New Quaker podcast from Pendle Hill

September 30, 2022
· Martin Kelley

The Pen­dle Hill Cen­ter out­side Philadel­phia is launch­ing The Seed, a new pod­cast, with the first episode sched­uled to drop on World Quak­er Day. From their press release:

The podcast’s host, Dwight Dun­ston, is a West Philly-based facil­i­ta­tor, hip-hop artist, edu­ca­tor, and activist who has brought his cre­ativ­i­ty, care, and com­pas­sion to schools, com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters, retire­ment homes, fes­ti­vals, and sta­di­ums all over the coun­try and internationally.

In the open­ing episode, Dwight Dun­ston and Pen­dle Hill exec­u­tive direc­tor Fran­cis­co Bur­gos share with the audi­ence their dreams for The Seed. They wel­come lis­ten­ers into the pod­cast as an expan­sion of Pen­dle Hill’s spaces of trans­for­ma­tion, a green­house for nur­tur­ing hope­ful visions of the world that is possible. 

Dwight, also known as Ster­ling Duns, is a great choice for a host. FJ inter­viewed him back in 2015 and he’s also the sub­ject of a Quak­er­S­peak inter­view. Pen­dle Hill is a real cross­roads, bring­ing togeth­er spir­i­tu­al seek­ers and change advo­cates since its ear­li­est days. Their decades-long tra­di­tion of dai­ly wor­ship tran­si­tioned to a hybrid for­mat almost imme­di­ate­ly upon lock­down in 2020 and real­ly gave a lot of peo­ple hope in a hard time. It total­ly makes sense that they build upon their con­nec­tions to start a pod­cast. The pro­mo sounds good; I can’t wait for the launch.

The Quak­er pod­cast ecosys­tem has a been a bit touch and go over the years, with great pod­casts com­ing and going. Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing’s pod­cast is one of the few that’s still going strong (I very much rec­om­mend Hen­ry Jason’s series, “Fun­da­men­tal Beliefs of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends”). I know of two pod­cast series cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion in addi­tion to Pen­dle Hill’s. It’s an excit­ing time for Quak­er audio!

Featured on Friends Journal this week

September 26, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Fin­ish­ing up the Quak­er Arts issue:

Trans­form­ing Weapons into Art. Earl­ham’s peace stud­ies prof Welling Hall decid­ed to actu­al­ly take the para­ble lit­er­al­ly and trans­form swords — and bul­lets and com­bat knives — into some­thing new, in this case, provoca­tive art.

On Being a Quak­er Film­mak­er. Mar­tin Krafft explores that of God in the larger-than-life sub­ject of his upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary film as she strug­gles with ter­mi­nal can­cer: “The more I filmed Rachel, the more I real­ized that I was not just film­ing her health jour­ney. I was film­ing Rachel in her rich, com­pli­cat­ed, at times painful, fullness.”

Unbinding the local

September 23, 2022
· Martin Kelley

It seems as if Friends are in the mid­dle of a big shift, fast-forwarded by Covid lock­downs but part of a larg­er trend.

A few weeks ago at a Quak­er meet­ing, I was giv­en a print­out for a Quak­erism class being spon­sored by anoth­er meet­ing. Noth­ing remark­able, except that the meet­ing is thou­sands of miles away and the work­shop leader thou­sands of miles from the meet­ing. Obvi­ous­ly this is all hap­pen­ing by Zoom. I’m glad to see Friends hun­gry to go deep­er into their faith, but the top­ic is one I’ve taught mul­ti­ple times and could teach in-person at any near­by meeting.

I appre­ci­ate our new Zoom oppor­tu­ni­ties. I have a busy sched­ule and love that I have the chance to attend inter­est­ing work­shops and meet Friends with­out leav­ing my house (to be hon­est, I’ve occa­sion­al­ly run errands to the gro­cery store or a kid drop-off while lis­ten­ing to a live Quak­er talk).

But what hap­pens when our pri­ma­ry Quak­er expe­ri­ence is with peo­ple who aren’t local? It’s increas­ing­ly easy to be an “at large” Friend liv­ing a busy life of dai­ly Quak­er wor­ship and far-flung work­shops all on Zoom. This is great for Friends at a dis­tance from local Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties. But what becomes of our meet­ing com­mu­ni­ties as this trend accel­er­ates? How do our ties to spe­cif­ic neigh­bor­hoods change? And what does it mean if the peo­ple in local meet­ings stop being asked to teach because of the easy acces­si­bil­i­ty of nation­al­ly known teach­ers via Zoom? Will Friends who would have been encour­aged to teach at the local lev­el be rel­e­gat­ed to the role of con­sumer? Will Quak­er lead­er­ship becomes even more con­cen­trat­ed and nation­al — indi­vid­u­als with per­son­al brands and followers?

I sus­pect the inter­est and shifts reflects needs that have been unmet by our cur­rent struc­tures. Maybe our local meet­ings aren’t that nur­tur­ing or will­ing to go deep. Many aren’t set up well for busy par­ents like myself, or for those with lim­it­ed trans­porta­tion. In the U.S. alone mil­lions of peo­ple are nowhere near a Friends congregation. 

Visiting new meetings online

September 23, 2022
· Martin Kelley

A brand new video from Quak­er­S­peak, “What to Expect at a Hybrid Quak­er Meet­ing for Wor­ship,“ con­vinc­ing­ly high­lights the ben­e­fits of online wor­ship. As Robin Mohr says:

One of the things we’ve learned in the last cou­ple of years is that it is eas­i­er to vis­it a new Quak­er meet­ing that’s far away because of the oppor­tu­ni­ties set up through online wor­ship, and we’ve seen a lot of peo­ple go back to vis­it a meet­ing they vis­it­ed before or to be able to vis­it some­place they’ve always heard about but nev­er been to, and that has been a gift to our community. 

Featured on Friends Journal this week.

September 22, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Con­tin­u­ing with Sep­tem­ber’s Quak­er Arts issue:

“Art Is Pray­ing with My Whole Body.” Cai Quirk’s jour­neys as a life­long Quak­er, artist, and gender-diverse per­son are inex­tri­ca­bly linked. Cai sub­mit­ted two arti­cles to us: this text explo­ration of their work and a series of pho­tos titled “Tran­scen­dence.” We liked them so much we decid­ed to pub­lish both (one online and the oth­er both in print and online). Unbe­knownst to me, Cai also sub­mit­ted a poem, which our poet­ry edi­tor chose. When it came time to decide on a cov­er, Cai’s pho­tos stood out more than any of the oth­er selec­tions we test­ed out. I’m pret­ty sure we’ve nev­er had some­one appear in so many forms before.

“It’s Not a Lux­u­ry: Eight Quak­er Artists on the Heal­ing Pow­er of Art.” Johan­na Jack­son spent time with sev­er­al Quak­er artists, ask­ing them about their art and spir­i­tu­al prac­tice dur­ing the pandemic.

Friends Journal hiring a staff writer

August 16, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Want to work with me? Friends Pub­lish­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, the par­ent cor­po­ra­tion of Friends Jour­nal, Quak­er Speak, and Quak​er​.org, is look­ing for our first-ever staff writer 1. We’re look­ing for some­one with jour­nal­is­tic chops who is also famil­iar with the cir­cus that is the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends.

Friends Jour­nal will con­tin­ue to have arti­cles from every-day Friends shar­ing their min­istry and their view of Quak­er life. But with a staff writer we’ll be able to run more deeply report­ed and top­i­cal sto­ries. We’ve been com­mis­sion­ing these already. For exam­ple, in 2019 Erik Han­son report­ed on how a Quak­er school respond­ed to long-ago accu­sa­tions of sex­u­al abuse. When the coro­n­avirus lock­downs hit we com­mis­sioned a quick-turnaround sto­ry from Katie Bres­lin on how Quak­er meet­ings were respond­ing and anoth­er by Greg Woods on the then-novel con­cept of com­muning online. And for years we’ve con­duct­ed inter­views of inter­est­ing Friends who are either too busy to write or per­haps not nat­ur­al writ­ers. With only two of us in edi­to­r­i­al there have been so many times we have to say no to fab­u­lous inter­view pos­si­bil­i­ty. A staff writer will gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to include these voic­es more often.

Here’s an excerpt from the job description:

Friends Pub­lish­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, a non­prof­it Quak­er mag­a­zine and web pub­lish­ing orga­ni­za­tion, seeks a staff writer to join our team. The Staff Writer will work remote­ly, though they may occa­sion­al­ly trav­el to FPC’s Philadel­phia office or oth­er loca­tions as need­ed for all-staff activ­i­ties or to cov­er sto­ries. Trav­el is like­ly to be less than 2 weeks per year. This posi­tion reports to the Senior Editor.

You can check out the jobs page for more. If you know any­one who might qual­i­fy, please please let them know. This real­ly is a remote-friendly position!


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The Nearness of God as Spirit

August 7, 2022
· Martin Kelley

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I had a few min­utes before wor­ship at Crop­well Meet­ing this morn­ing and so turned to the book­case — a place you’ll often find me in in-between times at church­es of all sorts. There was a slim, dark vol­ume with no dis­cernible title on the spine, a mys­tery book. I pulled it out and it was a 1935 copy of Philadel­phia Faith and Prac­tice.

On the inside-front cov­er was the name of its orig­i­nal own­er, who had a sur­name famil­iar to any­one who has wan­dered the grave­yard out front. Near the begin­ning was a his­to­ry of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing which abrupt­ly end­ed in the ear­ly 1800s, just before the Great Schism. It’s as if his­to­ry end­ed there. Only the pub­li­ca­tion address let on to those in the know that this was the Ortho­dox Year­ly Meeting.

As I start­ed read­ing pas­sages I was struck by how well writ­ten it is. I don’t know why that should be sur­pris­ing as Philadel­phia Ortho­dox had Friends like Rufus Jones, Thomas Kel­ly, and Howard Brin­ton. I guess I wasn’t expect­ing the offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion to be free of stilt­ed nine­teenth cen­tu­ry prose.

Here’s a pas­sage from the begin­ning of its “Wor­ship and Min­istry” sec­tion that spoke to me:

Our con­cep­tion of wor­ship is based on a deep-seated faith that God is Spir­it, as Christ taught at Jacob’s well, and that man, as spir­it, can respond to Him and enter into direct com­mu­nion and fel­low­ship with Him. This faith in the near­ness of God as Spir­it sprang out of a fresh and won­der­ful expe­ri­ence of God in the lives of George Fox and the ear­ly Friends. They felt that they found Him as they walked in the fields or as they sat in the qui­et of their meet­ings and they arrived at an unwa­ver­ing cer­tain­ty of the real pres­ence of God in the lives of men, which gave them unusu­al inner strength and spir­i­tu­al power.

I appre­ci­ate that it clear­ly maps out how God and Humana inter­act, tying it with­out much arti­fice to a par­tic­u­lar pas­sage in the gospels. And then it gets real with the image of seek­ers walk­ing the fields look­ing to com­mune with God: such a human depic­tion. I’ll be check­ing out whether I have a copy of this F&P in my home library. It seems we’ll worth a read.

A ran­dom Google search while wait­ing for my fam­i­ly to pick me up from Crop­well turned up this 1922 edi­to­r­i­al in The Friend. This appar­ent­ly is the dis­cus­sion lead­ing up to the new F&P that sur­prised me!

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