Quaker calendar alternatives

September 28, 2020

John Jere­mi­ah Edmin­ster sent me a note about yesterday’s post about the demise of the Scat­ter­good Mot­to Calendar:

I had­n’t real­ized that the Scat­ter­good Cal­en­dar was ceas­ing pub­li­ca­tion. But the Tract Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends con­tin­ues to pub­lish its cal­en­dar in both the pock­et ver­sion and the wall ver­sion, each for $2 per copy and $20 per dozen, and it might be a wor­thy pub­lic ser­vice of thee to direct read­ers to the web­site, trac​tas​so​ci​a​tion​.org, so that any­one griev­ing the demise of the Scat­ter­good Cal­en­dar and won­der­ing what to do for the Friends they used to give gift-calendars to might know where else to look.

 

Is “a bit of quiet” Quaker worship?

August 12, 2020

From Rhi­an­non Grant:

The phrase ‘out­ward prac­tice’ rais­es a more dif­fi­cult pos­si­bil­i­ty. Do we some­times risk mak­ing the unpro­grammed, open, lis­ten­ing space of Quak­er wor­ship into an out­ward rit­u­al – just the kind of rit­u­al ear­ly Quak­ers were reject­ing when they threw out the prac­tices of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions of Chris­tians and cre­at­ed unpro­grammed wor­ship instead – by focus­ing too much on the fact of silence or sit­ting still? 

https://​brigid​foxand​bud​dha​.word​press​.com/​2​0​2​0​/​0​8​/​1​0​/​i​s​-​a​-​b​i​t​-​o​f​-​q​u​i​e​t​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​w​o​r​s​h​i​p​/​a​m​p​/​?​_​_​t​w​i​t​t​e​r​_​i​m​p​r​e​s​s​i​o​n​=​t​rue

Quaker education in a pandemic

June 5, 2020

Johan Mau­r­er starts with the recent pub­lic con­tro­ver­sy over Sid­well Friends but then trans­vers­es a long sweep of Quak­er school iden­ti­ty debates, includ­ing one at a parent-led school coop with which he was involved:

The one I remem­ber most vivid­ly echoed the West­town debates: how much overt Quak­erism is too much for a school that was already attract­ing non-Quaker fam­i­lies? After lis­ten­ing to some of this debate, Earl­ham’s Paul Lacey said to me, “Instead of being ‘in the world, but not of it,’ too often we Quak­ers are of the world, but not in it!”
https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​2​0​/​0​6​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​e​d​u​c​a​t​i​o​n​-​i​n​-​p​a​n​d​e​m​i​c​.​h​tml

The Quaker values of a Quaker school questioned in The Atlantic

May 9, 2020

The elite Sid­well Friends accept­ing $5 mil­lion of emer­gency Coro­na small busi­ness relief mon­ey has been float­ing in the news for over a week now but this arti­cle in The Atlantic hits where it hurts, focus­ing on the school’s use of “Quak­er val­ues” to jus­ti­fy its actions. It namechecks John Wool­man and the Fry fam­i­ly, then quotes three promi­nent aca­d­e­m­ic Friends (David Har­ring­ton Watt, Paul Ander­son, and Stephen Angell).

A few thoughts: it’s great to see an arti­cle on Friends actu­al­ly go out and inter­view Friends. The reporter obvi­ous­ly knew that focus­ing a cri­tique on “Quak­er val­ues” would get a reac­tion from some quarters.

There’s a great con­ver­sa­tion about this on a Face­book thread. Paul Ander­son says he was selec­tive­ly quot­ed and told the reporter that a case could be made that Quak­er fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty might well pre­clude using endow­ment funds for oper­at­ing expenses.

A wider Quaker fellowship

April 23, 2020

Robin Mohr on the chal­lenges and upsides to vir­tu­al worship:

Peo­ple who have basic inter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty, and Friends who were pre­vi­ous­ly iso­lat­ed for health rea­sons, are now able to par­tic­i­pate in wor­ship. Friends who had moved away are com­ing back to vis­it. Peo­ple who once didn’t have time for wor­ship are show­ing up on Sun­day morn­ings. The oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it with long-lost friends, or to vis­it Quak­er meet­ings in far­away places, just got much eas­i­er. New peo­ple are find­ing their way to our meet­ings via Face­book and Instagram. 

It’s true for me per­son­al­ly that I’ve been able to be more active in wor­ship than before. My non-Quaker fam­i­ly is also par­tic­i­pat­ing more before, with night­ly prayer meet­ings. It’s not the same as in-person fel­low­ship but it’s not a horse of a dif­fer­ent color.

In the age of social dis­tanc­ing, Quak­ers have quick­ly adapt­ed to online worship

Can this be a time we rethink our assumptions of Quaker worship?

March 28, 2020

From Kath­leen Wooten:

Now we are in a very strange time.  Meet­ings that in the past took months to dis­cern whether or not to rearrange their bench­es have jumped into online spaces and are cre­at­ing whole new wor­ship expe­ri­ences, with new shapes and methods.

I too have been won­der­ing whether this extend­ed peri­od of virtual-only wor­ship will help us rethink the form of our Quak­er wor­ship. A lot of soci­etal changes over the last few decades has made the clas­sic Quak­er Sun­day morn­ing wor­ship less acces­si­ble to peo­ple who might be seek­ing the insights of the Quak­er way. Sud­den­ly now there is a wealth of ways to con­nect with Friends remote­ly. It will be inter­est­ing to see how that changes things.

Visiting Petty Island

June 16, 2019

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As a lover of maps, I’ve often be intrigued by the envi­rons  of the Delaware Riv­er. As the tides go up and down, the time­less­ness of the riv­er becomes a kind of gen­tle solace to the indus­tri­al­iza­tion along its banks. Nowhere is this more appar­ent than on the islands which some­how remain in its course. I’ve camped at Pea Patch Island down by Delaware and found a sur­pris­ing fam­i­ly con­nec­tion in its con­vo­lut­ed own­er­ship. But clos­er to my com­mute is Pet­ty Island, sit­ting along­side the New Jer­sey main­land a short dis­tance north of the Ben Franklin Bridge.

Pet­ty Island is owned by the Cit­go oil com­pa­ny and until just a few months ago was still dot­ted with its oil tanks and a large marine car­go facil­i­ty. Satel­lite views still show this twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry indus­try. But in a very long and oftentimes-uncertain process it’s due to become part of New Jer­sey nat­ur­al lands and even­tu­al­ly to become a pre­serve. The pub­lic is gen­er­al­ly still not allowed on the island but there are occa­sion­al trips and on this past Sat­ur­day I got to tour the island.

We were very lucky to have Bob Shinn as our tour guide. He’s a walk­ing ency­clo­pe­dia of the island and the state geopol­i­tics and waves of names and com­mer­cial uses it’s been through. He lit­er­al­ly wrote the entry on Pet­ty Island in the Philadel­phia Ency­clo­pe­dia. Not sur­pris­ing­ly there’s a lot of Quak­ers in the ear­ly record­ed his­to­ry and the deed between the first Quak­er own­er and three Lenape rep­re­sen­ta­tives is intact in the Haver­ford Col­lege col­lec­tions (this deed was also a major part of a talk by Lenape – set­tler his­to­ry giv­en by Jean Soder­lund a few months ago at Ran­co­cas Meet­ing (see also her book Lenape Coun­try)).

The ever-changing, never-settled his­to­ry of the island con­tin­ues with its name. Wikipedia, Google Maps, and — most impor­tant­ly — Bob Shinn call it “Pet­ty Island,” while the guard shack, wel­come sign, NJ Audubon Soci­ety, and New Jer­sey Nat­ur­al Lands Trust adds the pos­ses­sive to make it “Pet­ty’s Island.” The lat­ter is espe­cial­ly awkward-sounding to my ears, as South Jer­sey place names char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly drop the apos­tro­phes over time (for exam­ple, the riv­er land­ing named after Cap­tain George May is now the town of “Mays Landing.”)

Rem­nants of the indus­tri­al­iza­tion remain: the mas­sive three-story load­ing facil­i­ty has been kept to become the bones of a future vis­i­tors cen­ter; the adja­cent asphalt park­ing area has just been replant­ed as a mead­ow and is most­ly a lot of rocks and short blades of grass (with some Fowler’s toads!). We were lucky enough to be the first pub­lic group to be there since this had all been cleared away.

Bonus: I did­n’t real­ize till we were about to get in our cars that South Jer­sey Trails was also on the tour. He wrote it up too! If you look care­ful­ly, I’m in the back­ground of one of the shots, and now that I’m look­ing I think that’s him in some of mine.