Tag Archives ⇒ grundy

FGC on Quaker Religious Ed

February 12, 2004
· Martin Kelley

One of the pieces I helped put online in my role of FGC web­mas­ter is FGC Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion: Lessons for the 21st Cen­tu­ry, by Beck­ey Phipps. It’s def­i­nite­ly worth a read. It’s com­prised of inter­views of three Friends:

Ernie Busce­mi: “It is the most amaz­ing thing, all the kids that I know that have gone into [Quak­er] lead­er­ship pro­grams – they’ve dis­ap­peared. I see the same thing [hap­pen­ing] as a woman and per­son of col­or, we are doing some­thing wrong.”

Mar­ty Grundy: “Our branch [of Friends] has dis­card­ed the tools by which ear­li­er Friends’ prac­tices were formed. We’ve lost our under­stand­ing of what it is that we are about.”

Arthur Larrabee: “We need to tap into God’s ener­gy and God’s joy. Ear­ly Friends had that ener­gy, they had a vision, they had the con­nec­tion with the inward Christ, a source of infi­nite ener­gy pow­er and joy.”

While I wish this could be extend­ed a bit (e.g., why not ask the ‘kids’ them­selves where they’ve gone), at least these are the right questions.

Signs of Hope

November 26, 2003
· Martin Kelley

I think I some­times appear more pes­simistic than I real­ly am. Here are some of this week’s rea­sons for hope.
* Being in touch with Jorj & Sue and Barb and Tobi because of these writ­ings (could the “Lost Generation”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000147.php be mud­dling towards a new coalesence?)
* A small flur­ry of recent talks and pam­phlets about redis­cov­er­ing tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism: Mar­ty Grundy’s 2002 lec­ture _Quaker Trea­sure: Dis­cov­er­ing The Basis For Uni­ty Among Friends_, Paul Lacey’s _The Author­i­ty Of Our Meet­ings Is The Pow­er Of God_ , and Lloyd Lee Wilson’s “Wrestling With Our Faith Tradition”:http://www.ncymc.org/journal/ncymcjournal3.pdf (PDF)
* Tony P. say­ing he was griev­ed that Julie has left the Soci­ety of Friends and car­ing enough to talk to her. Thank you.
* A fly­er I saw this week­end, writ­ten by PYM Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion staff. It was a list of what they thought they should be doing and it was real­ly pret­ty good (why don’t they’d print this in _PYM News_ , it’s much bet­ter than their boil­er­plate entries this issue). Even more I hope the work does take a move in that direction.
* Thomas Ham­m’s The Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca, which just came in yes­ter­day. It’s per­haps a lit­tle too intro­duc­to­ry but we need a good intro­duc­tion and Ham­m’s the one to write it. His book on Ortho­dox Friends, Trans­for­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism is amaz­ing­ly well researched and essen­tial read­ing for any involved Friend who wants to under­stand who we are. He’s work­ing on a com­pan­ion his­to­ry on the Hick­sites, which is very much needed.