Twitter thread of the day

May 31, 2019

So this happened:

So yeah, THAT Lin-Manuel Miran­da. I’m going to have Moana songs in my head all day now. See the line where the sky meets THE sea? It calls ME, And no one KNOOOOOWWS, how far it GOOOEEES. (okay, it sounds bet­ter when my 8yo daugh­ter sings along in the car).

Nicole Cliffe is a for­mer athe­ist turned Chris­t­ian (but AFAIK, not Quak­er (yet)) who told her con­ver­sion sto­ry in Chris­tian­i­ty Today a few years ago. One of her claims to fame is co-founding The Toast, which stop pub­lish­ing in 2016 but still has some­one pay­ing for the web serv­er.

And in case Lin-Manuel swings by, he should know that his­to­ry geek Quak­er hip hop is a thing.

A more modern commission

March 7, 2019

As an East Coast unpro­grammed Friend, Quak­er mis­sion work is still a bit exot­ic. We’re used to read­ing of well-meaning nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Friends whose atti­tudes shock us today. But here’s a sto­ry of some Mid­west mis­sion work with the Shawnee in the 1970s and 80s.

Their “mis­sion” work con­sists of farm­ing, teach­ing, music and wood­work­ing and lan­guage trans­lat­ing, lots of trans­port­ing chil­dren and teens. It also involves preach­ing each week, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in funer­als, wed­dings, and oth­er tra­di­tion­al pas­toral duties, all aimed at intro­duc­ing peo­ple to Jesus.

Their “mis­sion” work con­sists of farm­ing, teach­ing, music and wood­work­ing and lan­guage trans­lat­ing, lots of trans­port­ing chil­dren and teens. It also involves preach­ing each week, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in funer­als, wed­dings, and oth­er tra­di­tion­al pas­toral duties, all aimed at intro­duc­ing peo­ple to Jesus. 

http://​www​.lib​er​al​first​.com/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​o​u​r​-​g​r​e​a​t​-​c​o​m​m​i​s​s​ion

Top 10 Quakers in fiction

January 9, 2019

Although the title gives poten­tial read­ers the impres­sion that this is yet anoth­er click-bait lis­ti­cle, the arti­cle is by a Quak­er nov­el­ist and starts with nice obser­va­tions about Friends and creativity:

In the light of our high ideals, it can be hard for indi­vid­ual Quak­ers not to feel inad­e­quate. I cer­tain­ly do. We’re exhort­ed to “let our lives speak”, and I often feel like my life doesn’t have much to say. But I am a writer. As a com­mu­ni­ty that lis­tens patient­ly for the truth, Quak­ers pro­vide a unique place for cre­ativ­i­ty. The faith that can sit through hours of Meet­ing – through bore­dom, frus­tra­tion, dis­trac­tion – is the same thing that keeps me going when I’m strug­gling for my next idea. We wor­ship in silence, but we’re wait­ing for words, which some­how gives me faith that, if I wait in front of a blank page for long enough, the right sto­ry will come. 

https://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​b​o​o​k​s​/​2​0​1​9​/​j​a​n​/​0​9​/​t​o​p​-​1​0​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​i​n​-​f​i​c​t​i​o​n​?​C​M​P​=​t​w​t​_gu

In Newly Found Audio, A Forgotten Civil Rights Leader Says Coming Out ‘Was An Absolute Necessity’

January 7, 2019

Wow, this should be inter­est­ing! The pod­cast series intro is all we have so far but this NPR piece is dish­ing some of the details of what we’ll hear when this episode airs:

Despite the risks, Rustin felt it was his respon­si­bil­i­ty to be open about his sex­u­al­i­ty. He traces that duty back to an expe­ri­ence he had as a black man in the 1940s Jim Crow South, when he took his place at the back of a seg­re­gat­ed bus.

“As I was going by the sec­ond seat to go to the rear, a white child reached out for the ring neck­tie I was wear­ing and pulled it,” he recalled in the new­ly released audio. “Where­upon its moth­er said, ‘Don’t touch a n*****.’ ”

As Rustin tells it, here’s what ran through his mind in that moment after the white woman called him the slur: “If I go and sit qui­et­ly at the back of that bus now, that child, who was so inno­cent of race rela­tions that it was going to play with me, will have seen so many blacks go in the back and sit down qui­et­ly that it’s going to end up say­ing, ‘They like it back there, I’ve nev­er seen any­body protest against it.’ ” 

Rustin was fired from his work with orga­ni­za­tions like the Fel­low­ship of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and he often had to work semi-anonymously behind the scenes. The famous March on Wash­ing­ton that we remem­ber for Mar­tin Luther King Jr.‘s speech was Rustin’s idea.

One of his catch-phrases in speech­es was that we should “speak truth to pow­er.” When he worked with the Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee to write the famous 1955 pam­phlet of that name, not only was­n’t he not list­ed as one of the authors, but the oth­ers con­coct­ed some ridicu­lous sto­ry about the phrase being some ancient Quak­er say­ing. Shame­ful. I real­ly want to lis­ten to his sto­ry and can’t wait for the podcast!

https://​www​.npr​.org/​2​0​1​9​/​0​1​/​0​6​/​6​8​2​5​9​8​6​4​9​/​i​n​-​n​e​w​l​y​-​f​o​u​n​d​-​a​u​d​i​o​-​a​-​f​o​r​g​o​t​t​e​n​-​c​i​v​i​l​-​r​i​g​h​t​s​-​l​e​a​d​e​r​-​s​a​y​s​-​c​o​m​i​n​g​-​o​u​t​-​w​a​s​-​a​n​-​a​b​s​o​?​f​b​c​l​i​d​=​I​w​A​R​3​e​U​S​v​E​9​R​s​H​V​j​g​Q​U​3​z​C​m​D​s​6​z​4​9​b​I​u​K​3​i​j​T​t​1​J​B​z​n​V​7​B​V​z​p​e​k​H​7​G​2​k​w​C​m2c

Mike Shell reviews book reviews

November 13, 2018

Okay, it’s not quite so ref­er­en­tial: Mike’s lift­ing up three books in Sep­tem­ber’s Friends Jour­nal book columns that “help ‘white’ read­ers go deep­er into self-awareness about the hid­den dynam­ics of racism.” He also tells a lit­tle of his own sto­ry of color-blindness.

When my “white” friends said I couldn’t bring my “black” best friend to their lunch table, I shrugged and sat with him at a “black” table. On the minus side, when some­one in the school park­ing lot shout­ed nig­ger lover, and my friend want­ed to fight, I just told him I didn’t mind the insult. That was prob­a­bly my first seri­ous­ly hurt­ful act of “white color-blindness.” It took me decades to real­ize, to my shame, that it was he who was being insult­ed, not me. 

https://​uni​ver​sal​ist​friends​.org/​w​e​b​l​o​g​/​t​h​r​e​e​-​b​o​o​k​s​-​f​o​r​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​p​e​o​ple

Patricia Dallmann’s observations of Matthew 17

September 18, 2018

A fishy story:

This isn’t your ordi­nary fish sto­ry, though it is incred­i­ble. Nev­er­the­less, there’s a les­son about real­i­ty being taught here, a les­son to be con­firmed by expe­ri­ence alone. For the expe­ri­ence goes well beyond that which we have learned is pos­si­ble in nature, just like the sto­ry itself. 

http://​www​.quak​erquak​er​.org/​x​n​/​d​e​t​a​i​l​/​2​3​6​0​6​8​5​:​B​l​o​g​P​o​s​t​:​1​6​1​406

A New Creation Story

August 16, 2018

A nice piece on Philadel­phia Friend O:

For O., a mem­ber of Cen­tral Philadel­phia Month­ly Meet­ing, car­ry­ing this query for pas­toral min­istry awak­ens joy in her heart. It rais­es impor­tant ques­tions: Are we trans­formed by the pow­er of love, dur­ing our bio­log­i­cal con­cep­tion as human beings? Might our lives be a mea­sure­less love sto­ry about creation?

It’s hard to cap­ture O’s per­son­al­i­ty in ASCII char­ac­ters. She’s been in a few Quak­er­S­peak videos.

A New Cre­ation Sto­ry: Embrac­ing Love