Tag Archives ⇒ birth

I’m not the only one who digs archives

April 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Philadel­phia Friends are so mod­est that blog posts on Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing’s web­site don’t even have bylines. Or maybe some­one for­got to fill out a field. Either way, here’s a first-person account by an anony­mous Philadelphia-area Friend in their ear­ly 60s who start­ed read­ing Friends Jour­nal archives: Some Thoughts from the 1955 Friends Journal

I select­ed the issue clos­est to my birth date and began read­ing. The dis­cus­sion of the Kore­an con­flict, of the arms race, of the Israeli-Palestinian dis­pute, could all have been writ­ten today. And for a lunch-time med­i­ta­tion, this arti­cle, on prepar­ing for meet­ing, was just the right size for read­ing over my soup and sandwich.

March 27, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I do not believe there has ever been any pos­si­ble way of sal­va­tion but that of a birth of divin­i­ty in man.
 — SCOTT

March 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

In all ages it has been a real birth of God in the soul which is the true Immanuel state.
 — JOB SCOTT

March 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Let it be con­sid­ered that the min­istry is a birth.
 — BOWNAS

March 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Let it be con­sid­ered that the min­istry is a birth.
 — BOWNAS

Quaker news editor needed

January 3, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Here at Friends Jour­nal, we’re very lucky to have some very com­mit­ted vol­un­teers. Karie Firooz­mand and Eileen Red­den sends books out to dozens of vol­un­teer read­ers and pull the results togeth­er into our month­ly books col­umn. Rose­mary Zim­mer­man reads through all the poet­ry that comes in, care­ful­ly select­ing pieces to appear in the mag­a­zine. Mary Julia Street reworks the birth notices and obit­u­ar­ies that come in to include more inter­est­ing details than you get in most news­pa­per listings.

Last year we won the “Best in Class” award from the Asso­ci­at­ed Church Press. We’re proud, of course, but I was pleas­ant­ly. Com­pared to most denom­i­na­tion­al mag­a­zines, Friends Jour­nal is crazi­ly under­staffed. For­give the pugilis­tic metaphor, but these vol­un­teer edi­tors are a big rea­son we punch above our weight. Cut­ting through cul­tur­al sta­t­ic and the man­u­fac­tured busy­ness of mod­ern life and reach seek­ers is a never-ending chal­lenge. Think about whether you might be led to work with us on this

The extend­ed dead­line is Jan­u­ary 16th. MLK Day. Learn more at:


News Editor Search - Friends Journal

News Edi­tor Search — Friends Journal 

This is an unpaid vol­un­teer posi­tion, and the can­di­date will work remote­ly. The time com­mit­ment is flexible.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Are We More Than Our Demographics?

September 28, 2011
· Martin Kelley

One of the things that is intrigu­ing me late­ly is the nature of Quak­er debate.  There are half a dozen seemingly-perennial polit­i­cal issues around which Friends in my cir­cles have very strong opin­ions (these include abor­tion, nuclear pow­er, and the role of Friends in the trou­bles of Israel/Palestine) . We often jus­ti­fy our posi­tions with appeals to our Quak­er faith, but I won­der how often our opin­ions could be more accu­rate­ly pre­dict­ed by our demo­graph­ic profile?


How many of your polit­i­cal posi­tions and social atti­tudes could be accu­rate­ly guessed by a savvy demog­ra­ph­er who knew your date of birth,  postal code,  edu­ca­tion and fam­i­ly income? I’d guess each of us are far more pre­dictable than we’d like to think.If true,  then what role does our reli­gious life actu­al­ly play?

Reli­gious beliefs are also a demo­graph­ic cat­e­go­ry,  grant­ed, but if they only con­firm posi­tions that could be just as actu­al­ly pre­dict­ed by non-spiritual data, then does­n’t that imply that we’ve sim­ply found (or remained in) a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty that con­firms our pre-existing bias­es? Have we cre­at­ed a faith in our own image? And if true, is it real­ly fair to jus­ti­fy our­selves based on appeals to Quak­er values?

The “polit­i­cal” Quak­er writ­ings I’m find­ing most inter­est­ing (because they’re least pre­dictable) are the ones that stop to ask how Quak­er dis­cern­ment fits into the debate. Dis­cern­ment: one could eas­i­ly argue that Quak­er open­ings and tools around it are one of our great­est gifts to human spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.  When we build a wor­ship com­mu­ni­ty based on strict adher­ence to the imme­di­ate prompt­ing of the Holy Spir­it, the first ques­tion becomes fig­ur­ing out what is of-God and what is not.  Is James Nayler, rid­ing Jesus-like into Bris­tol, a prophet or a nut?

When we go deep into the ques­tions,  we may find that the answers are less impor­tant than the care we take to reach them.  Wait­ing for one anoth­er,  hold­ing one anoth­er’s hand in love despite dif­fer­ences of opin­ion, can be more impor­tant than being the right-answer ear­ly adopter. How do you step back from easy answers to the thorny ques­tions? How do you poll your­self and that-of-God in your­self to open your eyes and ears for the poten­tial of surprise?

Bible Illiterate No More

April 20, 2011
· Martin Kelley

One Year BibleA bit of a mile­stone – I fin­ished the One Year Bible read­ing plan last night! I man­aged to stretch it out to 27 months but that’s alright. I start­ed in Jan­u­ary 2009 and ini­tial­ly kept the dai­ly read­ings going till May of that year, when I feel hope­less­ly behind. I kept a men­tal note of the date and in May 2010 I start­ed where I had left off. I kept read­ing reg­u­lar­ly until the last week in Decem­ber, when I was under­stand­ably dis­tract­ed by the birth of our third son Gre­go­ry on 12/28. Know­ing I want­ed to keep the cycle going, I skipped that week and start­ed again on Jan­u­ary 1, 2011. It was only last night that I went back and fin­ished up that last week – fea­tur­ing Malachi and Rev­e­la­tions (which has the Lam­b’s War metaphor so impor­tant to ear­ly Friends).

Thanks go to Gregg Kosela and AJ Schwanz for let­ting me know such a thing as one year Bible read­ing plans exist­ed. I had nev­er been able to stick to a reg­u­lar Bible-reading reg­i­men before. The grand­moth­er who fre­quent­ly declared me a Bible illit­er­ate would be so proud! (Actu­al­ly not, she’d find some­thing else to cri­tique, but her hangups around fam­i­ly and “Chris­t­ian” liv­ing are a much longer blog post!).

It’s been great hav­ing a reg­u­lar spir­i­tu­al prac­tice. I’m glad I can find my way around the Bible now and my under­stand­ing of Friends has deep­ened. The ear­ly Quak­er writ­ings are steeped in Bib­li­cal allu­sions and we miss a lot when we miss those references.