Future of Quaker media at Pendle Hill next month

April 27, 2012

I’m part of a dis­cus­sion at the Pen­dle Hill con­fer­ence cen­ter out­side Philadel­phia next month. Every­one’s invit­ed. It’s a rare chance to real­ly bring a lot of dif­fer­ent read­ers and media pro­duc­ers (offi­cial and DIY) togeth­er into the same room to map out where Quak­er media is head­ed. If you’re a pas­sion­ate read­er or think that Quak­er pub­li­ca­tions are vital to our spir­i­tu­al move­ment, then do try to make it out.

Youtube, Twit­ter, pod­casts, blogs, books. Where’s it all going and who’s doing it? How does it tie back to Quak­erism? What does it mean for Friends and our insti­tu­tions? Join pan­elists Charles Mar­tin, Gabriel Ehri and Mar­tin Kel­ley, along with Quak­er pub­lish­ers and writ­ers from around the world, and read­ers and media enthu­si­asts, for a wide-ranging dis­cus­sion about the future of Quak­er media.

We will begin with some wor­ship at 7.00pm If you’d like a deli­cious Pen­dle Hill din­ner before­hand please reply to the Face­book event wall (see http://​on​.fb​.me/​q​u​a​k​e​r​m​e​dia). Din­ner is at 6.00pm and will cost $12.50

This is part of this year’s Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions con­fer­ence. QUIP has been hav­ing to re-imagine its role over the last ten years as so many of its anchor pub­lish­ers and book­stores have closed. I have a big con­cern that a lot of online Quak­er mate­r­i­al is being pro­duced by non-Quakers and/or in ways that aren’t real­ly root­ed in typ­i­cal Quak­er process­es. Maybe we can talk about that some at Pen­dle Hill.

Remembering George Willoughby

January 9, 2010

There’s a nice remem­brance of George Willough­by by the Brandy­wine Peace Com­mu­ni­ty’s Bob Smith over on the War Resisters Inter­na­tion­al site. George died a few days ago at the age of 95. It’s hard not to remem­ber his favorite quip as he and his wife Lil­lian cel­e­brat­ed their 80th birth­days: “twen­ty years to go!” Nei­ther of them made it to 100 but they cer­tain­ly lived fuller lives than the aver­age couple.

1
George in 2002, from War Resisters International

I don’t know enough of the details of their lives to write the obit­u­ary (a Wikipedia page was start­ed this morn­ing) but I will say they always seemed to me like the For­rest Gumps of peace activists — at the cen­ter of every cool peace wit­ness since 1950. You squint to look at the pho­tos and there’s George and Lil, always there. Or maybe pop music would give us the bet­ter anal­o­gy: you know how there are entire b‑rate bands that carve an entire career around end­less­ly rehash­ing a par­tic­u­lar Bea­t­les song? Well, there are whole activist orga­ni­za­tions that are built around par­tic­u­lar cam­paigns that the Willough­bys cham­pi­oned. Like: in 1958 George was a crew mem­ber of the Gold­en Rule (pro­filed a bit here), a boat­load of crazy activists who sailed into a Pacif­ic nuclear bomb test to dis­rupt it. Twelve years lat­er some Van­cou­ver activists stage a copy­cat boat sail­ing, an act which spawned Green­peace. Lil­lian was con­cerned about ris­ing vio­lence against women and start­ed one of the first Take Back the Night march­es. If you’ve ever sat in an activist meet­ing where every­one’s using con­sen­sus, then you’ve been influ­enced by the Willoughbys!

2
The Gold­en Rule, 1959, from the Swarth­more Peace Collection.

For many years I lived deeply embed­ded in com­mu­ni­ties co-founded by the Willough­bys. There’s a recent inter­view with George Lakey about the found­ing of Move­ment for a New Soci­ety that he and they helped cre­ate. In the 1990s I liked to say how I lived “in its ruins,” work­ing at its pub­lish­ing house, liv­ing in one of its land-trusted hous­es, and get­ting my food from the coop, all insti­tu­tions that grew out of MNS. I got to know the Willough­bys through Cen­tral Philadel­phia meet­ing but also as friends. It was a treat to vis­it their house in Dept­ford, N.J. — it adjoined a wildlife sanc­tu­ary they helped pro­tect against the strip-mall sprawl that is the rest of that town. I last saw George a few months ago, and while he had a bit of trou­ble remem­ber­ing who I was, that irre­press­ible smile and spir­it were very strong!

When news of George’s pass­ing start­ed buzzing around the net I got a nice email from Howard Clark, who’s been very involved with War Resisters Inter­na­tion­al for many years. It was a real blast-from-the-past and remind­ed me how lit­tle I’m involved with all this these days. The Philadel­phia office of New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers went under in 1995 and a few years ago I final­ly dropped the Non​vi​o​lence​.org project that I had start­ed to keep the orga­niz­ing going.

3
George at Fort Gulick in Pana­ma (undat­ed), also from Swarthmore.

I’ve writ­ten before that one of the clos­est modern-day suc­ces­sor to the Move­ment for a New Soci­ety is the so-called New Monas­tic move­ment – explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian but focused on love and char­i­ty and often very Quak­er’ish. Our cul­ture of sec­u­lar Quak­erism has kept Friends from get­ting involved and shar­ing our decades of expe­ri­ence. Now that Shane Clai­borne is being invit­ed to seem­ing­ly every lib­er­al Quak­er venue, maybe it’s a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to look back on our own lega­cy. Friends like George and Lil­lian helped invent this form.

I miss the strong sense of com­mu­ni­ty I once felt. Is there a way we can com­bine MNS & the “New Monas­tic” move­ment into some­thing explic­it­ly reli­gious and pub­lic that might help spread the good news of the Inward Christ and inspire a new wave of lefty peacenik activism more in line with Jesus’ teach­ings than the xeno­pho­bic crap that gets spewed by so many “Chris­t­ian” activists? With that, anoth­er plug for the work­shop Wess Daniels and I are doing in May at Pen­dle Hill: “New Monas­tics and Cov­er­gent Friends.” If mon­ey’s a prob­lem there’s still time to ask your meet­ing to help get you there. If that does­n’t work or dis­tance is a prob­lem, I’m sure we’ll be talk­ing about it more here in the com­ments and blogs.

2010 update: David Alpert post­ed a nice remem­brance of George.

August 2013 updates from the pages of Friends Jour­nal: The Gold­en Rule Shall Sail Again and Expand­ing Old Pine Farm.

Friends Familiar with My Struggles

May 5, 2005

A Guest Piece from ‘Quak­er­s­peak’ C. Reddy.

On April 23 I flew to Ore­gon to serve on an edi­to­r­i­al board for a book that QUIP is putting togeth­er of young Friends’ expe­ri­ences of Quak­erism. After arriv­ing in Ore­gon but before I met with the edi­to­r­i­al board for this, I served on a pan­el with the oth­er young Friends on the edi­to­r­i­al board in a QUIP meet­ing (as we had arrived at the end of a QUIP con­fer­ence for our meet­ing) about how media, print­ed or oth­er­wise, inspired us spir­i­tu­al­ly. As we relat­ed our expe­ri­ences as young Friends (and grow­ing up as Quak­ers), a num­ber of issues sur­faced rather quickly.

As young Friends move through high school and enter the [young] adult world, there is often a gen­er­al lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between young Friends and adults in Meet­ings, as if there’s some ten­sion about it. Per­son­al­ly, as a young Friend in Durham Friends Meet­ing (NCYM(Cons.)), I’ve found that I know cer­tain adults — ones with whom I have inter­act­ed more specif­i­cal­ly over the years as I have grown up. Often these are par­ents of oth­er young Friends in the Meet­ing or peo­ple who have been involved in youth group events. What’s miss­ing is the con­nec­tion to the rest of the adults in Meet­ing; I’ve been attend­ing Durham Friends Meet­ing since I was born (with a peri­od dur­ing mid­dle school where I was most­ly absent, but for the last few years I’ve been quite reg­u­lar in atten­dance) and I feel like most of the meet­ing has no idea who I am. In addi­tion to that, I’ve not known how to com­mu­ni­cate my involve­ment and ded­i­ca­tion in var­i­ous nation­al Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties, such as being cho­sen as one of six co-clerks of the HS pro­gram at FGC Gath­er­ing this sum­mer, my par­tic­i­pa­tion in Young Quakes, my atten­dance at a Pen­dle Hill Clerk­ing work­shop last fall, my involve­ment in this QUIP book, or how I have been read­ing many Quak­er books over the last few months, all of which have been VERY inte­gral in my spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment. Even Friends in Durham Friends Meet­ing with whom I do con­verse some­times after Meet­ing do not know of all these things with which I am involved.

Also, when I stopped attend­ing First Day school in Jan­u­ary of my junior year in high school (a lit­tle over a year ago) and began attend­ing the full hour of Wor­ship, I spoke to two youth lead­ers about it briefly so they would under­stand, and then there was no fur­ther response. Look­ing back on this, I feel that the Meet­ing should be more involved in such a tran­si­tion for all young Friends — not just those adults direct­ly involved in the youth group/First Day school, but every­one should be more aware and atten­tive of the young Friends in Meet­ing and their involve­ment in Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties out­side of Meeting.

One thing that each of us felt is very impor­tant yet very lack­ing is men­tor­ship with­in Meet­ing for Wor­ship. There need to be adults who are not nec­es­sar­i­ly First Day school teach­ers, youth group lead­ers, or par­ents who are will­ing to have a rela­tion­ship with a young Friend as some­one who has had more expe­ri­ence with Quak­erism and can nur­ture a young Friend’s spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment. A young Friend who was in Ore­gon with me relat­ed her expe­ri­ences with a men­tor she has at Earl­ham (she is a second-year there, cur­rent­ly), and how she sees him about once a week; often she even receives books to read from him.

As the only active young Friend at my school (I’m sort of the ‘token’ Quak­er around), I usu­al­ly do not have any­one to talk to about my spir­i­tu­al find­ings and lead­ings. As I have con­tin­ued to devel­op spir­i­tu­al­ly, I find more and more I need oth­er Friends to talk who are famil­iar with my struggles.

These are issues not only with­in Durham Friends Meet­ing, but in Meet­ings across the coun­try. I rec­og­nize that there are efforts to improve youth pro­grams every­where, but it nev­er hurts to start locally.

As a grad­u­at­ing senior this year, and as an involved Friend, I would like to improve my rela­tion­ship with the Meet­ing as a whole and make way for bet­ter rela­tion­ships between mem­bers and young Friends in the future. This, how­ev­er, needs to be ful­ly a double-sided effort.

Quaker publications meeting (QUIP) in Indiana

April 28, 2004

Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions, bet­ter known as “QUIP,” is a col­lec­tion of 50 Quak­er pub­lish­ers, book­sellers and authors com­mit­ted to the “min­istry of the writ­ten word.” I often think of QUIP as a sup­port group of sorts for those of us who real­ly believe that pub­lish­ing can make a dif­fer­ence. It’s also one of those places where dif­fer­ent branch­es of Friends come togeth­er to work and tell sto­ries. QUIP ses­sions strike a nice bal­ance between work and unstruc­tured time. It has its own nice cul­ture of friend­li­ness and coop­er­a­tion that are the real rea­son many of us go every year.

Quakers Uniting in Publications annual meeting in Richmond Indiana 2004.
Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions annu­al meet­ing in Rich­mond Indi­ana 2004.