Net Sightings

May 2, 2005

The Pub­lic Quak­er writ­ing about prayer
bq. Prayer is one con­stant thing for me, a reli­able base. When am I hav­ing epis­te­mo­log­i­cal doubt about every­thing, I do know that is good for me to pray.
A month ago LizOpp post­ed a inter­est “FAQ on her wor­ship group”:http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2005/03/faqs-about-my-worship-group.html which is well worth read­ing. Last week she fol­lowed it up with a very chew-worthy post on “The­o­log­i­cal uni­ty and spir­i­tu­al diversity”:http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2005/04/theological-unity-and-spiritual.html (which adds new ground to the ter­ri­to­ry we’ve been explor­ing here on Quak­er Ranter on “Non-Theism”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000567.php and “Lov­ing God”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000577.php).
“Quakerspeak”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/Quakerspeak/ is the new blog by a high-school Friend I met last week in Ore­gon. Whew, is she on fire!:
bq. I nev­er real­ly thought much about how I was sort of bot­tling up all my the­o­log­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al con­tem­pla­tions; sud­den­ly I feel like I’m pour­ing it all out on the table and exam­in­ing it all.. well, except that I’ve been exam­in­ing it all. I’m try­ing to bet­ter apply my spritu­al­i­ty to my dai­ly life and inter­ac­tions with­out los­ing sight of myself; I’m try­ing to fig­ure out where it all fits into my own life with­out try­ing to alter my per­son­al­i­ty or ways of being.
Beppe’s just start­ed a new series with a post, “The Trou­bles with Friends Part 1”:http://beppeblog.blogspot.com/2005/05/trouble-with-friends-1-too-much-of.html. This first install­ment focus­es on our fear of judge­men­tal­ism. Speak on, bro!

On the Web: Transmitting Quakerism and Being There for God

March 16, 2005

Liz Oppen­heimer has post­ed an extra­or­di­nary account of how “Friends trans­mit­ted Quak­erism to her over time”:http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2005/03/Quakerism-from-generation-to.html. I find myself at a loss of words to sum it up – you have to read it for your­self and I strong­ly rec­om­mend you do. Here’s just the mer­est snippet:
bq. It took me years to under­stand that there was much, much more to Quak­erism than just meet­ing for wor­ship… I had yet to under­stand the con­cepts of cor­po­rate dis­cern­ment or Gospel Order or wait­ing on the Spir­it for guid­ance. None of my peers or spir­i­tu­al friends at the time were talk­ing with me about this stuff; and I have no rec­ol­lec­tion of any­one mak­ing the Quak­er decision-making process more explic­it at the time.
Liz will be offer­ing a work­shop at this year’s “FGC Gathering”:www.FGCQuaker.org/gathering. The descrip­tion sound­ed great but if this post is any­thing like the shar­ing that will go on in that work­shop, then you’ll want to be there.
In a sim­i­lar vein, the Con­trar­i­an Quak­er explains “I’m not here to be seen by men. I’m here to wor­ship God”:http://Quakerman.blogspot.com/2005/03/i‑go-along.html; “New peo­ple, as they walk in, are met with smiles and intro­duc­tions but by their sec­ond or third vis­it they end up stand­ing in the midst of a gab­bing throng com­plete­ly ignored after meet­ing for wor­ship… I sim­ply decid­ed that I was here to wor­ship God.”

Uh-Oh: Beppe’s Doubts

March 9, 2005

I’ve occa­sion­al­ly thought of Beppe­blog’s  Joe Gua­da as my blog­ging Quak­er dopple­ganger. More than once he’s writ­ten the post I was about to write. And more than one impor­tant arti­cle of mine start­ed as com­men­tary to one of his insight­ful articles.

So I’m wor­ried that he’s writ­ten the first of a mul­ti­part arti­cle ask­ing Is it time to leave Quak­erism. I’m wor­ried not just that Quak­erism would lose a bright Light, etc., etc, but because I know that now I’m going to have to pub­licly mull over the ques­tion that’s a con­stant back­ground hum that I try not to think about.

Update: just to prove my point, my com­ment to Joe’s post was more inter­est­ing that my post point­ing to his post. Here’s the com­ment I just left there:

There was one day in wor­ship a few years ago right around the time when my wife Julie decid­ed to leave Quak­erism when I had this odd vision. I imag­ined us as boul­ders the front edge of a water­fall. Thou­sands of gal­lons of water swept over us every day, erod­ing and scar­ring our sur­face and under­min­ing the frag­ile base we were on. When Boul­der Julie final­ly dis­lodged and fell off the precipice of Quak­erism, I real­ized that one of the rocks that had held me in place was now gone and now there was going to be even more water and pres­sure try­ing to push me off.
I say this because you’ve become one of my blog­ging rocks, some­one who con­firms that I’m not a total nut­case. If you went over the edge I’d have to reassess my sit­u­a­tion and at least take a peek down myself. At the very least I’m going to have to blog about why I’ve stayed so long. I’m sure this is only part one to my com­men­tary on these issues…

Quaker Dharma: Let the Light Shine

February 2, 2005

Over a new-to-me blog called The Quak­er Dhar­ma there’s a post call­ing for us to The Let Our Light Shine Bright­ly. He makes some very good points like “It’s worth explain­ing what Quak­erism is” and “true out­reach is an act of spir­i­tu­al hos­pi­tal­i­ty.” He also tells a few sto­ries. Here’s one about pas­sion­ate younger reli­gious he’s known:

I came to Quak­erism from Bud­dhist study. I also worked for an inter­na­tion­al Bud­dhist orga­ni­za­tion for two years. These are expe­ri­ences for which I am deeply grate­ful. Teach­ings for which I am deeply grate­ful. I saw twen­ty some­thing year olds who took Bud­dhist ordi­na­tion vows and shaved their heads. This was deeply mov­ing and was a joy to share their sense of union at hav­ing com­mit­ted to a path. These kids were fly­ing to India to take teach­ings. The com­mit­ment lev­el was unbe­liev­able. Some of them went on month long silent retreats. Quak­erism, espe­cial­ly now, in these times could speak to many. Unfor­tu­nate­ly we hide it and thou­sands and thou­sands of peo­ple in their twen­ties and thir­ties go with­out a spir­i­tu­al home.

Kwakersaur: Jesus vs Christ vs Discernment

January 26, 2005

“Inter­est­ing short post”:http://kwakersaur.blogspot.com/2005/01/jesus-language.html from Kwak­er­saur about the dif­fer­ent ways Friends have relat­ed to God cir­ca 1660, 1950 and today. A snippet
bq. [The first gen­er­a­tion of Friends’] lan­guage lacked the me-an-Jesus kind of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty that marks the 1955 min­utes and char­ac­ter­izes a lot of Chris­t­ian spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of today. For ear­ly Quak­ers — and I sus­pect ear­ly Chris­tians — it was not so much Jesus as a friend­ly affa­ble fel­low who loved us in a warm and com­fy positive-strokes-I’m-OK-You’re-OK kin­da way.

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Johan Maurer: More about boldness

November 12, 2004

Johan has a great post about “Quak­er evan­ge­liz­ing in Russia”:http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2004/11/more-about-boldness.htm that real­ly applies to Quak­ers reach­ing out any­where. My favorite paragraph:
bq. I per­son­al­ly have a hard time with hob­by­ist Quak­erism, espe­cial­ly when defined in terms of ultra­finicky pre­scrip­tions of how “we” do things, “our” spe­cial pro­ce­dures and folk­ways, or any­thing else that detracts from Jesus being in the cen­ter of our com­mu­ni­ty life. How can we present some­thing so stilt­ed and crab­by and cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic as an answer to spir­i­tu­al bondage? It is just anoth­er form of bondage!

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Missional Churches and Half-Hearted Welcomes

September 11, 2004

Over on my main “Non​vi​o​lence​.org blog”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000436.php I link to Punkmon­key’s great post, “refus­ing to get political”:http://ginkworld.blogspot.com/2004/09/refusing-to-get-political.html, where he talks about why Chris­t­ian paci­fism is more than sim­ply anti-war activism. Oh how I wish more Quak­ers knew this! I like Punkmon­key’s blog a lot. He’s also recent­ly writ­ten about what it would mean to be a “mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty of faith”:http://ginkworld.blogspot.com/2004/07/missional-community-of-faith.html:
bq. a mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty of faith is a liv­ing breath­ing trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ty of faith will­ing to get messy while reach out to, and bring­ing in, those out­side the cur­rent community
Amen broth­er. The whole post is great. I love his cri­tique of check-writing church­es (per­fect­ly applic­a­ble to most peace and social con­cerns com­mit­tees I’ve seen). He also hits some­thing I see a lot: Meet­ings that are “wel­com­ing and exclud­ing” in their cliquish­ness: “small groups of peo­ple who seem friend­ly, and wel­com­ing but in actu­al­i­ty are not wel­com­ing.” Punkmon­key’s not Quak­er but Bebbe­blog’s Joe Gua­da is and I start­ed read­ing his posts next. There I found a real­ly inter­est­ing coun­ter­point: “Can I be a (fill in the blank here) & be a Quak­er, too?”:http://beppeblog.blogspot.com/2004/09/file-under-Quakerism-religion-can-i-be.html. Joe’s post also talks about iden­ti­ty, prax­is and super­fi­cial half-welcoming. He quotes a friend who’s not joined Quakers:
bq. Yes, I know that every­one has the Inner Light. Yes, I remem­ber how uncom­fort­able it is to be look­ing for a group and to feel left out (though it’s not as uncom­fort­able as feel­ing like you’re part of the group, get­ting deeply involved and then find­ing out that you’re a bad fit because peo­ple weren’t telling you up front that you did­n’t fit).
Lots of great read­ing in all this!

Plain Dress Discussion on Yahoo

April 19, 2004

Julie, my wife, has just start­ed a Yahoo group called PlainAnd­Mod­est­Dress.
Here’s her description:

This group is for Chris­tians inter­est­ed in dis­cussing issues of reli­gious plain and mod­est dress. It is not nec­es­sary to have grown up in a plain or mod­est­ly dress­ing group. We are espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in the expe­ri­ences of those who have come to this point as a sort of con­ver­sion or a “recov­ery” of tra­di­tion that has been lost. Tra­di­tion­al Catholics, Anabap­tists, con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­ers, and oth­er Chris­tians wel­come here. The­o­log­i­cal points and demon­i­na­tion­al dif­fer­ences are open for dis­cus­sion (not argu­ment), as are the specifics of what type of plain dress you have been called to. Dis­cus­sion of head­cov­er­ing is also allowed here, as are gen­der dis­tinc­tions in dress. We may also share prayers for one anoth­er, as well as the chal­lenges we face in try­ing to live in obe­di­ence to the Lord. This is not a forum in which to dis­cuss the valid­i­ty of Chris­tian­i­ty – no blas­phem­ing allowed. 

There is much to be said about plain dress. This is not an easy wit­ness. It forces us to deal with issues of sub­mis­sion and humil­i­ty on a dai­ly basis – just try to go to a con­ve­nience store and not feel self-consciously set apart. Explain­ing this new ‘style’ to one’s more world­ly friends can be quite a chal­lenge. These are eter­nal issues for those adopt­ing plain dress and I laugh with com­rade­ship when I read old Quak­er jour­nal accounts of going plain.
Even so, I have a bit of trep­i­da­tion about a news­group on plain dress. I don’t want to fetishize plain dress by talk­ing about it too much. The point should­n’t be to for­mu­late some sort of ‘uni­form of the right­eous,’ and adop­tion of this tes­ti­mo­ny should­n’t be moti­vat­ed by peer pres­sure or ambi­tion, but by a call­ing from the Holy Spir­it – this is the crux of what I under­stand Mar­garet Fell to have been say­ing when she called pres­sured plain­ness a “sil­ly poor gospel”. (I should say that some non-Quaker do dress more as an iden­ti­fy­ing uni­form, which is fine, just not nec­es­sar­i­ly the Quak­er rationale).
But like any out­ward form or tes­ti­mo­ny (peace, Quak­er process, etc.), tak­ing up plain dress can be a fruit­ful course in reli­gious edu­ca­tion. I think back to being sev­en­teen and buck­ing my father’s wish that I attend the Naval Acad­e­my – my “no” made me ask how else my beliefs about peace might need to be act­ed out in my life. It became a use­ful query. Plain dress has forced me to think anew about how I “con­sume” cloth­ing and how I relate to mass mar­ket­ing and the glob­al cloth­ing indus­try. It’s also kept me from duck­ing out on my faith, as I wear an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of my beliefs.
So join the plain dress dis­cus­sion or take a look at the ever-growing sec­tion of the site called Resources on Quak­er Plain Dress, which includes “My Exper­i­ments with Plain­ness”, my ear­ly sto­ry about going plain.