New Monastics & Convergent Friends update

April 28, 2010

My work­shop part­ner Wess Daniels just post­ed an update about the upcom­ing work­shop at Pen­dle Hill. Here’s the start. Click through to the full post to get a taste of what we’re preparing.

Mar­tin Kel­ley and I will be
lead­ing a
week­end retreat at Pen­dle Hill in just a cou­ple weeks (May 14 – 16)

and I’m start­ing to get real­ly excit­ed about it! Mar­tin and I have been
col­lab­o­rat­ing a lot togeth­er over the past few months in prepa­ra­tion for
this week­end and I want­ed to share a lit­tle more of what we have
planned for those of you who are inter­est­ed in com­ing (or still on the
fence). Dur­ing the week­end we will be encour­ag­ing con­ver­sa­tions around
build­ing com­mu­ni­ties, con­ver­gent Friends and how this looks in our local
meet­ings. I want­ed to give the descrip­tion of the week­end, some of the
queries we’ll be touch­ing on, and the out­line for the week­end. And of
course, I want to invite all of you inter­est­ed par­ties to join us!

Read the full post on Wess’s blog

Quakermaps: DIY Friends FTW!

April 12, 2010

A few weeks ago Mic­ah Bales IM’ed me, as he often does, and asked for my feed­back on a project he and Jon Watts were work­ing on. They were build­ing a map of all the Friends meet­ing­hous­es and church­es in the coun­try, sub-divided by geog­ra­phy, wor­ship style, etc.

My first reac­tion was “huh?” I war­i­ly respond­ed: “you do know about FGC’s Quak​erfind​er​.org and FWC­C’s Meet­ing Map, right?” I had helped to build both sites and attest­ed to the amount of work they rep­re­sent. I was think­ing of a kind way of dis­cour­ag­ing Mic­ah from this her­culean task when he told me he and Jon were half done. He sent me the link: a beau­ti­ful web­site, full of cool maps, which they’ve now pub­licly announced at Quak​ermaps​.com. I tried to find more prob­lems but he kept answer­ing them: “well, you need to have each meet­ing have it’s own page,” “it does,” “well but to be real­ly cool you’d have to let meet­ings update infor­ma­tion direct­ly” (an idea I sug­gest­ed to FGC last month), “they will.” There’s still a lot of inputting to be done, but it’s already fabulous.
Two peo­ple work­ing a series of long days inputting infor­ma­tion and embed­ding it on Word­Press have cre­at­ed the coolest Meet­ing direc­to­ry going. There’s no six-figure grants from Quak­er foun­da­tions, no cer­ti­fied pro­gram­mers, no series of orga­niz­ing con­sul­ta­tions. No Sales­force account, Dru­pal instal­la­tions, Ver­ti­cal Response signups. No high paid con­sul­tants yakking in what­ev­er consultant-speak is trendy this year.
Just two guys using open source and free, with the cost being time spent togeth­er shar­ing this project – time well spent build­ing their friend­ship, I suspect.
I hope every­one’s notic­ing just how cool this is – and not just the maps, but the way it’s come togeth­er. Mic­ah and Jon grew up in two dif­fer­ent branch­es of Friends. As I under­stand they got to know each oth­er larg­er­ly through Jon’s now-famous and much-debated video Dance Par­ty Erupts dur­ing Quak­er Meet­ing for Wor­ship. They built a friend­ship (which you can hear in Mic­ah’s recent inter­view of Jon) and then start­ed a cool project to share with the world.
Con­ver­gent Friends isn’t a the­ol­o­gy or a spe­cif­ic group of peo­ple, but a dif­fer­ent way of relat­ing and work­ing togeth­er. The way I see it, Quak​ermaps​.com proves that Quak​erQuak​er​.org is not a fluke. The inter­net expos­es us to peo­ple out­side our nat­ur­al com­fort zones and pro­vides us ways to meet, work togeth­er and pub­lish col­lab­o­ra­tions with min­i­mal invest­ment. The quick response, flex­i­bil­i­ty and off-the-clock ethos can come up with tru­ly inno­vat­ed work. I think the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends is enter­ing a new era of DIY orga­niz­ing and I’m very excit­ed. Mic­ah and Jon FTW!
Read more:

Young Adult Friends Conference in Wichita this Fifth Month

March 17, 2010

I’ve been lucky enough to have two house­guests this week: Mic­ah Bales and Faith Kel­ley (no rela­tion). They’ve come up to the Philadel­phia area to help pub­li­cize a gath­er­ing of young adult Friends that will take place in Wichi­ta in a few months. Before they left, I got them to share their excite­ment for the con­fer­ence in front of my webcam.

Inter­view with Faith Kel­ley & Mic­ah Bales, two of the orga­niz­ers of the upcom­ing young adult Friends con­fer­ence in Wichi­ta Kansas.

FAITH: This is an invi­ta­tion for a gath­er­ing for young adult Friends ages 18 – 35 from all the branch­es of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends from all across the con­ti­nent. It’s going to be in Wichi­ta Kansas from May 28 – 31. It’s a time to get togeth­er and learn about each oth­er, to hear each oth­er’s sto­ries and wor­ship togeth­er. We’re real­ly excit­ed by this oppor­tu­ni­ty to have peo­ple who have nev­er been to these before and to have peo­ple who have been to oth­er gath­er­ings to come back.
MICAH: A lot of the advance mate­r­i­al is already up online so you can get a good idea what this con­fer­ence is going to be about and to get a sense of how to pre­pare your­self for a gath­er­ing like this. We’ll be get­ting togeth­er with folks from all over the coun­try, Cana­da and Mex­i­co – we’re hop­ing a lot of His­pan­ic Friends show up and we’ve already trans­lat­ed the web­site into Span­ish. Reg­is­tra­tion is set up already; ear­ly reg­is­tra­tion goes until April 15. Air­fare to Wichi­ta is look­ing pret­ty good at the moment; if you reg­is­ter ear­ly you’re like­ly to get a fair­ly decent plane tick­et out.
FAITH: We’re hop­ing peo­ple will choose to car­pool togeth­er. So get orga­nized, reg­is­ter ear­ly and look at the advance mate­ri­als online. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
2010 Young Adult Friends Conference

Dusting off the Elders of Balby

January 28, 2010

One of the blue­prints for Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty is the “Epis­tle from the Elders at Bal­by” writ­ten in 1656 at the very infan­cy of the Friends move­ment by a gath­er­ing of lead­ers from York­shire and North Mid­lands, England.

It’s the pre­cur­sor to Faith and Prac­tice, as it out­lines the rela­tion­ship between indi­vid­u­als and the meet­ing. If remem­bered at all today, it’s for its post­script, a para­phrase of 2 Corinthi­ans that warns read­ers not to treat this as a form to wor­ship and to remain liv­ing in the light which is pure and holy. That post­script now starts off most lib­er­al Quak­er books of Faith and Practice. 

But the Epis­tle itself is well worth dust­ing off. It address­es wor­ship, min­istry, mar­riage, and how to deal in meek­ness and love with those walk­ing “dis­or­der­ly.” It talks of how to sup­port fam­i­lies and take care of mem­bers who were impris­oned or in need. Some of it’s lan­guage is a lit­tle stilt­ed and there’s some talk of the role of ser­vants that most mod­ern Friend would object to. But over­all, it’s a remark­ably lucid, prac­ti­cal and rel­e­vant doc­u­ment. It’s also short: just over two pages.

One of the things I hear again and again from Friends is the desire for a deep­er com­mu­ni­ty of faith. Younger Friends are espe­cial­ly drawn toward the so-called “New Monas­tic” move­ment of tight com­mu­nal liv­ing. The Bal­by Epis­tle is a glimpse into how an ear­li­er gen­er­a­tion of Friends addressed some of these same concerns.

ONLINE EDITIONS OF THE EPISTLE AT BALBY:
Quak­er Her­itage Press: qhpress​.org/​t​e​x​t​s​/​b​a​l​b​y​.​h​tml
Street Cor­ner Soci­ety: strecor​soc​.org/​d​o​c​s​/​b​a​l​b​y​.​h​tml
Wik­isource: en​.wik​isource​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​T​h​e​_​E​p​i​s​t​l​e​_​f​r​o​m​_​t​h​e​_​E​l​d​e​r​s​_​a​t​_​B​a​l​b​y​,​_​1​656

DISCUSSIONS:
Brook­lyn Quak­er post & dis­cus­sion (2005): brook​lyn​quak​er​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​5​/​0​3​/​e​l​d​e​r​s​-​a​t​-​b​a​l​b​y​.​h​tml

QuakerQuakers in the World

January 19, 2010

I was able to make up this list that displays Quak​erQuak​er​.org membership profiles and upcoming gatherings in a geography-focused way.

Countries

Aus­tralia
Bel­gium
Cana­da
France
Ger­many
Greece
Ire­land
Kenya
Mex­i­co
Nether­lands
New
Zealand

Unit­ed
Kingdom

Unit­ed
States

Select Cities

Lon­don

Philadelphia


New York


Richmond


Greensboro


Portland


Seattle


Birmingham


Boston


Minneapolis


San Francisco

U.S. Regions

New
England


Mid-Atlantic


South­east US


Great Plains


Southwest


Midwest


North Pacific

U.S. States

Alaba­ma
Alas­ka
Ari­zona
Arkansas
Cal­i­for­nia
Col­orado
Con­necti­cut
Delaware
Dis­trict
of Columbia

Flori­da
Geor­gia
Hawaii
Ida­ho
Illi­nois
Indi­ana
Iowa
Kansas
Ken­tucky
Louisiana
Maine
Mary­land
Mass­a­chu­setts
Michi­gan
Min­neso­ta
Mis­sis­sip­pi
Mis­souri
Mon­tana
Nebras­ka
Neva­da
New
Hampshire

New
Jersey

New
Mexico

New
York

North
Carolina

North
Dakota

Ohio
Okla­homa
Ore­gon
Penn­syl­va­nia
Puer­to
Rico

Rhode
Island

South
Carolina

South
Dakota

Ten­nessee
Texas
Utah
Ver­mont
Vir­ginia
Wash­ing­ton
West
Virginia

Wis­con­sin
Wyoming

Gatherings by Theme

Con­ver­gent
Year­ly
Meetings


Gatherings

Retreats
Online

Young Adult

Gatherings by Location

New
England


Unit­ed Kingdom


Mid Atlantic


Baltimore


Philadelphia


Great Plains


Northwest

Ohio

Betsy Blake and “He Lives!” at Pendle Hill

November 19, 2009

A busy Quak­er week. On Tues­day I heard North Car­oli­na Friend Bet­sy Blake give a talk called “He Lives” at Pen­dle Hill, the sto­ry of how “Jesus has been her rock” to quote from the pro­gram descrip­tion. It was a great talk and very well received.

Bet­sy is a grad­u­ate of the Quak­er pro­gram at Guil­ford (so she was a
good fol­lowup for Max Carter’s talk this week­end) and she helped
orga­nize the World Gath­er­ing of Young Friends a few years ago. The talk was record­ed and should be up on the Pen­dle Hill short­ly (I’ll add a link when it is) so I’ll not try to be com­pre­hen­sive but just share a few of my impressions.

Bet­sy is the kind of per­son that can just come under the radar. She starts telling sto­ries, fun­ny and poignant by turn, each one a Bet­sy sto­ry that you take on its own mer­its. It’s only at the end of the hour that you ful­ly real­ize she’s been tes­ti­fy­ing to the pres­ence of Jesus in her life in all this time. Real-life sight­ings, com­fort­ing hands on shoul­ders fam­i­ly tragedy, intel­lec­tu­al doubts and expand­ed spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tions all come togeth­er like dif­fer­ent sides of the elephant.

One theme that came up a few times in the question-and-answer sec­tion is the feel­ing of a kind of spir­i­tu­al tired­ness – a fatigue from run­ning the same old debates over and over. It’s an exhaus­tion that squelch­es curios­i­ty about oth­er Friends and some­times moves us to fol­low the easy path in times of con­flict rather than the time-consuming & dif­fi­cult path that might be the one we need to be on.

The last time I was in the Pen­dle Hill barn it was to lis­ten to Shane Clai­borne. I’m one of those odd peo­ple that don’t think he’s a very good speak­er for lib­er­al Quak­ers. He down­plays the reli­gious instruc­tion he received as a child to empha­size the pro­gres­sive spir­i­tu­al smörgås­bord of his adult­hood with­out ever quite real­iz­ing (I think) that this ear­ly edu­ca­tion gave him the lan­guage and vocab­u­lary to ground his cur­rent spir­i­tu­al trav­els. Those who grow up in lib­er­al Quak­er meet­ings gen­er­al­ly start with the dab­bling; their chal­lenge is to find a way to go deep­er into a spe­cif­ic spir­i­tu­al prac­tice, some­thing that can’t be done on week­end trips to cool spir­i­tu­al destinations.

Bet­sy brought an appre­ci­a­tion for her ground­ed Chris­t­ian upbring­ing that I thought was a more pow­er­ful mes­sage. She talked about how her mom was raised in a tra­di­tion that could talk of dark­ness. When a fam­i­ly mem­ber died and doubt of God nat­u­ral­ly fol­lowed, her moth­er was able to remind her that God had healed the beloved sis­ter, only “not in the way we want­ed.” Pow­er­ful stuff.

The sounds at Pen­dle Hill were fas­ci­nat­ing: the sound of knit­ting nee­dles was a gen­tle click-clack through the time. And one annoy­ing speak­er rose at one point with an annoy­ing ser­mon­ette that I real­ized was a modern-day ver­sion of Quak­er singsong (lib­er­al Friend edi­tion), com­plete with dra­mat­ic paus­es and over-melodious deliv­ery. Fun­ny to real­ize it exists in such an unlike­ly place!

And a plug that the Tues­day night speak­er’s series con­tin­ues with some great Friends com­ing up, with North Car­oli­na’s Lloyd Lee Wil­son at bat for next week. Hey, and I’ll be there with Wess Daniels this May to lead a work­shop on “The New Monas­tics and Con­ver­gent Friends.”

Max Carter talk on introducing the Bible to younger Friends

November 17, 2009

Max Carter gave a talk for the Bible Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends this past week­end at Moorestown (N.J.) Friends Meet­ing. Max is a long-time edu­ca­tor and cur­rent­ly heads the Quak­er Lead­er­ship Schol­ars Pro­gram at Guil­ford Col­lege, a pro­gram that has pro­duced a num­ber of active twenty-something Friends in recent years. The Bible Asso­ci­a­tion is one of those great Philadel­phia relics that some­how sur­vived a cou­ple of cen­turies of upheavals and still plugs along with a mis­sion more-or-less craft­ed at its found­ing in the ear­ly 1800s: it dis­trib­utes free Bibles to Friends, Friends schools, and any First-day School class that might answer their inquiries.

Max’s pro­gram at Guil­ford is one of the recip­i­ents of the Bible Asso­ci­a­tion’s efforts and he began by jok­ing that his sole qual­i­fi­ca­tion for speak­ing at their annu­al meet­ing was that he was one of their more active customers.

Many of the stu­dents going through Max’s pro­gram grew up in the big­ger East Coast year­ly meet­ings. In these set­tings, being an involved Quak­er teen means reg­u­lar­ly going to camps like Catoctin and Onas, doing the FGC Gath­er­ing every year, and hav­ing a par­ent on an impor­tant year­ly meet­ing com­mit­tee. “Quak­er” is a spe­cif­ic group of friends and a set of guide­lines about how to live in this sub­cul­ture. Know­ing the rules to Wink and being able to craft a sug­ges­tive ques­tion for Great Wind Blows is more impor­tant than even rudi­men­ta­ry Bible lit­er­a­cy, let alone Bar­clay’s Cat­e­chism. The knowl­edge of George Fox rarely extends much past the song (“with his shag­gy shag­gy locks”). So there’s a real cul­ture shock when they show up in Max’s class and he hands them a Bible. “I’ve nev­er touched one of these before” and “Why do we have to use this?” are non-uncommon responses.

None of this sur­prised me, of course. I’ve led high school work­shops at Gath­er­ing and for year­ly meet­ing teens. Great kids, all of them, but most of them have been real­ly short­changed in the con­text of their faith. The Guil­ford pro­gram is a good intro­duc­tion (“we grad­u­ate more Quak­ers than we bring in” was how Max put it) but do we real­ly want them to wait so long? And to have so rel­a­tive­ly few get this chance. Where’s the bal­ance between let­ting them choose for them­selves and giv­ing them the infor­ma­tion on which to make a choice?

There was a sort of built-in irony to the scene. Most of the thirty-five or so atten­dees at the Moorestown talk were half-a-century old­er than the stu­dents Max was pro­fil­ing. It’s pret­ty safe to say I was the youngest per­son there. It does­n’t seem healthy to have such sep­a­rat­ed worlds.

Con­ver­gent Friends

Max did talk for a few min­utes about Con­ver­gent Friends. I think we’ve shak­en hands a few times but he did­n’t rec­og­nize me so it was a rare fly-on-wall oppor­tu­ni­ty to see first­hand how we’re described. It was pos­i­tive (we “bear watch­ing!”) but there were a few minor mis-perceptions. The most wor­ri­some is that we’re a group of young adult Friends. At 42, I’ve grad­u­at­ed from even the most expan­sive def­i­n­i­tion of YAF and so have many of the oth­er Con­ver­gent Friends (on a Face­book thread LizOpp made the mis­take of list­ing all of the old­er Con­ver­gent Friends and touched off a lit­tle mock out­rage – I’m going to steer clear of that mis­take!). After the talk one attendee (a New Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship reg­u­lar) came up and said that she had been think­ing of going to the “New Monas­tics and Con­ver­gent Friends” work­shop C Wess Daniels and I are co-leading next May but had second-thoughts hear­ing that CF’s were young adults. “That’s the first I’ve heard that” she said; “me too!” I replied and encour­aged her to come. We def­i­nite­ly need to con­tin­ue to talk about how C.F. rep­re­sents an atti­tude and includes many who were doing the work long before Robin Mohr’s Octo­ber 2006 Friends Jour­nal arti­cle brought it to wider attention.

Tech­niques for Teach­ing the Bible and Quakerism

The most use­ful part of Max’s talk was the end, where he shared what he thought were lessons of the Quak­er Lead­er­ship Schol­ars Pro­gram. He

  • Demys­ti­fy the Bible: a great per­cent­age of incom­ing stu­dents to the QLSP had nev­er touched it so it seemed foreign;
  • Make it fun: he has a newslet­ter col­umn called “Con­cor­dance Capers” that digs into the deriva­tion of pop cul­ture ref­er­ences of Bib­li­cal phras­es; he often shows Mon­ty Python’s “The Life of Bri­an” at the end of the class.
  • Make it rel­e­vant: Give inter­est­ed stu­dents the tools and guid­ance to start read­ing it.
  • Show the geneal­o­gy: Start with the parts that are most obvi­ous­ly Quak­er: John and the inner Light, the Ser­mon on the Mount, etc.
  • Con­tem­po­rary exam­ples: Link to con­tem­po­rary groups that are liv­ing a rad­i­cal Chris­t­ian wit­ness today. This past semes­ter they talked about the New Monas­tic move­ment, for exam­ple and they’ve pro­filed the Sim­ple Way and Atlanta’s Open Door.
  • The Bible as human con­di­tion: how is the Bible a sto­ry that we can be a part of, an inspi­ra­tion rather than a lit­er­al­ist authority.

Ran­dom Thoughts:

A cou­ple of thoughts have been churn­ing through my head since the talk: one is how to scale this up. How could we have more of this kind of work hap­pen­ing at the local year­ly meet­ing lev­el and start with younger Friends: mid­dle school or high school­ers? And what about bring­ing con­vinced Friends on board? Most QLSP stu­dents are born Quak­er and come from prominent-enough fam­i­lies to get meet­ing let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion to enter the pro­gram. Grad­u­ates of the QLSP are fun­neled into var­i­ous Quak­er posi­tions these days, leav­ing out con­vinced Friends (like me and like most of the cen­tral Con­ver­gent Friends fig­ures). I talked about this divide a lot back in the 1990s when I was try­ing to pull togeth­er the mostly-convinced Cen­tral Philadel­phia Meet­ing young adult com­mu­ni­ty with the mostly-birthright offi­cial year­ly meet­ing YAF group. I was con­vinced then and am even more con­vinced now that no renew­al will hap­pen unless we can get these com­ple­men­tary per­spec­tives and ener­gies work­ing together.

PS: Due to a con­flict between Feed­burn­er and Dis­qus, some of com­ments are here (Wess and Lizopp), here (Robin M) and here (Chris M). I think I’ve fixed it so that this odd spread won’t hap­pen again.

 
PPS: Max emailed on 2/10/10 to say that many QLSPers are first gen­er­a­tion or con­vinced them­selves. He says that quite a few came to Guil­ford as non-Quakers (“think­ing we had “gone the way of the T‑Rex”) and came in by con­vince­ment. Cool!

Hanging with the high schoolers

August 26, 2009

At the PYM High School Friends retreat, Fall 2009Had a good time with Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing high school Friends yes­ter­day, two mini-session on the tes­ti­monies in the mid­dle of their end-of-summer gath­er­ing. The sec­ond ses­sion was an attempt at a write-your-own tes­ti­monies exer­cise, fueled by my testimonies-as-wiki idea and ground­ed by pas­sages from an 1843 Book of Dis­ci­pline and Thomas Clark­son’s “Por­trai­ture”. My hope was that by reverse-engineering the old tes­ti­monies we might get an appre­ci­a­tion for their spir­i­tu­al focus. The exer­cise needs a bit of tweak­ing but I’ll try to fix it up and write it out in case oth­ers want to try it with local Friends.

The invite came when the pro­gram coor­di­na­tor googled “quak­er tes­ti­monies” and found the video below (loose tran­script is here):