This week I was reading the stories of Paul S. Lippencott, Jr., a recorded minister of my own Cropwell Meeting who lived from 1882 to 1968. I’m trying to understand the character of the meeting, and our outgoing clerk has told stories of being a kid and listening to Paul’s sermons back in the 1960s. Someone had gotten an early tape recorder to collect Paul’s tales and published the somewhat rambling account as Answered Prayers, a book I found at Vintage Quaker Books.

The best story is the lead one. As a young man of around 30, Paul was retired in bed reading religious books when he felt a prompt (queue etherial music). “After a short period of prayer it became very clear to me that I should go out and gear up the horse.” Prompts came to him one after another: drive west down the road a couple of miles to the next town, and then: buy non-perishable groceries at the store that was still open. All this was done in faith: “Until that time I had no idea where I was going to take this food,” he writes. Then a final prompt as he remembered “an old colored lady named Margaret Worthington” who “lived in a cabin by herself” a half-mile away. He had never met her but felt led to visit on that dark night. “I pulled up at the little one room cabin where there was a light through the window, and as I went to the door, I heard her voice praying for help and food. I was there under unusual circumstances to answer the fervent prayers of a believing soul.”

Yowsa!

If you want the whole story of the mysterious food run, it’s on the Cropwell website accompanying a talk on the long and entwined relationships between the meeting and local Black families. “Aunt Margaret” had a special talent for having her prayers answered and Paul’s book has more stories about her.

Paul tells other stories about following mysterious prompts. In one, he feels led to take a longer route back to his office after lunch. It’s the Depression and on this different path he runs into an old acquaintance, now out of work and “in very trying condition.” He’s feeling broken and finally admits to Paul that he’s considering taking his own life. They pray together and hope is restored. As Paul writes “There was some reason for me to make that short detour, even on a morning when I was pressed for time. I am thankful that the Lord helped me to be able and alert to listen to that Still, Small Voice.”

This is of course an echo of the parable of the Good Samaratan. People of high standing walked by the injured traveler but it was the lowly Samaratan who listened and heard the prompt and the prayer, stopped their busy life, and aided the traveler. Jesus told the story to illustrate the query “who is my neighbor.” I’m not sure I have the best ear for these kinds of prayers hanging out there but I’d like to try to listen more.

If you’re in South Jersey or Philly and want to hear more Cropwell stories, you’re invited to visit this Sunday to honor our outgoing clerk, Earl Evens. A few years ago Cropwell was down to two attending members and close to being laid down when a small group led by Earl felt a prompt to try to rebuild the community. Earl’s stories of old Cropwell, the way he’s played host to the rebirthed community, and his gentle opinions on Quaker worship have helped set the spiritual DNA of our expanding group (five new members last year and another applied this week). I’m the incoming clerk and omg, these are quite the shoes to fill.

A few weeks before the show, one of the adult organizers made an announcement about the upcoming show at the rise of meeting for worship. He explained, “We did a really radical thing. We asked our teens what they would want to do if they could organize an event for young people. And they told us. And we listened.” At a time when we are deeply engaged in conversations about the direction of Quakerism, it’s powerful to be reminded that building toward our future might be easier to achieve if we open our hearts and minds and listen to the next generation.

Read more at Finding the Divine in a Mosh Pit. This is from the March edition of Spark, New York Yearly Meeting’s publication, which focuses on the arts this issue.

Be sure to scroll to the bottom of Cole’s article for a disclaimer about the mosh pit (spoiler: there wasn’t one). It made me wonder if kids still mosh. Wikipedia dates the practice to 1980. I’m sure some do, as we live in an age of evergreen sub-genres. The availability of music and video on-demand and the ability to quickly organize communities via app make every era easily accessible. I’ve lost track of how many 80s revivals we’ve gone through.

But concerts these days are so mediated by cell phones. Even I find myself taking it out when the first chords of a favorite song start up. And even if you yourself resist, others will have their phones out videoing you. I’m fascinated by the videos of high school kids from the 1980s that sometime get posted on YouTube. They’re so unfazed by the camera, which would have been some bulky Hi8 camcorder, probably because they figured no one would actually ever look at the footage. It’s hard to imagine the wild abandon and non-self-consciousness of 1980s moshing when you know any awkward move you make might show up on Tiktok or Insta the next day.

Their “mission” work consists of farming, teaching, music and woodworking and language translating, lots of transporting children and teens. It also involves preaching each week, and participation in funerals, weddings, and other traditional pastoral duties, all aimed at introducing people to Jesus.

Their “mission” work consists of farming, teaching, music and woodworking and language translating, lots of transporting children and teens. It also involves preaching each week, and participation in funerals, weddings, and other traditional pastoral duties, all aimed at introducing people to Jesus. 

http://www.liberalfirst.com/opinion/our-great-commission

I don’t know much about Rorem or the extent or ongoingness of his Quaker identity (if anyone wants to share more in the comments that would be great). I keep a list I call “Surprising Unexpected Unlikely Quakers” for names people give me of famous’ish people with Quaker connections. Who’s your favorite unlikely Quaker?

At 95, Ned Rorem Is Done Composing. But He’s Not Done Living. (Published 2018)

As the composer, writer and gay icon lives quietly on the Upper West Side, his music and books…

www.nytimes.com

This overt distrust of the arts faded away a long time ago. Today, the sheer volume of creativity among Friends is impressive. When we put out a call for this issue, we had far more submissions than we could possibly print. A dozen more artists told us they would love to write something but were too busy creating to do so at this time. Faced with a bit of a dilemma, we’ve created a sampler: each of the articles in these pages represents a different facet of creativity among Friends.

Throughout the diverse disciplines of visual arts, music, writing, photography, community-based art, and performance art, a common thread harks back to the concerns of those earlier Friends: there’s still a conscientiousness around art.

I’ll talk more about individual articles as we feature them but in the meantime, feel free to leave me your initial thoughts in the comments below. Bummed that you didn’t write anything? The issue on Meetings and Money is looking for submissions.

Just a moment…

www.friendsjournal.org

Especially artists and musicians, we often don’t have the same point of view or even the same background. Each of us will bring a lot of baggage into the meeting of the musicians and we have to build trust with each other and people need to feel free to express their ideas as a soloist without feeling told by the leader how exactly to play—we have to work it out as an ensemble. And I think that’s very true with meetings also.

Those with long memories might remember that I interviewed Chad Stephenson after he made a comparison between new jazz traditionalists and Convergent Friends at the 2009 Ben Lomond conference (I believe he wrote an expanded version for the Spirit Rising Quaker anthology but I can’t find a link).

On a recent Tuesday, Friends Journal sponsored me to attend one of Tufte’s one-day workshops. He’s most well-known for his beautiful books on data visualizations but his workshop touched on a number of fascinating topics. “The world is way too interesting to have disciplinary boundaries,” he said at one point as he took us from music to maps to space shuttles to magicians. The range was purposeful. He was teaching us how to think.

I estimated a crowd of maybe 450. A large percentage were low-level corporate types (I overheard one say “I was not expecting that he’d bash PowerPoint so much”; this slacker obviously hadn’t even taken five minutes to skim Tufte’s Wikipedia page). There were smaller mixes of techie, creatives, and design professionals, some of whom were there after fawning over his books for years. Bonus if you go: part of the workshop registration fee is gratis copies of his books!

I have 13 pages of notes. Some highlights for me:

• The heart of much of the workshop was critical thinking. Tufte dissected various news websites to take us through the ways they gave attribution and presented data. He also went through studies and gave various pointers to sniff out when verifying data was being withheld.
• “Producing a good presentation is a moral and ethical act.” (ditto for being an good audience member). There is a form of civic responsibility to inquiry.
• Tufte is a big believer in meetings that begin with reading. The highest-resolution device most of us have is paper. People can read 2–3 times faster than a presenter can talk. By letting people go at their own pace they can tailor the presentation to their own needs.
• Data presentation: A theme throughout the workshop was “documents not decks,” an emphasis on flat, web-like presentations that allow readers to control scrolling. He continually called out “flat surfaces” and material that is “adjacent in space” to give an almost theological argument for their superiority over deck-like presentations (think PowerPoint) that can obscure important data.
• He urged us not to pander to our audience: Consumer sites show that data can be popular: the New York Times’s website has 450 links; ESPN’s has tables atop tables and yet people read these sites every day. Why can’t we have the same level of data-rich accessibility in our work lives? “Have we suddenly becomes stupid just because we’ve comes to work?” He urged the mid-level execs in the audience to demand good presentations. We should push back against the low-expectations of their bosses to ask “Why can’t we live up to ESPN?”
• Data as beauty. From gorgeous maps to graphical music notation (below), Tufte loves design and data that come together in beauty. It is amazing.

One of my favorite parts of the workshop was an afternoon digression from strict data that he introduced by saying, “It’s time for a heart to heart.” It began with a sermonette on credibility: how to make yourself accountable and just other’s arguments.

Then he talked about how to respond when someone challenges your work. I could tell there must be a long list of personal stories informing this part of the workshop–lessons learned, yes, but surely opportunities lost too. Tufte told us it was only natural to respond in defensiveness and anger and counseled us to not be too quick to dismiss critique. You’ve got to do the hard work to see whether your challenger might be correct.

He reminded us that when we’re in a room full of peers, everyone present has been filtered and selected over the years. You should assume the room will be just as smart as you are. “How dare you think your motives are better than those of your colleagues!” he thundered at an emotional crescendo. He admitted that this self-doubt is a hard posture to adopt. He’s polled public figures he respects and even the thickest-skinned are stung by challenge.

He said he had learned to back off, go slow, and contemplate when he’s challenged. Just when I thought he had found some super-human ability to rationally consider things, he told us it could took him three to five years to really accept the validity of dissenting views.

This was a much-needed sermon for me and I nodded along along. As someone who professionally amplifies opinion, I’m often in the middle of people in debate (I’ve been an actor in these conflicts in the past, though these days I generally play a role somewhere between an agent and mediator). It’s good to see intellectual debate as a process and to remember that it can take years. “This concludes the therapeutic portion of today’s course”, he concluded, before going back to visualizations.

He ended by showing us timeless first-editions of beautiful scientific works by Galileo and Euclid. He felt a genuine appreciation of being part of an intellectual tradition. He was a master and for this day we in the audience were his apprentices. “In life we need tools that last forever and give us clear leverage in clear thinking.”

Update: apparently some number of data visualization people have disliked his workshops. What I found fascinatingly wide-ranging they found rambling. Perhaps Tufte has tightened his presentation or I caught him on a good day. More likely, I think they came looking for a more technical discussion of data visualization and was surprised that Tufte focused so much on critical thinking and communication skills. I have a particular soft spot for quirky and opinionated people who don’t follow scripts and Tufte’s detours all made a certain sense to me. But then I’m a philosophy major turned do-gooder writer/publisher. Your mileage may vary.

I recently listened to Solomon Burke’s 196 album Rock ‘n’ Soul. Definitely worth a listen if like me he’s been off your musical radar. I especially like Wikipedia’s account of how conflicts over branding and church propriety led Burke and his record label Atlantic to coin the term “soul music.”

Almost immediately after signing to Atlantic, Wexler and Burke clashed over his branding and the songs that he would record. According to Burke, “Their idea was, we have another young kid to sing gospel, and we’re going to put him in the blues bag.“As Burke had struggled from an early age with “his attraction to secular music on the one hand and his allegiance to the church on the other,” when he was signed to Atlantic Records he “refused to be classified as a rhythm-and-blues singer” due to a perceived “stigma of profanity” by the church, and R&B’s reputation as “the devil’s music.”

Burke indicated in 2005: “I told them about my spiritual background, and what I felt was necessary, and that I was concerned about being labeled rhythm & blues. What kind of songs would they be giving me to sing? Because of my age, and my position in the church, I was concerned about saying things that were not proper, or that sent the wrong message. That angered Jerry Wexler a little bit. He said, ‘We’re the greatest blues label in the world! You should be honored to be on this label, and we’ll do everything we can – but you have to work with us.’”

To mollify Burke, it was decided to market him as a singer of “soul music” after he had consulted his church brethren and won approval for the term. When a Philadelphia DJ said to Burke, “You’re singing from your soul and you don’t want to be an R&B singer, so what kind of singer are you going to be?”, Burke shot back: “I want to be a soul singer.” Burke’s sound, which was especially popular in the South, was described there as “river deep country fried buttercream soul.” Burke is credited with coining the term “soul music,” which he confirmed in a 1996 interview.