An amazing thing has happened in the last two years: we’ve got Friends from the corners of Quakerism sharing our similarities and differences, our frustrations and dreams through Quaker blogs. Disenchanted Friends who have longed for deeper conversation and consolation when things are hard at their local meeting have built a network of Friends who understand. When our generation is settling down to write our memoirs — our Quaker journals — a lot of us will have to have at least one chapter about becoming involved in the Quaker blogging community.
When I signed off on my last post, I promised I would continue with something on “blogs, ministry and liberal Quaker outreach.” Here’s the first of the follow-ups.
As I settle in to my second week at my new (and newly-defined) jobs at FGC, I wonder if I be here without help of the Quaker Ranter? I started this blog two summers ago. It was a time when I felt like I might be headed toward membership in the lost Quaker generation that was the focus of one of my earliest posts. There were a lot of dead-ends in my life. A couple of applications for more serious, responsible employment with Friends had recently gone nowhere. Life at my monthly meeting was odd (we’ll keep it at that). I felt I was coming into a deeper experiential knowledge of my Quakerism and perhaps inching toward more overt ministry but there was no outlet, no sense of how this inward transformation might fit into any sort of outward social form or forum.
Everywhere I looked I saw Friends shortcoming themselves and our religious society with a don’t-rock-the-boat timidity that wasn’t serving God’s purpose for us. I saw precious little prophetic ministry. I knew of few Friends who were asking challenging questions about our worship life. Our language about God was becoming ever more coded and sterilized. Most of the twenty-somethings I knew generally approached Quakerism primarily as a series of cultural norms with only different standards from one yearly meeting to another (and one Quaker branch to another, I suspect) .
With all this as backdrop, I started the Quaker Ranter with a nothing-left-to-lose mentality. I was nervous about pushing boundaries and about broaching things publicly that most Friends only say in hushed tones of two or three on meetinghouse steps. I was also doubly nervous about being a Quaker employee talking about this stuff (livelihood and all that!). The few Quaker blogs that were out there were generally blogs by Quakers but about anything but Quakerism, politics being the most common topic.
Now sure, a lot of this hasn’t changed over these few years. But one thing has: we now have a vibrant community of Quaker bloggers. We’ve got folks from the corners of Quakerism getting to know one another and hash out not just our similarities and differences, but our frustrations and dreams. It’s so cool. There’s something happening in all this! Disenchanted Friends who have longed for deeper conversation and consolation when things are hard at their local meeting are finding Friends who understand.
Through the blog and the community that formed around it I’ve found a voice. I’m evolving, certainly, through reading, life, blog conversations and most importantly (I hope!) the acting of the Holy Spirit on my ever-resistant ego. But because of my blog I’m someone who now feels comfortable talking about what it means to be a Quaker in a public setting. It almost seems quaint to think back to the early blog conversations about whether we can call this a kind of ministry. When we’re all settling down to write our memoirs — our Quaker journals — a lot of us will have to have at least one chapter about becoming involved in the Quaker blogging community. In Howard Brinton’s Quaker Journals he enumerated the steps toward growth in the ministry that most of the writers seemed to go through; I suspect the journals of our generation will add self-published electronic media to it’s list of classic steps.
When I started Quaker Ranter I did have to wonder if this might be a quickest way to get fired. Not to cast aspersions on the powers-that-be at FGC but the web is full of cautionary tales of people being canned because of too-public blogs. My only consolation was the sense that no one that mattered really read the thing. But as it became more prominent a curious phenomenon happened: even Quaker staff and uber-insiders seemed to be relating to this conversation and wanted a place to complain and dream about Quakerism. My personal reputation has certainly gone up because of this site, directly and indirectly because of the blog. This brings with it the snares of popular praise (itself a well-worn theme in Quaker journals) but it also made it more likely I would be considered for my new outreach job. It’s funny how life works.
Okay, that’s enough for a post. I’ll have to keep outreach till next time. But bear with me: it’s about form too and how form contributes to ministry.
PS: Talking of two years of Quaker blogging… My “Nonviolence.org turns ten years old this Thursday!! I thought about making a big deal about it but alas there’s so little time.
Hey there, Martin. Your faithfulness to the leading to start a blog and be open with your questions and ideas about Quakerism has certainly borne fruit, I’d say. I find my heart gladdened to read your reflections of the last two years.
I wonder if I hadn’t talked with you at the Gathering store two years ago when you mentioned your blog and I mentioned that I see myself as a Conservative-leaning Friend, how things might be for me…
I am a believer in “discerning and doing the very next thing that’s right in front of me” and the rest will take care of itself. I sense that for you, “the rest” is now taken care of. Or at least the “very next thing” is!
And congratulations for the 10 years for Nonviolence.org too.
Blessings,
Liz, The Good Raised Up
I’ve really appreciated what you’ve done in calling attention to Quaker blogs. For a while there, I was the only Quaker blog I knew about, and I wasn’t blogging a whole lot about Quakerism. It’s good to know there’s a whole horde of others.
Thank you, Martin, for providing this service. I checked out Quaker sites on the Web two or three years ago, and found — as you indicated — very little blogging dealing with real issues of faith.
And so I didn’t bother looking again until this summer, when I discovered Quaker Blog Watch — which has surprised me by putting me in touch with a world of others who seem to have similar concerns to mine and be seeking similar things in their faith journeys. In fact, I’ve been fairly astounded that so many Quakers from so many different Quakerly backgrounds have thoughts and questions so similar to my own.
I too am at the liberal end of the Conservative tradition, or possibly at the conservative end of the liberal tradition or something like that. More importantly, I too seek to walk with the Living God, and see that as more important than labels like “liberal” and “conservative” — but also see much to learn from all of our Quaker history, even the disputes. Knowing that others have similar hopes and concerns, and being able to see their ideas unfold in dialogue across blogs, is incredibly valuable. I appreciate the very supportive community at my own Monthly Meeting, but this very interactive, vibrant online community makes me feel connected to a Quaker body and tradition and conversation which is even larger. (With the result that I now realize I need to be more involved with my Yearly Meeting as well.)
So far, I’ve mostly been sitting back and listening to what others have to say in this great conversation, since I am learning so much. But I’ve been greatly comforted by all the answers and speculations and encouragements flowing back and forth. And I think it is at least party enabled by Quaker Blog Watch.
So thank you, Martin!
Martin,
Congratulations on the milestones! And many thanks to you for your online ministry. Prior to discovering QR, I was beginning to feel spiritually dry and out-of-place in my relationship to my monthly meeting and Friends in general. As I cast about in frustration for Quaker spiritual sustenance of the kind that wasn’t written down 300 years ago, I came across this site — and through it, the vibrant Quaker blogging community you mention.
The resulting change in my personal spiritual practice, and in my feelings of connectedness to Quakerism, has been deep, quiet, and profoundly refreshing. Thank you for holding open this virtual door through which I was able to discover Friends in the Light whom I had never met before.
Hi Liz: Oh yes, the Gathering bookstore is a great place for conversations like that!
Lynn: that’s right, yours was one of the few blogs when I started.
It’s interesting to see how the tone of blogs have differed from the Quaker newsgroups that preceded them (and that continue of course). I never could stand too much of the newsgroups: the over-intellectualized hollowness and mean-spiritedness of too many of the conversations. It didn’t seem like many of the regulars were (or could be) involved in the humanness of a monthly meeting. The average Quaker blogger might not be the consumate committee-Friend but at least we’re in the meetinghouse. So many of us have a hard time feeling fully engaged in the meeting life and I wonder if it’s because Friends today have so de-emphasized the kind of roles we might natural play in our meetings. I’m reading 18th Century minister “Samuel Bownas”:http://www.quakerbooks.org/get/0 – 87574-911 – 9 now and I’m wondering if today he’d be another vaguely disenchanted backbencher wondering if he really fit it.
Kent and Kevin: you both speak to being nourished by a conversation you weren’t having before. It’s interesting to see how the internet is pulling us out past our meetinghouse doors into fellowship with the larger Quaker church. This is a kind of traveling ministry sometimes, isn’t it?
Martin,
Heaps of blessings upon you for this ministry! I’ve been an enthusiast ever since finding your site through Lynn’s last spring.
Man, I know what you mean about the newsgroups and listservs. I signed up for Quaker‑L before Quaker‑P split off and ended up signing off after a year or so.
I haven’t had as much time to follow blogs or post as I’d like, in small part because I am blessed to be fully engaged in my monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings, in contrast to the experience Martin and others have had.
I hope to have more to say about how I found Quaker blogs soon on my OWN new blog, Chris M.: Tables, Chairs and Oaken Chests. However, I’m starting off with a silly topic that means a great deal to me, because it’s been on my mind for months now.
Really, Martin, thank you for your service.
Gee, Martin, I went from a woman with a full life and a fulfilling relationship with my Quaker Meeting, to a woman with the same life who really just wants to sit around and read Quaker blogs. Sometimes I’m not sure this was a good thing…
On the other hand, my relationship with my Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly Meeting has taken on new perspective since I first started reading the Quaker Ranter about eight months ago. I appreciate what I have here more.
I have traveled more widely among Quaker circles than I ever would have without the Internet connection: evangelical Friends’ blogs, reports on FGC, FUM, Northwest YM, Northern YM, Iowa YM©.
I’ve read some wonderful books because they were recommended by bloggers: Howard Brinton’s Quaker Journals, for one.
And I find that I am not just making new friends, but I am meeting friends of friends — not that I personally have ever met many bloggers, but many of the bloggers I read are known in real life by somebody I do know. Does that make sense? The Quaker world is not that big, maybe we’re all within three or four degrees of separation. And I think that strengthening these bonds is good for all of us. The few friendly conversations I’ve had by phone and email and in person! with other bloggers are a support and a joy.
So thank you. Really.
Friend Martin,
I’m happy to read that the worldly concerns of life have settled for you, and even provide an open door to pursue some of the conerns that, I believe, God has laid on your heart. Hurray!
I always look forward to posts on your blog. You are a sort of “sheep herder” for the rest of us, if only by providing a person and site where different wandering, searching, hungering, and curious “back-benchers”, pastors, and church members can stop by and meet each other. I am very thankful for your work here and how it’s impacted myself and others in the Quaker blogosphere.
By the way, I was frankly surprised, when I first searched for Quaker blogs, how little they had to write about Quakerism. Nothing particularly wrong with that, but honestly it was rare or nothing. And you are completely accurate about the Quaker news groups. I participated in that for about six months in the late 1990’s. Can you say, “let’s argue about politics and economics ad nauseum”, anyone? Ahhh!
The Quaker blog community, in all its spectrums, is a much more nurturing, helpful, and engaging experience. Praise God! And you have been a big part of that. Verily!
So thanks again, you, Friend, you! And congrats on the 10 year anniversary of Nonviolence.org.
Hi Martin:
Like the others, I’m glad you took the risk to do the QR. It was an inspiration for me to open about my own bumpy journey towards outreach or ministry. It’s also been a catalyst for a broader community to develop. I’m very excited about your new post with FGC and I beleive it’s the beginning of good things. You know you can call on me to support your efforts.
All the best,
Martin,
I’ve been following your blog for about a year now. It introduced me to the entire Quaker blogging universe and has given me a lot of food for thought and reflection (and most recently led to opening my own blog-shop). I haven’t always agreed with your posts: in my case you have both “comforted the afflicted” and “afflicted the comfortable.” While I often can’t “me-too” with you theologically, your writing has helped sharpen my own commitment to a Quakerism that is centered on “that which does not proceed from my own imaginings” — one way in which I most inelegantly define “God.”
So I’m grateful for your blogging ministry and am gratified as well that you will be involved in outreach with FGC. Outreach is a thing that has most concerned me here in the sparsely-Quakered environs of SCYM!
David
Martin: I have so much enjoyed getting lost in your blog and others today.
I’m hoping you might point me in the direction I was hoping to go when I started.
I am looking for wisdom, queries, discussion about working with the old style of Quaker Journaling, in the context of blogs. I have been sharing a blog about my Call to teaching the contemplative practice of QiGong inside prisons for a year now. As I just reread the year, I was disappointed in myself for my lack of vulnerability and absorption with the daily goings on, verses the spiritual context, struggles and challenges that I have been through this year… Others may not be so hard on me as I am with myself, but I want to move in a deeper direction.
Can you point me to blogs of other social activists working out their Callings and talking about them in a spiritual context, maybe even as fellow Quakers?
I am ready to transform this blog of mine and seeking eldering.
I am concerned about pitfalls of pride held up with demonstrating the confidence that allows our life to preach especially in the context of writing about spiritual experiences.
Judy Tretheway
http://chifully.blogspirit.com
Pieces I cliped out of places I’ve been today:
(it is so much of a cliche of old Quaker journals that literary types classify it as part of the essential structure of the journals
What is the essential structure of a Quaker Journal?
For me, it is important to be ready to be transformed, ready to yield to the leadings of the Spirit, wherever the Spirit may take us. Making a decision based on reason has seldom had the lasting effect for me as making a decision based on readiness and faithfulness.
We are but simple human creatures and it is hard for us not to secretly tender some sort of pride within for what we’ve done — this of course is kindling for the Tempter. But if we trust in that which is eternal, and wait upon that proof, we can hold true.