I think Wess should call this “early deadoption”

November 12, 2026
· Martin Kelley

My friend Wess Daniels is very cor­rect when he calls him­self an ear­ly adopter of social media. I’ve learned over the years to wait a few beats before fol­low­ing him down into some new cool ser­vice, just because who has the time? But to his cred­it, I’m pret­ty sure he was the first cheer­leader for Slack I had heard and I and my work col­leagues live in it all day now.

Over time he’s become more skep­ti­cal of social media:

> These com­pa­nies have fig­ured out how to make mon­ey off of every frac­tion of a sec­ond we use these plat­forms, mean­ing their busi­ness mod­el is not about help­ing us do what we came to the plat­form to do, their mod­el is to make sure we stay on as long as they can pos­si­bly keep us there and bring us back as often as pos­si­ble. Dis­trac­tion and pre­oc­cu­pa­tion is the name of the game.

I’ve cut back and dead­opt­ed plen­ty of social media. I’ve become ever more com­fort­able in my per­son­al blog. But I do miss the cama­raderie of the old days. Twit­ter RIP was quite a com­mu­ni­ty. I’m active on Bluesky but I’ll post things I know are inter­est­ing and hear nothing.

This mon­th’s issue of *Friends Jour­nal* is our annu­al fic­tion issues. The idea to do fic­tion orig­i­nat­ed quite lit­er­al­ly in a 2021 tweet from Annalee Flower Horne: “[Psst can we have a Quak­er sci­ence fic­tion anthology.](https://www.friendsjournal.org/in-but-not-of-this-world/)” I can’t think of any social media plat­form that has the mix of ban­ter and friend­ship and per­son­al­i­ty of gold­en age Twit­ter. The plat­forms kept chas­ing after mon­ey and algo­rithems; these days they’re full of AI slop. I can get the motivi­a­tion to deadopt.

Early Adoption (in the Opposite Direction) - Part One - gathering in light a blog by wess daniels
Ear­ly Adop­tion (in the Oppo­site Direc­tion) — Part One — gath­er­ing in light a blog by wess daniels 

I’ve been ear­ly adopt­ing as long as I’ve been old enough to adopt some­thing. As a child, I…

gathering in light a blog by wess daniels gath­er­ing in light a blog by wess daniels 

Writing inspired by… Quaker meeting for business?

November 12, 2026
· Martin Kelley

Novem­ber is fic­tion month for Friends Jour­nal. This week I inter­viewed Beck Daniel Wren about his sto­ry “Star­lings.” It’s a great tale that real­ly chal­lenges read­er to pon­der what iden­ti­ties we allow oth­ers — and our­selves — to see. There’s a lot that is top­i­cal in the sto­ry­telling (immi­gra­tion, gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion, scape­goat­ing, etc.) but it’s all in ser­vice to the sto­ry — a real tes­ta­ment to the writ­ing craft.

I asked Beck one of my go-to ques­tions for fic­tion and poet­ry: what makes a lit­er­ary work Quak­er? It’s often an unan­swer­able ques­tion. Yes, some sto­ries in our fic­tion issues take place in Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es and most of our authors are them­selves Friends (though that isn’t a require­ment). But it’d be ter­ri­bly reduc­tive to make those require­ments for publication. 

Beck cred­its his immer­sion in Quak­er faith with a refine­ment of writ­ing style, point­ing to metaphors of light that infuse “Star­lings” and oth­er works. But even more sur­pris­ing­ly, he says the process of our busi­ness meet­ings has allowed him to trust the read­er and not over explain metaphors. “I can open doors, I can ask ques­tions, and I don’t have to pro­vide all the answers.” I love it! It’s a great inter­view all around. You can watch the whole inter­view or read the show notes and tran­scripts over at the FJ website.

Cropwell Meeting Open House

October 20, 2026
· Martin Kelley

On Sun­day my meet­ing host­ed an open house to rein­tro­duce our­selves to our neigh­bors. Although the meet­ing has grown from five years ago — when only two peo­ple reg­u­lar­ly showed up at wor­ship — like all social bod­ies, we con­tin­ue to have ups and downs. A few ill­ness­es have recent­ly drawn some beloved reg­u­lars away. I’m con­vinced that regrow­ing a meet­ing is a 10-year project, at least, so we con­tin­ue on. The wor­ship is still deep and com­fort­ing. And the open house had a lot of great moments.

Cropwell Opens its Doors Again - Cropwell Quakers
Crop­well Opens its Doors Again — Crop­well Quakers 

On Sun­day, Octo­ber 18, Crop­well Quak­er Meet­ing sprung open the doors for its sec­ond Open House. About thirty…

Cropwell Quakers Crop­well Quakers 

Living the 200-Year Present: An Interview with S​.​E​.​W. Smith

October 20, 2026
· Martin Kelley

My Quak­er Talk inter­view with S​.​E​.​W. Smith, in which we talk about liv­ing with the eter­nal now and 200-year present. His arti­cle, Restore the Time, appears in the Octo­ber issue of Friends Jour­nal.

I’m a bit of a suck­er for what-if sce­nar­ios. A decade ago I got into Philip K. Dick­’s The Man in the High Cas­tle, which starts with the premise that the 1933 assas­si­na­tion attempt against FDR was suc­cess­ful and led step by step to the allies los­ing World War 2 (the 2015 TV series was also very well done). A cou­ple of years ago I addressed the debate going on about George Fox evad­ing a stronger stance against slav­ery while in Bar­ba­dos and won­dered if such a move would have destroyed the Quak­er move­ment: what might have hap­pened in such a scenario?

Show notes and tran­script.

How Do We Talk About Quaker Worship? Balancing Belief and Practice

October 14, 2026
· Martin Kelley

I talked with Jack Tripp, who teach­es ninth and eleventh grade Eng­lish at the same Quak­er school he him­self attend­ed a decade or so ago. With a reli­gious tra­di­tion as fierce­ly anti-creedal as ours — and one that has mor­phed and evolved into var­i­ous con­tra­dic­to­ry forms — how do we describe our­selves? The prob­lem is height­ened in a Quak­er school set­tings, where only a frac­tion of stu­dents will be Quak­er them­selves. Jack­’s arti­cle, Toward a Quak­er Pedi­gree, is in the online edi­tion of this mon­th’s Friends Jour­nal.

Show notes and transcript

Also, I don’t think I ever shared last mon­th’s Quak­er Talk pod­cast inter­view with Michelle Downey, “How a Quak­er Meet­ing Wel­comes Mil­i­tary Fam­i­lies.” I also wrote the intro­duc­tion to the Octo­ber issue, “Restor­ing Our Parts of the World.”

Turning Weapons into Peace: My Interview with Scotty Utz

September 14, 2026
· Martin Kelley

I inter­viewed Sep­tem­ber FJ author Scot­ty Utz about Guns-to-Garden Move­ment. Fas­ci­nat­ing wit­ness and some heart­break­ing sto­ries. From my intro:

One of the most pro­found and oft quot­ed state­ments from prob­a­bly the entire Bible is from Isa­iah, and it goes And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many peo­ple, and they shall beat their swords into plough shares, and their spears into prun­ing hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, nei­ther shall they learn war any more. And this may seem like a won­der­ful lyri­cal kind of state­ment. But what if we actu­al­ly took it seri­ous­ly and actu­al­ly start­ed tak­ing our instru­ments of war and turn­ing them into prun­ing hooks?

Full show notes and tran­scrip­tions here.

“Creationtide” and the Seasons of the Church and Earth

September 6, 2026
· Martin Kelley

A beau­ti­ful med­i­ta­tion by Bri­an Dray­ton on Quak­ers soft­en­ing on the ideas of times and sea­sons and how he (and I sus­pect many oth­er Friends) have come to more ful­ly embrace the sea­sons of both the wider Chris­t­ian Church and also the nat­ur­al sea­sons of the earth and cosmos.

Be Ready to Answer the Phone

August 20, 2026
· Martin Kelley

Thoughts on the sur­prise Tru­itt fam­i­ly vis­it yes­ter­day, because I know Quak­ers can be real­ly real­ly bad at this… Make sure you have a web­site that lists a phone num­ber that rings through to a real per­son in real time. One that also lists an email that will be prompt­ly read and answered. This event came togeth­er pret­ty fast. From the first phone call from town­ship offi­cial Sta­cy Webb late Tues­day after­noon to my unlock­ing the meet­ing­house doors was about 24 hours.

I was on a video call when Sta​cy’s first call came in so I had to let it go to voice­mail. So also have voice­mail set up. After my pre­vi­ous call end­ed I was able to reply to Sta­cy’s email and then fol­lowup with a quick call to con­firm details. This was one less detail she had to wor­ry about in an event with lots of mov­ing parts. (In addi­tion to a half dozen Tru­itt fam­i­ly mem­bers we had the may­or, deputy may­or, town­ship man­ag­er, a police liai­son, and a com­mu­ni­ca­tions staffer with a cam­era. That’s a lot of peo­ple to coor­di­nate.) In a lull in the event, Sta­cy told me it was great that she find and reach some­one at Crop­well Meet­ing so easily.

I know com­mu­ni­ca­tion can be hard but we need to be acces­si­ble. I’ve been ghost­ed SO MANY TIMES when try­ing to call or email Quak­er meet­ings. And it’s not just the small ones that don’t get back to me. Some­times meet­ings with paid office staff also don’t return mes­sages. Crop­well uses a Google Voice num­ber to for­ward phone calls to my per­son­al cell and emails also auto­mat­i­cal­ly for­ward to me. It’s not over­whelm­ing, not in the least — I let things for­ward to voice­mail when I need to and I have ringers turned off at night. But because Crop­well set this up even before I became involved, I’ve been able to respond to inquiries quick­ly, once even as I was dri­ving to meet­ing on Sun­day morn­ing (don’t wor­ry, I pulled over). Peo­ple already think we’re extinct. Don’t give them more rea­sons to think that’s true.