Tag Archives ⇒ george fox

The peace of Christ for those with ears to hear

March 9, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Over on Quak­er Oats Live, Cherice is fired up about tax­es again and propos­ing a peace wit­ness for next year:

My solu­tion: Quak­ers, Men­non­ites, Brethren, and whomev­er else wants to par­tic­i­pate refus­es to pay war tax­es for a few years, and we suf­fer the con­se­quences. I think we should cam­paign for a war-tax-free 2010 in all Quak­er meet­ings and Mennonite/Brethren/etc. com­mu­ni­ties. What are they going to do – throw us all in jail? Maybe. But they can’t do that for­ev­er. No one wants to pay their tax­es for a bunch of Quak­ers and oth­er paci­fists to sit in jail for not pay­ing tax­es. It does­n’t make sense.

A com­menter chimes in with a warn­ing about Friends who were hit by heavy tax penal­ties a quar­ter cen­tu­ry ago. But I know of some­one who did­n’t pay tax­es for twen­ty years and recent­ly vol­un­teered the infor­ma­tion to the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice. The col­lec­tors were non­cha­lant, polite and sym­pa­thet­ic and set­tled for a very rea­son­able amount. If this friend’s expe­ri­ence is any guide, there’s not much dra­ma to be had in war tax resis­tance. These days, Cae­sar does­n’t care much.

What if our wit­ness was direct­ed not at the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment but at our fel­low Chris­tians? We could fol­low Quak­er founder George Fox’s exam­ple and climb the tallest tree we could find (real or metaphor­i­cal) and begin preach­ing the good news that war goes against the teach­ings of Jesus. As always, we would be respect­ful and char­i­ta­ble but we could reclaim the strong and clear voic­es of those who have trav­eled before us. If we felt the need for back­up? Well, I under­stand there are twenty-seven or so books to the New Tes­ta­ment sym­pa­thet­ic to our cause. And I have every rea­son to believe that the Inward Christ is still hum­ming our tune and burn­ing bush­es for all who have eyes to see and ears to lis­ten. Just as John Wool­man min­is­tered with his co-religionists about the sin of slav­ery, maybe our job is to min­is­ter to our co-religionists about war.

But who are these co-religionist neigh­bors of ours? Twen­ty years of peace orga­niz­ing and Friends orga­niz­ing makes me doubt we could find any large group of “his­toric peace church” mem­bers to join us. We talk big and write pret­ty epis­tles, but few indi­vid­u­als engage in wit­ness­es that involve any dan­ger of real sac­ri­fice. The way most of our estab­lished bod­ies could­n’t fig­ure out how to respond to a mod­ern day prophet­ic Chris­t­ian wit­ness in Tom Fox’s kid­nap­ping is the norm. When the IRS threat­ened to put liens on Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing to force resis­tant staffers to pay, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary and clerk said all sorts of sym­pa­thet­ic words of anguish (which they prob­a­bly even meant), then docked the employ­ee’s pay any­way. There have been times when clear-eyed Chris­tians did­n’t mind loos­ing their lib­er­ty or prop­er­ty in ser­vice to the gospel. Ear­ly Friends called our emu­la­tion of Christ’s sac­ri­fice the Lam­b’s War, but even sev­en years of real war in the ancient land of Baby­lo­nia itself has­n’t brought back the old fire. Our meet­ing­hous­es sit quaint, with own­er­ship deeds untouched, even as we wring our hands won­der­ing why most remain half-empty on First Day morning.

But what about these emerg­ing church kids?: all those peo­ple read­ing Shane Clai­borne, mov­ing to neigh­bor­hoods in need, orga­niz­ing into small cells to talk late into the night about prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty? Some of them are actu­al­ly putting down their can­dles and pre­ten­tious jar­gon long enough to read those twenty-seven books. Friends have a lot of accu­mu­lat­ed wis­dom about what it means the prim­i­tive Chris­t­ian life, even if we’re pret­ty rusty on its actu­al prac­tice. What shape would that wit­ness take and who would join us into that unknown but famil­iar desert? What would our move­ment even be called? And does it matter?

—–

Any­one inter­est­ed in think­ing more on this should start sav­ing up their loose change ($200 com­muters) to come join C Wess Daniels and me this Novem­ber when we lead a work­shop on “The New Monas­tics and Con­ver­gent Friends” at Pen­dle Hill near Philadel­phia. Methinks I’m already start­ing to blog about it.

Margaret Fell’s Red Dress

February 19, 2009
· Martin Kelley

I wrote this in Eighth Month 2004 for the Plainand­mod­est­dress dis­cus­sion group back when the red dress MacGuf­fin made it’s appear­ance on that board.

I won­der if it’s not a good time for the Mar­garet Fell sto­ry. She was one of the most impor­tant founders of the Quak­er move­ment, a feisty, out­spo­ken, hard­work­ing and polit­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful ear­ly Friend who lat­er mar­ried George Fox.

The sto­ry goes that one day Mar­garet wore a red dress to Meet­ing. Anoth­er Friend com­plained that it was gaudy. She shot back in a let­ter that it was a “sil­ly poor gospel” to ques­tion her dress. In my branch of Friends, this sto­ry is end­less­ly repeat­ed out of con­text to prove that “plain dress” isn’t real­ly Quak­er. (I haven’t looked up to see if I have the actu­al details cor­rect – I’m telling the apoc­ryphal ver­sion of this tale.)

Before declar­ing her Friend’s com­plaint “sil­ly poor gospel” Mar­garet explains that Friends have set up month­ly, quar­ter­ly and year­ly meet­ing struc­tures in order to dis­ci­pline those walk­ing out of line of the truth. She fol­lows it by say­ing that we should be “cov­ered with God’s eter­nal Spir­it, and clothed with his eter­nal Light.”

It seems real­ly clear here that Mar­garet is using this exchange as a teach­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate the process of gospel order. Indi­vid­u­als are charged with try­ing to fol­low Christ’s com­mands, and we should expect that these might lead to all sorts of seemingly-odd appear­ances (even red dress­es!). What mat­ters is NOT the out­ward form of plain dress, but the inward spir­i­tu­al obe­di­ence that it (hope­ful­ly!) mir­rors. Gospel order says it’s the Meet­ing’s role to double-guess indi­vid­u­als and labor with them and dis­ci­pline them if need be. Indi­vid­u­als enforc­ing a dress code of con­for­mi­ty with snarky com­ments after meet­ing is legal­ism – it’s not gospel order and not prop­er Quak­er process (I would argue it’s a vari­ant of “detrac­tion”).

This con­cern over legal­ism is some­thing that is dis­tinct­ly Quak­er. Oth­er faiths are fine with writ­ten down, clearly-articulated out­ward forms. Look at creeds for exam­ple: it’s con­sid­ered fine for every­one to repeat a set phras­ing of belief, even though we might know or sus­pect that not every­one in church is sign­ing off on all the parts in it as they mut­ter along. Quak­ers are real­ly stick­lers on this and so avoid creeds alto­geth­er. In wor­ship, you should only give min­istry if you are active­ly moved of the Lord to deliv­er it and great care should be giv­en that you don’t “out­run your Guide” or add unnec­es­sary rhetor­i­cal flourishes.

This Plain and Mod­est Dress dis­cus­sion group is  meant for peo­ple of all sorts of reli­gious back­grounds of course. It might be inter­est­ing some time to talk about the dif­fer­ent assump­tions and ratio­nales each of our reli­gious tra­di­tions bring to the plain dress ques­tion. I think this anti-legalism that would dis­tin­guish Friends.

For Friends, I don’t think the point is that we should have a for­mal list of accept­able col­ors – we should­n’t get too obsessed over the “red or not red” ques­tion. I don’t sus­pect Mar­garet would want us spend­ing too much time work­ing out details of a stan­dard pan-Quaker uni­form. “Legal­ism” is a sil­ly poor gospel for Friends. There’s a great peo­ple to be gath­ered and a lot of work to do. The plain­ness with­in is the fruit of our devo­tion and it can cer­tain­ly shine through any out­ward col­or or fashion!

If I lived to see the day when all the Quak­ers were dress­ing alike and gos­sip­ing about how oth­ers were led to clothe them­selves, I’d break out a red dress too! But then, come to think about it, I DO live in a Quak­er world where there’s WAY TOO MUCH con­for­mi­ty in thought and dress and where there’s WAY TOO MUCH idle gos­sip when some­one adopts plain dress. Where I live, sus­penders and broad­falls might as well be a red dress!

When Isaac Penington, Margaret Fell and Elizabeth Bathurst join the reading group

January 20, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Not some­thing I’ll do every day, but over on Quak­erQuak­er I cross-referenced today’s One Year Bible read­ings with Esther Green­leaf Mur­er’s Quak­er Bible Index. Here’s the link to my post about today: First Month 20: Joseph ris­es to pow­er in Egypt; Jesus’ para­ble of wheat & tares and pearls. It’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly rich read­ing today. Jesus talks about the wheat and the weeds aka the corn and the tares, an inter­est­ing para­ble about let­ting the faith­ful and the unfaith­ful grow together. 

As if know­ing today is Inau­gu­ra­tion Day, Isaac Pen­ing­ton turned it into a polit­i­cal ref­er­ence: “But oh, how the laws and gov­ern­ments of this world are to be lament­ed over! And oh, what need there is of their ref­or­ma­tion, whose com­mon work it is to pluck up the ears of corn, and leave the tares standing!”

Mar­garet Fell sees the wheat and tares as an exam­ple of jeal­ousy and false min­istry: “Oh how hath this envi­ous man got­ten in among you. Sure­ly he hath come in the night, when men was asleep: & hath sown tares among the wheat, which when the reapers come must be bound in bun­dles and cast into the fire, for I know that there was good seed sown among you at the first, which when it found good ground, would have brought forth good fruit; but since there are mixed seeds­men come among you & some hath preached Christ of envy & some of good will, … & so it was easy to stir up jeal­ousy in you, you hav­ing the ground of jeal­ousy in your­selves which is as strong as death.”

We get poet­ry from the sev­en­teen cen­tu­ry Eliz­a­beth Bathurst (ahem) when she writes that “the Seed (or grace) of God, is small in its first appear­ance (even as the morn­ing ‑light), but as it is giv­en heed to, and obeyed, it will increase in bright­ness, till it shine in the soul, like the sun in the fir­ma­ment at noon-day height.”

The para­ble of the tares became a call for tol­er­ance in George Fox’s under­stand­ing: “For Christ com­mands chris­t­ian men to “love one anoth­er [John 13:34, etc], and love their ene­mies [Mat 5:44];” and so not to per­se­cute them. And those ene­mies may be changed by repen­tance and con­ver­sion, from tares to wheat. But if men imprison them, and spoil and destroy them, they do not give them time to repent. So it is clear it is the angels’ work to burn the tares, and not men’s.”

A cen­tu­ry lat­er, Sarah Tuke Grubb read and wor­ried about reli­gious edu­ca­tion and Quak­er drift: “But for want of keep­ing an eye open to this pre­serv­ing Pow­er, a spir­it of indif­fer­ence hath crept in, and, whilst many have slept, tares have been sown [Mat 13:25]; which as they spring up, have a ten­den­cy to choke the good seed; those ten­der impres­sions and reproofs of instruc­tion, which would have pre­pared our spir­its, and have bound them to the holy law and tes­ti­monies of truth.”

I hope all this helps us remem­ber that the Bible is our book too and an essen­tial resource for Friends. It’s easy to for­get this and kind of slip one way or anoth­er. One extreme is get­ting our Bible fix from main­stream Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian sources whose view­points might be in pret­ty direct oppo­si­tion from Quak­er under­stand­ings of Jesus and the Gospel (see Jeanne B’s post on The New Calvin­ism or Tom Smith’s very rea­son­able con­cerns about the lit­er­al­ism at the One Year Bible Blog I read and rec­om­mend). On the oth­er hand, it’s not uncom­mon in my neck of the Quak­er woods to describe our reli­gion as “Quak­er,” down­grade Chris­tian­i­ty by mak­ing it option­al, unmen­tion­able or non-contextual and turn­ing to the Bible only for the oblig­a­tory epis­tle ref­er­ence.

This was first made clear to me a few years ago by the mar­gins in the mod­ern edi­tion of Samuel Bow­nas’ “A Descrip­tion of the Qual­i­fi­ca­tions Nec­es­sary to a Gospel Min­istry,” which were pep­pered with the Bib­li­cal ref­er­ences Bow­nas was casu­al­ly cit­ing through­out. On my sec­ond read­ing (yes it’s that good!) I start­ed look­ing up the ref­er­ences and real­ized that: 1) Bow­nas was­n’t just mak­ing this stuff up or quot­ing willy-nilly; and 2) read­ing them helped me under­stand Bow­nas and by exten­sion the whole con­cept of Quak­er min­istry. You’re not read­ing my blog enough if you’re not get­ting the idea that this is one of the kind of prac­tices that Robin, Wess and I are going to be talk­ing about at the Con­ver­gent work­shop next month. If you can fig­ure out the trans­port then get your­self to Cali pron­to and join us.

Burnt Ubers and Reluctant Ranters

April 18, 2008
· Martin Kelley

Inter­est­ing read­ing today about how our Quak­er struc­tures can choke the Spir­it and hem in our com­mu­ni­ties. Johan M is no stranger to Quak­er insti­tu­tions, but in “Clerk Please” he writes:

But who will see and pro­claim these things to new audi­ences if we are so busy try­ing to sort out our struc­tures, nom­i­na­tion process­es, and inter­per­son­al ani­mosi­ties that we don’t take the time to dis­cern and hon­or leadings?

Susanne K echos some of these themes in her lat­est post, “Quak­erism and Struc­ture”:

One of the key parts of George Fox’s rev­e­la­tion was that reli­gious struc­tures can kill the free move­ment of the Spir­it… My Ffriend R has advo­cat­ed the prac­tice of dis­band­ing the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends every 50 years. He believes that the spark of the ini­tial vision and pas­sion of reli­gious groups only sur­vives for about 50 years before devel­op­ing struc­tures start to choke the move­ment of the Spirit.

It’s been about eigh­teen months since I was side­lined from the pro­fes­sion­al Quak­er world (I work for some Quak­ers now, but on a con­tract basis and the rela­tion­ship is much dif­fer­ent). A year or two before this, my month­ly meet­ing melt­ed down and more or less devolved into a wor­ship group and while I’ve found a more active meet­ing to attend, it’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly close and I haven’t joined.

The result of these two changes is that I haven’t sat in a staff meet­ing for over a year; I don’t attend busi­ness meet­ings; I don’t belong to any com­mit­tees; I don’t rep­re­sent any group at con­fer­ences. After years of being what Evan Welkin called an uberQuak­er, I’m an unin­volved slack­er. Bad Mar­tin, right?

Except I’m not unin­volved of course. I feel I’m doing as much now to help peo­ple find and grow into Quak­erism than I did when I was paid to do this. I don’t spend much time with that 2% skim of Quak­er elite who attend all the same con­fer­ences and appoint each oth­er to all the same com­mit­tees, but then cater­ing to their needs was pret­ty high main­te­nance and was nev­er some­thing I thought of as the real mission.

Suzanne talks about the “Sab­bat­i­cal Year” meme, and of course lots of elec­trons fly about the blo­gos­phere about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the Emerg­ing Church move­ment. There’s a hunger for a dif­fer­ent way of being a Friend. I know one Quak­er who threat­ens to burn down the famous meet­ing­house he wor­ships in because he feels that the build­ing has become an emp­ty icon, a weight of bricks upon the Spir­it (I’ll leave him anony­mous in case some­thing mys­te­ri­ous hap­pens to the meet­ing­house tonight!). How trag­ic would it be, real­ly, if some of insti­tu­tion­al bag­gage was laid down and we had to find oth­er ways to con­firm and sup­port one anoth­er’s ministries?

I love teach­ing Quak­erism, I love help­ing Quak­ers use the inter­net for out­reach and I love reach­ing out to poten­tial Friends with my writ­ing. I’m doing all that with­out com­mit­tees or staff meet­ings. No bud­gets to fight over, no mis­sion state­ments to write.

Half a decade ago now I wrote about the “lost Quak­er gen­er­a­tion,” active and vision­ary Gen X Friends who seemed to be drop­ping out in droves. We’re all keep­ing in bet­ter touch now via Face­book but I haven’t noticed much jump­ing back into the fray. What I have noticed is a phe­nom­e­non where Friends half a gen­er­a­tion old­er are tak­ing on Quak­er respon­si­bil­i­ties only to drop away from active meet­ing involve­ment when their terms ended. 

If we could pull togeth­er all of the dropouts togeth­er and start meet­ings that focused on wor­ship, reli­gious edu­ca­tion and deep-community activ­i­ties, I think we’d see some­thing inter­est­ing. I envy those with less-musty, Gen‑X heavy meet­ings near­by (Robin M show­cased her meet­ing recent­ly). And don’t get me wrong: I also love the old Quak­er ide­al of the strong local Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty and the bonds of the com­mu­ni­ty on the indi­vid­ual, etc., etc. But I don’t see meet­ings like that any­where near­by and the only clear lead­ing I real­ly have is to con­tin­ue this “free­lance” teach­ing, writ­ing and orga­niz­ing. It’s not the sit­u­a­tion I want but it’s the sit­u­a­tion I have and at this point I have to just trust the lead­ings as they come step by step and have faith they’re going some­where. Boy though, I wish I knew where all this was head­ing sometimes!

We the Church, the People and the Fellowship

November 13, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Lib­er­al Friends today fre­quent­ly ques­tion the mean­ing of mem­ber­ship. Its neces­si­ty and oblig­a­tions are debat­ed. Does it fos­ter sep­a­ra­tion? Is it an exclu­sive club? What cul­tur­al norms get in the way of wider fel­low­ship? Why do so many of our meet­ings have the same lim­it­ed demo­graph­ic and why do they look so unlike the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty. The way we answer these ques­tions affect the way we think of out­reach and min­istry and what we mean when we think of who “we” are. (Inter­est­ing recent dis­cus­sions from a seek­er here and amongst Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends here.)

Mem­ber­ship is a pow­er­ful means of facil­i­ta­tion fel­low­ship, some­thing that most of us need to grow very deep into the Spir­it. But the fel­low­ship of our month­ly meet­ings (and of “Quak­erism” in gen­er­al) can eas­i­ly become a dis­trac­tion, a means to its own end, a false idol. We need to keep our eyes on the prize and real­ize that mem­ber­ship in meet­ing is sec­ondary to mem­ber­ship in the body of Christ and into that Spir­it which seeks to build the King­dom of God in the world.

Here I’ll look at three over­lap­ping ways of defin­ing “we”: the Church, the Fel­low­ship and the Peo­ple. They’re not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive but they’re also not iden­ti­cal and its pos­si­ble to have one with­out the oth­ers. “We” are out of bal­ance and unable to grow into our full mea­sure as indi­vid­u­als and as a faith com­mu­ni­ty when we don’t keep our eyes on all three together.

The Church

This is the col­lec­tive body of all those who have expe­ri­enced the pow­er of the Inward Christ and turned toward Him. Lib­er­al Friend that I am I’m not going to insist on what name peo­ple give to the oth­er side of this encounter (espe­cial­ly at first). The expe­ri­ence of vis­i­ta­tion comes in var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions and we will be alter­nate­ly judged, com­fort­ed, etc. God loves us and does­n’t hide Him­self from us and reach­es us wher­ev­er we are. This is not to say that all reli­gious tra­di­tions are equal­ly use­ful guides to that path, just that God is merciful. 

The vis­i­ta­tion is not a one-time affair but ongo­ing. As we respond we will change and we will find our­selves vol­un­tar­i­ly re-aligning our lives in ways that let us hear the Spir­it more clear­ly. It is quite pos­si­ble to be a respectable mem­ber of a reli­gious body and stop lis­ten­ing (the root of Friends ner­vous­ness about pro­fes­sion­al min­istry). As we mature spir­i­tu­al­ly and fine-tune the instru­ment of our dis­cern­ment, we will be pre­sent­ed with ever more sub­tle and inge­nious temp­ta­tions and snares to fur­ther progress. It becomes almost impos­si­ble to progress with­out the active fel­low­ship of oth­ers com­mit­ted to this jour­ney, who will con­firm and chal­lenge us as need­ed and ampli­fy our praise.

The Fel­low­ship

We orga­nize our­selves into frail human insti­tu­tions to pro­vide that fel­low­ship. This is fine and nec­es­sary at times but comes with its own snares. It is all too easy to raise up our­selves and begin to exalt our­selves. It is easy to think that our pur­pose is to serve our­selves. We must nev­er for­get that the Body of Christ is our first mem­ber­ship and that its bound­aries will nev­er match up with our print­ed direc­to­ries or mem­ber­ship roles. The pri­ma­ry role of the month­ly meet­ing and lower-case “c” church­es is to spread the good news of the spir­i­tu­al res­ur­rec­tion of Christ and the life and pow­er that exists when we serve God. “The Mem­ber­ship” is always a tem­porar­i­ly illu­sion, a pale imi­ta­tion of The Church and a tem­po­rary stop-gap as the King­dom of God aligns itself on the world. 

The Peo­ple

“Christ has come to teach The Peo­ple Him­self,” one of George Fox’s most impor­tant insights. We’re all in this togeth­er, spir­i­tu­al sal­va­tion is for us all. Those of us who have felt the work­ings of the Inward Spir­it in our hearts must sing that out to every­one we meet. We must hum the song of God and so let oth­ers hear it in their hearts. 

In the Bible “the peo­ple” are the Jews, a spe­cif­ic social group whose spir­i­tu­al devo­tion fades in and out through the cen­turies. The Old Tes­ta­ment is sto­ry after sto­ry of the Jew­ish peo­ple falling down and get­ting back up, usu­al­ly with the help of a prophet whose role was to remind them of God and show them how far they had fall­en out of align­ment with His will. 

Jesus was prophet extra­or­di­naire. When lawyers asked him to define neigh­bor – who is it that our reli­gious insti­tu­tions exist to serve – he gave the sto­ry of a despised Samar­i­tan who did the right thing by help­ing a fel­low human in need. A point of this sto­ry was to show that the Jew­ish God works among non-Jews and that faith­ful­ness does­n’t depend on one’s social sta­tion in life.

The Peo­ple are every­where. We all have access to the Spir­it. And if we are to be the build­ing blocks to God’s King­dom here on Earth we must serve one anoth­er across the super­fi­cial­i­ties that seek to divide us: lines of class, race, eth­nic­i­ty and yes even sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. These are snares. We must seek to rise up togeth­er, focus­ing less on per­ceived fail­ings of those around us than on our own inward call to a greater per­fec­tion (com­mu­nion) with God.

What does this all mean to Friends?

Most Quak­er meet­ings I’ve vis­it­ed are good at one or two of these mod­els of we-ness. But with­out bal­ance they become self-serving. 

The Church with­out Fel­low­ship becomes a “ranter­ism” where every­one is tempt­ed by the snares of self-delusion. Church with­out the Peo­ple becomes a elite spir­i­tu­al­ism that detach­es itself from the pain of the world and the need to wit­ness and serve our neighbors.

Fel­low­ship with­out the Peo­ple becomes a social club unin­ter­est­ed in shar­ing this good thing we’ve got going. Fel­low­ship with­out the Church becomes the shell of an emp­ty form wor­ship­ing itself.

The Peo­ple with­out the Church give us a con­sumer cul­ture which exists for the next fash­ion, for the next sale at the Mall. The Peo­ple with­out Fel­low­ship becomes a flock of sheep dis­persed, easy tar­gets for the wolves of temp­ta­tion whis­per­ing in our ears.

Human fel­low­ships like a Quak­er month­ly meet­ing exist sole­ly to bridge the Church and the Peo­ple. Some of that work involves learn­ing our min­istry and ser­vice, facil­i­tat­ed by month­ly meet­ings and helped along by the tools of our Friends tra­di­tion. But most of the work of the Church is its dai­ly wit­ness to the world of the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of the Spir­it in our lives. If we’re doing our job right our meet­ings should con­stant­ly buck­le and break under the weight of new mem­bers and our wor­ship will spill out into our lives. We will care more about our neigh­bors than our fel­low­ship. “Out­reach,” “Inreach,” “Min­istry” and “Wit­ness” will all be the same work. 

Strangers to the Covenant

July 1, 2005
· Martin Kelley

A workshop led by Zachary Moon and Martin Kelley at the 2005 FGC Gathering of Friends.

 

This is for Young Friends who want to break into the pow­er of Quak­erism: it’s the stuff you didn’t get in First Day School. Con­nect­ing with his­tor­i­cal Quak­ers whose pow­er­ful min­istry came in their teens and twen­ties, we’ll look at how Friends wove God, covenants and gospel order togeth­er to build a move­ment that rocked the world. We’ll mine Quak­er his­to­ry to reclaim the pow­er of our tra­di­tion, to explore the liv­ing tes­ti­monies and our wit­ness in the world. (P/T)

Per­cent­age of time: Wor­ship 20 / Lec­ture 30 / Dis­cus­sion 50

 

Extended Description

We hope to encour­age Friends to imag­ine them­selves as min­is­ters and elders and to be bold enough to chal­lenge the insti­tu­tions of Quak­erism as need­ed. We want to build a com­mu­ni­ty, a cohort, of Friends who aren’t afraid to bust us out of our own lim­it­ed expec­ta­tions and give them space to grow into the aware­ness that their long­ing for deep­er spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion with shared wide­ly among oth­ers their age. Our task as work­shop con­ven­ers is to mod­el as both bold and hum­ble seek­ers after truth, who can stay real to the spir­it with­out tak­ing our­selves either too seri­ous­ly or too lightly.

Mar­tin and Zachary have dis­cov­ered a Quak­er tra­di­tion more defined, more coher­ent and far rich­er than the Quak­erism we were offered in First Day School. In integri­ty to that dis­cov­ery, we intend to cre­ate a space for fel­low­ship that would fur­ther open these glimpses of what’s out there and what pos­si­bil­i­ties exist to step out bold­ly in this Light.

Sun­day: Introductions
The most impor­tant task for today is mod­el­ing the ground­ed wor­ship and spirit-led min­istry that will be our true cur­ricu­lum this week. In a wor­ship shar­ing for­mat we will con­sid­er these questions:

  • What brought me to this workshop?
  • What did they fail to teach me in First Day School that I still want to know?

Mon­day: What is this Quakerism?
Today will be about enter­ing this ground­ed space togeth­er as Friends, begin­ning to ask some ques­tions that reveal and open. How do I artic­u­late what Quak­erism is all about? What ideas, lan­guage, and words (e.g. “God”, “Jesus” “Light”) do use to describe this tra­di­tion? Today we start that dia­logue. At the end of ses­sion we will ask par­tic­i­pants to seek out an old­er Friend and ask them for their answers on these queries and bring back that expe­ri­ence to our next gathering.

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nal and Bible
  • Present ques­tion: When some­one asks me “what is Quak­erism?” how do I respond.
  • Mar­tin and Zachary will share some thoughts on this ques­tion from oth­er Friends
  • Jour­nal­ing on Query
  • Dis­cus­sion of ideas and language.

Tues­day: The Mys­ti­cal Tra­di­tion and Gospel Order
We enter into the lan­guage and fab­ric of our Tra­di­tion at its mys­ti­cal roots. Ask­ing the ques­tions: What does God feel like? Intro­duce ear­ly Quaker’s talk about God. What does it feel like to be with God? What is Gospel Order?

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nals and Bible
  • Follow-up on pre­vi­ous day’s discussion/homework what new came into the Light overnight?
  • Jour­nal­ing on Query: When have I felt the pres­ence of God? Describe it in five senses?
  • Ini­tial dis­cus­sion and shar­ing of thoughts and ideas.
  • Intro­duce some ideas from ear­ly Friends and oth­ers on this Query. How have oth­ers (Jesus, Isa­iah, Mer­ton, Fox, Day) spo­ken of this experience?
  • Intro­duce themes of Spir­i­tu­al Prac­tice: If Quak­erism is about ask­ing the right ques­tions, how do we get into the place to hear those ques­tions and respond faith­ful­ly? We have already been incor­po­rat­ing devo­tion­al read­ing into our time togeth­er each morn­ing but we will intro­duce into the Light of Dis­ci­pline as such here. Nam­ing of oth­er prac­tices, pre­vi­ous­ly acknowl­edged and oth­er­wise, with­in the group.
  • Intro­duce ‘Spir­i­tu­al Dis­cern­ment’ themes for the fol­low­ing day’s session.

Wednes­day: The Roots of Friends’ Dis­cern­ment Tra­di­tion and the Testimonies
We delve into the archives, the dusty stuff, the stuff First Day School didn’t get to: the preach­ing from the trees, the prison time, the age George Fox was when he was first incar­cer­at­ed for his beliefs, what the tes­ti­monies are real­ly about and where they came from. Today is about tak­ing the skele­tons out of the clos­et and clean­ing house.

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nals and Bible
  • ‘Let’s talk his­to­ry’: Ear­ly Friends, the Mak­ing of The Soci­ety, and the Dis­cern­ment Tra­di­tion. [Mar­tin and Zachary may cov­er this, or we may arrange to have anoth­er Friend come and share some thoughts and infuse a new voice into our dialogue]
  • There are lots of tes­ti­monies: what are ours? Name some. How to they facil­i­tate our rela­tion­ship with God?
  • What’s up with “Obe­di­ence”, “Plain­ness”, and “Dis­ci­pline”? How do we prac­tice them?

Thurs­day: Friends in a Covenant­ed Relationship
We grow into our roles as lead­ers in this com­mu­ni­ty by con­sid­er­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties and the hur­dles in deep­en­ing our covenant rela­tion­ship. We begin with con­sid­er­ing spir­i­tu­al gifts, and then con­sid­er ques­tions around min­istry, its ori­gin and its dis­cern­ment. We will take up the task of con­sid­er­ing what our work, what piece of this respon­si­bil­i­ty is ours to carry.

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nals and Bible
  • Jour­nal­ing on the Queries: What is alive inside of me? How are my spir­i­tu­al gifts named and nurtured?
  • What are the tasks of ministry?
  • What are the tasks of eldering?
  • What are the struc­tures and prac­tices in our month­ly, quar­ter­ly and year­ly meet­ings that we can use to test out and sup­port lead­ings? How do these struc­tures work and not work. Clear­ness com­mit­tees? Trav­el­ing Friends? Spir­i­tu­al nurture/affinity groups?
  • What is hold­ing us back from liv­ing this deep­ened rela­tion­ship? What is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to this covenant and this covenant community?

Fri­day: The Future of Quakerism
We begin the work that will occu­py the rest of our lives. The par­tic­i­pants of this work­shop will be around for the next fifty or more years, so let’s start talk­ing about sys­tem­at­ic, long-term change. We have some­thing to con­tribute to this con­sid­er­a­tion right now.

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nals and Bible
  • Where do we go from here? Mar­tin will present on emer­gent church. Zachary will present some thoughts on ‘Beloved Community’.
    Many have talked about deep com­mu­nion with God and about covenant com­mu­ni­ty. Many have spo­ken our hearts and giv­en voice to the pas­sion we expe­ri­ence; now it’s on us what are we going to do about it? Where is it happening?
  • Dis­cus­sion (maybe as a fish­bowl) Where do we envi­sion Quak­erism 50 years from now? 100 years from now?

External Website: Quaker Ranter, Martin’s site.

James R: I Am What I Am

April 7, 2005
· Martin Kelley

By James Riemermann
Here’s a thought-provoking com­ment that James left a few days ago on the “We’re All Ranters Now”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/ranters.php piece. It’s an impor­tant tes­ti­mo­ny and a good chal­lenge. I’m stumped try­ing to answer it upon first read­ing, which means it’s def­i­nite­ly worth featuring!

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Danny: Looking for a Real Religion

March 21, 2005
· Martin Kelley

Here’s an email from Dan­ny, a new friend who I met at last week’s FGC-sponsored “Youth Min­istries Con­sul­ta­tion.” I liked his obser­va­tions and asked if I could share this on the blog. I’m glad he said yes, since it’s a good per­spec­tive on where one con­vinced 19 year old Friend is at.
Update: “Here’s Dan­ny’s new blog, Rid­ing the Whale”:http://Quakernow.blogspot.com/

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