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
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ work
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.tabletmag.com/scroll/258394/jewish-teacher-fired-from-quaker-school-for-making-nazi-joke
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/wiki/Shock_and_awe