Tag Archives ⇒ week

Being God’s Hands

October 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A sweet inter­view this week over on Quak­er­S­peak, an inter­view with Carter Nash:

I believe that peo­ple will respond to love, because I believe peo­ple respond to God. And if God is love, that is what peo­ple will respond to, is love. I think that’s the key to a lot of things and to a lot of prob­lems in the world, because if we tru­ly believe in God and we tru­ly believe that God is love as we were taught, and we act on that – and I believe that we are God’s hands here – then every­thing we do needs to be root­ed in love.

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​b​e​i​n​g​-​g​o​d​s​-​h​a​n​ds/

Becoming a Quaker Minister

August 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I love the gen­tle, delib­er­ate way Stephanie talks in her Quak­er­S­peak videos. In this week’s she talks about Quake ministry:

Join­ing up in that includes mak­ing my par­tic­u­lar gifts and skills avail­able and not need­ing it to be about me or accom­plish­ment, but about seek­ing to real­ly be a part of what God is try­ing to make hap­pen with and through me and oth­ers, and to rejoice in that. 

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​b​e​c​o​m​i​n​g​-​a​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​m​i​n​i​s​t​er/

QuakerSpeak on old Quaker records

July 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I must admit to lov­ing old libraries and geek­ing out on his­to­ries. In this week’s install­ment of Quak­er­S­peak, Mary Crauderu­eff, cura­tor at Haver­ford College’s Quak­er Col­lec­tion, talks about some of the favorite parts of her work:

You have things like mem­ber­ship records, mar­riage records, and mar­riage cer­tifi­cates. You have min­utes of the busi­ness meet­ings and you have com­mit­tee min­utes. Oth­er cool things that we have are deeds for meet­ings and meet­ing­hous­es. Peo­ple will some­times come to var­i­ous Quak­er archives and say, “Our meet­ing is in this dis­pute with the town­ship. We need to find the orig­i­nal deed to the meet­ing­house and we think that you have it. Can we look at it?” 

http://​Quak​er​s​peak​.com/​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​a​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​i​c​a​l​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​l​i​b​r​a​ry/

Lifting up the vocabulary

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week’s fea­tured Friends Jour­nal arti­cle is Sell­ing Hope by Tom Hoopes. Hoopes is a teacher at George School, one of the two promi­nent Quak­er board­ing schools in the Philadel­phia area, and he talks about the brand­ing chal­lenges of “Quak­er val­ues” which his­toric Quak­er schools so often fall back on when describ­ing their mis­sion. We often describe these with the sim­plis­tic “SPICES” foru­mu­la­tion (Eric Moon wrote about the prob­lems over-emphasizing these). Hoopes encour­ages us to expand our language:

We can use any num­ber of descrip­tors that do not sound so haughty and near­sight­ed. I think we should con­tin­u­al­ly lift up some key pieces of vocab­u­lary that real­ly do make the Quak­er way dis­tinc­tive. Here is a brief list, to which I am sure Friends can add oth­ers: “that of God in every per­son”; “the Inner Light”; “con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion”; “dis­cern­ment”; “sense of the meet­ing”; “right­ly led and right­ly ordered”; “Friend speaks my mind”; “the still, small voice with­in”; “way open­ing”; “clerk­ing”; “query”; “wor­ship shar­ing”; “expec­tant wait­ing”; “cen­ter­ing down”; “Quak­er deci­sion mak­ing”; “Quak­er tra­di­tion”; “faith and prac­tice”; “seek­ing clear­ness”; “Quak­er tes­ti­monies”; and of course, “meet­ing for worship.”

Long­time FJ read­ers will remem­ber a much-discussed 2008 arti­cle by Hoopes, “Young Fam­i­lies and Quak­erism: Will the Cen­ter Hold?” It cer­tain spoke to my con­di­tion as a par­ent strug­gling with fam­i­ly life among Friends:

Let’s look at some hard real­i­ties fac­ing many Quak­er par­ents of young chil­dren today. They are fre­quent­ly exhaust­ed and fraz­zled from attend­ing to their children’s needs in addi­tion to their own all week long. They des­per­ate­ly need a break from their own chil­dren, and they may feel guilty about that fact. They are often asked — or expect­ed — to serve as First-day school teach­ers or child­care providers. Hence, their expe­ri­ence of meet­ing is not one of replen­ish­ment, but of fur­ther depletion.

I wish I could report that Philadel­phia Friends took the 2008 arti­cle to heart.


Selling Quakerism - Friends Journal

Sell­ing Quak­erism — Friends Journal 

The Mis­sion – Mar­ket Ten­sion Inher­ent in Quak­er Values

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

British Quakers take long hard look at faith

May 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Britain Year­ly Meet­ing has decid­ed to under­take a once-in-a-generation rewrite of its Faith and Practice

Reg­u­lar revi­sion and being open to new truths is part of who Quak­ers are as a reli­gious soci­ety. Quak­ers com­piled the first of these books of dis­ci­pline in 1738. Since then, each new gen­er­a­tion of Quak­ers has revised the book. A new revi­sion may help it speak to younger Quak­ers and the wider world.

This pos­si­bil­i­ty of this revi­sion was the basis for the inac­cu­rate and overblown click­baity rhetoric last week that Quak­ers were giv­ing up God. Rewrit­ing these books of Faith and Prac­tice is not uncom­mon. But it can be a big fraught. Who decides what is archa­ic? Who decides which parts of our Quak­er expe­ri­ence are core and which are expend­able? Add to this the long­stand­ing Quak­er dis­trust of creedal state­ments and there’s a strong incen­tive to include every­body’s expe­ri­ence. Inclu­sion can be an admirable goal in life and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of course, but for a reli­gious body defin­ing itself it leads to lowest-common-denominationalism.

I’ve found it extreme­ly reward­ing to read old­er copies of Faith and Prac­tice pre­cise­ly because the sometimes-unfamiliar lan­guage opens up a spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion that I’ve missed in the rou­tine of con­tem­po­rary life. The 1806 Philadel­phia Book of Dis­ci­pline has chal­lenged me to rec­on­cile its very dif­fer­ent take on Quak­er faith (where are the SPICES?) with my own. My under­stand­ing is that the first copies of Faith and Prac­tice were essen­tial­ly binders of the impor­tant min­utes that had been passed by Friends over the first cen­tu­ry of our exis­tence; these min­utes rep­re­sent­ed bound­aries – on our par­tic­i­pa­tion on war, on our lan­guage of days and times, on our advices against gam­bling and tav­erns. This was a very dif­fer­ent kind of doc­u­ment than our Faith and Prac­tice’s today.

It would be a per­son­al hell for me to sit on one of the rewrit­ing com­mit­tees. I like the mar­gins and fringes of Quak­er spir­i­tu­al­i­ty too much. I like peo­ple who have tak­en the time to think through their expe­ri­ences and give words to it – phras­es and ideas which might not fit the stan­dard nomen­cla­ture. I like pub­lish­ing and shar­ing the ideas of peo­ple who don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly agree.

These days more new­com­ers first find Friends through Wikipedia and YouTube and (often phe­nom­e­nal­ly inac­cu­rate) online dis­cus­sions. A few years ago I sat in a ses­sion of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing in which we were dis­cus­sion revis­ing the sec­tion of Faith and Prac­tice that had to do with month­ly meet­ing report­ing. I was a bit sur­prised that the Friends who rose to speak on the pro­posed new pro­ce­dure all admit­ted being unaware of the process in the cur­rent edi­tion. It seems as if Faith and Prac­tice is often a impre­cise snap­shot of Quak­er insti­tu­tion­al life even to those of us who are deeply embedded.


Quakers take long hard look at faith

Quak­ers take long hard look at faith 

Quak­ers in Britain are to rewrite their book of dis­ci­pline that has guid­ed their work and wit­ness across…

Quakers Quakers 

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 

Hope in the Middle East

March 27, 2018
· Martin Kelley

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.


What Once Was Can Be Again - Friends Journal

What Once Was Can Be Again — Friends Journal 

Work­ing on a shared vision of equal­i­ty and a just peace between Pales­tini­ans and Israelis.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Ask Me Anything: Do Quakers celebrate Easter and if so, how?

March 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A ques­tion From Jes­si­ca F about Friends and Easter.

On the face of it, this is an easy ques­tion. Ear­ly Friends were loath to rec­og­nize any litur­gi­cal prac­tices and they were lower‑p puri­tan­i­cal about any­thing that smacked of pagan­ism. Famous­ly, they didn’t use the com­mon names of the week or months because many of them referred to non-Christian deities, like Thor and Janus.

They were espe­cial­ly grumpy about any­thing that smacked of latter-day syn­cretism. Many of the church hol­i­days were seen as pagan fes­ti­vals with a super­fi­cial Chris­t­ian over­lay. I’ll be the first to admit they could get kind of obnox­ious this way. Wikipedia explains some of this attitude:

Oth­er Protes­tant groups took a dif­fer­ent atti­tude, with most Anabap­tists, Quak­ers, Con­gre­ga­tion­al­ists and Pres­by­ter­ian Puri­tans regard­ing such fes­ti­vals as an abom­i­na­tion. The Puri­tan rejec­tion of East­er tra­di­tions was (and is) based part­ly upon their inter­pre­ta­tion of 2 Corinthi­ans 6:14 – 16 and part­ly upon a more gen­er­al belief that, if a reli­gious prac­tice or cel­e­bra­tion is not actu­al­ly writ­ten in the Chris­t­ian Bible, then that practice/celebration must be a lat­er devel­op­ment and can­not be con­sid­ered an authen­tic part of Chris­t­ian prac­tice or belief — so at best sim­ply unnec­es­sary, at worst actu­al­ly sinful.

In Latin, East­er is called Pascha, a ref­er­ence to the Jew­ish Passover fes­ti­val. But in Eng­land, Pascha took place in the month the old Eng­lish called Ēostre after a god­dess whose fes­ti­val was cel­e­brat­ed in that month. This made it dou­bly hard for Eng­lish Protes­tant groups that want­ed to cleanse Chris­tian­i­ty of “popish” or “pagan” influ­ences. So for right or wrong, they ignored it like they did the day the world calls Christmas.

Sym­bol­i­cal­ly, Quak­ers love the idea of East­er. One of George Fox’s most key open­ings was that“Christ has come to teach the peo­ple him­self!” The idea that Jesus rose again and is with us is pret­ty cen­tral to tra­di­tion­al Quak­er beliefs.

These days East­er is large­ly cel­e­brat­ed by Friends stand­ing up on Sun­day to break the silence of wor­ship with nos­tal­gic sto­ries of East­ers in their pre-Quaker youth. Some­times they’ll admit to hav­ing attend­ed a East­er ser­vice at anoth­er church before com­ing to meet­ing that morn­ing. If you’re real­ly lucky, you’ll get min­istry about flow­ers or hats.