last thursday Posts

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 proseltyzing 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.

An amazing thing has happened in the last two years: we've got Friends from the corners of Quakerism sharing our similarities and differences, our frustrations and dreams through Quaker blogs. Disenchanted Friends who have longed for deeper conversation and consolation when things are hard at their local meeting have built a network of Friends who understand. When our generation is settling down to write our memoirs -- our Quaker journals -- a lot of us will have to have at least one chapter about becoming involved in the Quaker blogging community.

Theo and I on the old bike this summer. More photos

Last Thursday my Francis-inspired paternity leave ended--two weeks paid for by my employer, two weeks or so of vacation time. It was good to have off though I must admit I spent more time corralling two-year old Theo than I did gazing into newborn Francis's eyes. I heartily recommend taking Septembers off. One of my more enjoyable tasks was the almost-daily bicycle rides with Theo. Sometimes we went across town to the lake and it's playground, Theo going up and down the slides over and over again until nighttime threatened and I had to insist on coming home. Other times we took long rides to local attractions such as last post's Blue Hole. The bike so symbolized our special time together that it seems almost proper that it was stolen from the train station on that first day of commuting, apparently the latest victim of my South Jersey town's bike theft ring. When I walked in the door that evening, Theo came running yelling "diya-di-cal!" but there was nothing I could do. Summer's over kid.

As we got onto the campus of UMass Amherst to help set up for this year's FGC Gathering, Julie & I realized that this is the first time we've been to this venue since we started plain dressing (last year we stayed home since Julie was very pregnant). FGC Friends tend to turn to the Lands End catalog for sartorial inspiration. Hippie culture is another font, both directly as tie-die shirts and in muted form as the tasteful fair-trade clothes that many older Friends prefer. Because the Gathering takes place in July and in sporadically air-conditioned buildings, people also dress for summer camp--khaki shorts & once colorful faded t-shirts are the de facto Gathering uniform. In this setting, just wearing long pants is cause for comment ("aren't you hot like that?!") Try broadfalls and a long-sleeve collarless shirt, or a long dress!

The U.S. media is giving all-out coverage to video stills of an American named Nicholas Berg, who was decapitated by iraqi insurgents (the original video bore the title "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American"). Barely mentioned is that Berg was arrested by U.S.-backed iraq police forces and detained without charge by iraqi police from around 24 March to 6 April, after being stopped at a checkpoint in Mosul. UPDATE: According to The Guardian and other sources, Berg was originally arrested by the iraqi police but actually held for the thirteen days by U.S. military personnel.

Yes, folks, stop looking for the video and start asking how Berg got into the hands of his executioners. His own family said the U.S. military was at least partially responsible for his imprisonment. On April 5, they filed a federal suit claiming that Mr. Berg was being held illegally by the United States military in iraq:

The Bergs last heard from their son April 9, when he told his parents he would come home by way of Jordan. Suzanne Berg said that the family had been trying for weeks to learn where their son was, but that federal officials had not been helpful. Philadelphia Inquirer

In what is becoming the motif of the iraq Occupation, agents with the F.B.I. claim that the iraqi police acted independently by arresting Berg in the first place. The police are yet another tier of the blame-and-denial game being played by the Pentagon and Bush Administration. The U.S. controls (or should control) the contractors and iraqi police and needs to take responsibility for what their minions are doing in iraq.

My heart goes out to the family of Nicholas Berg. He's from a Philadelphia suburb near the one I grew up in. He took classes at two colleges in my old neighborhood and I could easily have passed him cutting through the campuses. I can totally empathize with his desire to see the world and maybe make it a better place by helping to rebuild iraq.

There are questions that must be answered and the U.S. media had better start asking them:

When did the U.S.-backed iraqi police release Berg?

Who did they release him to?

Where has Berg been for the last month?

Who are the men who decapitated Berg and who were they working for?

Who released the execution video (even hawkish blogger Andrew Sullivan can't find the site, even Aljazeera doesn't say where it is) and who added the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi caption?

Some of the websites questioning the Berg story are clearly those of wingnut conspiracy types. With that warning, here are some interesting links and threads:

• Is Berg Story a Fraud? on the Nonviolence.org board.
• Doctor declares Berg video a fake. I myself wondered why the stills of the captors holding his head looked so clean-looking. The democraticunderground forum has other interesting discussions, including ones looking at the captor's body language and researching the video codecs the web video was recorded with (apparently very up-to-date, it was made by pros, perhaps purposefully kept fuzzy).
• iraq militants claim al-Zarqawi is dead
• Fishy Circumstances and Flawed Timelines Surround American's Beheading. Lots of links here.

For what it's worth, I was contacted my a major American news organization Thursday morning. The researcher said they were asking many of the same questions and she asked if I had uncovered anything interesting. If any of my readers know of other resources, send me an email and I'll post it here and pass it along to this news source.