Tag Archives ⇒ something

Red Hens, resistance, and love

June 29, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er weighs in on the civility-in-politics ques­tions hap­pen­ing now. He makes use­ful dis­tinc­tions between mass behav­ior and spon­ta­neous protest and then lays out the sit­u­a­tion for those of us who fol­low the Prince of Peace.

I’m con­vinced that the USA is in a kind of dan­ger that is new to most of us. But even if our worst fears turn out to be exag­ger­at­ed, the scale of pain and despair among some (and wicked glee among oth­ers) is some­thing that demands a prophet­ic and pas­toral response from all who claim to rep­re­sent Good News.

Also check out his list of eight options for respond­ing to the cur­rent polit­i­cal crisis.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​6​/​s​o​w​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​t​e​a​r​s​-​p​a​r​t​-​t​w​o​-​r​e​d​-​h​e​n​s​.​h​tml

Creativity and the Arts

June 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Hap­py first of the month. The new issue of Friends Jour­nal is up and it’s a great one: Cre­ativ­i­ty and the Arts. This is actu­al­ly the first issue on the arts since the mag­a­zine went to col­or in 2013. Here’s a bit of the intro­duc­to­ry Among Friends col­umn writ­ten by yours tru­ly:

This overt dis­trust of the arts fad­ed away a long time ago. Today, the sheer vol­ume of cre­ativ­i­ty among Friends is impres­sive. When we put out a call for this issue, we had far more sub­mis­sions than we could pos­si­bly print. A dozen more artists told us they would love to write some­thing but were too busy cre­at­ing to do so at this time. Faced with a bit of a dilem­ma, we’ve cre­at­ed a sam­pler: each of the arti­cles in these pages rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent facet of cre­ativ­i­ty among Friends.

Through­out the diverse dis­ci­plines of visu­al arts, music, writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, community-based art, and per­for­mance art, a com­mon thread harks back to the con­cerns of those ear­li­er Friends: there’s still a con­sci­en­tious­ness around art.

I’ll talk more about indi­vid­ual arti­cles as we fea­ture them but in the mean­time, feel free to leave me your ini­tial thoughts in the com­ments below. Bummed that you did­n’t write any­thing? The issue on Meet­ings and Mon­ey is look­ing for sub­mis­sions.


Page not found - Friends Journal

Page not found — Friends Journal 

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Our unease with evil

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son is back, with a look at Quak­ers’ unease with evil

If there is some­thing divine or at least quasi-divine about the human, then where does human evil fit in? How could the two coex­ist? I sus­pect that this cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance explains part of our our unease with evil.

Evil

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?

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.

Have we abandoned all hope for a viral Quakerism?

April 25, 2018
· Martin Kelley

So a curi­ous sta­tis­tic: so far no one has sub­mit­ted any arti­cles for the August Friends Jour­nal issue, “Going Viral with Quak­erism.” Is this a sign that we’ve all just giv­en up all hope of Quak­er spir­i­tu­al­i­ty mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in the world?

Prob­a­bly not: there are many issues for which we only get sub­mis­sions in the last week before dead­line (or the week after dead­line, which is not to be encour­aged). But if you are think­ing of writ­ing, or have been mean­ing to encour­age a friend with vision to send us some­thing, then by all means sit down in front of a keyboard.

Also, the issue after that is non-themed. If you’ve ever had any ques­tions for writ­ing a gen­er­al sub­mis­sion, let me know in the com­ments or direct mes­sage me. I’m writ­ing some­thing about that process this week.


Writing Opp: Going Viral with Quakerism (due 5/14) - Friends Journal

Writ­ing Opp: Going Viral with Quak­erism (due 5/14) — Friends Journal 

What’s the Quak­er mes­sage for today? How do we com­mu­ni­cate it and how do we share it? What…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

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

Does this need to be said?

April 11, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A great piece from newish Quak­er blog­ger Josh Tal­bot on the per­son­al strug­gle to fol­low the peace tes­ti­mo­ny: Not Falling Into the Fire of My Own Ire.

Los­ing your­self to anger is pos­si­ble even with anger focused against injus­tice and cru­el­ty. You can become so focused on the tar­get of your rage. That you do not notice when you have lost sight of your goals and are only in it for the fight. Even fol­low­ing the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny of Non-Violence we need to rec­og­nize when we are no longer being Non-Aggressive.

Like many con­vinced Friends, I came to the soci­ety through activism. I had met plen­ty of peo­ple who let right­eous anger serve as cov­er for more vis­cer­al hatred. One eye-opening protest in the 90s was in a rur­al part of Penn­syl­va­nia. When one of the locals screamed the cliche of the era — “Go get a job!” — a pro­tes­tor shout­ed back, “I’ve got a job and I make more than you.” It was true even as it was cru­el and irrel­e­vant and braggy.

I did­n’t see this kind of behav­ior as much with the Friends I saw at var­i­ous protests, which is large­ly why I start­ed grav­i­tat­ing toward them when­ev­er pos­si­ble. I could see that there was some­thing in the Quak­er cul­ture and val­ue sys­tem that was able to nav­i­gate between right­eous and per­son­al anger and draw the line in dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions. I love Josh’s descrip­tion of the “Craig Fer­gu­son” method:

I ask myself. “Does this need to be said?” “Does this need to be said by me?” “Does this need to be said by me right now?” Doing this cuts down on moments of spon­ta­neous anger.

This could also describe the Quak­er dis­cern­ment method for min­istry. Maybe there’s some­thing to the care we take (or at least aim for) in that process that gives us a lit­tle more self-discipline in the heat of protest or that helps us sort through thorny eth­i­cal issues that run through our own community.

https://​quak​er​re​turns​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​n​o​t​-​f​a​l​l​i​n​g​-​i​n​t​o​-​f​i​r​e​-​o​f​-​m​y​-​o​w​n​-​i​r​e​.​h​tml