Quaker Abolitionist Benjamin Lay Remembered

May 8, 2018

Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing has pub­lished a piece on the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of dis­owned sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry Quak­er rab­bler­ouser Ben­jamin Lay

On Sat­ur­day, April 21, 2018, Abing­ton Month­ly Meet­ing unveiled a bur­ial stone for Sarah & Ben­jamin Lay. The event which fea­tured open­ing remarks by author Mar­cus Redik­er and local res­i­dent and Quak­er Avis Wan­da McClin­ton was fol­lowed by a gath­er­ing in the meet­ing­house in the man­ner of a Friends Memo­r­i­al Meeting.

Abing­ton was the first Friends meet­ing I ever vis­it­ed and I’ve loved the sto­ry of Lay since the time I first stum­bled on it (even as a kid I was enough of a local his­to­ry nerd that I might have read of Lay’s antics before I ever met a Quak­er). I’m per­son­al­ly so hap­py to see him get this wider recog­ni­tion. The PYM piece is all-text but much of the grave mark­er cer­e­mo­ny has been post­ed to YouTube.

https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​3​e​-​4​_​Y​Z​x​eQk

Hope in the Middle East

March 27, 2018

As the March Friends Jour­nal theme of Quak­ers and the Holy Land comes to a close, this week’s fea­tured arti­cle is one with hope. Sandy Rea shares sto­ries of teach­ing in var­i­ous parts of the Mid­dle East with his wife Stephanie Judson:

I fell in love with Lebanon: with the peo­ple, the sound of the lan­guage, the tastes of the food, and smells of the spices. Views to the Lebanon moun­tains from Beirut’s sea­side boule­vards and rooftops are entic­ing. Moun­tain vil­lages have pre­served their charm by keep­ing old­er homes with the blonde stone and red tile roofs. The hard-working and earnest teach­ers and the smart, business-minded shop own­ers are always glad to see for­eign­ers. There is an indus­tri­ous­ness, resilience, and pride in the Lebanese that con­tribute to the repeat­ed ris­ings from so many destruc­tions of the city.

Sandy also gives us his­to­ries of times in which Chris­tians, Mus­lims, and Jews have lived togeth­er in peace. It is pos­si­ble. Today Sandy is clerk of the Mid­dle East Col­lab­o­ra­tive of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing, which is work­ing  on rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in the region.

+Matt Taibbi’s latest Rolling Stone piece explains the anger behind #ows: Wall…

October 27, 2011

Reshared post from +Tim O’Reil­ly

+Matt Taib­bi’s lat­est Rolling Stone piece explains the anger behind #ows: Wall Street Isn’t Win­ning. It’s Cheat­ing. Real­ly excel­lent. Skew­ers the idea that this is class war­fare against the rich, focus­es on the tilt­ed play­ing field.

Embed­ded Link

Wall Street Isn’t Win­ning It’s Cheat­ing | Matt Taib­bi | Rolling Stone
I was at an event on the Upper East Side last Fri­day night when I got to talk­ing with a sales­man in the media busi­ness. The sub­ject turned to Zucott 

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Call off the search parties

March 10, 2007

The retreat at the Carmelite Monastery was nice. Here’s some pic­tures, the first of those “long-remembered”:/if_i_dont_make_it_back.php tall stone walls and the rest of the beau­ti­ful chapel:
Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia
It was a silent retreat – for us at least. There were three talks about “Tere­sa of Avila”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_Avila giv­en by Father Tim Byer­ley, who also works with the “Col­legium Center”:http://www.collegiumcenter.org/about.php, a kind of reli­gious edu­ca­tion out­reach project for young adult Catholics in South Jer­sey (I men­tioned it “a few months ago”:https://www.quakerranter.org/teaching_quakerism_again.php as a mod­el of young adult youth out­reach that Friends might want to con­sid­er). Much of what Tere­sa has to say about prayer is uni­ver­sal and very applic­a­ble to Friends, though I have to admit I start­ed spac­ing out by around the fourth man­sion of the “Inte­ri­or Castle”:http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2.toc.html (I’ve nev­er been good with num­bered reli­gious steps!).
I’m in no dan­ger of fol­low­ing my wife Julie’s jour­ney from Friends to Catholi­cism, though as always I very much enjoyed being in the midst of a gath­ered group com­mit­ted to a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. The idea of reli­gious life as self-abnegation is an impor­tant one for all Chris­tians in an age where “me-ism”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScWdek6_Ids&eurl has become the “sec­u­lar state religion”:http://www.walmart.com/ and I hope to return to it in the near future.