Results tagged “bloggers/” from The Quaker Ranter

This First Day I stayed up late (I'm doing some fill-in night work these days and morning is late for me) and visited northwest Philadelphia's Chestnut Hill Monthly Meeting for worship and a monthly education hour they call "Forum." This month's focus was on Quaker blogging and I was asked to speak along with Imperfect Serenity Eileen Flanagan and Juliloquy (as usual I'm using the identities they give on the blog). In the audience were SEPTA Kid (who I knew I knew from Flickr!), A Thin Place Dan Evans and Christie, the yearly meeting staffer who helped put together the recent yearly meeting youth blog. When we began the Forum moderator asked for a show of hands for people who had blogs and there were even more bloggers there. Per capita Chestnut Hill might even outpace Twin Cities in blogdom. A few thoughts in no particular order:

Blogging Cultures

A recurring theme to the questions was privacy and how far we go to name ourselves and family members. All three of us cloak ourselves in one way or another (mine is primarily geographic, though Dan claimed he could find my address if he wanted (tell me if you can so I can see if I can plug up that hole!)). The whole concern seemed a little age-reflective, just in that I wondered if folks there knew just how open the whole Facebook/Myspace 20-something crowd can be. A difference of course is that we three panelists (and most of the audience) are of that professional age where we do have to worry about outward appearances. A common message on Myspace is the announcement that someone's got a job and will now take down their more wild pictures. Are the differences in how willing people are to share their lives online a reflection more of changing generational standards or age-based necessities?

Mommy and Daddy Blogs & Bloggings

We three bloggers were all parents of young'ish children and this all came up in our stories. With my small kids, family arrangement with my wife not being Quaker and current night-shift work, it's nearly impossible for me to give a lot of face-time to Quaker activities (Chris M recently posted about being able to accept an important meeting appointment that he had to turn down a few years ago, in part because of parental responsibilities). The particulars of my current life arrangement makes getting to worship a major accomplishment. Many bloggers are parents of small kids and our sites have given us the ability to stay more engaged in a sort of intellectual life than we could be otherwise. Many other bloggers seem to be geographically isolated from their peer group, which creates a similar dynamic.

Panels & Interest Groups, Workshops and Worship

It's tempting to compare this panel to the outwardly-similar interest group I convened with LizOpp and Robin M at last year's FGC Gathering. The most pronounced difference is that the interest group didn't focus on blogging but mentioned it only as a piece of our spiritual life story. Our concern was the ministry that was growing out of the blogosphere. We grounded our session in worship and as I wrote last summer, much of the talk had a feel of testimony to it.

At the Chestnut Hill Forum blogs were the focus. I'm quite qualified to talk about blogs and the internet from a purely technical and social standpoint, of course, and that's mostly what I did but it felt awkward for me. Christie touched on this when she asked a question towards the end about why my blog posts tend to have strong opinions but my presentation that day was so mild. The question has stayed with me and I think part of the difference is that the monthly Forum series is pattered after a secular educational model: it's more workshop that worship sharing. For me that kept it on a level on mechanics. I could share what's been happening on the Quaker blogosphere from a sociological standpoint but to give something approaching "testimony" would have felt out of place. Educational forums are fine and I don't want to dismiss their value but their form probably does keep the conversation at a particular level.

Contextless Forwards

In her question Christie also mentioned how certain posts of mine sometimes get forwarded around to yearly meeting staff. I consciously try to keep my blog wide-ranging, as a way to give readers a way to know the person behind the blog. I know what I write can sometimes be challenging. I know too that it's easy to dismiss challenges by taking statements out of context in such a way that the messenger can be parodied as some sort of other who can be safely ignored. Regular readers will hopefully catch the love that undergirds everything I write (my goal at least) and will understand the balance I try to keep between liberal and traditional Quakerism. But it's good to remember that some people only reading certain posts: I might want to take care to represent myself completely in everything post I write, even if it's only a disclaimer.

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Enough for now, I've got to wake up the baby from his nap. It was great to visit Chestnut Hill, where I've never worshiped before. It was quite refreshing to be a meeting where there's lots of parents and families. It was nice to meet the other bloggers and have a chance to talk about Friends and blogging to a new audience. Thanks to Amey for organizing it, my dear friend Thomas for tech'ing it up and to everyone who came and participated.

Last night LizOpp, Robin M and myself hosted our FGC Gathering interest group. The title was "On Fire!: Renewing Quakerism through a Convergence of Friends." All morning long we've had Friends grabbing our arms to tell us how powerful and important it was for them. One well-traveled Friend went so far as to say the spontaneous worship that occurred halfway through was the deepest he's experienced in twenty years of Quakerism. The obvious challenge for us hosts is keeping our egos securely tamed from all this praise.

The work wasn't ours. We simply set the stage. My first impulse is to say we helped create an environment where the Spirit could break into the event, but that's not really it. We tried to create a space where participants would recognize when the Spirit knocked on the door.

Food for Fire participants. Bloggers at the workshop pose for a goofy attacking-one-another photo.

What happened last night felt similar to what happened in last February's Powell House Food for the Fire workshop. While I took notes and journaled a lot about it I never gave a followup blog post. It was powerful and I needed to digest it. Luckily participants Rob, Amanda and Zach and Claire all shared about it or its themes in the weeks afterwards.

I'd like to share something about the assumptions and preparation that went into these two events. There's no way to create a cookie-cutter agenda to force a deep spiritual high. In fact part of what's needed is to move beyond predictability. Both times I've had a clear sense that a point came when I was no longer facilitating, where Spirit was actively guiding us and participants were actively responding to that process, even eldering us past the control of facilitation.

When I came to Powell House I had a workshop description and a keen interest in the topic. What I didn't bring was an agenda. I'm trying to experiment with not being too prepared.* Early Friends held open meetings and while they often bore concerns and had themes that frequently reoccurred in their ministry. Friends today rely very much on models borrowed from higher education: we have workshops that expect agendas, we give talks that expect pre-printed speeches. These are often the opportunities we get for teaching ministries, yet they are very programmed. The challenge is to figure out how to subvert them to allow for unprogrammed surprise.

At Powell House I spent time before each session walking around the grounds in prayer for guidance on what to do next. I had brainstormed ideas beforehand but my main preparation had been a lot of Quaker reading and prayer in the weeks preceeding the event. I wanted the sessions to connect to the spiritual condition of the participants, as individuals and as a group. There were a few moments I thought I was nuts. For example, walking around before the Powell House Saturday afternoon session it seemed like reading a chapter of Samuel Bownas's Description of the Qualifications would be a good idea, but by mid-afternoon I could see the sleepy faces. We did it anyway and faces and spirit lit up. People wanted to engage with Bownas. As it turns out we read all of chapter three, "Advice to Ministers in a State of Infancy." It was so cool.

The real inbreaking happened a little later. The group was tired, dinner was nearing. I started to recommend we go into a circle to break up. One Friend interrupted, looked at another across the room and said “you have something to say, don’t you.” The second Friend said yes, then challenged us that we hadn’t actually answered our queries at all. The main question was still on the table. “What are we called to do?” There was a release. I knew I was not in control of the workshop anymore. We came into a prayer circle and started to talk about some of this. One Friend said something about naming who it is that call us. A theme came out that it wasn't enough for us to find some sort of personal salvation and comfort in our Quaker meetings: we needed to bring all the world into this if it was to be meaningful. It truly felt like the Holy Spirit was in the room. It wasn't necessarily so comfortable and it somehow seemed like not enough, but it pointed to the work we needed to do afterwards.

Blogging participants of On Fire! workshop pose together. About fifty people total came out for the Monday night interest group. Click photo for names and links. Lots of discussions happened at the rise of the worship. The semi-impromptu post-discussion group. (Thanks for FGC's Emily for taking & posting this!) FGC Gathering photos on Flickr and Technorati

Last night, at the FGC interest group, something similar happened. Robin, Liz and I had planned out the first half of the meeting. The most important piece: coming early to sit in prayer and holding it well past the time the interest group was supposed to start. The work of Friends needs to be rooted in worship. We need to be still enough to hear the Holy Spirit. If the medium is the message, our message was about the need to not pack ourselves in with agendas. We started predicatbly enough by asking the fifty-or-so participants to give their names and to name a spiritual practice that gives them joy. We asked for space in between speakers to keep worship at the fore and we were blessed by a self-faciliating group; Friends did hold the spaces in between.

Then the three of us told our stories of starting spiritually-focused blogs and coming to find a fellowship that extended beyond our traditional Quaker branches (hence the term "Convergence of Friends"). I went first and explained that I trying to be careful not to do this to lift myself up. My story is simple and like those of many Friends. I was giving testimony. The idea of testimony rang throughout the evening. Robin's story in particular was very grounded and coming last it took us into the unprogrammed agenda-less time we had left free. Friends rose to give testimony of other "convergent" experiences, for example particpation in the Northwest Women's Theological Conferences, events of the Western branch of the Christian Friends Fellowship.

At some point a woman I didn't know stood up without being recognized and she had a pose of supplication. My first though, "oh no!" Then I noticed another Friend, worshipful in spirit, who pointed her to us. She said she was going to sing a song. "Oh no again!" I thought. But this was the facilitation coming off our shoulders. This was a Friend rising to name what we needed and another Friend pointing that we needed to go this direction. It was like the two Powell House Friends: one recognizing in the other a need to share ministry and being willing to break through "proper" group process. At the interest group the song was powerful, it brought us to a place where we could be low and thankful. We were now spontaneously in worship. Liz, Robin and I had planned some closing worship but this wasn't the time yet. But it was the time and the suceeding ministry was heartfelt and largely from the Source.

The only funny aside was that we felt we couldn't let the group go on past our 8:45 end time, for the simple reason that childcare ended then and we needed to let parents go. We mentioned this around 8:30 but twenty minutes later the worship was continuing. Just then the cellphone of the Friend giving ministry went off: it was his daughter calling to ask where he was! He turned off the phone but it gave us the excuse to close the meeting and invite an extended meeting to continue outside. This was wonderful as there were a number of other similarly-themed interest groups (one on youth ministries, the other on the World Gathering of Young Friends) and participants from all three groups met outside and continued the sharing for another two hours.

Lessons? Simply to ground workshop events in worship, let the agenda be empty enough for the Spirit to intervene (having backup exercises just in case it doesn't is fine!). I don't think this is a foolproof method. A lot depends on the participants and how willing they are to share in the faciliation and worship. A lot also depends on Friends breaking into the agenda, for both times that was what turned the event from a workshop to a gathered meeting.

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• For me the danger is a personal style that has long relied on a last-minute miracles (I was the kind of college student who read all the material through the semester but didn't actually start writing anything until the night before an assignment was due). I don't want my theology to be an excuse for my procrastination and I try to test this regularly.

Related posts:

Lots of folks have been talking about the Gathering and the Monday night interest group.

• Co-faciliator LizOpp also details some of the process of the Interest Group and of the semi-impromptu multi-generational interest group afterwards. She's also written about the visits from Freedom Friends Church.
• Co-facilitator RobinM has the first of a handful of promised posts where she emphasizes the importance of grounding and starting the session in worship.
• ChrisM describes how he couldn't sleep after the Interest Group.
• Dave T has a quick check-in and description.
• Paul L felt a real covering of the meeting halfway through the Interest Group.
• Both AJ Schwanz and Gregg Koskela have posts about a post-Gathering meet-up of some Friends around a picnic table in Oregon.

I'm sure more reaction posts are up there and I'll link to them as I find them. I suspect that in addition to being the biggest group Quaker blogger photo to date (sorry Gregg!), this will end up being the most blogged about Quaker event yet, at least till Wess gathers West Coasters together next month. I counted at least 20 Quaker bloggers at the Gathering.

I tried to post this as a comment on this piece by James Riemermann on the Nontheist Friends website but the site experienced a technical difficulty when I tried to submit it (hope it's back up soon!). James describes his post as a "rant" about "conservative-leaning liberal Friends," and one theme that got picked up in the comments was how he and others felt excluded by us (for that is a term I use to try to describe my spiritual condition). Rather than loose the comment I'll just post it here.

Hi James and everyone,
Well, I think I was one of the first of the Quaker bloggers to talk about conservative-leaning liberal Quakers back in July 2003. I too am not sure it's anything worth calling a "movement."

I hear this feeling of being excluded but I'm not sure where that's coming from. When James had a really wonderful, thought-provoking response to my "We're All Ranters Now" piece, I asked him if I could "reprint" the comment as its own guest piece. It got a lot of attention, a lot of comments. I didn't realize you were using nontheistfriends.org as a blog these days but Robin M of What Canst Thou Say did and has added a link to your post from QuakerQuaker.org, which again is a validation that yours is an important voice (I can pretty much guarantee that this is going to be one of the more followed links). You and everyone here are part of the family.

Yes, we have some disagreements. I don't think Quakerism is simply made up of whoever makes it into the meetinghouse. I think we have a tradition that we've inherited. This consists of practices and values and ways of looking at the world. Much of that tradition comes from the gospel of Jesus and the epistles between the earliest Christian communities. Much of what might feel like neutral Quaker practice is a clear echo of that tradition, and that echo is what I talk about that in my blogs. I think it's good to know where we're coming from. That doesn't mean we're stuck there and we adapt it as our revelation changes (this attitude is why I'm a liberal Friend no matter how much I talk about Christ). These blog conversations are the ways we share our experiences, minister to and comfort one another.

That people hold different religious understandings and practices isn't in itself inherently exclusionary. Diversity is good for us, right? There's no one Quaker center. There's mulitiple conversations happening in multiple languages, much of it gloriously overlapping on the electronic pathways of the internet. That's wonderful, it shows a great vitality. The religious tradition that is Quakerism is not dead, not mothballed away in a living history museum somewhere. It's alive, with its assumptions and boundaries constantly being revisited. That's cool. If a particular post feels too carping, there's always the "eldering of the back button," as I like to call it. Let's try to hear each other from where we are and to remain open to the ministry from those who might appear to be coming from a different place. Love is the first movement and love is unconditional and accepts us for who we are.

I better stop this before I get too mushy, with all this talk of love! See what I mean about being a liberal Quaker?
Your Friend, Martin

On electronic fellowships, online magazines and the freedom of this patchwork of independent cross-linked blogs: "Maybe the web's form of hyperlinking is actually superior to Old Media publishing. I love how I can put forward a strong vision of Quakerism without offending anyone--any put-off readers can hit the "back" button. With my Subjective Guide to Quaker Blogs and my On the Web posts I highlight the bloggers I find particularly interesting, even when I'm not in perfect theological unity. I like that I can have discussions back and forth with Friends who I don't exactly agree with. I have nothing to announce, no clear plan forward and no money to do anything anyway. But I thought it'd be interesting to hear what others have been thinking along these lines."

So why didn't I get the memo that April is "Don't Blog About Quakerism Month"? On Monday Beppe said he was taking a hiatus from Quakerism. On Tuesday, Amanda confided to us that she's having a midblog crisis. Wednesday has Kwakersauer's announcement that his blog is under deconstruction.

I'm looking around here and I'm getting a little nervous. The Contrarian Quaker started things on Third Month 31, posting a thoughtful piece on those of us who have been expressing doubts lately. Since then a number of Quaker bloggers have gone quiet: The Brooklyn Quaker, Quaker Dharma and Can You Believe Johan have gone almost a week into April without a post. Gulp!

Public Quaker Alice is still with us, she posted three days ago. Just Curious James checked in on April Fool's Day (but he's talking about British Evangelicals--uh-oh!). LizOpp checked in on the third and Kenneth Sutton has had two posts in April (go Kenneth!).

Still I have to wonder if someone else is planning to take the fall on Thursday? I feel like I'm in one of those bad haunted mansion mystery movies: the lights go out, a scream shatters the night and there's one less guest at the hotel. I'm still here. Has anyone seen the butler lately?

Update: Beppe has talked more about the practices and motivations of Quaker blogging.

By QuaCarol

Sometimes I have to lift up comments and make them their own posts. Here's one of QuaCarol's reply to Uh-Oh: Beppe's Doubts: "I see this community of bloggers, reaching out to each other and connecting, when meetings (and here I venture to say “all”) are focused on keeping their pamphlet racks filled, rather than posting URLs on their bulletin boards or creating a newcomer’s URL handout."

A guest piece from Rob of Consider the Lillies

Rob describes himself: "I’m a twenty-something gay Mid-western expatriate living in Boston. I was inspired to begin a blog based on the writings of other urban Quaker bloggers as they reflect and discuss their inward faith and outward experiences. When I’m not reading or writing, I’m usually with my friends, traveling about, and/or generally making an arse of myself."

My regular readers may not be aware that Quaker Ranter is the talk of the political internet for the last few days. Since posting my "account of getting a phone call from a CBS News publicist", I've been linked to by a Who's Who of blogging gliteratti: Wonkette, Instapundit, The Volokh Conspiracy, Little Green Footballs, RatherBiased, etc. For a short time yesterday, the story was a part of the second-ranked article on Technorati's Politics Attention index. See The Left Wing Conspiracy Revealed by Nonviolence.org on the main site.

So there's been a flurry of blogging about Confessions of an Anti-Sanctions Activist, an article condemning the activist group Voices in the Wilderness by one of it's former members. Lots of conservative blogs, including the very influential Instapundit are commenting on it. But so far I've seen no pacifist responses other than my own and Voices' website is silent. What's up with this? Is everyone just figuring it's better to let this all die down or do they not know the publicity value of such a prominent article?