for the meet­ing to pro­duce a land­mark state­ment on repro­duc­tive rights. As soon as it was passed she said, “next up, a minute on same-sex mar­riage!” In the late 90s, that was still con­tro­ver­sial even with LGBTQ cir­cles and I imag­ine that even the pro­gres­sive folks at Abing­ton were dread­ing the thought she might put this on the agenda!

In her late 60s, she bought her first house, in Philadel­phi­a’s Mount Airy neigh­bor­hood. She loved fix­ing it up and babysit­ting her grand­chil­dren. She nev­er made any strong con­nec­tions with any of the near­by Quak­er Meet­ings only attend­ing wor­ship spo­rad­i­cal­ly after the move. When she was diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease in 2010, she took the news with dig­ni­ty. She moved into an inde­pen­dent liv­ing apart­ment in Atco, N.J. and con­tin­ued an active lifestyle as long as possible.

Behind the scenes on corporate activism

July 17, 2015
· Martin Kelley

I had the plea­sure of an author chat with Jeff Perkins, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Friends Fidu­cia­ry Cor­po­ra­tion, the orga­ni­za­tion that pro­vides finan­cial ser­vices to Quak­er meet­ings and is on the fore­front of social­ly respon­si­ble invest­ment. We talked about the kind of activism that hap­pens on investor con­fer­ence calls. Jef­f’s arti­cle, Main Street Activism and Wall Street Advo­ca­cy: Strange Bed­fel­lows?, appears in the June/July issue of Friends Journal.