Author Archives ⇒ Martin Kelley

Twitter thread of the day

May 31, 2019
· Martin Kelley

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.

Half forgotten Philadelhpia Quaker cemetery at center of development controversy

May 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

As report­ed in the Philadel­phia Inquirer:

How many skele­tons might remain buried? Pos­si­bly thou­sands, accord­ing to archae­ol­o­gists, but no one knows. His­tor­i­cal maps are unclear on the ceme­ter­ies’ bound­aries, but numer­ous his­to­ries por­tray the grounds as used first by Quak­ers and then by the poor, whose num­bers increased along with the size of the city. 

They quote the Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing gen­er­al sec­re­tary, who had heard noth­ing about this. The arti­cle also cites a 1880s arti­cle in Friends Intel­li­gencer, the pre­de­ces­sor to Friends Jour­nal.

https://​www​.philly​.com/​a​r​t​s​/​s​c​h​u​y​l​k​i​l​l​-​y​a​r​d​s​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​c​e​m​e​t​e​r​i​e​s​-​p​h​i​l​a​d​e​l​p​h​i​a​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​-​b​r​a​n​d​y​w​i​n​e​-​d​r​e​x​e​l​-​2​0​1​9​0​5​0​2​.​h​tml

We don’t worship silence

May 1, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith:

There are a lot of Quak­ers for whom the qual­i­ty of their wor­ship is mea­sured by the qual­i­ty of the silence there­in, to the point that “dis­rup­tions” — whether they come from chil­dren, late­com­ers, folks who are not neu­rotyp­i­cal, or folks who don’t com­port them­selves in the man­ner of the white mid­dle class — are regard­ed as annoy­ances. This is not just a mistake. 

We don’t wor­ship silence

Japan Would Make Akihito Emperor, but She Called Him ‘Jimmy’

April 30, 2019
· Martin Kelley

With the abdi­ca­tion of Japan’s emper­or comes renewed atten­tion on his first post-war teacher: Amer­i­can Friend Eliz­a­beth Gray Vining:

An Amer­i­can teacher taught the young prince he would nev­er be a god. But he just might help heal his country. 


Japan Would Make Akihito Emperor, but She Called Him ‘Jimmy’ (Published 2019)

Japan Would Make Aki­hi­to Emper­or, but She Called Him ‘Jim­my’ (Pub­lished 2019) 

An Amer­i­can teacher taught the young prince he would nev­er be a god. But he just might help…
www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com

Jesus the key to my experience

April 22, 2019
· Martin Kelley

From Mark Russ:

As a Chris­t­ian Quak­er liv­ing in a post-Christian Quak­er cul­ture, I’m occa­sion­al­ly called upon to explain my Chris­tian­i­ty to my fel­low Quak­ers. I recent­ly did this by say­ing ‘Jesus is the key that unlocks my expe­ri­ence of the world’. I was then asked ‘could you say more about that?’, and I didn’t real­ly have an answer prepared 

Jesus the key to my experience

Welcoming families in meetings

April 18, 2019
· Martin Kelley

An account of one British meet­ing find­ing space for families:

It has been the task of the whole meet­ing not just of one or two; there has been an aware­ness that what they are doing now will need to change and evolve. And there has been a care and nour­ish­ing of us as par­ents too, with our own spir­i­tu­al jour­neys and need for nurture.

I know, from talk­ing to oth­er Quak­er par­ents – and, very sad­ly, from par­ents who would love to explore Quak­erism but who have felt dis­cour­aged or unwel­comed – that we have been par­tic­u­lar­ly lucky. Lucky not because we found a Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty with a ready-made chil­dren’s meet­ing, but because we found a meet­ing will­ing and ready to wel­come, to make space, where there was a sense of glad­ness that we were there. 


Welcoming families in meetings

Wel­com­ing fam­i­lies in meetings 

How do we rejoice in the pres­ence of chil­dren in our meet­ings and nur­ture their spir­i­tu­al growth? Alistair…
Quakers Quakers 

Are Quakers Christian?

April 15, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son takes on one of the trick­i­er ques­tions of mod­ern lib­er­al Quakerism:

I am going to make a bold apol­o­gy for a clar­i­fied lib­er­al Quak­er iden­ti­ty that retains its roots and recov­ers wor­ship in the spir­it of Christ, but yet releas­es us from the ortho­dox Chris­t­ian pre­oc­cu­pa­tions that no longer speak to so many unpro­grammed Friends. 

Are Quak­ers Christian?

Transcript of Ashley Wilcox’s message at Guilford

April 14, 2019
· Martin Kelley

The talks was on “Quak­ers and the Prophet­ic Tradition”:

When Quak­ers talk about the prophet­ic tra­di­tion, we tend to go back to ear­ly Friends, but I am going to go back to Jeremiah. 

https://​www​.ash​leymwilcox​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​2​0​1​9​/​4​/​1​4​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​a​n​d​-​t​h​e​-​p​r​o​p​h​e​t​i​c​-​t​r​a​d​i​t​ion