Tag Archives ⇒ baltimore

Check out KD’s defense of organized (Quaker) religion

February 14, 2009
· Martin Kelley

It’s up on the side­bar and fea­tured on Quak­erQuak­er, but I want to give an added boost to my friend Kevin-Douglas’ post “Why I both­er with reli­gion.” I’ve writ­ten about the Emer­gent Church / Quak­er exper­i­ment that Kevin-Douglass is help­ing to orga­nize down in Bal­ti­more. Check out their new’ish web­site, http://​www​.seton​hill​friends​.org/
Here’s a snip­pet of today’s post:

Orga­nized reli­gion is based in com­mu­ni­ty. Being in a com­mu­ni­ty chal­lenges me. Sim­ply hang­ing out with my friends and engag­ing my fam­i­ly isn’t enough. The risks of such an inten­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and the sup­port avail­able there­in offer so much more than if I just do what comes eas­i­ly or go along with what exists around me. I’m chal­lenged in com­mu­ni­ty. I’m held account­able. And while it could be said that I could get this out of a gay rights group, or being part of an eth­i­cal soci­ety, the truth is that in a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty, we all seek to go much deep­er than the psy­cho­log­i­cal or emo­tion­al lev­els. We seek to under­stand that Mys­tery — God. We seek to under­stand that trans­for­ma­tive and heal­ing pow­er that comes from that Mystery.

Kevin-Douglas orig­i­nal­ly post­ed it to Face­book ear­li­er today and I asked if he would sign up to Quak­erQuak­er and post it there. There’s a lot of great stuff that goes up on Face­book and it’s a use­ful tool for keep­ing in touch with friends, but most posts are not vis­i­ble beyond your own Face­book friends list (it depends on your pri­va­cy set­tings). If you post some­thing real­ly good about Friends or belief on Face­book, seri­ous­ly con­sid­er whether you might repost it some­where more pub­lic. If you don’t have a blog handy, you can do what KD did and post it on Quak­erQuak­er, where every reg­is­tered user has blog­ging capa­bil­i­ties (it cre­ates a bit of a meta­phys­i­cal con­nun­drum for the Quak­erQuak­er edi­tors, as it means we’ll be link­ing QQ posts to the QQ site, but that’s fine).

Baltimore Emergent Church Quaker experiment

February 18, 2008
· Martin Kelley

My friend Kevin-Douglas emailed recent­ly about a new wor­ship group he’s helped to start in down­town Bal­ti­more. It sounds like some of the oth­er Christ-center wor­ship groups that have been pop­ping up the shad­ow of estab­lished Quak­er meet­ings. It’s con­scious­ly small and home-based, tak­ing place at a non-traditional time with an implic­it Emer­gent Church fla­vor. Expe­ri­enced Friends are involved (I know KD from FGC’s Cen­tral Com­mit­tee for exam­ple) and while it’s formed next to and out of large, active meet­ings, it’s not schismatic. 

I asked KD if I could put his descrip­tion up as a “guest post.’ I’m hop­ing a post here can let more seek­ers and Friends in Bal­ti­more know about it. But beyond that, there’s a def­i­nite small move­ment afoot and I thought Ranter read­ers might be inter­est­ed in the exam­ple (here are a few oth­ers: Laugh­ing Waters and Chat­ta­hoochee (thanks to Bill Samuel for the last link, some of these are indexed in his help­ful Friends Chris­t­ian Renew­al listing).

From KD:

Before R. got sick and even­tu­al­ly died, we had been think­ing of
host­ing an infor­mal meet­ing for wor­ship in the man­ner of Friends at our
house that would be explic­it­ly Christ-centered. We aren’t talking
Chris­t­ian Ortho­doxy here, but rather with the under­stand­ing of all
involved that we come togeth­er to explore our faith through the
teach­ings of Jesus and those who came before and after him.  It would
be Quak­er in that we’d fol­low in the tra­di­tion of Quak­er Christians,
gain­ing from their wis­dom and experience. 

Now, the Spir­it is lead­ing me back to this. 

So, what is going on? 

I
very much appre­ci­ate uni­ver­sal­ism as a world view. I in no way believe
that Chris­tian­i­ty is the only way. I do believe, how­ev­er, that Jesus is
the Way, Truth and the Life.  The Way being one of love and compassion,
of jus­tice and sin­cere seek­ing of that mys­tery that I call God. I
don’t think Jesus was the only one who brought that way, but I do see
his way as lead­ing to God, and that by his Way, we can get to God. It
does­n’t mat­ter to me whether he was or is God; I do see him as a
sacra­ment, a way to God.  For me he is the way to God.  He is liv­ing. I know this experientially.

So
I want to share in this with oth­ers. I want to sit in silence, or sing
in praise, or con­sid­er a query, scrip­ture or word of advice from
Friends past with oth­ers who also want to know God through Christ.  I’m
not con­cerned about the­ol­o­gy.  IT’s about expe­ri­ence for me.  I don’t
mind if those who don’t “know Jesus” come, as I know God can speak
through all.   If those who come and don’t con­sid­er themselves
Chris­t­ian are will­ing to wres­tle with the teach­ings of Jesus and his
ances­tors and his fol­low­ers, then I say WELCOME!  I’m not set on form
either.  I do pre­fer unpro­grammed wor­ship, but I mean that literally: 
that we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly set a pro­gram, but that there indeed may be
silence or a query, scrip­ture or advice read at the begin­ning of
wor­ship. Per­haps can­dles are lit, maybe even *gasp* incense!  I don’t
feel the need to be bound to our puri­tan roots and yet I feel the
wis­dom of allow­ing the Spir­it to direct the wor­ship is a wis­dom we
should con­tin­ue to fol­low.  I believe in expe­ri­en­tial and experimental
wor­ship. Per­haps we have the Friends hym­nal avail­able and one may feel
led to sing from it and oth­ers can join if they too feel led.  As for
now, it’s been com­plete­ly unpro­grammed wor­ship as one would find in
most Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends meet­ings.   As for com­mu­ni­ty, I hope God will
gath­er togeth­er a com­mu­ni­ty where we do rec­og­nize min­istries and gifts
per­haps in the way that Friends have done so tra­di­tion­al­ly but maybe in
rad­i­cal­ly new ways!   I’m so tired of Evangelical/Liberal/Conservative labels.  Can we just be Friends?

I do so love being Quak­er.  I do so love Jesus.  I hope to find a com­mu­ni­ty where these are wed with­out qualifications.

We meet third Sun­days of every month at a home (Mine right now) from 5 – 6pm and are list­ed in Quak­er Finder:

Down­town Bal­ti­more Wor­ship Group
Christ-centered, unpro­grammed wor­ship is gen­er­al­ly held on the 3rd Sun­day of the month at 5:00 PM in a home. Fol­low link for cur­rent details. 

Baltimore and FUM from sessions to the static web to interactive discussion.

September 22, 2007
· Martin Kelley

One thing I love about the inter­net and blogs is that they’re open­ing up dis­cus­sions in the Quak­er world. Infor­ma­tion and dia­log that was once con­fined to a small group of insid­ers is opened up to what we might only-half jok­ing­ly label “the laity.” The lat­est few entries to Quak­erQuak­er show this in operation. 

Last mon­th’s annu­al ses­sions of Bal­ti­more Year­ly Meet­ing (the region­al body for Friends those parts) were marked by an impor­tant report from its rep­re­sen­ta­tives to Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing, an inter­na­tion­al body of Friends that Bal­ti­more belongs to but has a com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with. Atten­dees at the year­ly meet­ing ses­sion heard the report, of course, and news trick­led out in var­i­ous ways (one vis­i­tor IM’ed me that day with the briefest sketch). 

Enter the inter­net. At some point Bal­ti­more put the report up on their web­site. The infor­ma­tion was there but there’s no oppor­tu­ni­ty for dis­cus­sion as the BYM web­site has no com­ment­ing fea­ture. I post­ed the report up to Quak­erQuak­er and with­in a few hours, Johan Mau­r­er was on top of it. Johan used to be the chief exec­u­tive of Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing and a wide expe­ri­ence with Friends from across the Quak­er the­o­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al spec­trum. He’s also an active blog­ger and he post­ed a reply, What is real­ly wrong with FUM, part two: the Bal­ti­more YM report, that I find par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful. His blog has com­ments. I’ve put Johan’s post up on Quak­erQuak­er and we now have a forum to try to tease apart the range of issues in the Bal­ti­more report: lead­er­ship, the­ol­o­gy, inter­na­tion­al rela­tions, etc. How cool is that?

PS: I linked to the Wikipedia arti­cles on Bal­ti­more and Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing. Has any­one else noticed Wikipedia makes a much more acces­si­ble intro­duc­tion to Quak­er bod­ies than their own websites?

Plain Quaker Dressing at FGC

July 3, 2004
· Martin Kelley

As we got onto the cam­pus of UMass Amherst to help set up for this year’s FGC Gath­er­ing, Julie & I real­ized that this is the first time we’ve been to this venue since we start­ed plain dress­ing (last year we stayed home since Julie was very preg­nant). FGC Friends tend to turn to the Lands End cat­a­log for sar­to­r­i­al inspi­ra­tion. Hip­pie cul­ture is anoth­er font, both direct­ly as tie-die shirts and in mut­ed form as the taste­ful fair-trade clothes that many old­er Friends pre­fer. Because the Gath­er­ing takes place in July and in spo­rad­i­cal­ly air-conditioned build­ings, peo­ple also dress for sum­mer camp – kha­ki shorts & once col­or­ful fad­ed t‑shirts are the de fac­to Gath­er­ing uni­form. In this set­ting, just wear­ing long pants is cause for com­ment (“aren’t you hot like that?!”) Try broad­falls and a long-sleeve col­lar­less shirt, or a long dress!

So I’ve decid­ed to write down all the con­ver­sa­tions or ques­tions I get about my dress this week. I should men­tion that I actu­al­ly pre­fer curi­ous ques­tions to the strange star­ing I some­times get. So here we go:

  • While ring­ing up a Gath­er­ing store order: some­one I’ve known for years asked me whether my cloth­ing was “a the­o­log­i­cal state­ment or if it was just comfortable.”
  • While trou­bleshoot­ing the store com­put­ers and answer­ing a cell­phone call from the office: com­pared to a lit­er­ary char­ac­ter named “Cos­mic Pos­sum,” who was described to me as some­one able to seem­less­ly live in both the past and mod­ern world (at the time the ref­er­ence was made I was work­ing two com­put­ers and tak­ing a cell phone call.
  • Walk­ing by the din­ing hall, an old­er Friend called out “Looks good!” I said “Huh?”, he replied “that’s a good outfit!”

Mon­day:

  • “Nice out­fit” again, this time from Nils P. As soon as he said it I warned him that I was keep­ing this log and that he should expect to see him­self in it.
  • I talked a lit­tle bit about dress with a friend from Bal­ti­more Year­ly Meet­ing, a gay Friend involved with FLGCQBC who is iden­ti­fy­ing more and more as con­ser­v­a­tive and think­ing about going plain. One con­cern he raised was avoid­ing sweat­shop labor. (I point­ed out that plain dress is a cot­tage indus­try and that the seam­stress­es are usu­al­ly local and believ­ers.) He also does­n’t want to look “like a farmer” as he walks around the city of Bal­ti­more. (I talked about how I have lim­its as to how plain I go and don’t want this to be a his­tor­i­cal out­fit but one which peo­ple might actu­al­ly be able to see them­selves adopt­ing. I also talked about how I still want to iden­ti­fy on some lev­el with urban anar­chist cul­ture, which has a sort of plain aesthetic.)

Tues­day:

  • An extend­ed con­ver­sa­tion with a book­store cus­tomer from Cal­i­for­nia. She began by ask­ing if I’m doing plain dress for the same rea­sons as anoth­er plain dress­er here, who I’ve seen but not met yet. We began talk­ing about moti­va­tions and what it’s like and how it is for women, espe­cial­ly who lead active lives. I talked about my wife’s Julie’s prac­tice, which includes leo­tards when she’s work­ing at a gym­nas­tics coach. We also talked about dif­fer­ent kinds of Quak­er­sIt was a great conversation.
  • While sit­ting on a book­store couch blog­ging: “You’re look­ing very dis­tin­guished here, with facial hair and susspenders. Is this what mar­ried life does? You’re look­ing very Quak­er­ly. Does thee also have a hat?”

Wednes­day

  • I spent sick most­ly in bed…
  • I did have a brief, fever-fed con­ver­sa­tion with some of the oth­er plain dress­ing youths and soon-to-be plain dress­ing youth. It’s not about dress, but about being Quak­er and about how we live as Friends.

Thurs­day:

  • I had an extend­ed con­ver­sa­tion with a cou­ple who run the Equal Exchange table about plain dress, Gohn Broth­ers cat­a­log and avoid­ing sweatshop-made cloth­ing for union-made cloth­ing. There’s a lot of peo­ple inter­est­ed in this and the issues real­ly con­nect with sim­plic­i­ty and jus­tice issues.