Tag Archives ⇒ experience

Walt Whitman: A prophet found under your boot-soles

June 3, 2019
· Martin Kelley

A brief look at some of the Quak­er influ­ences on Walt Whit­man’s spirituality:

Whit­man absorbed deist prin­ci­ples from his father; he was equal­ly influ­enced by his mother’s Quak­er back­ground. He embraced the Quak­er empha­sis on indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ence of the divine — what Friends call the “inner light” — as well as the con­cept of “that of God” exist­ing with­in every per­son. Whitman’s poet­ry reflects Quak­ers’ rad­i­cal­ly egal­i­tar­i­an theology 

https://​www​.churchtimes​.co​.uk/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​2​0​1​9​/​3​1​-​m​a​y​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​s​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​s​/​w​a​l​t​-​w​h​i​t​m​a​n​-​a​-​p​r​o​p​h​e​t​-​f​o​u​n​d​-​u​n​d​e​r​-​y​o​u​r​-​b​o​o​t​-​s​o​les

Jesus the key to my experience

April 22, 2019
· Martin Kelley

From Mark Russ:

As a Chris­t­ian Quak­er liv­ing in a post-Christian Quak­er cul­ture, I’m occa­sion­al­ly called upon to explain my Chris­tian­i­ty to my fel­low Quak­ers. I recent­ly did this by say­ing ‘Jesus is the key that unlocks my expe­ri­ence of the world’. I was then asked ‘could you say more about that?’, and I didn’t real­ly have an answer prepared 

Jesus the key to my experience

Brian Drayton: One cost of our theological diversity

February 11, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Respond­ing to arti­cles in the Decem­ber Friends Journal:

Rather I am aware that a cer­tain lev­el of fel­low­ship or com­pan­ion­ship is miss­ing. It can take a life­time, I find, to explore the impli­ca­tions and mean­ing of the gospel life, to expe­ri­ence such a renew­ing of the mind that one can grow into the life of Christ, see and learn to hon­or the Sophia of God, the Logos in its appear­ing in humans, and in cre­ation, and in our­selves in our mea­sure. Fel­low­ship with oth­ers who are fol­low­ing that same path ( a path “tra­di­tion­al­ly held by Friends”) is nour­ish­ing, stim­u­lat­ing, and educa­tive in, well, par­tic­u­lar ways. Fel­low­ship with earnest seek­ers who under­stand their paths dif­fer­ent­ly is also pre­cious, and indeed nec­es­sary — but not the same. 

One cost of our the­o­log­i­cal diversity

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

Lost Bayard Rustin interview

January 10, 2019
· Martin Kelley

The Mak­ing Gay His­to­ry pod­cast fea­tur­ing Quak­er Civ­il Rights Bayard Rustin is avail­able now:

The chal­lenge we faced in telling Rustin’s sto­ry in a Mak­ing Gay His­to­ry episode was the appar­ent absence of any record­ings where he talked about his expe­ri­ences as a gay man.  But thanks to the dogged research­ing efforts of Sara Burn­ing­ham and the gen­eros­i­ty of Rustin’s sur­viv­ing part­ner, Wal­ter Nae­gle, who record­ed and saved the rare inter­views Rustin gave on the sub­ject of his sex­u­al­i­ty, we’re able to bring this aspect of Rustin’s expe­ri­ence to life through his own voice. 

https://​mak​ing​gay​his​to​ry​.com/​p​o​d​c​a​s​t​/​b​a​y​a​r​d​-​r​u​s​t​in/

New eBook “Remixing Faith” Now Available

November 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Wess Daniels:

I have put this talk togeth­er in ebook form com­plete with lots of pic­tures and illus­tra­tions and for­mat­ting that adds to the read­ing expe­ri­ence. I want­ed to share this with all of you and make it as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble, so it is free to down­load. It should work with most modern-day eBook read­ers and apps. If that doesn’t work for you, I have also turned the talk into a down­load­able .PDF.

New eBook “Remix­ing Faith” Now Available

Why Do Quakers Worship in Silence?

October 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Catch­ing up with last week’s Quak­er­S­peak, which was a great one with Lloyd Lee Wil­son explain­ing how Quak­er silence is dif­fer­ent from indi­vid­ual meditation:

From the exte­ri­or, there may not appear to be very much dif­fer­ent between a group of indi­vid­u­als doing indi­vid­ual med­i­ta­tion or indi­vid­ual con­tem­pla­tion in the same room and a group of Quak­er wor­ship­ing togeth­er. But there are a num­ber of things that are, as we expe­ri­ence them, dif­fer­ent. One is that these prac­tices that have as their goal achiev­ing still­ness of mind or per­fect qui­et or single-pointed aware­ness, as a goal, are actu­al­ly quite dif­fer­ent from what we are attempt­ing and achiev­ing in meet­ing for wor­ship. For Friends, this point of still­ness is only a way sta­tion, and we pass though that. It is not our goal, but it is how we get to a point of encounter with God.
 

Why Do Quak­ers Wor­ship in Silence?

Ben Woods; Liberal Quakerism and the Need for Roots

September 21, 2018
· Martin Kelley

On our rela­tion­ship with Christianity:

In this vein, for ear­ly Friends, ‘being a Chris­t­ian‘, was more than sim­ply assent­ing to the­o­log­i­cal abstracts. To live as a ‘Friend of the Truth’ was to expe­ri­ence direct­ly the claim that God loves the uni­verse per­pet­u­al­ly in Christ. In this respect, ‘Quak­er’ Chris­tian­i­ty is more than a the­o­ry or phi­los­o­phy of things, but a prac­ti­cal rela­tion­ship with a liv­ing per­son. To walk with Jesus of Nazareth meant to live with the same man­tle upon one’s shoul­ders, to teach, to heal, and to restore. 

Reflec­tions on Lib­er­al Quak­erism and the Need for Roots