Tag Archives ⇒ someone

Alastair McIntosh interviewed

July 30, 2018
· Martin Kelley

High Pro­files mag­a­zine has pub­lished a nice inter­view with Alas­tair McIn­tosh, a Quak­er aca­d­e­m­ic, author, and activist. It’s not all about his Quak­erism but then it’s nice to see some­one using it as a just a piece of their iden­ti­ty. I love see­ing our roots laid out in the same sen­tence as a cri­tique of the Mur­doch press, etc.

The North is the part of Eng­land to which the rad­i­cals retreat­ed under Nor­man vio­lence, and I sus­pect that’s part of why the more rad­i­cal side of Eng­land comes out there. Quak­erism devel­oped main­ly in the north and west of Eng­land and I sus­pect that non­con­for­mi­ty comes out of that rad­i­cal spir­it – which needs to be rekin­dled, not in ways manip­u­lat­ed by the Mur­doch press or the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty or Ukip but much more in the way that William Blake under­stood, of con­nect­ing with the spir­it of the land. 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that we ran a nice piece by McIn­tosh in the Feb­ru­ary issue of Friends Jour­nal. He talked about Thomas Mer­ton, the Catholic monk with Quak­er roots. Again, our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in context.

Alas­tair McIntosh

Skeletons (not even) in the closet

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This is a bit a gru­some sto­ry, though not as shock­ing at it should be. Louellen White, a researcher look­ing for bur­ial records of Native Amer­i­can chil­dren stum­bled on a Native Amer­i­can skull just sit­ting in a dis­play case of a old Philadel­phia meeting.

As White searched for grave­yard ledgers in the library — crammed with stuffed birds, cloth­ing, shells and books — she came upon the skull. Her legs wob­bled. And her stom­ach dropped. Arsenault-Cote offered advice and reas­sur­ance. “You’re out there look­ing for them, and now they’re show­ing them­selves to you,” she told White. “He’s been wait­ing a long time.” His­tor­i­cal­ly, Philadel­phia Quak­ers were “incon­sis­tent friends” to Indi­ans, engaged in the same col­o­niz­ing projects as oth­er faiths while see­ing them­selves as unique­ly able to edu­cate natives.

Incon­sis­tent is an apt word. Paula Palmer has been trac­ing the his­to­ry of Quak­er Indi­an Board­ing Schools: high-minded enter­pris­es that often for­ca­bly stripped her­itage from their pupils in ways that were as cul­tur­al­ly impe­r­i­al as they were unaware.

Byber­ry Meet­ing dates to the 1690s and the meet­ing­house grounds are full of abo­li­tion­ist his­to­ry. The skull was appar­ent­ly dug up in the mid-nineteenth cen­tu­ry as part of a near­by canal project and is thought to have come to the meet­ing­house as part of a col­lec­tion from a shut­tered his­tor­i­cal soci­ety. Its pres­ence on the shelf rep­re­sents the atti­tudes of Friends many decades ago who thought noth­ing of plac­ing a Lenape skull in a case. There’s also the sad sub­text that the meet­ing library is said to be so unused that most of the meet­ing’s con­tem­po­rary mem­bers had no idea it was there. It’s a shame that it took an out­side researcher to notice the skele­tons in our dis­play case.

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​4​8​3​0​7​2​5​7​1​.​h​tml

Letting your life speak in digital spaces

May 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Kath­leen Wooten has some tips on min­is­ter­ing in social spaces with­out “los­ing your san­i­ty”):

Devel­op per­son­al rules: These are spe­cif­ic to you. A few of mine…. Nev­er respond to an angry mes­sage from my phone. Always open a com­put­er, sit down inten­tion­al­ly, and if pos­si­ble wait 24 hours. ON social media – this might be a short­er time frame, but still, not until I can sit and cen­ter and not speak out of anger.


Letting your life speak in digital spaces (without losing your sanity)

Let­ting your life speak in dig­i­tal spaces (with­out los­ing your sanity) 

The inter­net is a very effec­tive tool.  Con­nect­ing, shar­ing, work, social inter­ac­tions – all can and do happen…

QuakerKathleen QuakerKathleen 

I’m not sure if I’ve ever writ­ten down my per­son­al guide­lines. Some of these are gener­ic to being a good online cit­i­zen (don’t feed trolls, don’t punch down, don’t respond in anger, dis­en­gage when a con­ver­sa­tion is obvi­ous­ly run­ning in circles).

Oth­er guide­lines of mine arguably come from Quak­er val­ues. For exam­ple, in gen­er­al I won’t men­tion some­one else on a forum in which they don’t appear. I’m espe­cial­ly wary on pri­vate Face­book groups, as they can eas­i­ly become forum for detrac­tion and us/them peer pres­sure.  The Tract Asso­ci­a­tion pam­phlet on detrac­tion is real­ly a must-read. It’s actu­al­ly prob­a­bly some­thing worth re-reading every six months. Read­ers: what kind of prac­tices have you devel­oped to be a respon­si­ble Quak­er online?

Reading the Qur’an as a Quaker

April 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Earl­ham col­lege pro­fe­sor and Quak­er author Michael Birkel decid­ed to reach across reli­gious divides by sim­ply talk­ing to his neigh­bors, a project which came to span the Unit­ed States: Read­ing the Qur’an as a Quaker

What is it like to read some­one else’s scrip­ture? I think it’s quite pos­si­ble that it can change you in ways that I can’t pre­dict for any read­er, except to say that it will make your life richer.

In addi­tion to the Quak­er­S­peak video there’s also a book of Birkel’s project, Qu’ran in Con­ver­sa­tion.

Ask Me Anything: How easy is it to become a Quaker?

April 25, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I have an Ask Me Any­thing request from read­er Ruby M:

Hel­lo! I’m study­ing The Friends Church for aca­d­e­m­ic pur­pos­es and I’d love to hear from some­one with first­hand expe­ri­ence. How easy is it to become a quak­er? Do you ever feel peo­ple treat you dif­fer­ent­ly because you’re a quak­er? Do you think there should be more rep­re­sen­ta­tion of quak­ers in the media? Thank you so much for your time. I’m very eager to hear back from you!

Since my expe­ri­ence is just one data point, I hope oth­ers will use the com­ment sec­tion below to add their stories.

I found becom­ing a Quak­er to be some­thing of a spi­ral process. I first walked into a Friends meet­ing­house at the age of 20 and only slow­ly took on an iden­ti­ty as a Friend. At each step of the process, I learned more clear­ly what that might mean and have strived to grow into deep­er faith­ful­ness. I didn’t for­mal­ly apply for mem­ber­ship until a decade or so after I became a reg­u­lar atten­der. This time lag is not unheard of but I don’t think it’s usu­al. It’s more of an insight into my own care­ful­ness and ret­i­cence about join­ing things than it is an indi­ca­tion of any­thing the meet­ings I attend­ed required. When I did final­ly apply for mem­ber­ship I was quite qual­i­fied and want­ed the clear­ness process to be exact­ing: again, this is an insight into my psyche!

Most peo­ple on the street don’t quite know what Quak­ers are so I can’t say I’m always treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. I guess see­ing more Quak­ers in the media would be help­ful, though giv­en our over­all small num­bers I sus­pect even our fleet­ing appear­ances in TV shows and movies are more than we might pro­por­tion­al­ly expect.

I’m inter­est­ed to hear how oth­er Friends would answer Ruby’s question.

 

Update: reader answers by email and commentary

Jes­si­ca F: I’ve want­ed to be a Quak­er since I learned about the Abo­li­tion­ists who helped with the Under­ground Rail­road and prison reform. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the movie Gen­tle Per­sua­sion pre­sent­ed Quak­ers as being against music so I became a Uni­tar­i­an instead. Even­tu­al­ly I learned that wasn’t true for many Quak­ers and I found that all of the val­ues I had devel­oped through the years were also Quak­er val­ues and so becom­ing a Quak­er gave me a sup­port sys­tem and a com­mu­ni­ty of like minds.

Quaker historic ocean of zen calm silence

April 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The Young Quak­er Pod­cast in the UK recent­ly had an episode in which they had a mic run through 30 min­utes of silent wor­ship. I must admit I kind of laughed at the John Cage’­ness of it. But it’s gen­er­at­ed quite a bit of buzz. The Guardian declared it an ocean of calm, NPR thinks silence is gold­en. Not to be out­done, the BBC breath­less­ly announced that the pod­cast makes his­to­ry for record­ing Quak­er wor­ship (nev­er mind peo­ple have been wor­ship­ping via Skype and oth­er online media for many years now).

I love the inten­tion­al­i­ty of a room­ful of peo­ple agree­ing to set­tle into silence togeth­er as much as the next Friend, but I’m tempt­ed to won­der whether the cov­er­age would have quite so effu­sive if some­one had inter­rupt­ed part of the pod­cast’s silence to give a mes­sage. From daf­fodil min­istry to top-of-the-hour news­cast updates to dis­qui­si­tions on the gospel, pret­ty much any­thing would have popped the silence’s “moment of Zen,” to use NPR’s head-scratching description.

The best part of it all so far, in my opin­ion, is that one of the pod­cast­ers, host Jes­si­ca Hubbard-Bailey, got a chance to use the buzz to write her sto­ry of being a Quak­er for i (an online spin-off of the Inde­pen­dent): Life is tough for young peo­ple, but being a Quak­er has giv­en me hope.

When a friend came to me last year and sug­gest­ed the Young Quak­er Pod­cast record a silent Meet­ing for Wor­ship I was intrigued. But giv­en that most peo­ple are not quite so enam­oured with silence as Quak­ers, I couldn’t have antic­i­pat­ed the inter­est and response that followed.

https://​inews​.co​.uk/​i​n​e​w​s​-​l​i​f​e​s​t​y​l​e​/​w​o​m​e​n​/​l​i​f​e​-​i​s​-​t​o​u​g​h​-​f​o​r​-​y​o​u​n​g​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​b​u​t​-​b​e​i​n​g​-​a​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​h​a​s​-​g​i​v​e​n​-​m​e​-​h​o​pe/

I’m not the only one who digs archives

April 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Philadel­phia Friends are so mod­est that blog posts on Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing’s web­site don’t even have bylines. Or maybe some­one for­got to fill out a field. Either way, here’s a first-person account by an anony­mous Philadelphia-area Friend in their ear­ly 60s who start­ed read­ing Friends Jour­nal archives: Some Thoughts from the 1955 Friends Journal

I select­ed the issue clos­est to my birth date and began read­ing. The dis­cus­sion of the Kore­an con­flict, of the arms race, of the Israeli-Palestinian dis­pute, could all have been writ­ten today. And for a lunch-time med­i­ta­tion, this arti­cle, on prepar­ing for meet­ing, was just the right size for read­ing over my soup and sandwich.