Author Archives ⇒ Martin Kelley

Of violence and mental snaps

July 20, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Yet anoth­er hor­rif­ic shoot­ing. It’s hard to keep off the news feeds for each bit of new infor­ma­tion we learn of the per­pe­tra­tor and his vic­tims. It’s nat­ur­al to want to under­stand. If we do final­ly learn of a moti­va­tion behind James Holmes’s actions, it will prob­a­bly be more the trig­ger that set him off — the straw that broke the camel’s back, per­haps, or the dan­ger­ous obses­sion that’s informed his world of late.

A few years ago there was a fel­low from a near­by town who declared him­self the grand wiz­ard of his own branch of the Klu Klux Klan. He would announce plans for a march a local town and instant­ly the media would be rac­ing their news vans there to get reac­tions from politi­cians, police chiefs and ran­dom peo­ple on the street. Head­lines would ensue, blog­gers would go to work, counter-protests would be announced, etc. But the grand wiz­ard turned out to be most­ly an Oz-like appari­tion of smoke. No estab­lished KKK orga­ni­za­tion rec­og­nized him. His ral­lies would attract at most two of his bud­dies. He was in his ear­ly for­ties and liv­ing with his moth­er. He was fired after three weeks work­ing at Wawa, the local con­ve­nience store chain. Yes, he could have been a dan­ger if he had got­ten a hold of a cache of guns but he nev­er did. He was a guy who was a los­er at every­thing except get­ting media atten­tion for out­ra­geous pro­pos­al. Last I looked up he’s got reli­gion, recant­ed his racist ide­ol­o­gy, and apol­o­gized for the KKK talk.

Anoth­er sto­ry I could tell is more per­son­al, of a not-so-distant rel­a­tive who went on a middling-murder spree — five dead in the end (I’ll omit details for rea­sons of fam­i­ly diplo­ma­cy). I only met him once but I’ve come to know the set­ting that shaped him. Some of the issues that shaped him go back gen­er­a­tions and are still active. To tell the sto­ry of his snap would take a nov­el on the order of Jef­frey Eugendies’s Mid­dle­sex. I have an autis­tic son and know that this con­di­tion runs in the fam­i­ly. I try to imag­ine throw­ing him into a main­stream school set­ting with no sup­port and no diag­no­sis, and then bring­ing him up in the fam­i­ly tra­di­tion of alcohol-based self-medication; a stint on the armed forces would just add to the explo­sive mix. Forty years from now my pre­cious lit­tle boy might well be the top sto­ry on Action News. And it would be a tragedy.

If I had a time machine, I think I’d do exper­i­ments to under­stand the nexus of ide­ol­o­gy and indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ty. I’d give a 24-year-old Osama bin Laden a desk job in an obscure Sau­di min­istry, and an 18-year-old Adolf Hitler a prize to a pres­ti­gious for­eign art school.

Vio­lent ide­olo­gies are often the per­vert­ed man­i­fes­ta­tion of less-visible per­son­al and fam­i­ly tragedies. I hope we can find a way to step back from the voyeurism of Col­orado details to find ways to extend our­selves in love and care. Tonight, when you feel rage or indig­na­tion, call up a friend or rel­a­tive in pain. Yes, gun con­trol can help les­son the imme­di­ate tragedy. But let’s not for­get the long-term solu­tions. Think about how we lob­by to  widen access to med­ical care (e.g.: uni­ver­sal health­care) and pro­grams for the needy of our youth (hint: fund the schools, expand special-needs pro­grams, bring back after-school pro­grams and enrich­ment oppor­tun­ties). There are three- and six-and eighteen-year-old’s out there tee­ter­ing on cross­roads of alter­nate futures. Let’s hold out our hands and invite them to paths of heal­ing and love.

“Nostromo” by Joseph Conrad

July 12, 2012
· Martin Kelley

After Heart of Dark­ness I thought I’d try anoth­er book by Con­rad. The choice was made easy by the Wikipedia entry for Nos­tro­mo, which quotes F. Scott Fitzger­ald as say­ing “I’d rather have writ­ten Nos­tro­mo than any oth­er novel.”

Six weeks lat­er, and I’m only a quar­ter of the way through. I’m drop­ping this book. I won’t say that the book’s first quar­ter is com­plete­ly unin­ter­est­ing. Its pic­ture of a trou­bled South Amer­i­ca coun­try and the way its internationally-focused upper class tries to act as a reform move­ment drew me in, but only so far. At this point the nov­el is still just a thinly-cloaked his­to­ry les­son with broadly-drawn car­i­ca­tures that have failed to become characters. 

Let me be hon­est: I want some dra­ma. I want some­one to betray the emo­tion­al expec­ta­tions of their assigned role. Can’t some­body (any­body?!) kiss the wrong lips, betray the wrong fight­er, or at least have a cri­sis of faith in their God, life’s work, or politics?

I do believe the action gets sauci­er lat­er on. But I’m too con­fused by the polit­i­cal actors of Costagua­na (“who’s Avel­li­nos again?”) to care. I can check the Wikipedia pages on Venezuela and Colom­bia to see how the polit­cal dra­ma plays out. What­ev­er per­son­al dra­ma there is will have to be Fitzgerald’s.

Have Friends lost their cultural memory?

July 12, 2012
· Martin Kelley

In Amer­i­ca today our sense of spir­i­tu­al fel­low­ship in Lib­er­al meet­ings, the feel­ing of belong­ing to the same tribe, is dimin­ish­ing. We no longer live in the same com­mu­ni­ties, and we come from diverse faith tra­di­tions. Our cul­tur­al val­ues are no longer entwined at the roots, as were those of our founders. As a body we share less genet­ic and cul­tur­al mem­o­ry of what it means to be Quak­ers. Dif­fer­ent view­points often pre­vent us from look­ing in the same direc­tion to find a point of con­ver­gence. We hold beliefs rang­ing from Bud­dhism to non-theism to Chris­tian­i­ty, or we may sim­ply be eth­i­cal human­ists. Just imag­ine a mix­ture of wild seeds cast into a sin­gle plot of land, pro­duc­ing a pro­fu­sion of col­or. A wide vari­ety of plants all bloom­ing togeth­er sym­bol­ize our present con­di­tion in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. Dis­cern­ing which is a wild­flower and which is a weed is not easy. We are liv­ing a great exper­i­ment of reli­gious diversity.

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Photo of the Day: Dawn of the Web

July 12, 2012
· Martin Kelley


The first pho­to on the web pho­to turns 20 next Wednes­day and its sto­ry is more inter­est­ing that you’d think:

The first pho­to­graph­ic image ever uploaded to the Web was a Pho­to­shop dis­as­ter. It was cre­at­ed to sell some­thing, and fea­tured attrac­tive women in a come-hither pose. In short, photo-uploading was born with some orig­i­nal sins that have nev­er quite washed away.

Bonus Youtube: Les Hor­ri­bles Cer­nettes per­form “Col­lid­er”

In defense of worship spaces

July 11, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Ear­li­er this week I won­dered if it might not be such a bad idea if some of our strug­gling estab­lished meet­ings exper­i­ment­ed with the house church mod­el. An com­menter maps out the dif­fi­cul­ties:

Speak­ing as a “meet­ing planter” (our small Friends meet­ing here was found­ed two years ago by me and one oth­er Friend), I can tell you with­out reser­va­tion that, while we could meet in peo­ple’s homes, it would strict­ly lim­it the abil­i­ty to reach out with our mes­sage and attract oth­ers to par­tic­i­pate. You can pret­ty well be cer­tain that only those who already feel com­fort­able with you will come back to some­one’s home, which may not include the seek­ers who real­ly are look­ing for some­thing they can be part of.

I have seen this with oth­er church­es as well; the local UU fel­low­ship grew from ten to 15 peo­ple in the 5 years that they met in liv­ing rooms; they grew from 30 to 60 in two years when they had their own meetinghouse.

I am try­ing hard to raise the mon­ey to allow us to pur­chase and main­tain an appro­pri­ate build­ing for a meet­ing­house. Until we do, our Meet­ing will con­tin­ue to hide its light under a bushel, despite all our efforts to the con­trary. The desire to have a “home” is deep with­in the human heart, whether it is where we reside or where we worship.

The com­menter was anony­mous (update: no, he’s not, it’s Bruce Arnold of Let­ters from the Street) but I’d love to hear more. I won­der par­tic­u­lar­ly of there’s a zone of dif­fi­cult via­bil­i­ty when the wor­ship com­mu­ni­ty it’s too small to sup­port a build­ing struc­ture and need to pick a bigger-or small­er mod­el for long-term viability.

Religion in the mainstream press

July 10, 2012
· Martin Kelley

They default to the same bor­ing tropes, says Amy Levin at TheRevealer:

Reli­gious wars, reli­gious dress, reli­gious mon­ey – these are the real and yet superbly com­plex ele­ments of our cul­tur­al exis­tence. Scout any crack or cran­ny of pop­u­lar cul­ture and you find reli­gion cre­at­ing a glo­ri­ous maze of top­ics for writ­ers to dis­cov­er and sift and sing to the masses.

But late­ly, I find that a repul­sive plague of rep­e­ti­tion and banal­i­ty has swept over the dis­en­chant­ed cyber­sphere. Each day I begin my reli­gion news search with hope­ful eager­ness, sift­ing close­ly through main­stream and fringe out­lets, hun­gry for signs of a new trend, move­ment, argu­ment, study – any­thing oth­er than what I con­sumed the day before. But I search in vain, and my dol­drums have led me to take action.

(H/T to David Watt on Facebook)

Torching Meetinghouses Ctd.

July 9, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Appar­ent­ly Mic­ah Bales was­n’t call­ing for twenty-something Friends to engage in a reign of ter­ror, of kerosene and match­es. He was engag­ing in some­thing called he calls metaphor. Mic­ah reminds us that the liv­ing church needs to be able to ask questions:

A liv­ing, breath­ing com­mu­ni­ty can­not be per­fect in this sense. True life is found in dynam­ic ten­sion. Liv­ing com­mu­ni­ties change and grow; they repro­duce them­selves in a diverse array of shapes and sizes, suit­ed to their own times and places.

I myself would have avoid­ed the burn-baby-burn pose, even rhetor­i­cal­ly, if only because I’ve had too much per­son­al expe­ri­ence of Quak­ers who com­plete­ly lack a sense of irony. But it’s cer­tain­ly not with­out prece­dent for Friends to chal­lenge our con­nec­tion to mate­r­i­al space (Mic­ah aint’ got noth­ing on Ben­jamin Lay!). This cri­tique is why we call them meet­ing­hous­es, not church­es, and it’s why their most promi­nent archi­tec­tur­al style in the Delaware Val­ley resem­bles noth­ing so much as a barn – the most gener­ic of open struc­tures in the eyes of the farm­ers who built them.

There have been some good reac­tions among the com­men­taries on Mic­ah’s post. Isabel P. wrote from the per­spec­tive of a “spir­i­tu­al vagabond”:

For those of us with no meet­ing­hous­es, who wan­der from place to place try­ing to find a home for our wor­ship groups, this sort of hyper­bole (metaphor though it may be) is just painful. Is tra­di­tion and her­itage real­ly such an awful weight? Try being a spir­i­tu­al vagabond …

Else­where, Macken­zie paints the pic­ture of a not-atypical wealthy East Coast meet­ing that focus­es on structure:

The meet­ing room is larg­er than need­ed for how few peo­ple show up week­ly (about 70 on a “good” day, while the room can hold about 250). The cam­pus is larg­er than the par­tic­i­pants are will­ing to put in the sweat equi­ty to main­tain. You’d think work­ing togeth­er to main­tain it would go under the cat­e­go­ry of build­ing com­mu­ni­ty, which our First Day School claims is a tes­ti­mo­ny. Instead, the bud­get must be ever-expanded to hire some­one else to fix things up, rather than have any­one get their hands dirty. Nev­er mind that the meet­ing is run­ning on endow­ments from long-dead Friends as it is. So much paid main­te­nance puts a strain on the bud­get, mak­ing for per­sis­tent calls for more money.

Fur­ther down in that same thread, Tri­cia shares the heart­felt thank-you notes of Philadelphia-area Occu­py activists who found refuge in Quak­er struc­tures:

Dear­est Quak­er Friends, Thank you for har­bor­ing us in a safe place in your park­ing lot. We appre­ci­ate it, in sol­i­dar­i­ty — the 99%.

I’m so grate­ful that you opened your hearts and your space to us. (cat­a­stro­phe avert­ed!) I want to be a Quak­er. Love and Peace, Barbara.

There have also been some obnox­ious reac­tions, all too-typical dis­missals cit­ing some supposedly-inherent inabil­i­ty of younger Friends to be trust­ed in dis­cern­ment or lead­er­ship. Of course our own tra­di­tion proves this wrong. When we talk about Quak­er the­ol­o­gy, the start­ing point for Friends of all fla­vors is an essay writ­ten by a twenty-eight year old. When George Fox had his famous open­ing that “there is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy con­di­tion,” he was a twenty-three years old talk­ing about a son-of-God that nev­er left what Friends would call his “young adult” years. William Penn co-founded his first Quak­er colony at age 33, and even old Mar­garet Fell earned her nick­name “the moth­er of Quak­erism” for the orga­niz­ing work she began at age thirty-eight. By counter-example, I’m sure we find some old­er Friends who lack some­thing in the dis­cern­ment or self-control depart­ment. The moral of the exam­ples: age is not the most impor­tant fac­tor in Quak­er spir­i­tu­al discernment.

Now I want to turn back to the meet­ing­house ques­tion and put things in a bit of per­spec­tive. There are prob­a­bly only five or six dozen unpro­grammed meet­ings in North Amer­i­ca that are so large they could­n’t sim­ply squeeze into the near­est vol­un­teer fire hall. If calami­ty struck the meet­ing­house, the great major­i­ty of our con­gre­ga­tions could take a quick phone poll of mem­bers to deter­mine who has the largest liv­ing room and relo­cate there the fol­low­ing First Day. Yes, of course it’s nice to pro­vide space to the occa­sion­al pro­test­ers (and local yoga group, bat­tered wom­en’s shel­ter etc.), but it’s fair to ask if this is what we’re called to do with this time and mon­ey. There would be cer­tain oppor­tu­ni­ties gained if a month­ly meet­ing sold or long-term leased its prop­er­ty and re-established itself as a net­work of house church­es. I don’t think it’s nec­es­sar­i­ly a good option for most meet­ings but it would be an intrigu­ing exper­i­ment. And it’s def­i­nite­ly worth imagining.

“Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad, 1902

July 8, 2012
· Martin Kelley

I began Con­rad’s clas­sic tale as a follow-up to last mon­th’s State of Won­der by Ann Patch­ett. Her hero­ine trav­eled to the most remote reach­es of the Ama­zon; all sto­ries that make the trip from the bland­ness of civ­i­liza­tion (Min­neso­ta in Patch­et­t’s case) owe a debt to Con­rad’s clas­sic tale of a steam­boat trip far up the Con­go River.

The book cer­tain­ly has its odd­i­ties, start­ing with the nar­ra­tive voice: we are lis­ten­ing to a sto­ry told aboard a ship on the Thames that is wait­ing for a change of tide to send it on its way out to sea. The narrator-within-the-story, Mar­lowe, tells the entire tale in flash­back, with Con­rad only occa­sion­al­ly com­ing up for air to the deck of the Thames boat (Heart of Dark­ness was writ­ten as a three-part ser­i­al; I assume these nar­ra­tive breaks are the stitch­ing between installments).

I had heard much about this book over the years so I was curi­ous to see the exact nature of the deprav­i­ties upon which the infa­mous Kurtz had indulged him­self. But two-thirds of the way through the book I real­ized we were nev­er to real­ly learn them. We know there’s a remote camp by a lake and an African tribe that regards him as some kind of demi-god, and we hear tell that he’s law­less toward oth­er Euro­peans and single-minded in his quest for ivory. But these are all bare­ly more than hint­ed glimpses.

The sto­ry turns out to be not so much about Kurtz as it is about Mar­lows’ imag­in­ings as he gets deep­er into the con­ti­nent and gath­ers clues about the mys­tery man at the top of the riv­er. I found this to be a relief, as Con­rad seems almost as unin­ter­est­ed in flesh­ing out the Africans along the way. Kurtz is a bril­liant civ­i­lized man; in the jun­gle his sav­agery is unleashed and he becomes a force unto himself.

I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of any­thing high or low. I had, even like the n******, to invoke him – him­self his own exalt­ed and incred­i­ble degra­da­tion. There was noth­ing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked him­self loose of the earth. Con­found the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground or float­ed in the air.

Yes, this is a work­ing def­i­n­i­tion of a psy­chopath. If this were a mod­ern Show­time or AMC tele­vi­sion show, this would be the start of the action: the pro­duc­ers, writ­ers, and actors would leave lit­tle gore or deprav­i­ty to the imag­i­na­tion. But for Con­rad this is the moral­i­ty tale at the heart of the book. Short­ly after being found, Kurtz con­ve­nient­ly dies and our nar­ra­tor sails back down­stream, going (we are help­ful­ly told) twice the speed as before, back out to the ocean and civilization.

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