Tag Archives ⇒ blog

TV wars

June 25, 2025
· Martin Kelley

Hav­ing start­ed out my blog­ging life as a writer on non­vi­o­lence, I must admit it’s hard to real­ly respond to this week’s mil­i­tary actions with the grav­i­ty they deserve. Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions like AFSC and FCNL are speak­ing out, as they must (“We must act now” and “You can’t bomb your way to peace”) but I can’t get over just how much the­ater this all is. Pres­i­dent Trump gave Iran advance warn­ing of the incom­ing bunker bombs, plen­ty of time for Iran to get its stock­piles of near-weapons-grade mate­r­i­al out of har­m’s way. When Iran retal­i­at­ed with mis­siles against U.S. bases in Qatar, they too gave advance warn­ing, giv­ing the U.S. anti-missile defens­es the heads-up need­ed to defend and destroy the incom­ing barrage.

In reports, Trump is said to have decid­ed on the Iran attack in part because he felt Israel was get­ting such “good press” for its attacks against Iran (not sur­pris­ing­ly, he fix­ates on Fox News cov­er­age, which was all-in for Netanyahu’s attacks). U.S. mil­i­tary intel­li­gence says the attacks on For­do, Iran’s pri­ma­ry nuclear-enrichment site, only delayed a pos­si­ble cre­ation of a nuclear weapon by months. Why gen­er­ate such ill-will for such a tem­po­rary advantage?

Of course, would we even be in this mess if Trump had­n’t scut­tled the hard-won nego­ti­a­tions of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal frame­work. Even at the time it seemed like Trump was most­ly act­ing out of jeal­ousy that a long-term solu­tion had been the result of his pre­de­ces­sor’s work. There does­n’t seem to be any over­ar­ch­ing log­ic to any of this. It’s all for the TV cov­er­age (the rest of the world’s lead­ers seem to have fig­ured this out). Is there a real­ly an end-game to Israel assas­si­nat­ing so much of Iran­ian lead­er­ship, includ­ing some of the very peo­ple who were nego­ti­at­ing deals? And in the midst of this, a real solu­tion to the Pales­tin­ian — Israel con­flict seems fur­ther away than ever.

Peace­ful con­duct is the best way to set up peace­ful res­o­lu­tions. Iran has always been a coun­try with poten­tial. Encour­ag­ing it to give up nuclear and ter­ror­is­tic ambi­tions, promis­ing it last­ing safe­ty, and slow­ly inte­grat­ing it back into the world econ­o­my is real­ly a win-win for all sides. So why all this the­ater? What’s the end plan any­way? Or is that such a naive thing to even ask in 2025?

Ukraine and the dilemmas of pacifism

May 12, 2022
· Martin Kelley

From Johan Maurer

But let’s say you and I have put all our eggs into the Jesus bas­ket. Aban­don­ing non­vi­o­lence is sim­ply not an option. What can we say that is dif­fer­ent from the cal­cu­la­tions of our peace-loving friends and neigh­bors who are cast­ing about for polit­i­cal solu­tions and com­pro­mis­es when evi­dence sug­gests that the aggres­sor is com­plete­ly unin­ter­est­ed in what we think of him?

Everything’s a blog

October 29, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Appar­ent­ly it’s that time of year again. The days grow short­er, the nights grow chill­i­er, and we bemoan the death of blogging.

As some­one who’s now well into my third decade of blog­ging, It’s fun­ny read­ing the respons­es. Peo­ple are talk­ing about mar­kets or about how it’s not the same since big mon­ey stopped sub­si­diz­ing the blog­ging infrastructure.

When blogs start­ed they were incred­i­bly under the radar. We didn’t have big audi­ences — didn’t real­ly expect them — and we weren’t try­ing to mon­e­tize or brand our­selves. We were telling sto­ries. They were text, they were pic­tures, some­times they were videos and audio. For my first few years of blog­ging I resist­ed even call­ing it that because the term was so asso­ci­at­ed with a kind of self-focused hot take.

Accord­ing to one recent sur­vey, Word­Press is pow­er­ing 34% of the pub­lic inter­net. That’s not bad for a dead medi­um. If any­thing is RIP, it’s a nar­row def­i­n­i­tion of blog­ging. I’d argue that any cre­ative con­tent that is reg­u­lar­ly post­ed and dis­played in a time­line is a kind of blog. When I start­ed blog­ging in 1997, I was hand cod­ing every­thing. But now there’s a gazil­lion ser­vices that all look and feel dif­fer­ent but have a dis­tinct blog­ging DNA.

Peo­ple use Face­book to blog. When peo­ple unroll a Twit­ter for Thread Read­er App, it shows just how blog­gy Twit­ter is. Reddit’s the com­ment sec­tion of a blog large­ly divorced from a blog. Instagram’s noth­ing more than a pho­to­blog. Pod­casts are large­ly orga­nized as blogs. Mailchimp and Sub­stack are blogs tied to email lists. And of course there’s Tum­blr, Word­Press, Medi­um, and oth­er more clas­sic text-based blogs. Nowa­days the con­cept is so diverse and dif­fuse that it’s become invis­i­ble. The impor­tant thing is that peo­ple have a voice that they can share.

William Penn on community

March 21, 2019
· Martin Kelley

I some­times like to high­light the com­ments that peo­ple leave here on the blog. A few days ago, Carl Abbott replied to a link to a Steven Davi­son post on com­mu­ni­ty as a tes­ti­mo­ny. He wrote:

William Pen­n’s intro­duc­tion to George Fox’s Jour­nal (1691) speaks to some­thing very like community:

“Besides these gen­er­al doc­trines, as the larg­er branch­es, there sprang forth sev­er­al par­tic­u­lar doc­trines, that did exem­pli­fy and far­ther explain the truth and effi­ca­cy of the gen­er­al doc­trine before observed, in their lives and exam­ples: as,

Com­mu­nion and lov­ing one anoth­er. This is anot­ed mark in the mouth of all sorts of peo­ple con­cern­ing them: They will meet, they will help and stick one to anoth­er. Whence it is com­mon to hear some say: Look how the Quak­ers love and take care of one anoth­er. Oth­ers, less mod­er­ate, will say: The Quak­ers live none but them­selves: and if lov­ing one anoth­er. and hav­ing an inti­mate com­mu­nion in reli­gion, and con­stant care to meet to wor­ship God, and help one anoth­er, be any mark of prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty, they had it, blessed be the Lord in ample manner.” 

This cer­tain­ly sounds like com­mu­ni­ty to me.

Disappointment, frustration, and betrayal

March 8, 2019
· Martin Kelley

From Johan Maurer:

What choic­es do we have? The most obvi­ous and most glib answer is: leave! Escape! In fact, after prayer and con­sul­ta­tion and weigh­ing options, that may end up being the best answer. 

This seems like a very ground­ed look at some of the oft-recurrent dys­func­tions in church­es. Check out the list of prob­lems. I sus­pect thet most seek­ers have run into at least a fee of these in congregations.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​3​/​t​r​u​s​t​w​o​r​t​h​y​-​p​a​r​t​-​t​h​r​e​e​-​c​h​o​i​c​e​s​.​h​tml

Trustworthy, part one: the cost of betrayal

March 4, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er on abus­es in our meetings:

As far as I know, the final set­tle­ment in that case was nev­er made pub­lic. In a larg­er sense, the “final set­tle­ment” demand­ed by God’s grace and jus­tice will nev­er be mea­sured in dol­lars, but there is some­thing sat­is­fy­ing about know­ing that mon­ey was involved: almost noth­ing slices through pious mis­di­rec­tion or sophistry like cold cash. But it’s also true that cash does­n’t cut deeply enough. 

I’m still uncon­vinced we’re all doing enough to bring day­light to skele­tons in our clos­ets or heal­ing to vic­tims. Law­suits make every­one clam up, yet they too often seem to be the only mech­a­nism for shed­ding light on the sit­u­a­tion in the first place.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​2​/​t​r​u​s​t​w​o​r​t​h​y​-​p​a​r​t​-​o​n​e​-​c​o​s​t​-​o​f​-​b​e​t​r​a​y​a​l​.​h​tml

Evangelistic malpractice

February 8, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er on start­ing fresh in a cor­ner of the Quak­er world:

I was grate­ful that the “who” ques­tion was there — tes­ti­fy­ing that we are not cen­tered on our­selves, duti­ful­ly inven­to­ry­ing our Quak­er mark­ers. For me, evan­ge­lism (pay­ing urgent atten­tion to the “who”) puts all those oth­er tes­ti­monies in per­spec­tive. All those tes­ti­monies are “signs and won­ders,” qual­i­ties of the Light by which we as the Body of Christ par­tic­i­pate in mak­ing Jesus visible. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​2​/​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​t​i​c​-​m​a​l​p​r​a​c​t​i​c​e​.​h​tml

What is our vocation?

January 25, 2019
· Martin Kelley

From Johan Mau­r­er, a return to a ques­tion he first pon­dered twelve years ago: do Quak­ers have a voca­tion among the larg­er body of Chris­tians? There’s lots of good obser­va­tions about our spir­i­tu­al gifts, like this one:

A com­mu­ni­ty empow­ered by spir­i­tu­al gifts is not cul­tur­al­ly nar­row. This asser­tion is backed by vast hopes and very lit­tle expe­ri­ence. Many Friends meet­ings and church­es yearn for cul­tur­al and racial diver­si­ty, but seem to be stuck argu­ing about the­o­ret­i­cal ideals rather than choos­ing to exam­ine hur­dles: loca­tion, unin­tend­ed or unex­am­ined “we-they” mes­sages (no mat­ter how benev­o­lent or pro­gres­sive the inten­tion), and a ten­den­cy to see non-members as objects of ser­vice rather than co-equal par­tic­i­pants already part of “us” in God’s sto­ry. But most of all, I believe that spir­i­tu­al pow­er unites while cere­bral analy­sis divides. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​1​/​w​h​a​t​-​i​s​-​o​u​r​-​v​o​c​a​t​i​o​n​.​h​tml