Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker

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

March 28, 2023
· Martin Kelley

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.

Quakers on Wikipedia

March 27, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son on how Wikipedia describes Quak­ers—and how we might respond.

This rais­es a con­cern for me about how the Quak­er move­ment might over­see this kind of pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion of our faith and prac­tice going for­ward. In the spir­it of Wikipedia’s plat­form as a peer-to-peer project, and in keep­ing with the non-hierarchical gov­er­nance struc­tures so impor­tant to Friends, and, of course, with the guid­ance of the Holy Spir­it, I pro­pose a peer-to-peer process for the over­sight of such pre­sen­ta­tions, a long-range project of review that would hope­ful­ly include Friends with real exper­tise in the many areas of Quak­er his­to­ry, faith, and prac­tice cov­ered in this entry and what­ev­er oth­er entries we find

This relates to a long-term con­cern of mine that so much of the most pub­lic infor­ma­tion on Friends isn’t cre­at­ed by us. Wikipedia’s rel­a­tive­ly benign (there’s actu­al­ly a bit of a Quak­er process con­nec­tion) but our par­tic­i­pa­tion on social media like Face­book and Twit­ter are medi­at­ed by algo­rithms favor­ing con­tro­ver­sy. I edit Wikipedia entries a cou­ple of times a year but am also a small part of Friends Jour­nal efforts to built out Quak​er​.org to make it a use­ful, accu­rate, and pub­licly vis­i­ble intro­duc­tion to the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends.

There’s some good dis­cus­sion on Mastodon by some Wikipedia edi­tors who explain that Davi­son’s plan would be seen with some sus­pi­cion by Wikipedia. As com­menter Dan York wrote:

Wikipedia has a very strong ethos around “con­flict of inter­est” with the sense that peo­ple too close to a top­ic can’t write in a neu­tral point-of-view. There’s def­i­nite­ly val­ue in folks work­ing to improve the pages, but they need to keep these views in mind — and back up every­thing they do with reli­able sources.

Quakers on Wikipedia
Quak­ers on Wikipedia 

While work­ing on an essay on Quak­er meta­physics — what’s going on in our per­son­al mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ences, and espe­cial­ly, in…

Through the Flaming Sword Through the Flam­ing Sword 

Belonging: The Community or the Institution (12/37)

March 21, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Quak­er mem­ber­ship has long been a con­tentious issue for thr past few decades (Why should some­one join? What does it mean? What lin­its should there be?) but it’s becom­ing more com­pli­cat­ed with the rise of hybrid wor­ship. Emi­ly Provance looks at thr state of mem­ber­ship and how it’s evolving.

A lot of the work done about mem­ber­ship late­ly, espe­cial­ly by young adults, has been about help­ing Friends in gen­er­al under­stand that the insti­tu­tion­al prac­tices need to change to reflect what God is doing in our communities.

Belonging: The Community or the Institution (12/37)
Belong­ing: The Com­mu­ni­ty or the Insti­tu­tion (12/37)

Some­thing real­ly inter­est­ing has been hap­pen­ing with mem­ber­ship.  In the past ten years, a num­ber of Quak­er groups…

Turning, Turning Turn­ing, Turning 

Oooh!, a Quaker zine

March 6, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Wess Daniels got a pack of Quak­er zines in the mail. That’s right, phys­i­cal paper:

A few weeks back, I got some mail from some­one I didn’t know. As I opened it, these cute lit­tle book­lets fell out, and a let­ter addressed to me: Hel­lo, Mr. Daniels. The let­ter writer, Pacif­ic North­west Quak­er Natal­ie Ram­s­land, told me a lit­tle about how she came into zine mak­ing and why she was send­ing me some of her zines.

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Wess’s pho­to of the “Fold in the Light” zine (source)

That’s very cool! I zined back in col­lege: “The Vac­u­um” ran every Fri­day for most of two years. When I was doing a non­vi­o­lence web­site in the mid-90s it seemed nat­ur­al to apply this mod­el and I acci­den­tal­ly start­ed blog­ging, com­plete with mir­ror­ing it to an email list (I wrote “Fif­teen Years of Blog­ging” eleven years ago, whoa!). Now my blog auto­mat­i­cal­ly goes out by email on Fri­days. There’s such an obvi­ous through-line between the 90s zine and my ongo­ing blog­ging (and obvi­ous­ly we have week­ly con­tent cycles for Friends Jour­nal too).

I love the idea of paper zines com­ing back though their lim­it has always been that the best dis­tri­b­u­tion is local and miss­es those of us out of the geo­graph­ic loop.

Zine-makerNatalie also has a Sub­stack, which I’ll be read­ing eagerly.

Circling around, and surprising nudges toward renewed ministry and plainness

February 19, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From LizOpp, back on the blog:

I have come to believe that I live my life not in a straight line from birth to death but in a series of small and large cir­cles: from birth to learn­ing; from growth to for­get­ting; from remem­ber­ing to pride­ful liv­ing; from bro­ken­ness to humil­i­ty; from deep love and con­nec­tion to sep­a­rate­ness; from despair to faithfulness.

https://​the​goodraisedup​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​2​3​/​0​2​/​r​e​-​e​n​t​r​y​-​t​r​u​t​h​-​a​n​d​-​b​e​i​n​g​-​h​o​u​n​d​e​d​.​h​tml

I too have felt cir­cles com­ing back around. Liz attend­ed last week­end’s work­shop, the first multi-day retreat I’ve led since… check notes… 2014, when R. Scot Miller got me to Kala­ma­zoo, Michi­gan, for Green Pas­tures Quar­ter­ly Meet­ing. Last year I final­ly stopped my meet­ing wan­der­ing and have set­tled down at Crop­well Meet­ing, where I get to be involved in all the sil­ly, light­weight dra­mas that occur when­ev­er a group of peo­ple come together.

There, I’ve felt my spo­ken min­istry return. I was shocked a few months ago when I stood and was giv­en words that start­ed with reflect­ing of the sounds of the leaves blow­ing against the out­side walls, ref­er­enced an atten­der who had just been sweep­ing them, cir­cled to the his­to­ry of the peo­ple who have gath­ered with­in those walls and main­tained the build­ing for wor­ship, moved side­ways into a gen­tle les­son on min­istry in the qui­etist tra­di­tion, pulled it back to Jesus’s words in the Ser­mon on the Mount, and then tied it up in a bow with prayers of thanks to our faith­ful ances­tors and to those today who con­tin­ue to sweep away the ever-returned leaves. Read­ers, let me assure you I don’t think I’ve ever giv­en such coher­ent, bal­anced min­istry and I’m not sure where it came from. But faith­ful­ness is key.

I’ve also felt the nudge to bring back some iden­ti­fi­able plain dress. For years I’ve tend­ed toward what I used to call “Sears plain“1 and dur­ing the work-from-home life I’m some­times lucky if I get through the day with­out still wear­ing my paja­mas. Over the last few weeks I’ve been adding sus­penders to my reg­u­lar clothes. Of course I’ve gone through all the old famil­iar self-questioning: Am I doing this to stand out? Am I try­ing to puff myself up? Is this what faith­ful­ness leads me? But these ques­tions are part of the process and a tug toward plain­ness often pre­cedes out­ward min­istry; in his study Quak­er Jour­nals, Howard Brin­ton not­ed that future min­is­ters often record­ed inward nudges in their teen years and became plain­er in dress to the ridicule of their peers. I’m not a teen and I doubt any­one is going to make fun of me (at least to my face) but I do feel a cer­tain seri­ous­ness of intent come over me when I over­come my nat­ur­al desire for social anonymi­ty and put the sus­penders on.

Following the money in a downsizing Quaker meeting

January 20, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Adria Gulizia’s series on dying meet­ings:

Final­ly, we might see dying meet­ings dis­in­vest from their First Day School pro­grams, as the needs of par­ents and chil­dren are tac­it­ly acknowl­edged to be in com­pe­ti­tion with those of set­tled old­er adults. Those with pow­er and longevi­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty ensure that their needs keep get­ting met, while increas­ing­ly neglect­ing those they are called to serve — chil­dren, those new to our faith, peo­ple in prison, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and peo­ple who are strug­gling financially.

Friends instead spend their dwin­dling resources on inter­nal pri­or­i­ties and the expens­es asso­ci­at­ed with keep­ing a meet­ing­house well-warmed, well-lit and well cared-for — even if there’s nobody in it.

When doing out­reach, you have to focus less about the peo­ple in the meet­ing­house and more on the peo­ple who would be join­ing if they knew we exist­ed and were wel­comed in. So too, I think, for our pri­or­i­ties in a shrink­ing meet­ing. It’s easy to turn inward and just keep the status-quo rolling. I see meet­ings in well-populated areas that are shrink­ing and not doing what they need to do to be more vis­i­ble in their local community.


Turning Our Resources Inward

Turn­ing Our Resources Inward 

Dying church­es use their resources for their own com­fort, rather than to serve others.

In the Shadow of Babylon In the Shad­ow of Babylon