Tag Archives ⇒ relationships

Risking Community

April 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Gregg Kosel­ka, a post that rewards read­ing a few times: Risk­ing Community

When I look around, there is still so much hurt that needs to be processed. There are still real dif­fer­ences in phi­los­o­phy about how to build com­mu­ni­ty. Some see how much needs to rad­i­cal­ly change so that those who have been mar­gin­al­ized can tru­ly be safe and have agency, and so want to go slow­ly to build it cor­rect­ly. Some see the dam­age hav­ing no com­mu­ni­ty can bring, and want to do what they can to build some­thing as safe­ly as pos­si­ble. I hate that these dif­fer­ences are still caus­ing dam­age to our rela­tion­ships and our com­mu­ni­ties. I don’t have a solution.

I appre­ci­ate the way he tries to under­stand the flip sides of com­mu­ni­ty and insti­tu­tion­al­ism; per­haps schism could be seen as the moment they can no longer be nego­ti­at­ed. As pas­tor of one of the “most insti­tu­tion­al of insti­tu­tion­al church­es for 15 years,” he was in the cen­ter of the cen­trifu­gal forces that tore apart both North­west Year­ly Meet­ing as a whole and indi­vis­i­ble Friends church­es with­in it. From a dis­tance of 3000 miles and 150 years of diverg­ing Quak­er his­to­ry, I’m not in a posi­tion to say whether things could have gone dif­fer­ent­ly or whether indi­vid­u­als always act­ed in their best ways but I can appre­ci­ate that it there must have been a lot of impos­si­ble choic­es and no-good answers as polar­iza­tion gave way to disintegration.

Risk­ing Community

Hitler jokes and Quaker schools

March 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The case of a beloved Quak­er Jew­ish teacher being fired from a NYC Friends School for mak­ing a Nazi salute as a joke is bring­ing us some inter­est­ing com­men­tary. Mark Oppen­heimer writes in Tablet:

One might call this whole episode the tri­umph of Waspy good inten­tions over Jew­ish com­mon sense… But of course Quak­er schools — and Quak­er camps, like the one I once attend­ed, and Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es — are, these days, pret­ty Jew­ish places. The Times arti­cle has a bur­lesque feel, with a bunch of Jew­ish stu­dents and alum­ni per­form­ing in Quaker-face.

He also makes inter­est­ing points about the cul­tures of Jew­ish humor (“We Jews sur­vive because of Hitler jokes”) and that of Friends:

The Quak­er prac­tice of silent wor­ship can dis­pos­es its prac­ti­tion­ers against the loud, bawdy, con­tentious dis­course that infus­es Jew­ish cul­ture. I’m not mak­ing claims about indi­vid­ual Quak­ers — I can intro­duce you to per­fect­ly hilar­i­ous Quak­ers, some of whom inter­rupt even more than I do — but at their insti­tu­tions, the val­ues that come to the fore are Gene Sharp not Gene Wilder. In their earnest­ness, Quak­er schools are David Brooks not Mel Brooks. You get the idea.

I’m always a bit unsure how seri­ous­ly to take cul­tur­al Quak­er stereo­types as moti­vat­ing forces in pieces like these. I won­der how many Friends actu­al­ly work or study at a Man­hat­tan Quak­er school. A more gener­ic head­mas­ter fear-of-conflict seems as like­ly a cause as any­thing to do with silent wor­ship. Then too, we don’t know what oth­er issues might be at play below the sur­face of pri­va­cy and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. But the Friends Sem­i­nary inci­dent seems as good a mark­er as any­thing else of the com­pli­cat­ed dynam­ics with­in Friends schools today.

http://​www​.tablet​mag​.com/​s​c​r​o​l​l​/​2​5​8​3​9​4​/​j​e​w​i​s​h​-​t​e​a​c​h​e​r​-​f​i​r​e​d​-​f​r​o​m​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​s​c​h​o​o​l​-​f​o​r​-​m​a​k​i​n​g​-​n​a​z​i​-​j​oke

Authentic anecdotes

March 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I have some­thing of fas­ci­na­tion with the phe­nom­e­non of urban myths and mis­at­trib­uted quo­ta­tions. In the Jan­u­ary Friends Jour­nal I used the open­ing col­umn to track down “Live sim­ply so that oth­ers may sim­ply live,” a phrase that recurred in many of the arti­cles in the issue (the theme was Quak­er Lifestyles). Among Quak­ers, one of the more oft-told tales involves a mad prophet and his fair-haired noble protege…

It was late April on the north­ern moors and the win­ter had been espe­cial­ly harsh. Flow­ers were just start­ing to peek out of the ground as the farm­ers looked test­ed whether the soil was soft enough yet to plow. The noble­man dis­mount­ed his horse and asked the ham­let’s black­smith for directions.

It has been a long jour­ney. His ruf­fled silk shirt was dirty and full of the smells of a dozens of overnight acco­mo­da­tions in pig barns and lean-tos of the Eng­lish Mid­lands. His most-prized pos­ses­sion was spot­less, how­ev­er: the sil­ver sword giv­en him by his father, the admi­ral, last year on his eigh­teenth birth­day. It layed sheathed in its hand-stiched sheath.

The black­smith point­ed the for­eign­er to the path that crossed the dark moors toward the hill­side of Judge Fel­l’s estate. The manor house was the de fac­to head­quar­ters of the new cult that was scan­dal­iz­ing the King­dom, the Chil­dren of the Light. A short ten minute walk and our trav­el­er was face-to-face with the man he had come so far to see.

A long tum­ble of rehersed speach­es came out of the young man’s mouth as George Fox war­i­ly sized him up. The young William Penn want­ed to join the move­ment. Fox knew it would be a coup for the Chil­dren of the Light. Pen­n’s father was one of the wealth­i­est men in Eng­land and the fam­i­ly mon­ey could buy pro­tec­tion, fame, and land in the new colonies.

But Penn was­n’t quite ready. He had that sword. It would be a grave dis­re­spect to his father to leave it or give it away. “Friend George, what can I do?” The wise Fox knew that Penn was led to join. With a lit­tle encour­age­ment, it was a mat­ter of time the new appren­tice adopt­ed their paci­fist prin­ci­ples. Fox cleared his throat and answered: “Wear thy sword as long as thee can, young William.” Before tears could well in each man’s eyes they turned their atten­tion to logis­tics of a preach­ing trip to Lon­don. On their way out a few days lat­er, Penn qui­et­ly slipped back into a black­smith shop and gave away his sword. By the time they left the York­shire, farm­ers were work­ing the spring soil with their new sil­ver plowshares.

It is a beau­ti­ful sto­ry (which I’ve made even more melo­dra­mat­ic, because why not). Unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s also fake.

Both George Fox and William Penn left behind dozens of vol­umes of writ­ings and mem­oirs. Their friend­ship was one of the most sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ships for each of them. Sure­ly such a foun­da­tion­al sto­ry would have made it to print. Paul Buck­ley tracked down the sto­ry in “Time To Lay Down William Penn’s Sword” in the Decem­ber 2003 Friends Jour­nal.

The sword sto­ry is fake but it is also some­how true. Buck­ley calls it a “authen­tic anec­dote.” Every year Friends Jour­nal gets otherwise-wonderful essays whose nar­ra­tive turns on the sto­ry of William Pen­n’s sword. We can’t run them with­out cor­rec­tion so it falls on me to tell authors that the scene nev­er took place. Occa­sion­al­ly I’m told it does­n’t mat­ter that it’s not true.

What is the deep­er myth inside our beloved tall tales? First: they depend on the celebri­ty sta­tus of their char­ac­ters. If I sub­sti­tut­ed more obscure ear­ly Friends in the sword sto­ry — George White­head ask­ing Solomon Eccles, say — I doubt it would be as com­pelling or get repeat­ed as often.

Fame is an odd draw for modern-day Friends. There’s a baker’s-dozen of famous-enough Friends upon which we graft these sorts of sto­ries — John Wool­man, Lucre­tia Mott, Elias Hicks, Joseph John Gur­ney and his sis­ter Eliz­a­beth Fry. Chang­ing celebri­ty Quak­er’ sto­ries began ear­ly: edi­tors chopped out the embar­ras­ing bits of recently-departed Friends’ jour­nals. Dreams would get snipped out. George Fox’s accounts of mirac­u­lous heal­ings dis­ap­pear with his first edi­tor, pre­sum­ably wor­ried they would sound too wild

It’s prob­a­bly no coin­ci­dence that the Penn/Fox sto­ry dates back to the moment when Amer­i­can Friends split. The denom­i­na­tion’s ori­gin sto­ry was frac­tur­ing. Paul Buck­ley thinks the sword sto­ry pre­fig­ured the tol­er­ance and for­bear­ance of the Hick­site Friends. Philadelphia-area Friends healed that par­tic­u­lar wound almost three-quarters of a cen­tu­ry ago. What does it say about us today that this tale is still so pop­u­lar? Relat­ed read­ing, I tracked down anoth­er authen­tic anec­dote in 2016, “Bring peo­ple to Christ / Leave them there.”

A Quaker Lens Aids Biblical Interpretation

March 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Rhon­da Pfalzgraff-Carlson reads main­stream com­men­tary on the book of Colos­sians and is dis­ap­point­ed. Why? They miss rela­tion­ships and con­texts that seem obvi­ous from a Quak­er per­spec­tive. A Quak­er Lens Aids Bib­li­cal Interpretation

Even know­ing that I’m col­or­ing this inter­pre­ta­tion through the use of a Quak­er lens, I believe that a Quak­er per­spec­tive can help the mean­ing of the Bible become more clear.

I must admit that I take claims that any denom­i­na­tion has some sort of spe­cial con­nec­tion to the ear­ly church with a heap­ing spoon­ful of salt. But the ear­ly church was dis­or­ga­nized in a way that Friends can be.

Extending customer relationships through social media

April 8, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Over on my O’Reil­ly Media blog, I’ve writ­ten “Will Face­book (all but) replace cor­po­rate web­sites?,” a look at where I think the third-party social media web­sites are going. Here’s a taste:

The goal of most web­sites is to extend­ed the inter­ac­tion with the vis­i­tor beyond this one vis­it: we seek to sell them a prod­uct, join our mail­ing list, buy tick­ets to our event or sub­scribe to us in a news read­er. Face­book is quick­ly becom­ing the most impor­tant email list and news read­er. If it con­tin­ues to inno­vate (and bor­row ideas from inno­v­a­tive com­peti­tors) it could quick­ly become a major com­mer­cial por­tal as well. As its adop­tion rate climbs with­in the ranks of our tar­get audi­ences, it becomes an effec­tive way to extend vis­i­tor rela­tion­ship and build more inti­mate brand identities.

This will change com­pa­ny’s inter­ac­tions with cus­tomers, who will start to expect and then demand real-time inter­ac­tion. This can take many forms – sta­tus updates, cal­en­dars, videos – but the empha­sis will be on imme­di­a­cy. The style will shift from slickly-produced mass mar­ket­ing to a one-on-one respon­sive back and forth. Smart mar­keters will think less in terms of sell­ing and more in terms of rela­tion­ship build­ing. Ana­lyt­ics and constantly-rolling A/B tests will give us a near real-time gauge with which to mea­sure the suc­cess of these rela­tion­ships. The reces­sion is bring­ing a new urgency for mea­sur­able results and might actu­al­ly help shift cor­po­rate and non-profit bud­gets away from high-price opin­ions and toward this new style of social-network-mediated marketing.

It will be inter­est­ing to see how orga­ni­za­tions adapt to social medi­a’s evolv­ing role.