I had a nice inter­view with Wis­con­sin Friend Kat Grif­fith. She likes, even loves, going door-to-door in her “pur­ple” dis­trict and talk­ing pol­i­tics to strangers. She’s a won­der­ful sto­ry­teller and it was hard not to laugh as she talked about some of these adven­tures (spoil­er: she’s far braver than I am!). In a time of hyper-partisanship, it’s a good reminder to build our lives around curios­i­ty and communication.

The Feb­ru­ary arti­cle we were talk­ing about is “Rhap­sody in Pur­ple.” See also: Show notes for the video inter­view.

My intro­duc­to­ry col­umn in the Feb­ru­ary Friends Jour­nal, regard­ing the light­ning fast deci­sion to file a Quak­er law­suit about immigration:

I think Quak­er busi­ness meet­ings have anoth­er pur­pose: they give us prac­tice in deci­sion mak­ing, and we build trust in one anoth­er. When some­thing extra­or­di­nary comes up that has to be dealt with imme­di­ate­ly, we kick into action using the mus­cle mem­o­ry from all of those Sun­day after­noons spent talk­ing about the finances. Because we’re a reli­gious body that has tak­en the time to know one anoth­er, we can antic­i­pate con­cerns and move sur­pris­ing­ly quickly.

Every­thing is mov­ing crazy fast in the polit­i­cal world these days. That’s the plan, of course: to over­whelm us with the speed at which the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is being dis­man­tled. But we are prac­ticed; we too can respond with stead­fast love and solidarity.

A reminder that you can fol­low my link shares much more quick­ly via my Bluesky account. If you’re there you should def­i­nite­ly fol­low my Quak­ers list for every­thing that Friends are talk­ing about.

I also rec­om­mend Jason Kot­tke’s blog, long one of my favorites, who is turn­ing it over to links and cov­er­age about the coup in progress. Mike Mas­nick has been writ­ing impor­tant stuff about the insan­i­ty of Musk’s twenty-something crew tak­ing over and rewrit­ing pay­ment sys­tems across var­i­ous agen­cies (see, for exam­ple, “A 25-Year-Old Is Writ­ing Back­doors Into The Treasury’s $6 Tril­lion Pay­ment Sys­tem. What Could Pos­si­bly Go Wrong?”)

Pre­pared for This 

How do Quak­ers make swift, faith­ful deci­sions in times of cri­sis? Mar­tin Kel­ley explains the role of trust,…

Friends Journal 

I wrote up a pre­sen­ta­tion that Sarah Clarke and Bo Mén­dez gave about their work with the Quak­er Unit­ed Nations Office.

Quak­ers Learn about Work at the Unit­ed Nations — Crop­well Quakers 

On Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 26, a pre­sen­ta­tion at the Crop­well Friends Meet­ing­house in Marl­ton, N.J., attract­ed near­ly two dozen…

Crop­well Quakers 

Philadelphia-area Friend Tom Gates has start­ed a blog. Tom’s a very ground­ed and thought­ful Friend and I’m glad to know we’ll be see­ing more of his writ­ings. From his intro:

Con­tem­po­rary lib­er­al Friends (Quak­ers), in com­mon with oth­er lib­er­al denom­i­na­tions, have large­ly drift­ed away from the Bible, due in part to its seem­ing sanc­tion of divine vio­lence. Girard, by con­trast, sees the over­com­ing of “sacred vio­lence” as the cen­tral theme of the Bib­li­cal wit­ness, and so can pro­vide the means by which Quak­ers (and oth­ers) might reen­gage with the Scrip­tures. Girard’s claim that the bib­li­cal God has “noth­ing to do with vio­lence” will res­onate with Friends tra­di­tion­al com­mit­ment to non­vi­o­lence and peace­mak­ing. His insights into “the scape­goat mech­a­nism” can also help us to under­stand the wit­ness of ear­ly Friends, who func­tioned as “the scape­goat caste” in 17th cen­tu­ry England.

Quak­ers and the End of Scape­goat­ing | Tom Gates | Substack 

Part explo­ration of Rene Girard’s ground­break­ing ‘mimet­ic the­o­ry,’ part Bible com­men­tary, and part dia­logue with ear­ly and contemporary…

tgates​.sub​stack​.com