Life after Death

January 14, 2019

Rhi­an­non Grant on Lib­er­al Quak­ers’ view on the afterlife:

Spend­ing some more time with this idea, includ­ing dur­ing Meet­ing for Wor­ship, I realised that I actu­al­ly have a strong intu­ition against there being any form of life after death. Not only do I not think that any life which may or may not occur after death should affect my actions now (I don’t do things because I want to get into heav­en or gen­er­ate good kar­ma for my next life, and nor do I accept escha­to­log­i­cal ver­i­fi­ca­tion), I active­ly think it’s unlike­ly, even impos­si­ble, that such a thing exists. 

Friends Jour­nal devot­ed an issue to The Art of Dying and the After­life a few years ago, includ­ing an intro­duc­tion I wrote.

Lib­er­al Quak­ers and Life after Death

Help keep the work going!

January 8, 2019

If you spend much time online you’ll know that there’s a lot of noise and bad infor­ma­tion on the Inter­net. This is true with Quak­er mate­r­i­al too. Every day I’m scan­ning the cor­ners of the net to find the blog posts, Red­dit threads, Quak­er mag­a­zines and main­stream cov­er­age of Friends and bring­ing it on Quak­erQuak­er and my Quak­er­Ran­ter Dai­ly Email.

Var­i­ous Jan­u­ary serv­er bills are com­ing due in the next week and the Pay­pal account is emp­ty. Between domain reg­is­tra­tions, serv­er bills, and the Ning ser­vice the site can often rack up over $50 in a giv­en month.

Please con­sid­er a one-time dona­tion at http://​pay​pal​.me/​m​a​r​t​i​n​k​e​l​ley or use the Quak­erQuak­er dona­tion page to set up a month­ly donation.

Nuturing ministers: Case studies

December 24, 2018

Bri­an Dray­ton is start­ing a new series of his­tor­i­cal exam­ples of Quak­ers giv­ing min­is­te­r­i­al advice and training:

As I am work­ing on a revi­sion of my book on the Quak­er min­istry, I am revis­it­ing his­tor­i­cal accounts of times when a min­is­ter was giv­en guid­ance (elder­ing, over­sight, nur­ture, dis­ci­pline). As part of that work, I will from time to time post “case stud­ies” on this blog. 

Nutur­ing min­is­ters: Case stud­ies, Intro

2019 FGC Gathering workshops announced

December 19, 2018

It’s that time of year: FGC’s announced the work­shop list­ings for its annu­al Gath­er­ing, start­ing at the end of June at Grin­nell Col­lege in Iowa.

There are 48 work­shops to choose from this year, which is about the nor­mal num­ber for recent years. I used Archive​.org to look back and the biggest year I could dig up was 2006, when 73 work­shops were offered. Gath­er­ing atten­dance has dropped since then but I also sus­pect 73 selec­tions were a bit ambi­tious. The cur­rent nor­mal is more suit­ed to the Gath­er­ing size. There are lots of famil­iar work­shop lead­ers. Are there any that stand out for you? Fell free to drop rec­om­men­da­tions (or pro­mote your own work­shop if you’re doing one!) in the com­ment section.

https://​www​.fgc​quak​er​.org/​c​o​n​n​e​c​t​/​g​a​t​h​e​r​i​n​g​/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​s​-​a​n​d​-​e​v​e​n​t​s​/​w​o​r​k​s​h​ops

A small break

December 13, 2018

My apolo­gies for the radio silence on this so-called dai­ly site. A fam­i­ly vaca­tion took my atten­tion away from most things Quak­er and get­ting caught up on back work is keep­ing it away a few days. I should be up to speed by the weekend.

Dur­ing that time the domain reg­is­tra­tion for Quak­erQuak­er turned due. I must have missed the del­uge of email that its domain reg­is­trar usu­al­ly sends. I’ve paid the domain bill for anoth­er two years and it should be back up for everyone.

Redefining rude

October 23, 2018

From Mol­ly Shee­han, one of a small “gray wave” of Quak­ers who ran for Con­gress this year (she lost her pri­ma­ry bid):

When the mar­gin­al­ized cry out for com­pas­sion, they are not cen­sor­ing any­body. They are fight­ing for their very right to exist. Non­vi­o­lent dis­obe­di­ence and rewrit­ing the rules of civil­i­ty is for these groups. It is our job, espe­cial­ly as white peo­ple, or those with more soci­etal pow­er and time to protest, to ampli­fy the voic­es of the most marginalized.

https://​mil​len​ni​alpol​i​tics​.co/​r​e​d​e​f​i​n​e​-​r​u​d​e​-​e​m​b​r​a​c​e​-​d​i​s​r​u​p​t​i​ve/

The end of religious liberty?

October 23, 2018

Is it time to give up var­i­ous paci­fist calls for reli­gious lib­er­ty giv­en the way the con­cept has been coopt­ed by those try­ing to insti­tu­tion­al­ize discrimination?

At a time when the things that bind us togeth­er as a soci­ety are so frag­ile, I’m wary of efforts that smack of iso­lat­ing one­self from the sins of the world, rather than build­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty in hopes that, God will­ing, those sins might be overcome.

The dead end of reli­gious liberty

Regina Baird Haag on the sharing of vocal ministry

September 19, 2018

Study turns to some­thing more spon­ta­neous after a failed com­put­er save:

Since that Sun­day wor­ship, I have found myself more inclined and respon­sive to lead­ings to share vocal min­istry out of Silence. While I still pre­pare dili­gent­ly when occa­sions to plan to preach arise, meld­ing schol­ar­ship, dai­ly life, and spir­it over time, I am more sen­si­tive and respon­sive to those inner lead­ings and the Spir­it, from which ALL vocal and non-verbal min­istry are born and enlivened.

http://​www​.nyym​.org/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​m​y​-​e​x​p​e​r​i​e​n​c​e​-​s​h​a​r​i​n​g​-​v​o​c​a​l​-​m​i​n​i​s​try