Tag Archives ⇒ martin

Reviving Queer Worship

October 15, 2025
· Martin Kelley

In my lat­est author pod­cast inter­view, I talk with R.E. Mar­tin and Jason A. Ter­ry about the efforts to bring back wor­ship focused specif­i­cal­ly on the queer com­mu­ni­ty to Friends Meet­ing of Wash­ing­ton (FMW). I espe­cial­ly appre­ci­ate the work of con­nect­ing with elders who par­tic­i­pat­ed in this wor­ship in decades past — through the worst of the AIDS epi­dem­ic and through the strug­gle for grow­ing accep­tance of the 1990s.

You can watch the full episode of my talk with R.E. and Jason and read their arti­cle, “Advices and Que[e]ries: Cho­sen Fam­i­ly and Cho­sen Ances­tors.”

The Octo­ber issue of Friends Jour­nal is specif­i­cal­ly about affin­i­ty groups: how and why and when we might break off into wor­ship groups that specif­i­cal­ly include and exclude Friends. Octo­ber authors Vanes­sa Julye and Cur­tis Spence are inter­viewed as part of this mon­th’s Quak­ers Today pod­cast episode, “Quak­ers & Affin­i­ty Spaces: Find­ing Whole­ness in a Sep­a­rat­ed World.”

Mind​ful​walk​er​.com

October 30, 2008
· Martin Kelley

Mindful WalkerNew York City Jour­nal­ist Susan DeMark looks for the sto­ries behind the archi­tec­ture, build­ings, his­to­ry, and nature of NYC and beyond. She and a graph­ic design­er put togeth­er the look of the site and I per­formed the CSS mag­ic to trans­late their vision into a Word­Press blog.

Vis­it: Mind­ful Walker


Con­tin­ue read­ing →

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.

Food Not Bomb’s Publisher’s Note

June 29, 1992
· Martin Kelley

Intro from 2025: I see that the Food Not Bombs book I worked on in 1992 is avail­able in the Inter­net Archive. Look­ing through it, I see my pub­lish­er’s note is there. I might as well retroac­tive­ly add it to the blog!

I some­times muse over whether the ostrich isn’t the most apt ani­mal totem of our age. Like that giant bird, so many of us react to prob­lems by tizzy­ing about and shov­ing our heads in the sand. With our sight thus obscured, we hope for some­one to fix our trou­bles for us.

How else to describe our response to the unweav­ing of those social threads that once bound us in the vision of a com­mon human­i­ty? Over the past decade, we’ve seen an alarm­ing rise in pover­ty and hunger, yet so many of us have done so lit­tle. As we step over home­less peo­ple, we demon­strate anew how even the great­est hor­ror can become mun­dane when seen often enough.

We spend hours excus­ing our­selves for our inac­tion, while at the same time blam­ing oth­ers for theirs. We stick our heads in the sand and wait for oth­ers — be they in gov­ern­ment, social work or reli­gion — to come and solve the crises in our communities.

Tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty and action in our com­mu­ni­ty is pre­cise­ly the goal of Food Not Bombs col­lec­tives through­out the coun­try. Food Not Bombs is not about hir­ing pro­fes­sion­als, re-prioritizing the gov­ern­ment, or financ­ing new agen­cies; it is not at all about ask­ing oth­ers to solve our com­mu­ni­ties’ prob­lems. It is about ordi­nary, non-heroic folk empow­er­ing them­selves and com­ing togeth­er around food — the most basic of issues — as a way of pro­vid­ing for one another.

When you sit around a Food Not Bombs table, you get to know peo­ple in a way that does­n’t allow you to eas­i­ly stick your head back into the sand. By lit­er­al­ly break­ing bread with these won­der­ful strangers, you’re chal­lenged to break stereo­types. This is an essen­tial­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary act.

Some­times I look around the Food Not Bombs table here in Philadel­phia, and dream of a day when we will all take our heads out of the sand. Of a day when we will be able to look each oth­er in the eye and reach out to each oth­er in times of need. Of a day when we will pro­vide our­selves and each oth­er with free food, free hous­ing, free education.

We here at New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers are proud to be a part of that dream, and proud to offer you Food Not Bombs: How to Feed the Hun­gry and Build Com­mu­ni­ty. Read the book and vis­it — or start! — a Food Not Bombs chap­ter in your town. Maybe you’ll see why I some­times won­der if that dream might not be clos­er than we all think.

Mar­tin Kel­ley
for New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers
June 29, 1992