Visiting a Quaker School

April 18, 2006

I had an inter­est­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty last Thurs­day. I skipped work to be talk with two Quak­erism class­es at Philadel­phi­a’s William Penn Char­ter School (thanks for the invite Michael and Thomas!). I was asked to talk about Quak­er blogs, of all things. Sim­ple, right? Well, on the pre­vi­ous Tues­day I hap­pened upon this pas­sage from Bri­an Dray­ton’s new book, On Liv­ing with a Con­cern for Gospel Min­istry:

I think that your work will have the great­est good effect if you wait to find whether and where the springs of love and divine life con­nect with this open­ing before you appear in the work. This is even true when you have had an invi­ta­tion to come and speak on a top­ic to a work­shop or some oth­er forum. It is wise to be sus­pi­cious of what is very easy, draws on your prac­ticed strengths and accom­plish­ments, and can be treat­ed as an every­day trans­ac­tion. (p. 149).

Good advice. Of course the role of min­istry is even more com­pli­cat­ed in that I was­n’t address­ing a Quak­er audi­ence: like the major­i­ty of Friends schools, few Penn Char­ter stu­dents actu­al­ly are Quak­er. I’m a pub­lic school kid, but it from the out­side it seems like Friends schools stress the ethos of Quak­erism (“here’s Penn Char­ter’s state­ment”). Again Dray­ton helped me think beyond nor­mal ideas of pros­e­ly­tiz­ing and out­reach when he talked about “pub­lic meetings”:

We are also called, I feel to invite oth­ers to share Christ direct­ly, not pri­mar­i­ly in order to intro­duce them to Quak­erism and bring them into our meet­ings, but to encour­age them to turn to the light and fol­low it” (p. 147).

What I shared with the stu­dents was some of the ways my inter­ac­tion with the Spir­it and my faith com­mu­ni­ty shapes my life. When we keep it real, this is a pro­found­ly uni­ver­sal­ist and wel­com­ing message.

I talked about the per­son­al aspect of blog­ging: in my opin­ion we’re at our best when we weave our the­ol­o­gy with with per­son­al sto­ries and tes­ti­monies of spe­cif­ic spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences. The stu­dents remind­ed me that this is also real world les­son: their great­est excite­ment and ques­tion­ing came when we start­ed talk­ing about my father (I used to tell the sto­ry of my com­plete­ly messed-up child­hood fam­i­ly life a lot but have been out of the habit late­ly as it’s reced­ed into the past). The stu­dents real­ly want­ed to under­stand not just my sto­ry but how it’s shaped my Quak­erism and influ­enced my com­ing to Friends. They asked some hard ques­tions and I was stuck hav­ing to give them hard answers (in that they were non-sentimental). When we share of our­selves, we present a wit­ness that can reach out to others.

Lat­er on, one of the teach­ers pro­ject­ed my blogroll on a screen and asked me about the peo­ple on it. I start­ed telling sto­ries, relat­ing cool blog posts that had stuck out in my mind. Wow: this is a pret­ty amaz­ing group, with diver­si­ty of ages and Quak­erism. Review­ing the list real­ly remind­ed me of the amaz­ing com­mu­ni­ty that’s come togeth­er over the last few years.

One inter­est­ing lit­tle snip­pet for the Quak­er cul­tur­al his­to­ri­ans out there: Penn Char­ter was the Gur­neyite school back in the day. When I got Michael’s email I was ini­tial­ly sur­prised they even had class­es on Quak­erism as it’s often thought of as one of the least Quak­er of the Philadelphia-area Quak­er schools. But think­ing on it, it made per­fect sense: the Gur­neyites loved edu­ca­tion; they brought Sun­day School (sor­ry, First Day School) into Quak­erism, along with Bible study and high­er edu­ca­tion. Of course the school that bears their lega­cy would teach Quak­erism. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, the his­tor­i­cal Ortho­dox school down the road aways recent­ly approached Penn Char­ter ask­ing about their Quak­er class­es; in true Wilbu­rite fash­ion, they’ve nev­er both­ered try­ing to teach Quak­erism. The offi­cial Philadel­phia Quak­er sto­ry is that branch­es were all fixed up nice and tidy back in 1955 but scratch the sur­face just about any­where and you’ll find Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry atti­tudes still shap­ing our insti­tu­tion­al cul­ture. It’s pret­ty fas­ci­nat­ing really.

“Food for Fire” workshop at Powell House

December 27, 2005

In ear­ly Feb­ru­ary I’m lead­ing a young adult work­shop up at New York Year­ly Meet­ing’sPow­ell House. I don’t have any desire to get into the “spir­i­tu­al work­shop cir­cuit,” but I was asked and it seemed like an oppor­tu­ni­ty to gath­er some inter­est­ing folks to talk about what we hunger for. The work­shop is called “Food for Fire: Break­ing into the Pow­er of Quak­erism” (already regret­ting the “break­ing in” metaphor – should­n’t it be “bro­ken in by?”).

I hope that some of the extend­ed Quak­er Ranter fam­i­ly will be able to make it out. This could be a kind of Mid-Atlantic/New Eng­land gath­er­ing of what­ev­er this of infor­mal movement/network is. Because this is a work­shop mod­el I am expect­ed to impart knowl­edge but while I’ll come with an worked-out agen­da, I’m hap­py to loosen and/or toss it aside if need­ed. The work­shop description:

Many of the clas­sic themes of Quak­erism speak to the con­di­tion of a world wracked by con­sumerism, war, big­otry and envi­ron­men­tal dis­re­gard. Friends have a his­to­ry of unit­ing truth and love and turn­ing it into action. We’ll reach into the Quak­er attic to dust off gospel order, plain liv­ing, trav­el­ing min­istry, prophet­ic wit­ness; we’ll try them on and see how they fit into our expe­ri­ences of the liv­ing Spir­it. There will be plen­ty of time to share sto­ries in small groups and togeth­er. How are our month­ly meet­ings doing rec­og­niz­ing the gifts of min­istry and ser­vice among younger Friends? How are Friends doing spread­ing the good news of the Quak­er way? There is a great peo­ple to be gath­ered still but how can we enter into the faith­ful­ness required? Jesus came up the fish­er­men and said “Come, fol­low me;” what would we do if we got that call? Like any pro­grammed Quak­er event the work­shop is real­ly an excuse to assem­ble Friends togeth­er in prayer and faith­ful­ness to God. The most impor­tant thing we could do this week­end is build friend­ships: friend­ships of sup­port, mutu­al account­abil­i­ty, and peer men­tor­ship. Friends from all branch­es of Quak­erism wel­come, as are the newest of seekers.

The price is $180 for the week­end but if that’s a bur­den then try to get your meet­ing to pay – I sus­pect they’ll be hap­py to see that you’re show­ing an inter­est in Quak­erism. I’ll be dri­ving up from South Jer­sey and will prob­a­bly be able to pick up folks from Philly & New York. Email me if you have or need a ride from oth­er points and I’ll try to con­nect you with oth­er travelers.

If you’re too old or too impa­tient to wait for Sec­ond Month to roll around, pick up Bri­an Dray­ton’s new book On Liv­ing with a Con­cern for Gospel Min­istry and read that instead. Yes, I plugged it five days ago and yes, my pay­check comes from the pub­lish­er – but I’ve now now read the first chap­ter and it real­ly is that good. Read­ing it feels like putting that soon-to-be-favorite pop album on the turntable for the first time. Where were you when you first heard Sgt Pep­pers? (for the YAFs in the audi­ence: yes I’m being sil­ly with the Bea­t­les ref­er­ence; if you remem­ber first putting that album on a turntable in 1967 then this isn’t your workshop!).

Random updates

December 22, 2005

Just a quick note to every­one that I haven’t post­ed more late­ly. It’s a busy time of the year. I’ve had my hands full keep­ing up with arti­cles and links to the “Chris­t­ian Peacemakers”:/quaker/cpt.
I’ve also been doing some free­lance sites. One is launched: “Quakersong.org”:www.quakersong.org, the new online home of Annie Pat­ter­son and Peter Blood of _Rise Up Singing_ fame. It’s just the start to what should soon be an inter­est­ing site.
Geek-wise I’ve been inter­est­ed in the Web 2.0 stuff (see “this Best Of list of sites”:http://web2.wsj2.com/the_best_web_20_software_of_2005.htm, link cour­tesy “C Wess Daniels”:http://gatheringinlight.blogspot.com/). I’ve talked about some of this “back in June”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/i_dont_have_anything_to_say_either.php but it’s get­ting more excit­ing. In the Fall I was asked to sub­mit a pro­pos­al for redo­ing the web­site of a Quak­er con­fer­ence cen­ter near Philadel­phia and it was all Web 2.0‑centric – maybe too much so as I did­n’t get the job! I’ll post an edit­ed ver­sion of the pro­pos­al soon for the geeks out there. Some of the new tech stuff will under­gird a fab­u­lous new “Quakerfinder.org”:www.quakerfinder.org fea­ture that will allow iso­lat­ed Friends to con­nect to form new wor­ship groups (to launch soon) and even more is behind the dreams of a new “Quakerbooks.org”:www.quakerbooks.org site.
In the mean­time, I encour­age every­one to order “On Liv­ing with a Con­cern for Gospel Ministry”:http://www.quakerbooks.org/get/1 – 888305-38‑x, the new book by New Eng­land Year­ly Meet­ing’s Bri­an Dray­ton (it arrived from the print­ers yes­ter­day). It’s being billed as a mod­ern day ver­sion of “A Descrip­tion of the Qual­i­fi­ca­tions” and if it lives up the hype it should be an impor­tant book for the stir­rings of deep­en­ing faith­ful­ness we’ve been see­ing among Quak­ers late­ly. While you’re wait­ing for the book to arrive in your mail­box, check out Brook­lyn Rich’s “Test­ing Leadings”:http://brooklynquaker.blogspot.com/2005/12/testing-leadings-part‑1.html post.