Yearly Archives ⇒ 2007

Snipers shoot democracy yet again: the assasination of Benazir Bhutto

December 27, 2007
· Martin Kelley

The bul­lets and bombs have final­ly found their mark. It is no sur­prise to learn of yet anoth­er assas­i­na­tion attempt against Pak­istani oppo­si­tion leader Benazir Bhut­to. Details are still sketchy and con­flict­ing but the only thing we real­ly need to know is that this attempt was suc­cess­ful and that Bhut­to is dead less than two weeks before Par­lia­men­tary elec­tions that might well have brought her into pow­er for the third time.

Pak­istan is a coun­try who’s top gov­ern­ment sci­en­tist export­ed atom­ic bomb-making across the world for decades. It still hosts Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan’s Tal­iban are still more-or-less head­quar­tered in its West­ern provinces. The stand­off with India has spawned war after war over the decade, now nuclear-enabled should either coun­try get so embold­ened. Bil­lions of dol­lars of Unit­ed States mon­ey has left Wash­ing­ton for Islam­abad since 9/11 and a pop­u­lar politi­cian can’t even cam­paign there with­out dead­ly assas­si­na­tion attempts. Pak­istan is one of the world’s hot spots, a nexus of ter­ror­ism, nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion, reli­gious extrem­ism. It is a very sad day today indeed.

The spiritual discipline of sailing in circles

December 10, 2007
· Martin Kelley

An inter­est­ing image in meet­ing yes­ter­day. “CS” rose after the break of wor­ship to share a sto­ry from a old Quak­er jour­nal he’s been read­ing. The min­is­ter in ques­tion was in Eng­land at the time and felt a strong lead­ing to vis­it Friends in Ire­land. Being duti­ful he arranged pas­sage in a ship head­ing west and board­ed it think­ing he would soon reach his des­ti­na­tion. But the winds did­n’t coop­er­ate. The cur­rents did­n’t coop­er­ate. In an era before diesel engines and jet fuel the ful­fill­ment of trav­el­ing inten­tions were depen­dent upon out­side forces: wind, cur­rent, trails, weath­er. The poor Quak­er’s ship went around in cir­cles for a week and final­ly end­ed up in the port it had departed.

We expect today that when we set out to accom­plish some­thing it will get done. But there are always unex­pect­ed cur­rents to con­tend with, unco­op­er­a­tive winds, sand­bars and shoals and God may well be involved in these blocks. Our duty as peo­ple of faith is to get on the boat. We might not get to our Ire­land and that may not be the real pur­pose of our lead­ing. Maybe our job is to learn to catch fish from the boat. Per­haps our faith­ful­ness in appar­ent fail­ure is a les­son for the dis­be­liev­ing sailors on board. And maybe the les­son is for us, to remain faith­ful in the mys­tery and con­fu­sion of God’s roadblocks.

The mod­ern impulse is to win, to accom­plish, to neu­tral­ize dis­sent, problem-solve and suc­ceed. As Friends, we’ve inher­it­ed some of this atti­tudes and often want to take our spir­i­tu­al lead­ings and run with them as if
God’s part is over. We set up com­mit­tees, write mis­sion statements,
hire staff: we lock our ship’s course in a par­tic­u­lar direc­tion, crank
up the engines and plow ahead. These can be use­ful tools, cer­tain­ly, but some­how there’s a les­son for us in that lit­tle boat going around in circles.

No pictures please

November 28, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Since I use this blog as a bit of a per­son­al jour­nal, to remem­ber dates and hap­pen­ings, I should duti­ful­ly note that last night was the time four year old Theo pushed two year old Fran­cis off the foot­stool while brush­ing teeth, caus­ing said Fran­cis to fall pre­cip­i­tous­ly against the bath­tub and open a nasty gash in his chin. Three hours and a Martin/Francis emer­gency room vis­it lat­er there were four stitch­es in the poor guy’s chin. I’ll spare you all a descrip­tion of the ini­tial mess or the dif­fi­cul­ty of hold­ing down a scream­ing child while the doc­tor tries to put the stitch­es in. Every­thing is fine now. And no, no pho­tos or Youtube videos of the pro­ceed­ings. Maybe I’ll snap a pic­ture of the stitch­es so Fran­cis can see just where that scar came from!

Another Quaker bookstore bites the dust

November 28, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Not real­ly news, but Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing recent­ly ded­i­cat­ed their new Wel­come Cen­ter in what was once the FUM bookstore:

On Sep­tem­ber 15, 2007, FUM ded­i­cat­ed the space once used as the Quak­er Hill Book­store as the new FUM Wel­come Cen­ter. The Wel­come Cen­ter con­tains Quak­er books and resources for F/friends to stop by and make use of dur­ing busi­ness hours. Tables and chairs to com­fort­ably accom­mo­date 50 peo­ple make this a great space to rent for reunions, church groups, meet­ings, anniversary/birthday par­ties, etc. Reduced prices are avail­able for churches.

Most Quak­er pub­lish­ers and book­sellers have closed or been great­ly reduced over the last ten years. Great changes have occurred in the Philadelphia-area Pen­dle Hill book­store and pub­lish­ing oper­a­tion, the AFSC Book­store in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Bar­clay Press in Ore­gon. The ver­i­ta­ble Friends Book­shop in Lon­don farmed out its mail order busi­ness a few years ago and has seen part of its space tak­en over by a cof­fee­bar: pop­u­lar and cool I’m sure, but does Lon­don real­ly needs anoth­er place to buy cof­fee? Rumor has it that Britain’s pub­li­ca­tions com­mit­tee has been laid down. The offi­cial spin is usu­al­ly that the work con­tin­ues in a dif­fer­ent form but only Bar­clay Press has been reborn as some­thing real­ly cool. One of the few remain­ing book­sellers is my old pals at FGC’s Quaker­Books: still sell­ing good books but I’m wor­ried that so much of Quak­er pub­lish­ing is now in one bas­ket and I’d be more con­fi­dent if their web­site showed more signs of activity.

The boards mak­ing these deci­sions to scale back or close are prob­a­bly unaware that they’re part of a larg­er trend. They prob­a­bly think they’re respond­ing to unique sit­u­a­tions (the peer group Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions sends inter­nal emails around but has­n’t done much to pub­li­cize this sto­ry out­side of its mem­ber­ship). It’s sad to see that so many Quak­er decision-making bod­ies have inde­pen­dent­ly decid­ed that pub­lish­ing is not an essen­tial part of their mission.

Focused blogs and side trips

November 23, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Over on Eileen Flana­gan’s Imper­fect Seren­i­ty, there’s an inter­est­ing post on blog pub­lic­i­ty, “Blog­ging dilem­mas,” inspired in part by Robin M“ ‘s recent “How did you get here?” post. Both bring up inter­est­ing ques­tions about the role of blogs in com­mu­ni­ty build­ing and the loca­tion of that line that sep­a­rates good blog­ging from mere self-promotion and pandering.

Read­ers will prob­a­bly be unsur­prised to learn that I use Tech­no­rati, Google Blog Search, etc., every day to keep track of the Quak­er blo­gos­phere. I act as a kind of com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er and my search­es are for inter­est­ing posts talk­ing about Quak­ers (until read­ing Eileen’s post I had­n’t check my Tech­no­rati “rank” in months). Many peo­ple’s first intro­duc­tion to Quak​erQuak​er​.org is get­ting linked from it, and I sus­pect I’ve acci­den­tal­ly out­ed a few begin­ning blog­gers who had­n’t told any­one of their new blog!

I have a pro­fes­sion­al blog on web design and ana­lyt­ics (with a some­what off-topic but sat­is­fy­ing post on top at the moment) and sep­a­rat­ing that out has allowed me to use this per­son­al blog, Quak­er­Ran­ter, for what­ev­er I like. Most reg­u­lar­ly read­ers would say it focus­es on Quak­erism and cute kid pic­tures and while those are the most com­mon posts, the most read posts are the minor fas­ci­na­tions I indulge myself with occa­sion­al­ly. Quak­er plain dress is some­thing I prac­tice but don’t think about most of the time (806 read­ers in past month). My wife and I love to bust on bad baby names and unfair­ly unpop­u­lar baby names (627 vis­its). I’ve also detailed some out­ings to semi-legendary South Jer­sey haunts (317) and score high on search­es to them.

The con­ven­tion­al wis­dom of the blog-as-publicity tool crowd would prob­a­bly say these off-topic posts are dis­tract­ing my core audi­ence. Per­haps, but they’re infre­quent on the blog and long-lived on Google. Besides, I think it helps peo­ple to know I’m not just obsessed with one top­ic. Being a part of a real com­mu­ni­ty means know­ing each oth­er in all of our quirks. I’m more ten­der and for­giv­ing of oth­er Quak­er blog­gers when I know more of their sto­ry: it puts what they say into a con­text that makes it sound more lived, less ide­o­log­i­cal. There’s cer­tain­ly good rea­sons for tightly-focused pro­fes­sion­al blogs (I’d drop Techcrunch from my blogroll if they start­ed post­ing kids pic­tures!), but as more peo­ple read posts through feeds and aggre­ga­tors I won­der if there’s going to be as much pres­sure for per­son­al, community-oriented blogs to be as single-minded in their focus. 

We all have diverse, quirky inter­ests so why not indulge them? I have seen blogs that try too hard to pan­der to par­tic­u­lar audi­ences and boy, are they bor­ing! A cer­tain degree of idio­syn­crasy and sub­jec­tive orner­i­ness is prob­a­bly essen­tial. Per­son­al­i­ty is at least as impor­tant as focus.

PS: I’m also inter­est­ed in mak­ing sure I don’t loose the core audi­ence with all my side trips, hence the “lat­est Quak­er posts” at the top of the page. I have at least one request for a Quaker-only RSS feed and will even­tu­al­ly get that going.
PPS: As if on queue, the next post in Google Read­er after Eileen’s is Avin­ish Kaushik’s Blog Met­rics: Six rec­om­men­da­tions for mea­sur­ing your suc­cess. Parts of it are prob­a­bly a bit tech­ni­cal for most QR read­ers but it’s use­ful for think­ing about blogs as outreach.

We the Church, the People and the Fellowship

November 13, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Lib­er­al Friends today fre­quent­ly ques­tion the mean­ing of mem­ber­ship. Its neces­si­ty and oblig­a­tions are debat­ed. Does it fos­ter sep­a­ra­tion? Is it an exclu­sive club? What cul­tur­al norms get in the way of wider fel­low­ship? Why do so many of our meet­ings have the same lim­it­ed demo­graph­ic and why do they look so unlike the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty. The way we answer these ques­tions affect the way we think of out­reach and min­istry and what we mean when we think of who “we” are. (Inter­est­ing recent dis­cus­sions from a seek­er here and amongst Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends here.)

Mem­ber­ship is a pow­er­ful means of facil­i­ta­tion fel­low­ship, some­thing that most of us need to grow very deep into the Spir­it. But the fel­low­ship of our month­ly meet­ings (and of “Quak­erism” in gen­er­al) can eas­i­ly become a dis­trac­tion, a means to its own end, a false idol. We need to keep our eyes on the prize and real­ize that mem­ber­ship in meet­ing is sec­ondary to mem­ber­ship in the body of Christ and into that Spir­it which seeks to build the King­dom of God in the world.

Here I’ll look at three over­lap­ping ways of defin­ing “we”: the Church, the Fel­low­ship and the Peo­ple. They’re not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive but they’re also not iden­ti­cal and its pos­si­ble to have one with­out the oth­ers. “We” are out of bal­ance and unable to grow into our full mea­sure as indi­vid­u­als and as a faith com­mu­ni­ty when we don’t keep our eyes on all three together.

The Church

This is the col­lec­tive body of all those who have expe­ri­enced the pow­er of the Inward Christ and turned toward Him. Lib­er­al Friend that I am I’m not going to insist on what name peo­ple give to the oth­er side of this encounter (espe­cial­ly at first). The expe­ri­ence of vis­i­ta­tion comes in var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions and we will be alter­nate­ly judged, com­fort­ed, etc. God loves us and does­n’t hide Him­self from us and reach­es us wher­ev­er we are. This is not to say that all reli­gious tra­di­tions are equal­ly use­ful guides to that path, just that God is merciful. 

The vis­i­ta­tion is not a one-time affair but ongo­ing. As we respond we will change and we will find our­selves vol­un­tar­i­ly re-aligning our lives in ways that let us hear the Spir­it more clear­ly. It is quite pos­si­ble to be a respectable mem­ber of a reli­gious body and stop lis­ten­ing (the root of Friends ner­vous­ness about pro­fes­sion­al min­istry). As we mature spir­i­tu­al­ly and fine-tune the instru­ment of our dis­cern­ment, we will be pre­sent­ed with ever more sub­tle and inge­nious temp­ta­tions and snares to fur­ther progress. It becomes almost impos­si­ble to progress with­out the active fel­low­ship of oth­ers com­mit­ted to this jour­ney, who will con­firm and chal­lenge us as need­ed and ampli­fy our praise.

The Fel­low­ship

We orga­nize our­selves into frail human insti­tu­tions to pro­vide that fel­low­ship. This is fine and nec­es­sary at times but comes with its own snares. It is all too easy to raise up our­selves and begin to exalt our­selves. It is easy to think that our pur­pose is to serve our­selves. We must nev­er for­get that the Body of Christ is our first mem­ber­ship and that its bound­aries will nev­er match up with our print­ed direc­to­ries or mem­ber­ship roles. The pri­ma­ry role of the month­ly meet­ing and lower-case “c” church­es is to spread the good news of the spir­i­tu­al res­ur­rec­tion of Christ and the life and pow­er that exists when we serve God. “The Mem­ber­ship” is always a tem­porar­i­ly illu­sion, a pale imi­ta­tion of The Church and a tem­po­rary stop-gap as the King­dom of God aligns itself on the world. 

The Peo­ple

“Christ has come to teach The Peo­ple Him­self,” one of George Fox’s most impor­tant insights. We’re all in this togeth­er, spir­i­tu­al sal­va­tion is for us all. Those of us who have felt the work­ings of the Inward Spir­it in our hearts must sing that out to every­one we meet. We must hum the song of God and so let oth­ers hear it in their hearts. 

In the Bible “the peo­ple” are the Jews, a spe­cif­ic social group whose spir­i­tu­al devo­tion fades in and out through the cen­turies. The Old Tes­ta­ment is sto­ry after sto­ry of the Jew­ish peo­ple falling down and get­ting back up, usu­al­ly with the help of a prophet whose role was to remind them of God and show them how far they had fall­en out of align­ment with His will. 

Jesus was prophet extra­or­di­naire. When lawyers asked him to define neigh­bor – who is it that our reli­gious insti­tu­tions exist to serve – he gave the sto­ry of a despised Samar­i­tan who did the right thing by help­ing a fel­low human in need. A point of this sto­ry was to show that the Jew­ish God works among non-Jews and that faith­ful­ness does­n’t depend on one’s social sta­tion in life.

The Peo­ple are every­where. We all have access to the Spir­it. And if we are to be the build­ing blocks to God’s King­dom here on Earth we must serve one anoth­er across the super­fi­cial­i­ties that seek to divide us: lines of class, race, eth­nic­i­ty and yes even sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. These are snares. We must seek to rise up togeth­er, focus­ing less on per­ceived fail­ings of those around us than on our own inward call to a greater per­fec­tion (com­mu­nion) with God.

What does this all mean to Friends?

Most Quak­er meet­ings I’ve vis­it­ed are good at one or two of these mod­els of we-ness. But with­out bal­ance they become self-serving. 

The Church with­out Fel­low­ship becomes a “ranter­ism” where every­one is tempt­ed by the snares of self-delusion. Church with­out the Peo­ple becomes a elite spir­i­tu­al­ism that detach­es itself from the pain of the world and the need to wit­ness and serve our neighbors.

Fel­low­ship with­out the Peo­ple becomes a social club unin­ter­est­ed in shar­ing this good thing we’ve got going. Fel­low­ship with­out the Church becomes the shell of an emp­ty form wor­ship­ing itself.

The Peo­ple with­out the Church give us a con­sumer cul­ture which exists for the next fash­ion, for the next sale at the Mall. The Peo­ple with­out Fel­low­ship becomes a flock of sheep dis­persed, easy tar­gets for the wolves of temp­ta­tion whis­per­ing in our ears.

Human fel­low­ships like a Quak­er month­ly meet­ing exist sole­ly to bridge the Church and the Peo­ple. Some of that work involves learn­ing our min­istry and ser­vice, facil­i­tat­ed by month­ly meet­ings and helped along by the tools of our Friends tra­di­tion. But most of the work of the Church is its dai­ly wit­ness to the world of the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of the Spir­it in our lives. If we’re doing our job right our meet­ings should con­stant­ly buck­le and break under the weight of new mem­bers and our wor­ship will spill out into our lives. We will care more about our neigh­bors than our fel­low­ship. “Out­reach,” “Inreach,” “Min­istry” and “Wit­ness” will all be the same work.