Should We Torch Our Meetinghouses?

July 6, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Burn­ing down the meet­ing­house is a metaphor for the true free­dom that we find when we renounce all the things that we put before God. What would it look like for younger Friends to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for lead­er­ship with­in our Year­ly Meet­ings, not wait­ing for per­mis­sion or validation?

Together in the Truth
Togeth­er in the Truth 

There­fore, since we are receiv­ing a king­dom that can­not be shak­en, let us give thanks, by which we…
lambswar.blogspot.com lamb​swar​.blogspot​.com

Young Adult Friends Network, v.4

July 5, 2012
· Martin Kelley

A pro­mo video for the new Young Adult Friends web­site, fea­tur­ing catz and me drink­ing a lot of water at 4x speed (“YAFs” or “AYFs” is the name for Friends rough­ly between 18 and 35).

I think this is the fourth young adult Friends net­work­ing site I’ve put togeth­er, dat­ing back to the mid-90s when I still was a YAF.

Greg Woods intro­duces the site on his blog, and of course there’s a Face­book and Twit­ter pres­ence for the network.

The Morality of Patriotism redux

July 5, 2012
· Martin Kelley

For the Fourth of July, a peek back at one of the more talked-about arti­cles in recent Friends Jour­nal his­to­ry, Tony White’s The Immor­tal­i­ty of Patri­o­tism. A sample:

Patri­o­tism clouds our judg­ment; it hin­ders objec­tiv­i­ty and detracts from our abil­i­ty to assess polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions ratio­nal­ly. Patri­o­tism bias­es us toward our coun­try’s per­spec­tive, encum­ber­ing our desire and abil­i­ty to con­sid­er out­side per­spec­tives. Put briefly, patri­o­tism breeds con­for­mi­ty and closed-mindedness. Fur­ther­more, patri­o­tism makes us over­ly trust­ing of those in pow­er over us, and sus­cep­ti­ble to abus­es of that power.

This was pub­lished before I came as the Jour­nal’s edi­tor. The let­ters forum and Google search­es will pull up some very insight­ful cri­tiques that basi­cal­ly points out the dis­crep­an­cies between the sec­u­lar lefty cri­tique of the arti­cle and the his­toric Friends peace tes­ti­mo­ny. Over on the Friends Jour­nal Face­book page, there’s a live­ly dis­cus­sion cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing about patri­o­tism and the Fourth.

(H/T to Dan­ny Cole­man for the reminder link to White’s article)

Derecho Storm Damage in Mays Landing

June 30, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Last night a huge thun­der­storm front with a phe­nom­e­non called a dere­cho swept across South Jer­sey. Where I live in Ham­mon­ton the strangest part of it was a strobe-light effect caused by dozens of cloud-to-cloud light­ning flash­es per minute, punc­tu­at­ed by light­ning strikes. Fur­ther east into Atlantic Coun­ty winds took down incred­i­ble amounts of trees.

This morn­ing trav­eled to Mays Land­ing, which was sched­uled to host a street fes­ti­val today. A few brave mer­chants like Brown­ies Squared opened with­out pow­er and made the best of it, sell­ing refrig­er­at­ed goods at half-price. But most of the town was deal­ing with trees across downed pow­er lines. Accord­ing to NBC40 Weath­er 162,000 house­holds are with­out pow­er – con­sid­er­ably more than were out in last year’s hurricane.

Links:
* http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​D​e​r​e​cho
* https://​twit​ter​.com/​n​b​c​4​0​w​e​a​t​h​e​r​/​s​t​a​t​u​s​/​2​1​9​0​7​8​6​6​2​5​3​0​6​7​8​784

Interviewing Doug Bennett

May 29, 2012
· Martin Kelley

If all goes smooth­ly on the tech­ni­cal front, tomor­row I’ll be inter­view­ing Doug Ben­nett for Friends Jour­nal. In this mon­th’s fea­ture arti­cle, he argues that the Quak­er con­tro­ver­sies over homo­sex­u­al­i­ty could be an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring us clos­er togeth­er. Reply below with a ques­tion for Doug (<20 words) and we might use it for the interview!

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Were Friends part of Obama’s Evolution?

May 10, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s been attribut­ing some of his so-called “evo­lu­tion” on same-sex mar­riage to his daugh­ters. As he told ABC’s Robin Roberts:

You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose par­ents are same-sex cou­ples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sit­ting around the din­ner table, and we’re talk­ing about their friends and their par­ents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that some­how their friends’ par­ents would be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.

So where do Oba­ma’s daugh­ter’s inde­pen­dent friends come from? Like most tweens the like­li­est answer is school – in their case, Sid­well Friends. It’s not unlike­ly that the “evo­lu­tion” owed some­thing to the Quak­er envi­ron­ment there.

Most elite Quak­er schools have only a token base of Quak­er stu­dents and teach­ers, so we can’t assume that Malia and Sasha’s friends are Friends. Like many outward-facing Quak­er insti­tu­tions, mod­ern Friends schools’ strongest claim to Quak­erism is the val­ues and dis­cern­ment tech­niques they share with the wider world. They con­scious­ly trans­mit a style and ped­a­gogy and cre­ate an envi­ron­ment of open­ness and diver­si­ty. Of course the Oba­ma kids are going to rub up against non-traditional mar­riages at a East Coast Quak­er school. And no one should be sur­prised if they bring a lit­tle of that back home when the school bus drops them off at 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue.

NYTimes: Oba­ma Girls Influ­ence the Pres­i­dent — Again
Pres­i­dent Oba­ma often uses his daugh­ters, Malia and Sasha, as object lessons in explain­ing his rea­son­ing behind impor­tant pol­i­cy positions.