Tag Archives ⇒ vision

A 12-step program for world peace

February 12, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Bob Dock­horn, my pre­de­ces­sor as Friends Jour­nal senior edi­tor, has been doing a lot of writ­ing since he’s retired and one of his big projects involves a vision of a world free of its addic­tion to vio­lence. Some­where in the process he lost a step (there’s only 11).

Hav­ing been raised a Friend, I assume a hope­ful stance toward the future. Unlike many oth­ers, we gen­er­al­ly pre­sume that the human world is not meant to be adver­sar­i­al. Even deci­sion mak­ing by vot­ing is reject­ed among Friends as unnec­es­sar­i­ly con­fronta­tion­al. Friends par­tic­i­pate in local and nation­al elec­tions, but often with mis­giv­ings since these con­tests, law­mak­ing, and even courts can be set­tings in which priv­i­lege is pre­served and fought for.

One evening a few years ago, as I sat in silence at Southamp­ton (Pa.) Meet­ing, my atten­tion turned to a 12-Step poster on the wall, left behind by a Nar­cotics Anony­mous group that meets week­ly in our space. As I stared at it, I expe­ri­enced a flash of insight — that our entire cul­ture is addict­ed to com­pe­ti­tion and violence. 

I appre­ci­ate how the steps start sim­ply (“Clear One’s Pre­sump­tions,” “Access Mul­ti­ple Sources of Infor­ma­tion”) and then build into pro­pos­als that seem pie-in-the-sky “(Trans­form Mil­i­tary Insti­tu­tions,” “Imple­ment World Gov­ern­ment”), espe­cial­ly with cur­rent world trends. But that’s the nature of a jour­ney: it starts with steps but main­tains vision toward a destination.


Eleven Steps toward an Enduring World

Eleven Steps toward an Endur­ing World 

A fierce­ly ide­al­is­tic vision of a human­i­ty cured of its addic­tion to vio­lence and war.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Genesis: Outer Space and Inner Light, by

November 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

John A. Mina­han has writ­ten this week’s fea­tured Friends Jour­nal arti­cle, a nice­ly paced explo­ration that touch­es on per­son­al mem­oir, human mile­stones, cul­tur­al mem­o­ry, and the Book of Genesis:

Now the astro­nauts had used that same rhetor­i­cal strat­e­gy but on a plan­e­tary and even inter­plan­e­tary scale. Speak­ing the words of Gen­e­sis, they sent a mes­sage of heal­ing to a wound­ed world; they expressed a cer­tain cos­mic humil­i­ty about our place in the uni­verse; and, most of all, they shared good­will, jaw-dropping in its sim­plic­i­ty, with “all of you on the good earth.” A moral and exis­ten­tial vision took hold of me in that moment and has nev­er let go. Though I couldn’t have artic­u­lat­ed it as such then, it was a real­iza­tion of orig­i­nal goodness. 


Genesis: Outer Space and Inner Light

Gen­e­sis: Out­er Space and Inner Light 

Out­er space and Inner Light

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

What is the Quaker community we’d like to see?

October 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

On the Quak­erQuak­er forums, Kir­by Urn­er sets out a vision for a future Quak­er community:

My spec­u­la­tions, there­fore, cen­ter around around what a Quak­er Vil­lage might look like, under­stand­ing “vil­lage” to mean “small com­mu­ni­ty” (hun­dreds or thou­sands, but not mil­lions). How do these peo­ple live? How do they put their Chris­t­ian val­ues into practice?

Let’s say it’s a hun­dred years from now, when all of us are safe­ly dead. Or maybe we’d like to accel­er­ate the timeline?

For me, a hall­mark of Quak­erism is its egal­i­tar­i­an­ism and com­mit­ment to rotat­ing roles. That’s not a fea­ture of every branch I real­ize, and those who decry “out­ward forms” may con­sid­er Over­sight, Prop­er­ty Man­age­ment, Chil­dren’s Pro­gram etc., to be the oppo­site of “prim­i­tive” by def­i­n­i­tion. Per­haps such infra­struc­ture seems too com­pli­cat­ed, too much like every­day life. I real­ize we use our words differently. 

I like the qual­i­fi­ca­tion to imag­ine this 100 years from now. It gives us a bit of time to sort out all of the incon­ve­nient road­blocks of cur­rent apa­thy and resis­tance to change. One of the tech­niques Ama­zon is said to use is to start any new project ideas with a press release as a way to make sure the final prod­uct is focused on actu­al cus­tomer needs. Kir­by’s piece reminds me of this. What would it look like to have a strong vision of the Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties we’d like to live in someday?
http://​www​.quak​erquak​er​.org/​f​o​r​u​m​/​t​o​p​i​c​s​/​w​h​a​t​-​i​s​-​p​r​i​m​i​t​i​v​e​-​c​h​r​i​s​t​i​a​n​ity

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 

Can Quakerism Survive?

February 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Some­times I’m remiss at actu­al­ly shar­ing arti­cles I’ve worked on as part of my duties as Friends Jour­nal’s edi­tor. It’s espe­cial­ly iron­ic this week giv­en that one of the most talked-about recent Quak­er arti­cles comes from the Feb­ru­ary FJ issue.

Don McCormick­’s piece has a bold title: Can Quak­erism Sur­vive? He talks about thr decline that many Friends geoups have been expe­rien­ing and won­ders who it is that might have. vision for twenty-first cen­tu­ry Friends.

The arti­cle has gar­nered over eighty com­ments. The range and depth of that con­ver­sa­tion has been hum­bling as as edi­tor. But this is a good cross-section of visions of Quak­erism. An excerpt from McCormick:

Over the past 40 years, I have been part of and seen orga­ni­za­tions that had high ideals and did good work but were focused on inter­nal dynam­ics and paid lit­tle atten­tion to threats to their exis­tence. As a result, they went under. I wor­ry that our year­ly, quar­ter­ly, and month­ly meet­ings will also.

Waking up to President Trump

November 9, 2016
· Martin Kelley

Bar­ring a very improb­a­ble series of events we will more than like­ly be look­ing at Pres­i­dent Trump once the num­bers have been tal­lied overnight. And not just him but a rad­i­cal­ized Trumpian Con­gress, Sen­ate — and because of the suc­cess­ful stonewalling against Oba­ma’s nom­i­na­tion — Supreme Court. We’ve not just elect­ed an author­i­tar­i­an: we’ve also tak­en away the entire sys­tem of checks and bal­ances that might be able to hold him back. Add to that the expan­sion of the raw pow­er of the exec­u­tive branch in recent years and it’s the set­up for a dystopi­an TV show.

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We’ve seen seem­ing­ly sta­ble coun­tries fall apart under con­di­tions like this. We claim Amer­i­can excep­tion­al­ism but his­to­ry is lit­tered with the corpses of democ­ra­cies that did­n’t make it. This will be the biggest test of our civic val­ues in our life­times. We might well expe­ri­ence things the Amer­i­can repub­lic has nev­er seen: the impris­on­ment of a los­ing oppo­si­tion leader, the rise of orga­nized hate crimes, whole­sale theft of incred­i­ble wealth by a new oli­garchy, the divy­ing up of the world back into empires… The mod­el of a kind of alt right soft dic­ta­tor­ship is well devel­oped by this point and Trump has been clear through­out both his career and his can­di­da­cy that it’s his vision.

We do not get to choose our era or the chal­lenges it throws at us. Only some­one with his­tor­i­cal amne­sia would say this is unprece­dent­ed in our his­to­ry. The enslave­ment of mil­lions and the geno­cide of mil­lions more are dark stains indeli­bly soaked into the very found­ing of the nation. But much will change, par­tic­u­lar­ly our naiv­i­ty and false opti­mism in an inevitable for­ward progress of our nation­al sto­ry. We must respond with courage and grace. We’re going to get a les­son in what’s real­ly impor­tant. Time to engage.