Quakers Today asks: What do you desire?

July 3, 2023

The July episode of Friends Jour­nal’s Quak­ers Today pod­cast asks: What do you desire?

Leave a voice memo with your name and the town where you live. The num­ber to call is 317-QUAKERS, that’s 317 – 782-5377. +1 if call­ing from out­side the U.S. The dead­line to answer is Sun­day July 9, 2023.

The ques­tion comes from lis­ten­er Glen Retief. Glen asks us to con­sid­er this ques­tion, What do you desire? It is a broad ques­tion that you can answer in lots of ways. What do you desire for your­self? Your future? Your rela­tion­ships? It could also be con­nect­ed to the wider world around you. What do you desire for your com­mu­ni­ty? The place where you wor­ship? Or for oth­er earth­lings? What do you desire?

Making meetings simpler

May 11, 2018

British Friend Helen Drew­ery writes about what might be a uni­ver­sal desire to make Quak­er orga­ni­za­tion­al life simpler

How can we achieve a flex­i­ble sim­plic­i­ty – liv­ing by the essence of the Quak­er approach but not treat­ing old habits as sacro­sanct? Ear­ly Quak­ers saw sim­plic­i­ty as strip­ping out of their lives the super­flu­ous activ­i­ties and things – John Wool­man called them ‘cum­ber’ – so that they could more ful­ly fol­low the lead­ings of the Spirit.

Beth Kantor on the G+ Nonprofit Brand pages:

November 9, 2011

“I’m try­ing to avoid being seduced by Shiny Object Syn­drome. It makes non­prof­its and indi­vid­u­als to adopt the lat­est cool social tool based on peer pres­sure, buzz, or a strange desire to be one of the first. It can also dis­tract you from your pri­or­i­ty to do list.”

Seems sen­si­ble advice.

Embed­ded Link

Google + Non­prof­it Brand Pages
Why does Google +  launch new stuff when I’m on a book dead­line!!   The long await­ed brand pages on Google + are here.    I put a post out on Google + 

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“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!).