Tag Archives ⇒ quakerspeak

Do Friends Query?

April 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Doug Gwyn is next up on Quak­er­S­peak, this time answer­ing What is a Quak­er Query?

The Quak­er Queries are a won­der­ful inven­tion of ask­ing our­selves some sim­ple ques­tions… I’ve heard it said that through­out much of our his­to­ry, we were shop­keep­ers and busi­ness peo­ple, and we were used to doing inven­to­ry all the time. And the queries are a kind of spir­i­tu­al and moral inven­to­ry that Friends do well to keep track of.

It’s become kind of easy to make fun of queries. The clas­sic use was as ques­tions for­mal­ly asked and for­mal­ly answered in Quak­er meet­ings for busi­ness. As Gwyn says they were a form of account­ing. Local con­gre­ga­tions would go though a set list and send them to quar­ter meet­ings to sift and answer so they could in turn send it up to year­ly meet­ing ses­sions. I’ve seen this process fol­lowed at Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing if a bit tedious.

I could imag­ine the process being use­ful if for no oth­er rea­son that it gave Friends a chance to pry a bit into one anoth­er’s lives. Do all the mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty have their alco­hol use under con­trol? Are we real­ly com­mit­ted to peace in our communities?

These days a form of over-simplistic query is are writ­ten on the fly, with an implic­it “or” that I don’t always find par­tic­u­lar­ly help­ful. “Do Friends avoid the use of sty­ro­foam cups?” [or do you all hate the Earth?]. Used this way, queries risk becom­ing a list of busy­body norms to fol­lowed. We con­grat­u­late our­selves for not using paper nap­kins at a con­fer­ence we flew to.

As Doug points out, it helps to have a lit­tle humil­i­ty when it comes to queries. They’re one of the more use­ful items in the Quak­er tool­box. A good query will have some­thing to say to each of us, no mat­ter where we indi­vid­u­al­ly are in our spir­i­tu­al journey.

Painting for Worship

March 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I did­n’t know of Adri­an Mar­tinez before I was intro­duced to him in this Quak­er­S­peak video. He seems like quite a char­ac­ter (“art attack!”) but I’m intrigued at how his paint­ings have brought pri­mal Quak­er val­ues into unex­pect­ed spaces like the White House (not the occu­pant you might guess!) and cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca. His sto­ry of a very specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er pic­ture being bought for a board­room hints at mes­sages Friends might still have for the world:

The paint­ing I did, Meet­ing for Wor­ship, I just knew was not some­thing that was going to get sold. It was not an eco­nom­ic deci­sion. It was a neces­si­ty to do, nonethe­less. When I did it, I had this big show and it was imme­di­ate­ly pur­chased. First one. And it’s inter­est­ing: where it went went was the board­room of an insur­ance agency. The man that owned the com­pa­ny bought the paint­ing because he said, “The rea­son I need this paint­ing, and I need it in the board­room, is because we need more of that in our business.”

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​p​a​i​n​t​i​n​g​-​f​o​r​-​w​o​r​s​h​ip/

QuakerSpeak: Why I Am a Quaker

March 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The first ensem­ble episode of Quak­er­S­peak’s new sea­son is here: Why I Am a Quaker

Is being a Quak­er worth it? We asked 8 long­time Friends what keeps them com­ing to Meet­ing every Sunday.

I love the dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ty styles shown by the speak­ers. It goes to show that there does­n’t have to be a sin­gle way to be a Friend.

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​w​h​y​-​i​-​a​m​-​q​u​a​k​er/

QuakerSpeak DVDs for new visitors

February 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

So I’ll admit some­thing: although I’m the senior edi­tor of Friends Jour­nal, and the Quak­er­S­peak YouTube video series is a project of Friends Jour­nal, I’m still jeal­ous of the way it pro­vides a far supe­ri­or entrée to Quak­er thought and life. The way you get to know some­one with such imme­di­a­cy for ten min­utes or so is very powerful.

Every year, Quak­er­S­peak video­g­ra­ph­er Jon Watts has put togeth­er DVDs with col­lec­tions of that sea­son’s videos. There’s a bit of irony in pay­ing for DVDs of free videos but the col­lec­tions are use­ful for shar­ing in meet­ing­house fel­low­ship rooms as part of First-day classes.

But this year’s DVD is spe­cial. It’s only eight videos and they’ve been curat­ed with a very spe­cif­ic audi­ence in mind: new­com­ers and first-time atten­ders. Because the entire DVD runs a bit under an hour, the per-disk price has been made low­er. Low enough hope­ful­ly, for Quak­er meet­ings to buy them in enough bulk that they can be giv­en out to atten­ders who come to visit.

Quak­er wor­ship is an alien con­cept to a lot of reli­gious seek­ers. And it’s very pos­si­ble to attend a Quak­er meet­ing and leave not know­ing much more about Friends’ beliefs and val­ues than a vis­i­tor had walk­ing in that morn­ing. Imag­ine hav­ing some­thing you could hand them to teach them more about the diver­si­ty and depth of Quak­er belief. That’s what these DVDs offer (and, if they’re from the cord-cutter gen­er­a­tion, they can always use the print­ed playlist to open YouTube on their phones).

The dif­fer­ence between a curi­ous per­son vis­it­ing once and a reg­u­lar atten­der (and some­day mem­ber) is some­times just a bit of fol­lowup. I’m excit­ed to see if meet­ings take up this oppor­tu­ni­ty. I think Quak­er­S­peak has been the most impor­tant Quak­er out­reach pro­gram of recent times; this DVD is yet anoth­er way that we’re bridg­ing it with on-the-ground Quak­er meet­ings. Check it out.

http://​www​.quak​er​s​peak​.com/​d​vd/