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.”

Google+: View post on Google+

Visit: Mindful Walker

Client Testimonial:

“Martin has provided — and continues to provide excellent service and
consultation as a Web site developer. For my site on New York-based
architecture and history, Mindfulwalker.com, I asked for some complex
developments of and changes to a WordPress theme and the site
installation. I received the service that I needed and more, and I’m
very happy with the site today. Martin brings a variety of assets to
his role: He is extremely knowledgeable and capable in programming and
Web tools. He’s also a good communicator, is very value-conscious about
the service he delivers for the cost, and is understanding of client
needs. Beyond this, Martin helped with some excellent tutorials as I
took over the site. I plan to hire Martin again as I look forward to
enhancements and additional developments for my site and business.
Martin is excellent at what he does!” May 10, 2009

Susan DeMark, Journalist.
Hired Martin as a Graphic/Web Designer in 2007
Top qualities: Great Results, Good Value, High Integrity

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.

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