youtube Posts

Had a good time with Philadelphia Yearly Meeting high school Friends yesterday, two mini-session on the testimonies in the middle of their end-of-summer gathering. The second session was an attempt at a write-your-own testimonies exercise, fueled by my testimonies-as-wiki idea and grounded by passages from an 1843 Book of Discipline and Thomas Clarkson's "Portraiture". My hope was that by reverse-engineering the old testimonies we might get an appreciation for their spiritual focus. The exercise needs a bit of tweaking but I'll try to fix it up and write it out in case others want to try it with local Friends.

The invite came when the program coordinator googled "quaker testimonies" and found the video below (loose transcript is here):

An interview with Raye, a member of Ohio Yearly Meeting Conservative who serves on their Electronic Outreach Committee. You can also watch it on QuakerQuaker: Quaker Video and Electronic Outreach.

Raye: Ohio Yearly Meeting holds our yearly meeting in Barnesville Ohio--some people know us as those Barnesville folks. We have an electronic Outreach Committee and that includes the oversight and ministry associated with our website. We spend time thinking about how to open up to people who might be interested in Friends' ways and might want to know more about us whether or not they've ever read the Journal of George Fox. We're trying to expand our witness, if you will.

One of the questions that has come up in this electronic outreach group is: what types of communication or video are useful for someone to get to know us but also respectful of the fact that we do worship and that worship is a spiritually intimate time. We're trying to bridge and deal with respecting the worshippers, the Friends themselves, to not put on a performance and yet to try to communicate what it is that is edifying in practice and worship.

Martin: How do you give newcomers a taste of Quakers without directing it too much? If you just have that silent empty box it's hard for newcomers to know what should be filling that box.

Raye: One of the things Friends have done for hundreds of years is to publish, to keep journals and to share that. But that's not all there is to the Friends experience. There are those quiet times and those moments of ministry that we believe are Spirit-inspired. Many of us wish we could give people a little taste of that because that doesn't show up in a lot of published writings. That spontaneous and timely, and at times prophetic, witness that we see in our Meetings. We have considered digital video as a way to do that.

Martin: I love the video possibilities here. Video can be a way of reaching out to more people.

Raye: It's not just anything that can be written. Certainly the writings that have been published are very helpful in getting some sort of a glimmer of where we have been, or in some cases where we are headed or where we are. But there is nothing like that experience of being with Friends in meeting. It doesn't always happen but there are these moments called a covered meeting or a gathered meeting where everybody seems to be in the same place spiritually and when seems to be messages and gifts coming through people. That's difficult to get across.

We're hoping that with video we can discuss these kinds of things after the fact. We don't want to turn it into a spectator sport or performance.

Martin: Authenticity is a key part of the Quaker message. You're not practicing what you're going to say for First Day or Sunday. You're sitting there and waiting for that immediate spirit to come upon you.

Raye: We don't know when that will happen. There are meetings where everybody is very quiet, where there's a sense of that spirit and unity but it may be an outwardly quiet meeting. I have been in meetings where someone stood up and began to sing their message or a psalm or someone had a wonderful sermon that was perfect for the moment. These things happen but we don't know when they will.

Both of my workshop co-leaders Wess and Robin have now checked in with preliminary reports. More material is being collected on the QuakerQuaker event page.

Wess and I have both been uploading lots of photos to Flickr using the "quakerreclaiming2009" tag. I've been uploading my video interviews both on Youtube and QuakerQuaker. You can see them at the reclaiming2009 tag (I have the feeling we've just doubled the Quaker content on Youtube but it's not that extreme). Anyone present with more photos can either upload them to Flickr with the "quakerreclaiming2009" tag or send them directly up to QuakerQuaker. Same with videos.

Hey all, the Reclaiming Primitive Quakerism workshop at California's Ben Lomond Center wrapped up a few hours ago (I'm posting from the San Jose airport). I think it went well. There were about thirty participants. The makeup was very intergenerational and God and Christ were being named all over the place!



I myself felt stripped throughout the first half, a sense of vague but deep unease--not at how the workshop was going, but about who I am and where I am. Christ was hard at work pointing out the layers of pride that I've used to protect myself over the last few years. This morning's agenda was mostly extended worship, begun with "Bible Reading in the Manner of Conservative Friends" (video below) and it really lifted the veil for me--I think God even joked around with me a bit.

As always, many of the high points came unexpectedly in small conversations, both planned and random. One piece that I'll be returning to again and again is that we need to focus on the small acts and not build any sort of movement piece by piece and not worry about the Big Conference or the Big Website that will change everything that we know. That's not how the Spirit works and our pushing it to work this way almost invariably leads to failure and wasted effort.

Another piece is that we need to start focusing on really building up the kind of habits that will work out our spiritual muscles. Chad of 27Wishes had a great analogy that had to do with the neo-traditionalist jazz musicians and I hoped to get an interview with him on that but time ran out. I'll try to get a remote interview (an earlier interview with him is here, thanks Chad for being the first interview of the weekend!)

I conducted a bunch of video interviews that I'll start uploading to my Youtube account and on the "reclaiming2009" tag on QuakerQuaker. When you watch them, be charitable. I'm still learning through my style. But it was exciting starting to do them and it confirmed my sense that we really need to be burning up Youtube with Quaker stuff.

I need to find my boarding gate but I do want to say that the other piece is putting together collections of practices that Friends can try in their location Friends community. Gathering in Light Wess led a really well-received session that took the Lord's Prayer and turned it into an interactive small group even. We took photos and a bit of video and we'll be putting it together as a how-to somewhere or other.

Pictures going up on Flickr, I'll organize them soon. Also check out ConvergentFriends.org and the Reclaiming Primitive Quakerism workshop page on QuakerQuaker.

On a recent evening I met up with Gathering in Light Wess, who was in Philadelphia for a Quaker-sponsored peace conference. Over the next few hours, six of us went out for a great dinner, Wess and I tested some testimonies, and a revolving group of Friends ended up around a table in the conference's hotel lobby talking late into the night (the links are Wess' reviews, these days you can reverse stalk him through his Yelp account).

Of all of the many people I spoke with, only one had any kind of featured role at the conference. Without exception my conversation partners were fascinating and insightful about the issues that had brought them to Philadelphia, yet I sensed a pervading sense of missed opportunity: hundreds of lives rearranged and thousands of air miles flown mostly to listen to others talk. I spent my long commute home wondering what it would have been like to have spent the weekend in the hotel lobby recording ten minute Youtube interviews with as many conference participants as I could. We would have ended up with a snapshot of faith-based peace organizing circa 2009.

Next weekend I'll be burning up more of the ozone layer by flying to California to co-lead a workshop with Wess and Robin M. (details at ConvergentFriends.org, I'm sure we can squeeze more people in!) The participant list looks fabulous. I don't know everyone but there's at least half a dozen people coming who I would be thrilled to take workshops from. I really don't want to spend the weekend hearing myself talk! I also know there are plenty of people who can't come because of commitments and costs.

So we're going to try some experiments--they might work, they might not. On QuakerQuaker, there's a new group for the event and a discussion thread open to all QQ members (sign up is quick and painless). For those of you comfortable with the QQ tagging system, the Delicious tag for the event is "quaker.reclaiming2009". Robin M has proposed using #convergentfriends as our Twitter hashtag.

There's all sorts of mad things we could try (Ustream video or live blogging via Twitter, anyone?), wacky wacky stuff that would distract us from whatever message the Inward Christ might be trying to give us. But behind all this is a real questions about why and how we should gather together as Friends. As the banking system tanks, as the environment strains, as communications costs drop and we find ourselves in a curious new economy, what challenges and opportunities open up?

My sort-of response to Callid's great Youtube piece on the Quaker testimonies, I compare the classic testimonies to a wiki: the collective knowledge of Friends distilled into specific cautions and guides. "We as Friends have found that...." I do talk about how the recent "SPICE" simplification (simplicity, integrity, integrity, community and equality) has robbed our notion of testimonies of some of their power.

Over on One Quaker Take, Timothy is surprised to read a definition of "Convergent Friend" that sounds a lot like a certain flavor of West Coast liberal Quakerism. It doesn't seem so surprising for me as it comes from Gregg Koskela, a pastor at an Evangelical Friends church. It was five years ago this month that I went to a loud pizza shop in Philadelphia to attend a  "Meet-Up" of readers of emerging church blogs and realized I had more common ground with these younger Evangelicals than I would have ever thought:

Just about each of us at the table were coming from different theological starting points, but it's safe to say we are all "post" something or other. There was a shared sense that the stock answers our churches have been providing aren't working for us. We are all trying to find new ways to relate to our faith, to Christ and to one another in our church communities. There's something about building relationships that are deeper, more down-to-earth and real. Perhaps it's finding a way to be less dogmatic at the same time that we're more disciplined. For Friends, that means questioning the contemporary cultural orthodoxy of liberal-think (getting beyond the cliched catch phrases borrowed from liberal Protestantism and sixties-style activism) while being less afraid of being pecularily Quaker.

Rich the Brooklyn Quaker was recently asking about early Friends views of atonement and heaven and hell and it's a great post, but so is Marshall Massey's comment about how later Friends altered the message in distinctly different ways. The different flavors of Friends have spent a lot of energy minimizing certain parts of the Quaker message and over-emphasizing others and maybe the truth lies in some of the nuances we long ago paved over.

I have a working theory that a movement of "Convergence" will feel suspiciously liberal in evangelical circles, suspiciously evangelical in liberal circles, and suspiciously worldly in Quaker conservative circles. But that's almost to be expected. The work to be done is different depending on where we're starting from.

I don't think Friends are alone in these kinds of matters. I see this phenomenon in other religious denominations--the post-Evangelicals I broke pizza with back in 2003 weren't Quakers. But Friends might have a better way out of the existential puzzles that arise. For we (generally) believe that our action should be motivated first and foremost by the direct instruction of the risen Christ working on us now. That means we can't rely on canned answers. What worked in the past might not work now. The faith is the same. But what needs to be done and what needs to be preached is very much a here-and-now kind of proposition.

I can't help but think of Howard Brinton. Back in the 1950s his generation managed a reunification of East Coast Quaker factions that had been warring for over a century. One way they did it was hanging out together and then redefining what it meant to be a Friend. In Friends for 300 Years, Brinton argued that tests for membership shouldn't look at one's beliefs or practices. It was a truce and I'm sure it made sense at the time: there was a fairly strong consensus on what Quakerism meant and the fights at the edges over details were distracting. Fifty years later, there's little consensus among Philadelphia Friends and even those in leadership positions are loathe to talk about faith or practice except in a kind of code. I can't think of a single Philadelphia Friend who publicly expresses Quaker belief with the clarity or passion of mid-century figures like Brinton, Thomas Kelly or Rufus Jones.

What worked in the past might not work now. What sounds like old hat to to us might be very liberating for others. Convergence isn't very new. It's just keeping ourselves from ossifying into our own human concepts and staying open to the direct Christ. It's finding a way to maintain that crazy balance between tradition and the inward light. Same as it ever was.