The most-excellent Sterling Duns is back on QuakerSpeak and dreaming of wholeness:
It feels simple and deeply radical to just say as a group that is committed to honoring that of God in everyone, that that person of color, that black person is deserving of their full humanity — to be recognized by me as a Quaker. That’s a simple thing to say and it’s a radical thing to say.
A nice story on the belated recognition being given abolitionist stalwart and political prankster Benjamin Lay up at Abington Meeting in Pennsylvania (my first meeting!):
About 12 years ago, the Abington meetinghouse caretaker, Dave Wermeling, found an old sketch of Lay in a box. A short biography on worn brown paper was glued to back of the drawing. “I thought, ‘Who is this, and how can you not be talking about him?’” Wermeling recalled.
I’ve long admired the story of Benjamin Lay. I’m not sure that the general public reading these articles is quite realizing that Quaker disownment wasn’t a full shunning. As far as I know he continued to be influential with Quakers, for his passion if not his strategy. Lay went far, far ahead of the Quakers of the time. His stunts were awesome, but drenching yearly meeting attenders with pig blood and publishing books without permission was going to get you uninvited from formal decision making meetings.
I would very much hope that if any of us moderns were transported back to that era, we would find the conditions of human bondage so outrageous that we would all go full Benjamin Lay: disrupt meetings, shatter norms, get disowned by our religious bodies. If you read the history of eighteen-century Quaker activism in the Philadelphia area you’ll see there were many tracts starting in the earliest years of the Quaker colonies. There were lots of Quakers who felt slavery was morally wrong. But few felt the empowerment to break from social conventions the way Lay did. But that’s kind of the nature of prophecy. I would be suspicious of any candidate for prophet that is liked by the administrative bodies of their time. What kind of complacency are we demonstrating by our inactions today?
https://www.philly.com/philly/news/quakers-benjamin-lay-dwarf-abolitionist-slavery-abington-friends-meeting-20180419.html?mobi=true
The Young Quaker Podcast in the UK recently had an episode in which they had a mic run through 30 minutes of silent worship. I must admit I kind of laughed at the John Cage’ness of it. But it’s generated quite a bit of buzz. The Guardian declared it an ocean of calm, NPR thinks silence is golden. Not to be outdone, the BBC breathlessly announced that the podcast makes history for recording Quaker worship (never mind people have been worshipping via Skype and other online media for many years now).
I love the intentionality of a roomful of people agreeing to settle into silence together as much as the next Friend, but I’m tempted to wonder whether the coverage would have quite so effusive if someone had interrupted part of the podcast’s silence to give a message. From daffodil ministry to top-of-the-hour newscast updates to disquisitions on the gospel, pretty much anything would have popped the silence’s “moment of Zen,” to use NPR’s head-scratching description.
The best part of it all so far, in my opinion, is that one of the podcasters, host Jessica Hubbard-Bailey, got a chance to use the buzz to write her story of being a Quaker for i (an online spin-off of the Independent): Life is tough for young people, but being a Quaker has given me hope.
When a friend came to me last year and suggested the Young Quaker Podcast record a silent Meeting for Worship I was intrigued. But given that most people are not quite so enamoured with silence as Quakers, I couldn’t have anticipated the interest and response that followed.
https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/women/life-is-tough-for-young-people-but-being-a-quaker-has-given-me-hope/
Yesterday I mentioned an interesting conversation with Chad Stephenson years ago about his theory/metaphor that Convergent Friends were like New Jazz traditionalists. His piece had only been published in the Spirit Rising anthology but Chad saw my post and has graciously put it up on his blog!
Throughout Quaker faith, divergence from its roots has brought newer, modern audiences to Quakers and progressed with new pathways while abandoning the shared past commonalities. Yet as a splintered tradition, Quakers have begun to suffer each other as distant relatives do when dining during the holidays; a failing coordination of growth which has led instead to disunity and a lack of understanding and respect for common roots essential to creating a mutually enhancing ecosystem of faith grounded in the Light.
Kathleen Wooten looks at the heartbreaking immigration stories taking place all around us and asks the classic Quaker question, what might Love do?
I’m not quite sure how we got here, in this “Christian” nation of ours. Christ says to welcome the stranger. These folks are not even strangers to many of us – they are woven into the fabric of our shared communities, their families, their work and service in the world, and their blessings.
Johan Maurer looks at one of our most-used George Fox quotes and wonders whether we’re using it authentically: Has Christ come to teach his people himself?
I want us to use our dearest cliches honestly, but if they sometimes seem weakened by overuse, the solution isn’t necessarily to discard them. Maybe we can rediscover their provocative content and test whether the promise within is already being fulfilled or could once again be fulfilled in our time.
I appreciate that Johan also asks if we’re hoarding this insight and claiming it as particularly Quaker. One of my personal tests for adopting Quaker peculiarities of practice or belief is whether I could argue that they should be adopted by other Christians (or even other people of faith in general) as universal principles. An attitude of plainness not based on social pressures or uniforms is one I think would bring humility and insight to any follower of Christ, for example.
That Christ has risen and is here and is ready to guide us directly seems to be an obvious truth – the heart of the resurrection and of Pentecost and the apostles’ church plants. That some churches insert people in between is a potential distraction but even they would, I hope, keep in mind that Christ is there with them in their steeple houses and in their lives.
The only other take-away I have from this universality test is that it centers the Inward Christ and risen Jesus and not our human institutions. This was the obvious point in the 1650s as Quakers broke up religious meetings and I think it still holds true. Our libraries and meetinghouses and mission statements and staff flowcharts don’t mean anything if they get in the way of the purpose of our society, which is simply to help one another settle down, recognize that Inward Christ, and learn the corporate skills discernment so we can be Friends (of Jesus). The invitation to knock on Jesus’s door is extended to all, not just those of us calling ourselves Quaker.
https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2018/04/has-christ-come-to-teach-his-people.html
This week’s QuakerSpeak interviews musician Colton Weatherston. I love the way he relates the communication and collaboration of jazz musicians to Quaker worship:
Especially artists and musicians, we often don’t have the same point of view or even the same background. Each of us will bring a lot of baggage into the meeting of the musicians and we have to build trust with each other and people need to feel free to express their ideas as a soloist without feeling told by the leader how exactly to play — we have to work it out as an ensemble. And I think that’s very true with meetings also.
Those with long memories might remember that I interviewed Chad Stephenson after he made a comparison between new jazz traditionalists and Convergent Friends at the 2009 Ben Lomond conference (I believe he wrote an expanded version for the Spirit Rising Quaker anthology but I can’t find a link).
Philadelphia Friends are so modest that blog posts on Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s website don’t even have bylines. Or maybe someone forgot to fill out a field. Either way, here’s a first-person account by an anonymous Philadelphia-area Friend in their early 60s who started reading Friends Journal archives: Some Thoughts from the 1955 Friends Journal
I selected the issue closest to my birth date and began reading. The discussion of the Korean conflict, of the arms race, of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, could all have been written today. And for a lunch-time meditation, this article, on preparing for meeting, was just the right size for reading over my soup and sandwich.