Torching Meetinghouses Ctd.

July 9, 2012

Appar­ent­ly Mic­ah Bales was­n’t call­ing for twenty-something Friends to engage in a reign of ter­ror, of kerosene and match­es. He was engag­ing in some­thing called he calls metaphor. Mic­ah reminds us that the liv­ing church needs to be able to ask questions:

A liv­ing, breath­ing com­mu­ni­ty can­not be per­fect in this sense. True life is found in dynam­ic ten­sion. Liv­ing com­mu­ni­ties change and grow; they repro­duce them­selves in a diverse array of shapes and sizes, suit­ed to their own times and places.

I myself would have avoid­ed the burn-baby-burn pose, even rhetor­i­cal­ly, if only because I’ve had too much per­son­al expe­ri­ence of Quak­ers who com­plete­ly lack a sense of irony. But it’s cer­tain­ly not with­out prece­dent for Friends to chal­lenge our con­nec­tion to mate­r­i­al space (Mic­ah aint’ got noth­ing on Ben­jamin Lay!). This cri­tique is why we call them meet­ing­hous­es, not church­es, and it’s why their most promi­nent archi­tec­tur­al style in the Delaware Val­ley resem­bles noth­ing so much as a barn – the most gener­ic of open struc­tures in the eyes of the farm­ers who built them.

There have been some good reac­tions among the com­men­taries on Mic­ah’s post. Isabel P. wrote from the per­spec­tive of a “spir­i­tu­al vagabond”:

For those of us with no meet­ing­hous­es, who wan­der from place to place try­ing to find a home for our wor­ship groups, this sort of hyper­bole (metaphor though it may be) is just painful. Is tra­di­tion and her­itage real­ly such an awful weight? Try being a spir­i­tu­al vagabond …

Else­where, Macken­zie paints the pic­ture of a not-atypical wealthy East Coast meet­ing that focus­es on structure:

The meet­ing room is larg­er than need­ed for how few peo­ple show up week­ly (about 70 on a “good” day, while the room can hold about 250). The cam­pus is larg­er than the par­tic­i­pants are will­ing to put in the sweat equi­ty to main­tain. You’d think work­ing togeth­er to main­tain it would go under the cat­e­go­ry of build­ing com­mu­ni­ty, which our First Day School claims is a tes­ti­mo­ny. Instead, the bud­get must be ever-expanded to hire some­one else to fix things up, rather than have any­one get their hands dirty. Nev­er mind that the meet­ing is run­ning on endow­ments from long-dead Friends as it is. So much paid main­te­nance puts a strain on the bud­get, mak­ing for per­sis­tent calls for more money.

Fur­ther down in that same thread, Tri­cia shares the heart­felt thank-you notes of Philadelphia-area Occu­py activists who found refuge in Quak­er struc­tures:

Dear­est Quak­er Friends, Thank you for har­bor­ing us in a safe place in your park­ing lot. We appre­ci­ate it, in sol­i­dar­i­ty — the 99%.

I’m so grate­ful that you opened your hearts and your space to us. (cat­a­stro­phe avert­ed!) I want to be a Quak­er. Love and Peace, Barbara.

There have also been some obnox­ious reac­tions, all too-typical dis­missals cit­ing some supposedly-inherent inabil­i­ty of younger Friends to be trust­ed in dis­cern­ment or lead­er­ship. Of course our own tra­di­tion proves this wrong. When we talk about Quak­er the­ol­o­gy, the start­ing point for Friends of all fla­vors is an essay writ­ten by a twenty-eight year old. When George Fox had his famous open­ing that “there is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy con­di­tion,” he was a twenty-three years old talk­ing about a son-of-God that nev­er left what Friends would call his “young adult” years. William Penn co-founded his first Quak­er colony at age 33, and even old Mar­garet Fell earned her nick­name “the moth­er of Quak­erism” for the orga­niz­ing work she began at age thirty-eight. By counter-example, I’m sure we find some old­er Friends who lack some­thing in the dis­cern­ment or self-control depart­ment. The moral of the exam­ples: age is not the most impor­tant fac­tor in Quak­er spir­i­tu­al discernment.

Now I want to turn back to the meet­ing­house ques­tion and put things in a bit of per­spec­tive. There are prob­a­bly only five or six dozen unpro­grammed meet­ings in North Amer­i­ca that are so large they could­n’t sim­ply squeeze into the near­est vol­un­teer fire hall. If calami­ty struck the meet­ing­house, the great major­i­ty of our con­gre­ga­tions could take a quick phone poll of mem­bers to deter­mine who has the largest liv­ing room and relo­cate there the fol­low­ing First Day. Yes, of course it’s nice to pro­vide space to the occa­sion­al pro­test­ers (and local yoga group, bat­tered wom­en’s shel­ter etc.), but it’s fair to ask if this is what we’re called to do with this time and mon­ey. There would be cer­tain oppor­tu­ni­ties gained if a month­ly meet­ing sold or long-term leased its prop­er­ty and re-established itself as a net­work of house church­es. I don’t think it’s nec­es­sar­i­ly a good option for most meet­ings but it would be an intrigu­ing exper­i­ment. And it’s def­i­nite­ly worth imagining.

Interviewing Doug Bennett

May 29, 2012

If all goes smooth­ly on the tech­ni­cal front, tomor­row I’ll be inter­view­ing Doug Ben­nett for Friends Jour­nal. In this mon­th’s fea­ture arti­cle, he argues that the Quak­er con­tro­ver­sies over homo­sex­u­al­i­ty could be an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring us clos­er togeth­er. Reply below with a ques­tion for Doug (<20 words) and we might use it for the interview!

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Were Friends part of Obama’s Evolution?

May 10, 2012

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s been attribut­ing some of his so-called “evo­lu­tion” on same-sex mar­riage to his daugh­ters. As he told ABC’s Robin Roberts:

You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose par­ents are same-sex cou­ples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sit­ting around the din­ner table, and we’re talk­ing about their friends and their par­ents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that some­how their friends’ par­ents would be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.

So where do Oba­ma’s daugh­ter’s inde­pen­dent friends come from? Like most tweens the like­li­est answer is school – in their case, Sid­well Friends. It’s not unlike­ly that the “evo­lu­tion” owed some­thing to the Quak­er envi­ron­ment there.

Most elite Quak­er schools have only a token base of Quak­er stu­dents and teach­ers, so we can’t assume that Malia and Sasha’s friends are Friends. Like many outward-facing Quak­er insti­tu­tions, mod­ern Friends schools’ strongest claim to Quak­erism is the val­ues and dis­cern­ment tech­niques they share with the wider world. They con­scious­ly trans­mit a style and ped­a­gogy and cre­ate an envi­ron­ment of open­ness and diver­si­ty. Of course the Oba­ma kids are going to rub up against non-traditional mar­riages at a East Coast Quak­er school. And no one should be sur­prised if they bring a lit­tle of that back home when the school bus drops them off at 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue.

NYTimes: Oba­ma Girls Influ­ence the Pres­i­dent — Again
Pres­i­dent Oba­ma often uses his daugh­ters, Malia and Sasha, as object lessons in explain­ing his rea­son­ing behind impor­tant pol­i­cy positions.

Future of Quaker media at Pendle Hill next month

April 27, 2012

I’m part of a dis­cus­sion at the Pen­dle Hill con­fer­ence cen­ter out­side Philadel­phia next month. Every­one’s invit­ed. It’s a rare chance to real­ly bring a lot of dif­fer­ent read­ers and media pro­duc­ers (offi­cial and DIY) togeth­er into the same room to map out where Quak­er media is head­ed. If you’re a pas­sion­ate read­er or think that Quak­er pub­li­ca­tions are vital to our spir­i­tu­al move­ment, then do try to make it out.

Youtube, Twit­ter, pod­casts, blogs, books. Where’s it all going and who’s doing it? How does it tie back to Quak­erism? What does it mean for Friends and our insti­tu­tions? Join pan­elists Charles Mar­tin, Gabriel Ehri and Mar­tin Kel­ley, along with Quak­er pub­lish­ers and writ­ers from around the world, and read­ers and media enthu­si­asts, for a wide-ranging dis­cus­sion about the future of Quak­er media.

We will begin with some wor­ship at 7.00pm If you’d like a deli­cious Pen­dle Hill din­ner before­hand please reply to the Face­book event wall (see http://​on​.fb​.me/​q​u​a​k​e​r​m​e​dia). Din­ner is at 6.00pm and will cost $12.50

This is part of this year’s Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions con­fer­ence. QUIP has been hav­ing to re-imagine its role over the last ten years as so many of its anchor pub­lish­ers and book­stores have closed. I have a big con­cern that a lot of online Quak­er mate­r­i­al is being pro­duced by non-Quakers and/or in ways that aren’t real­ly root­ed in typ­i­cal Quak­er process­es. Maybe we can talk about that some at Pen­dle Hill.

Resurrection with the Cross and Rabbi

April 11, 2012

Of course, that is not the part of the sto­ry that moti­vates me. I am not seek­ing to be abused and betrayed, let down by my best friends and hunt­ed by those in pow­er. I may rec­og­nize the neces­si­ty of suf­fer­ing, but by no means do I seek it out. I think most of us grav­i­tate towards the tri­umphant vic­to­ry and joy of Jesus\’ resurrection

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Naked Leadership on QuakerQuaker This Week

February 26, 2012

On the blogs, Robin Mohr wrote about Friends lead­er­ship and vision and the “Nakedness/You’re Not a Quak­er” respons­es con­tin­ue with two more follow-up’s among this week’s Edi­tor Picks. Else­where, the Mod­ern Quak­ers and Cloth­ing project has been col­lect­ing some great per­son­al sto­ries. And on a house­keep­ing note, dona­tions for Quak­erQuak­er have been pret­ty light late­ly; please con­sid­er help­ing out.

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Naked Lead­er­ship? [Quak­erQuak­er This Week, 2/26/12] — QuakerQuaker
Naked Leadership?
On the blogs, Robin Mohr wrote about Friends lead­er­ship and vision and the Nakedness/You’re Not a Quak­er respons­es con­tin­ue with two more f… 

What might it mean that one of the best-selling new novels revolves around a Quaker…

January 12, 2012

What might it mean that one of the best-selling new nov­els revolves around a Quak­er plot line? Yes indeed, “The Mar­riage Plot” by “Vir­gin Sui­cides” author Jef­frey Eugenides appar­ent­ly does. I’ve ordered it and will try to write up impres­sions too, Accord­ing to this piece in Com­men­tary, anoth­er cur­rent book has a Quak­er theme. Curi­ous. #books #eugenides

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Jef­frey Eugenides « Com­men­tary Magazine
I am writ­ing about Jef­frey Eugenides’s mag­i­cal nov­el The Mar­riage Plot at greater length else­where, but a remark­able coin­ci­dence — an instant of serendip­i­ty in lit­er­ary his­to­ry — struck me upon re… 

The January issue of +Friends Journal will include an interview with +Robin Mohr.…

November 10, 2011

The Jan­u­ary issue of +Friends Jour­nal will include an inter­view with +Robin Mohr. One of the clas­sic Quak­er tracts that’s inspired her is a 1944 speech that Rufus M Jones gave to young Friends in Bal­ti­more Year­ly Meet­ing. We could­n’t locate a copy online so we scanned, copied and typed it in and will use it as a sup­ple­men­tal link to Robin’s piece. #blog

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What Will Get Us Ready | Friends Journal
By Rufus M Jones Web-only fea­ture Rufus M. Jones’ 1944 lec­ture for Bal­ti­more Young Friends Year­ly Meeting. 

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