March 28, 2018

When we say we are hold­ing some­one in the Light, it is wise to remem­ber that hold­ing is an action verb. Some­times I con­fuse inter­ces­sion prayer with plac­ing a short order to a Spir­it I treat as a per­son­al com­plaint depart­ment. “You didn’t get my order right, God…she’s even sick­er than before!” I love the way Quak­er teach­ings hum­ble me and help me work with love while wait­ing expec­tant­ly for God’s will to be done.

— Bon­nie S.  in a recent comment

Hitler jokes and Quaker schools

March 26, 2018

The case of a beloved Quak­er Jew­ish teacher being fired from a NYC Friends School for mak­ing a Nazi salute as a joke is bring­ing us some inter­est­ing com­men­tary. Mark Oppen­heimer writes in Tablet:

One might call this whole episode the tri­umph of Waspy good inten­tions over Jew­ish com­mon sense… But of course Quak­er schools — and Quak­er camps, like the one I once attend­ed, and Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es — are, these days, pret­ty Jew­ish places. The Times arti­cle has a bur­lesque feel, with a bunch of Jew­ish stu­dents and alum­ni per­form­ing in Quaker-face.

He also makes inter­est­ing points about the cul­tures of Jew­ish humor (“We Jews sur­vive because of Hitler jokes”) and that of Friends:

The Quak­er prac­tice of silent wor­ship can dis­pos­es its prac­ti­tion­ers against the loud, bawdy, con­tentious dis­course that infus­es Jew­ish cul­ture. I’m not mak­ing claims about indi­vid­ual Quak­ers — I can intro­duce you to per­fect­ly hilar­i­ous Quak­ers, some of whom inter­rupt even more than I do — but at their insti­tu­tions, the val­ues that come to the fore are Gene Sharp not Gene Wilder. In their earnest­ness, Quak­er schools are David Brooks not Mel Brooks. You get the idea.

I’m always a bit unsure how seri­ous­ly to take cul­tur­al Quak­er stereo­types as moti­vat­ing forces in pieces like these. I won­der how many Friends actu­al­ly work or study at a Man­hat­tan Quak­er school. A more gener­ic head­mas­ter fear-of-conflict seems as like­ly a cause as any­thing to do with silent wor­ship. Then too, we don’t know what oth­er issues might be at play below the sur­face of pri­va­cy and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. But the Friends Sem­i­nary inci­dent seems as good a mark­er as any­thing else of the com­pli­cat­ed dynam­ics with­in Friends schools today.

http://​www​.tablet​mag​.com/​s​c​r​o​l​l​/​2​5​8​3​9​4​/​j​e​w​i​s​h​-​t​e​a​c​h​e​r​-​f​i​r​e​d​-​f​r​o​m​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​s​c​h​o​o​l​-​f​o​r​-​m​a​k​i​n​g​-​n​a​z​i​-​j​oke

Only Quakerism?

March 15, 2018

Over on the Quak­erQuak­er dis­cus­sions, Ore­gon Friend Kir­by Urn­er won­ders whether we need to think of our Quak­erism less an iden­ti­ty built around mem­ber­ship sta­tus and more as a way of life, No Quak­ers, Only Quak­erism:

I’d be hap­py to see a branch (fork) of Quak­erism which dis­pensed with mem­ber­ship on the grounds that there’s no way to “be” a Friend, only Friend­ly, as a mod­i­fi­er to one’s actions, as fleet­ing as the Now Moment itself. You “are” a Friend now, and again now, but it takes work to “stay in the moment” as such.  It’s a prac­tice.  You don’t get to rest on your lau­rels, as the Romans put it.  It’d be fun to see how that turned out.

 

How does Truth prosper among us?

March 7, 2018

New Eng­land Friend Bri­an Dray­ton recent­ly vis­it­ed Philadel­phia and recount­ed host min­istry on the old Quak­er query, How does Truth pros­per among us?

Friends in the past used “Truth” in ways that went well beyond a sim­ple propo­si­tion or asser­tion of fact, a “truth claim,” some spe­cif­ic con­tent. “Truth” instead con­not­ed some­thing of the action and the real­i­ty of God’s work in the world, as we expe­ri­ence and try to live it.

Used by indi­vid­u­als as a greet­ing, some vari­a­tion of “How does the truth fare with thee?” can be a reminder that the friend­ships of Friends can be spir­i­tu­al­ly deep­er than “yo, whas­sup?” infor­mal­i­ty (at one point Friends would even eschew “Good morn­ing” as a greet­ing on the chance that the morn­ing might actu­al­ly not be com­par­a­tive­ly good).

Quakers in evolution

March 1, 2018

UK Friend Craig Bar­nett describes changes in Friends in evo­lu­tion­ary terms. It’s a bit of a “On the one hand/On the oth­er hand” argu­ment that points out the strengths of both Quak­er tra­di­tion and Quak­er inno­va­tion. I want my have my cake and eat it too, to both hon­or the divine and work toward rad­i­cal neigh­bor­li­ness here on Earth using tech­niques boot­strapped on clas­sic Quak­er insights. Craig lays out where we are:

This evo­lu­tion­ary change towards a plu­ral­ist and post-Christian move­ment is not straight­for­ward­ly bet­ter or worse. It has cer­tain­ly been a use­ful adap­ta­tion for enabling many peo­ple to find a home in a spir­i­tu­al­ly wel­com­ing com­mu­ni­ty, while at the same time pro­duc­ing a loss of shared reli­gious expe­ri­ence and language

Weak politics

February 27, 2018

An unsigned post on the Quak­er Lib­er­tar­i­an group blog looks at post­mod­ernism and weak politics. 

As I see it, Quak­ers at their best have been about the work of the for­mer for many years. And post­moder­ni­ty offers a com­ple­men­tary philo­soph­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal lens to Quak­er faith and prac­tice, even as it chal­lenges our tra­di­tion to the extent that it makes uni­ver­sal claims, builds up its own dom­i­nant struc­tures and nar­ra­tives, and engages in oppres­sion of oth­ers in the name of a greater good

Can Quakerism Survive?

February 24, 2018

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.

Shock and awe and pushback

January 31, 2017

Shock and awe is the tac­tic of a bul­ly­ing invad­er who wants to demor­al­ize a coun­try into sur­ren­der­ing before a defense has been mount­ed. It a strat­e­gy you choose if you don’t think you can win in a long, drawn-out battle.

Trump has sur­round­ed him­self by a pro­tec­tive scrum of advi­sors who spend much of their time keep­ing him steady and mas­sag­ing his ego to assure him the peo­ple are all behind him. I don’t think he knows how to deal with the size of the oppo­si­tion so far. He turns to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry to try to con­vince him­self that what he wants to be true real­ly would be except for evil “dudes” out there — George Soros hir­ing actors to protest, mil­lions of undoc­u­ment­ed aliens vot­ing, etc., and of course the orig­i­nal Trump con­spir­a­cy that refused to think a black Amer­i­can could be a legit­i­mate president.

https://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​S​h​o​c​k​_​a​n​d​_​awe