Welcoming families in meetings

April 18, 2019

An account of one British meet­ing find­ing space for families:

It has been the task of the whole meet­ing not just of one or two; there has been an aware­ness that what they are doing now will need to change and evolve. And there has been a care and nour­ish­ing of us as par­ents too, with our own spir­i­tu­al jour­neys and need for nurture.

I know, from talk­ing to oth­er Quak­er par­ents – and, very sad­ly, from par­ents who would love to explore Quak­erism but who have felt dis­cour­aged or unwel­comed – that we have been par­tic­u­lar­ly lucky. Lucky not because we found a Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty with a ready-made chil­dren’s meet­ing, but because we found a meet­ing will­ing and ready to wel­come, to make space, where there was a sense of glad­ness that we were there. 

Belonging and difference

February 13, 2019

Gil S on con­ti­nu­ity and change:

Many of us find dif­fi­cul­ty in fac­ing change. The way a meet­ing house is arranged and the way Quak­er faith is expressed have both changed over time. There have always been those who find it dif­fi­cult if not impos­si­ble to let go of what has gone before. In my local meet­ing I always sit in the same place and acknowl­edge that I find change dif­fi­cult, but in spite of this there are ways in which I have changed. 

I sus­pect part of thr con­text of this is the hopes and fears of British Friends as they embark on a reci­sion of their book of Faith and Prac­tice. An edit­ing group has recent­ly been named.

https://​stum​bling​step​ping​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​2​/​b​e​l​o​n​g​i​n​g​-​a​n​d​-​d​i​f​f​e​r​e​n​c​e​.​h​tml

UK Quakers will not profit from the occupation of Palestine

November 20, 2018

British Friends become first church in UK to pull invest­ments in com­pa­nies prof­it­ing from the occu­pa­tion of Pales­tine. From record­ing clerk Paul Parker:

As Quak­ers, we seek to live out our faith through every­day actions, includ­ing the choic­es we make about where to put our mon­ey. We believe strong­ly in the pow­er of legit­i­mate, non­vi­o­lent, demo­c­ra­t­ic tools such as moral­ly respon­si­ble invest­ment to realise pos­i­tive change in the world. We want to make sure our mon­ey and ener­gies are instead put into places which sup­port our com­mit­ments to peace, equal­i­ty and justice. 

As you’d might expect, there’s been back­lash. The Board of Deputies of British Jews has con­demned Britain Year­ly Meet­ing’s deci­sion as a “biased and petu­lant act.”.

Isaac Smith: Good soil

August 23, 2018

An obser­va­tion on the soil of God’s work — us:

For many of us, our predica­ment today seems most like the soil with the thorns: We want to draw clos­er to God and walk in God’s ways, but there is so much bad news, so many oblig­a­tions, so many dis­trac­tions. We can be led astray, some­times with­out even know­ing it. The founder of our move­ment, George Fox, once said that “what­ev­er ye are addict­ed to, the Tempter will come in that thing; and when he can trou­ble you, then he gets advan­tage over you, and then ye are gone.” We can be addict­ed to many things: not just, say, alco­hol or gam­bling, but ideas, both about the world and about ourselves. 

Alone, none of us can do much to change the world. But we can allow our­selves to be instru­ments of peace, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, love. It’s easy to get stuck and tempt­ing in those times to get defen­sive or look toward oth­ers. I’ve found the old Quak­er take on “The Tempter” to be per­son­al­ly very use­ful. I’ve learned to ques­tion and go inward when­ev­er I feel too much pride in some­thing or find myself part of a group that seems self-satisfied with its work. 
Good soil

Jeff Kisling: Resist not evil today

August 18, 2018

When look­ing back to Nazi Ger­many in the 1930s are we so sure God Could not have found a way?

Hen­ry Cad­bury believed the Jew­ish peo­ple should have appealed to the Ger­man sense of jus­tice and nation­al con­science. Then those Ger­mans would have stood up for the Jew­ish peo­ple, and pre­vent­ed the Nazis from acquir­ing pow­er. The death camps would not have happened.

Many prob­a­bly think that is naive and could not have worked. But that is what non­vi­o­lence is about, con­nect­ing with those you are hop­ing to change. Lis­ten­ing deeply and being will­ing to change your­self. This is also what faith is about, believ­ing in the pres­ence of God today. Believ­ing that as you lis­ten close­ly you will be guid­ed by the Inner Light. Believ­ing some­how God will find a way.

There’s a fine line between ide­al­is­tic naiveté and real­is­tic sol­i­dar­i­ty. I’m still of the mind that Cad­bury should have har­bored more cyn­i­cism of what was hap­pen­ing as the Nazi Par­ty grew in Ger­many but I can see Jef­f’s point: in 1934, was the future we know inevitable?

Resist not evil today

Cor­rec­tion: I got my Jeffs mixed up in the orig­i­nal ver­sion of this post. This was writ­ten by Jeff Kisling.

How a Small Group of Quaker Activists Took on PNC Bank and Won

July 26, 2018

One thing I love about the Friends move­ment is its abil­i­ty to live with­in the ten­sions of a being both a deeply spir­i­tu­al ascetic prac­tice and a strate­gi­cal­ly focused world-changing social action toolk­it. Some­times the two come togeth­er in won­der­ful ways. Quak­er­S­peak has a mini-documentary about the Earth Quak­er Action Team’s cam­paign to stop PNC Bank from financ­ing moun­tain­top removal mining:

George Lakey: So any way you look at it, this is an offense against the plan­et. It’s an offense against peo­ple. It’s where eco­nom­ic jus­tice and cli­mate jus­tice coin­cide. Let’s tack­le it.

Ingrid Lakey: This bank that had Quak­er roots, this bank that called itself the green­est bank in the busi­ness was in fact blow­ing up moun­tains to get coal which is a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change. So we thought, “that’s not cool! We can’t let that slide.” Call­ing on our own belief in our integri­ty, we decid­ed to call them out on it.

I myself could watch a whole video of George Lakey just laugh­ing. I’ve attend­ed a few EQAT actions over the years and wrote a per­son­al sto­ry about my par­tic­i­pa­tion in a pub­lic fast in 2013.

How a Small Group of Quak­er Activists Took on PNC Bank and Won

Syncretism and dilution

June 11, 2018

Bri­an Dray­ton looks at the effects of syn­cretism, dilu­tion, and cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion on the Quak­er movement.

At first blush, such a process might be cel­e­brat­ed as a process of enrich­ment: Quak­erism ver­sion 1 turns into Quak­erism v2, now new and bet­ter because it has bells or out­ward sacra­ments or what-have-you. But note that this kind of change is not just a mat­ter of sim­ple addi­tion, because ele­ments drawn from var­i­ous oth­er tra­di­tions are them­selves embed­ded deeply in some cul­ture, and so they are clothed round with mean­ings and nuances that are implic­it­ly adopt­ed along with the idea or prac­tice that has been explic­it­ly imported.

Love, judg­ment, and the “inner crit­ic”, pt. 2b: Syn­cretism, dilu­tion, and the draw­backs of cul­tur­al appropriation