Tag Archives ⇒ morning

Upcoming Friends Journal themes

October 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week we unveiled the next slate of themes for Friends Jour­nal, one which takes us all the way through the end of 2020 (I can’t get over how much fur­ther away this feels than the cal­en­dar says it is). This is the sixth round of themes since we intro­duced the for­mat back in the begin­ning of 2012. We’ve kept the pat­tern the same – nine themed issues a year, with two non-themed issues for more eclec­tic mate­r­i­al we get (

Before 2012, the mix had been flipped for years: two annu­al spe­cial issues, with the rest a catch-all from the incom­ing sub­mis­sion slush pile. I feel that more fre­quent themes have helped us steer clear of the rut of repeat­ing the same arti­cles on a too-frequent basis. We’re also see­ing more arti­cles con­scious­ly writ­ten for us (as opposed to be shopped around to var­i­ous pro­gres­sive pub­li­ca­tions). Most impor­tant­ly from an edi­to­r­i­al per­spec­tive, the process  also forces us to reach out to peo­ple, direct­ly and on social media, to encour­age them to write. One of my never-ending, never- reach­able goals, is to always be encour­ag­ing new voic­es in the mag­a­zine. This is one tool to help get there.

We’ve already start­ed get­ting feed­back from indi­vid­u­als that their favorite cause isn’t cov­ered in this lat­est list. I’m okay with that. We don’t cov­er every­thing every round. Core con­cerns of Friends get cov­ered on a reg­u­lar basis in the non-themed issues. Some authors are also real­ly cre­ative in find­ing a hook to bring their cause into seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed top­ic. Also, I think we’ve cov­ered all of the major top­ics in the last sev­en years — some­times mul­ti­ple times — and those arti­cles are still be read and shared and com­ment­ed on.

Many of these themes come from read­er sug­ges­tions. Oth­ers come from more ran­dom con­ver­sa­tions we have. One of my favorite this time is the issue on Gam­bling. That was inspired one late-January 2018 morn­ing when a new Friend called in to ask us if we had any arti­cles on the top­ic. Appar­ent­ly, she had been chas­tised at meet­ing that week­end for sug­gest­ing there should be a prize for who­ev­er guessed the cor­rect num­ber of valen­tine can­dy hearts in a jar. She want­ed to under­stand the Quak­er tes­ti­monies. Much to my sur­prise there had­n’t been much in recent Friends Jour­nal arti­cles. I ran­dom­ly asked on Face­book whether we had “essen­tial­ly dropped” our tes­ti­mo­ny on gam­bling. The resul­tant Face­book thread quick­ly made it obvi­ous that Friends have an issue-worthy amount of feel­ings on the topic.

Have fun look­ing over the list. If you have sug­ges­tions, let me know (I will write them down and remem­ber). If you want to encour­age peo­ple to write, please please do. Also, send me a mes­sage if you want to get on a month­ly email list in which I pro­mote an upcom­ing writ­ing dead­line. The next com­ing up in for March’s issue, Out­side the Meet­ing­house.


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New Jersey Transit wastes our time again

August 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I just came back from what was billed as a kind of hearing/information meet­ing on New Jer­sey Tran­sit’s planned shut­down of the Atlantic City Line. At least two of us had tak­en this seri­ous­ly enough that we had writ­ten 500-word state­ments (here’s mine) but as soon as I walked into the Atlantic City rail sta­tion this morn­ing at 8am, I real­ized that this was just a pro-forma, dis­or­ga­nized PR appearance.

The chief exec­u­tive of New Jer­sey Tran­sit, Kevin Cor­bett 1, was there telling us the same list of excus­es for the shut­down they’ve been telling us, name­ly, that this is about Pos­i­tive Train Con­trol (PTC) test­ing 2. At least I think he was. NJT appar­ent­ly does­n’t believe in micro­phones. I squeezed as close­ly as I could in the amor­phous crowd of maybe 100 pas­sen­gers who had turned up but I still could only make out a few words. Near­est Cor­bett were video cam­eras whose spot­lights lit up his face. Maybe I can watch the news tonight and hear the meet­ing that I drove forty min­utes to attend3.

I did hear repeat­ed invok­ing of “PTC” but no of those words were admis­sions or mea cul­pas about the long-simmering labor prob­lems that have led to train crew short­ages. Because NJ Tran­sit’s man­age­ment have been behind tar­gets for train­ing new crews, and because engi­neers have been leav­ing for better-paying jobs on Amtrak and Metro North, there aren’t enough crews to run all of its lines and also do PTC test­ing. The eas­i­est fix to the labor short­age is to just shut down the least polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed train line and rede­ploy its crews to NYC-bound trains. We’re told this is a tem­po­rary fix but what if the man­age­ment prob­lems hir­ing, train­ing, and retain­ing crews con­tin­ues to bot­tom out?

After half an hour of this, Tran­sit police found portable line mark­ers so that pas­sen­gers could line up to talk to Cor­bett. There were many pas­sen­gers I rec­og­nized from my 15 years of com­mut­ing this line and I stood try­ing to hear them but again, to no avail. It was clear he was just giv­ing the line.

Near­by was a table with sched­ules. I was pret­ty unhap­py but I asked them a spe­cif­ic ques­tion 4. At least the Tran­sit employ­ee said she did­n’t know and would look into it. She even wrote “Far­ley” on a pad of paper. I guess my trip was­n’t total­ly wasted.

If you’re a South Jer­sey local affect­ed by all this, there’s a peti­tion to sign. My friend Joseph (bicy­cleri­i­ights on Twit­ter) has also done a great job writ­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of vision­ary South Jer­sey tran­sit reform. Update: Also, Nore­ast­er­N­ick did a much bet­ter job get­ting to the front of the line and chal­leng­ing Cor­bett. His video is great.

Ask Me Anything: Do Quakers celebrate Easter and if so, how?

March 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A ques­tion From Jes­si­ca F about Friends and Easter.

On the face of it, this is an easy ques­tion. Ear­ly Friends were loath to rec­og­nize any litur­gi­cal prac­tices and they were lower‑p puri­tan­i­cal about any­thing that smacked of pagan­ism. Famous­ly, they didn’t use the com­mon names of the week or months because many of them referred to non-Christian deities, like Thor and Janus.

They were espe­cial­ly grumpy about any­thing that smacked of latter-day syn­cretism. Many of the church hol­i­days were seen as pagan fes­ti­vals with a super­fi­cial Chris­t­ian over­lay. I’ll be the first to admit they could get kind of obnox­ious this way. Wikipedia explains some of this attitude:

Oth­er Protes­tant groups took a dif­fer­ent atti­tude, with most Anabap­tists, Quak­ers, Con­gre­ga­tion­al­ists and Pres­by­ter­ian Puri­tans regard­ing such fes­ti­vals as an abom­i­na­tion. The Puri­tan rejec­tion of East­er tra­di­tions was (and is) based part­ly upon their inter­pre­ta­tion of 2 Corinthi­ans 6:14 – 16 and part­ly upon a more gen­er­al belief that, if a reli­gious prac­tice or cel­e­bra­tion is not actu­al­ly writ­ten in the Chris­t­ian Bible, then that practice/celebration must be a lat­er devel­op­ment and can­not be con­sid­ered an authen­tic part of Chris­t­ian prac­tice or belief — so at best sim­ply unnec­es­sary, at worst actu­al­ly sinful.

In Latin, East­er is called Pascha, a ref­er­ence to the Jew­ish Passover fes­ti­val. But in Eng­land, Pascha took place in the month the old Eng­lish called Ēostre after a god­dess whose fes­ti­val was cel­e­brat­ed in that month. This made it dou­bly hard for Eng­lish Protes­tant groups that want­ed to cleanse Chris­tian­i­ty of “popish” or “pagan” influ­ences. So for right or wrong, they ignored it like they did the day the world calls Christmas.

Sym­bol­i­cal­ly, Quak­ers love the idea of East­er. One of George Fox’s most key open­ings was that“Christ has come to teach the peo­ple him­self!” The idea that Jesus rose again and is with us is pret­ty cen­tral to tra­di­tion­al Quak­er beliefs.

These days East­er is large­ly cel­e­brat­ed by Friends stand­ing up on Sun­day to break the silence of wor­ship with nos­tal­gic sto­ries of East­ers in their pre-Quaker youth. Some­times they’ll admit to hav­ing attend­ed a East­er ser­vice at anoth­er church before com­ing to meet­ing that morn­ing. If you’re real­ly lucky, you’ll get min­istry about flow­ers or hats.

How does Truth prosper among us?

March 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

New Eng­land Friend Bri­an Dray­ton recent­ly vis­it­ed Philadel­phia and recount­ed host min­istry on the old Quak­er query, How does Truth pros­per among us?

Friends in the past used “Truth” in ways that went well beyond a sim­ple propo­si­tion or asser­tion of fact, a “truth claim,” some spe­cif­ic con­tent. “Truth” instead con­not­ed some­thing of the action and the real­i­ty of God’s work in the world, as we expe­ri­ence and try to live it.

Used by indi­vid­u­als as a greet­ing, some vari­a­tion of “How does the truth fare with thee?” can be a reminder that the friend­ships of Friends can be spir­i­tu­al­ly deep­er than “yo, whas­sup?” infor­mal­i­ty (at one point Friends would even eschew “Good morn­ing” as a greet­ing on the chance that the morn­ing might actu­al­ly not be com­par­a­tive­ly good).

Daily quotes

March 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

What’s an email newslet­ter with­out a dai­ly inspi­ra­tional quote, right? I’ve put togeth­er a lit­tle hack that should put one front and cen­ter every morn­ing. I’ve primed it with a hand­ful of clas­sics — Fox, the Pen­ing­tons, Jones. But as it gets going I’ll start includ­ing some of the great modern-day quotes that show up every week on the web. And rather than just quote a ran­dom 300-some-year-old quote out of con­text, I hope to find it embed­ded and dis­cussed in cur­rent blog posts. We’re a liv­ing tradition.

QuakerSpeak DVDs for new visitors

February 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

So I’ll admit some­thing: although I’m the senior edi­tor of Friends Jour­nal, and the Quak­er­S­peak YouTube video series is a project of Friends Jour­nal, I’m still jeal­ous of the way it pro­vides a far supe­ri­or entrée to Quak­er thought and life. The way you get to know some­one with such imme­di­a­cy for ten min­utes or so is very powerful.

Every year, Quak­er­S­peak video­g­ra­ph­er Jon Watts has put togeth­er DVDs with col­lec­tions of that sea­son’s videos. There’s a bit of irony in pay­ing for DVDs of free videos but the col­lec­tions are use­ful for shar­ing in meet­ing­house fel­low­ship rooms as part of First-day classes.

But this year’s DVD is spe­cial. It’s only eight videos and they’ve been curat­ed with a very spe­cif­ic audi­ence in mind: new­com­ers and first-time atten­ders. Because the entire DVD runs a bit under an hour, the per-disk price has been made low­er. Low enough hope­ful­ly, for Quak­er meet­ings to buy them in enough bulk that they can be giv­en out to atten­ders who come to visit.

Quak­er wor­ship is an alien con­cept to a lot of reli­gious seek­ers. And it’s very pos­si­ble to attend a Quak­er meet­ing and leave not know­ing much more about Friends’ beliefs and val­ues than a vis­i­tor had walk­ing in that morn­ing. Imag­ine hav­ing some­thing you could hand them to teach them more about the diver­si­ty and depth of Quak­er belief. That’s what these DVDs offer (and, if they’re from the cord-cutter gen­er­a­tion, they can always use the print­ed playlist to open YouTube on their phones).

The dif­fer­ence between a curi­ous per­son vis­it­ing once and a reg­u­lar atten­der (and some­day mem­ber) is some­times just a bit of fol­lowup. I’m excit­ed to see if meet­ings take up this oppor­tu­ni­ty. I think Quak­er­S­peak has been the most impor­tant Quak­er out­reach pro­gram of recent times; this DVD is yet anoth­er way that we’re bridg­ing it with on-the-ground Quak­er meet­ings. Check it out.

Quak­er­S­peak DVDs

Hammonton 2017 Fourth of July

July 5, 2017
· Martin Kelley

We didn’t see much of the Ham­mon­ton Fourth of July parade this year because once again the kids were in the bike parade por­tion (all except Fran­cis, who had a bad melt­down in the morn­ing and stayed home with mom).

The bike parade was again spon­sored by Toy Mar­ket, the inde­pen­dent toy store in town (sup­pli­er of much of our house­hold’s San­ta deliv­ery). They had a table full of red, white, and blue bunting that we could apply to the bikes. We all had a lot of fun.

Notes for next year: a tan­dem exten­sion on a adult bike looked like fun and then 7‑yo Gre­go­ry will be a good age for this (we should dig ours out from the back of the garage). Also: the parade has a dog con­tin­gent so maybe a much-calmer Fran­cis will be able to be part of that next year (we’re due to pick up the ser­vice dog in 12 days!, eeek!!!)