Monthly Archives ⇒ March 2005

QuaCarol: You Don’t Want to Be Ranters Anymore

March 11, 2005
· Martin Kelley

By QuaC­arol
Some­times I have to lift up com­ments and make them their own posts. Here’s one of QuaC­arol’s reply to “Uh-Oh: Beppe’s Doubts”:/martink/archives/000544.php: “I see this com­mu­ni­ty of blog­gers, reach­ing out to each oth­er and con­nect­ing, when meet­ings (and here I ven­ture to say “all”) are focused on keep­ing their pam­phlet racks filled, rather than post­ing URLs on their bul­letin boards or cre­at­ing a newcomer’s URL handout.”

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Uh-Oh: Beppe’s Doubts

March 9, 2005
· Martin Kelley

I’ve occa­sion­al­ly thought of Beppe­blog’s  Joe Gua­da as my blog­ging Quak­er dopple­ganger. More than once he’s writ­ten the post I was about to write. And more than one impor­tant arti­cle of mine start­ed as com­men­tary to one of his insight­ful articles.

So I’m wor­ried that he’s writ­ten the first of a mul­ti­part arti­cle ask­ing Is it time to leave Quak­erism. I’m wor­ried not just that Quak­erism would lose a bright Light, etc., etc, but because I know that now I’m going to have to pub­licly mull over the ques­tion that’s a con­stant back­ground hum that I try not to think about.

Update: just to prove my point, my com­ment to Joe’s post was more inter­est­ing that my post point­ing to his post. Here’s the com­ment I just left there:

There was one day in wor­ship a few years ago right around the time when my wife Julie decid­ed to leave Quak­erism when I had this odd vision. I imag­ined us as boul­ders the front edge of a water­fall. Thou­sands of gal­lons of water swept over us every day, erod­ing and scar­ring our sur­face and under­min­ing the frag­ile base we were on. When Boul­der Julie final­ly dis­lodged and fell off the precipice of Quak­erism, I real­ized that one of the rocks that had held me in place was now gone and now there was going to be even more water and pres­sure try­ing to push me off.
I say this because you’ve become one of my blog­ging rocks, some­one who con­firms that I’m not a total nut­case. If you went over the edge I’d have to reassess my sit­u­a­tion and at least take a peek down myself. At the very least I’m going to have to blog about why I’ve stayed so long. I’m sure this is only part one to my com­men­tary on these issues…

Bulldozing the U.N.

March 8, 2005
· Martin Kelley

Pres­i­dent Bush has nom­i­nat­ed a “foe of the Unit­ed Nations to be its U.S. ambassador”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13790-2005Mar7.html. Ten years ago he declared: “There’s no such thing as the Unit­ed Nations,” and went on to say “If the U.N. sec­re­tary build­ing in New York lost 10 sto­ries, it would­n’t make a bit of dif­fer­ence.” This is a fel­low who called his role in with­drawl­ing the U.S. sig­na­ture on the treaty rat­i­fy­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court “the hap­pi­est moment of my gov­ern­ment service”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13790-2005Mar7.html. The Guardian reports that “fought arms con­trol agree­ments, a strength­en­ing of the bio­log­i­cal weapons con­ven­tion and the com­pre­hen­sive test ban treaty”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1432701,00.html?gusrc=rss. With his nom­i­na­tion, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues its course of uni­la­te­ri­al­ism and open con­tempt for the world com­mu­ni­ty. Not a good way to build a last peace.

Lebanon and Syria

March 5, 2005
· Martin Kelley

The res­ig­na­tion of the gov­ern­ment is Lebanon is being hailed as a “boost for democ­ra­cy” Reports describe Beirut as “a sea of excitement”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,13031,1428151,00.html. ABC News and oth­ers are report­ing that “Syr­ia is about to announce its with­drawl from Lebanon”:http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=553479. How won­der­ful it would be if “Beirut could emerge”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut from its thir­ty years of chaos with the start of the “1975 civ­il war”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War.
Even good change can cause tur­moil. David Hirst, writ­ing in the guardian, won­ders whether the upheaval threa­t­ends to “desta­bi­lize Syr­ia and turn it into anoth­er iraq”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,13031,1430243,00.html: “After the exam­ple of elec­tions, how­ev­er flawed, in occu­pied iraq and Pales­tine, has come this new, unsched­uled out­break of pop­u­lar self-assertion in a coun­try [Lebanon] where a sis­ter Arab state, not an alien occu­pi­er, is in charge.”
For the lat­est news, you can turn to the “Guardian’s spe­cial report on Syr­ia and iraq”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/0,13031,928812,00.html. To jump in the fray, you can turn to the Non­vi­o­lence Board­’s thread on the “res­ig­na­tion of the Lebanese government”:http://www.nonviolence.org/comment/viewtopic.php?t=3297

On Dressing Plain

March 3, 2005
· Martin Kelley

A guest piece from Rob of “Con­sid­er the Lil­lies” (update: a blog now closed, here’s a 2006 snap­shot cour­tesy of Archive​.org). Rob describes him­self: “I’m a twenty-something gay Mid-western expa­tri­ate liv­ing in Boston. I was inspired to begin a blog based on the writ­ings of oth­er urban Quak­er blog­gers as they reflect and dis­cuss their inward faith and out­ward expe­ri­ences. When I’m not read­ing or writ­ing, I’m usu­al­ly with my friends, trav­el­ing about, and/or gen­er­al­ly mak­ing an arse of myself.”

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