Tag Archives ⇒ pride

Isaac Smith: Good soil

August 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

An obser­va­tion on the soil of God’s work — us:

For many of us, our predica­ment today seems most like the soil with the thorns: We want to draw clos­er to God and walk in God’s ways, but there is so much bad news, so many oblig­a­tions, so many dis­trac­tions. We can be led astray, some­times with­out even know­ing it. The founder of our move­ment, George Fox, once said that “what­ev­er ye are addict­ed to, the Tempter will come in that thing; and when he can trou­ble you, then he gets advan­tage over you, and then ye are gone.” We can be addict­ed to many things: not just, say, alco­hol or gam­bling, but ideas, both about the world and about ourselves. 

Alone, none of us can do much to change the world. But we can allow our­selves to be instru­ments of peace, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, love. It’s easy to get stuck and tempt­ing in those times to get defen­sive or look toward oth­ers. I’ve found the old Quak­er take on “The Tempter” to be per­son­al­ly very use­ful. I’ve learned to ques­tion and go inward when­ev­er I feel too much pride in some­thing or find myself part of a group that seems self-satisfied with its work. 
Good soil

Hope in the Middle East

March 27, 2018
· Martin Kelley

As the March Friends Jour­nal theme of Quak­ers and the Holy Land comes to a close, this week’s fea­tured arti­cle is one with hope. Sandy Rea shares sto­ries of teach­ing in var­i­ous parts of the Mid­dle East with his wife Stephanie Judson:

I fell in love with Lebanon: with the peo­ple, the sound of the lan­guage, the tastes of the food, and smells of the spices. Views to the Lebanon moun­tains from Beirut’s sea­side boule­vards and rooftops are entic­ing. Moun­tain vil­lages have pre­served their charm by keep­ing old­er homes with the blonde stone and red tile roofs. The hard-working and earnest teach­ers and the smart, business-minded shop own­ers are always glad to see for­eign­ers. There is an indus­tri­ous­ness, resilience, and pride in the Lebanese that con­tribute to the repeat­ed ris­ings from so many destruc­tions of the city.

Sandy also gives us his­to­ries of times in which Chris­tians, Mus­lims, and Jews have lived togeth­er in peace. It is pos­si­ble. Today Sandy is clerk of the Mid­dle East Col­lab­o­ra­tive of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing, which is work­ing  on rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in the region.


What Once Was Can Be Again - Friends Journal

What Once Was Can Be Again — Friends Journal 

Work­ing on a shared vision of equal­i­ty and a just peace between Pales­tini­ans and Israelis.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Learning the discernment of self-sacrifice, loss and pride

June 10, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Ear­li­er today I post­ed an excerpt of an inter­est­ing arti­cle on Anabap­tism on my Tum­blr blog and it’s engen­dered quite a con­ver­sa­tion on Face­book about tes­ti­monies and emp­ty forms, etc. It’s true that any form of spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline can get twist­ed into look-at-me hero­ism or lets-talk-anything-but-God group conformity. 

The answer isn’t to give up tes­ti­monies or to hold onto them even tighter, but instead to con­stant­ly remind our­selves about their pur­pose: to learn how to live as an atten­tive peo­ple of God. Here’s what I wrote on Facebook:

I’ve been a most­ly bicycle-riding veg­an for decades, an outspoken
paci­fist and a fre­quent plain dress­er. All of these prac­tices have
aid­ed my spir­i­tu­al growth but also have unearthed new sources of pride
for me to wres­tle with. The self-examination has been prac­tice in
discernment. 

I often think back to the sto­ry of the Good Samar­i­tan. What mat­tered
was­n’t how he was dressed or whether he was rid­ing a bicy­cle. No, what
mat­tered is that he knew enough to know he was being called to
sac­ri­fice some­thing: to get cov­ered in a strangers blood, to aid
some­one who might resent him for it, to lose mon­ey he had earned to put
some­one up for the night. Maybe he had prac­ticed this dis­cern­ment of
self-sacrifice by liv­ing a tes­ti­mo­ny that had chal­lenged him to
nav­i­gate between loss and pride, and maybe he had been brought up in a
com­mu­ni­ty where the val­ue of love was prized above all. The important
thing is he knew to stop and be a true neighbor.

First thoughts about convergent weekend

February 22, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Hey all, the Reclaim­ing Prim­i­tive Quak­erism work­shop at Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Ben Lomond Cen­ter wrapped up a few hours ago (I’m post­ing from the San Jose air­port). I think it went well. There were about thir­ty par­tic­i­pants. The make­up was very inter­gen­er­a­tional and God and Christ were being named all over the place! 

Group shot

I myself felt stripped through­out the first half, a sense of vague but deep unease – not at how the work­shop was going, but about who I am and where I am. Christ was hard at work point­ing out the lay­ers of pride that I’ve used to pro­tect myself over the last few years. This morn­ing’s agen­da was most­ly extend­ed wor­ship, begun with “Bible Read­ing in the Man­ner of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends” (video below) and it real­ly lift­ed the veil for me – I think God even joked around with me a bit.


As always, many of the high points came unex­pect­ed­ly in small con­ver­sa­tions, both planned and ran­dom. One piece that I’ll be return­ing to again and again is that we need to focus on the small acts and not build any sort of move­ment piece by piece and not wor­ry about the Big Con­fer­ence or the Big Web­site that will change every­thing that we know. That’s not how the Spir­it works and our push­ing it to work this way almost invari­ably leads to fail­ure and wast­ed effort.

Anoth­er piece is that we need to start focus­ing on real­ly build­ing up the kind of habits that will work out our spir­i­tu­al mus­cles. Chad of 27Wishes had a great anal­o­gy that had to do with the neo-traditionalist jazz musi­cians and I hoped to get an inter­view with him on that but time ran out. I’ll try to get a remote inter­view (an ear­li­er inter­view with him is here, thanks Chad for being the first inter­view of the weekend!)

Wess and Martin computeringI con­duct­ed a bunch of video inter­views that I’ll start upload­ing to my Youtube account and on the “reclaiming2009” tag on Quak­erQuak­er. When you watch them, be char­i­ta­ble. I’m still learn­ing through my style. But it was excit­ing start­ing to do them and it con­firmed my sense that we real­ly need to be burn­ing up Youtube with Quak­er stuff.

I need to find my board­ing gate but I do want to say that the oth­er piece is putting togeth­er col­lec­tions of prac­tices that Friends can try in their loca­tion Friends com­mu­ni­ty. Gath­er­ing in Light Wess led a real­ly well-received ses­sion that took the Lord’s Prayer and turned it into an inter­ac­tive small group even. We took pho­tos and a bit of video and we’ll be putting it togeth­er as a how-to some­where or other.

Pic­tures going up on Flickr, I’ll orga­nize them soon. Also check out Con​ver​gent​Friends​.org and the Reclaim­ing Prim­i­tive Quak­erism work­shop page on QuakerQuaker.

It’s hard not to make the connection.

June 21, 2003
· Martin Kelley

In Iraq, U.S. sol­diers are blar­ing the sound­tract to ‘Apoc­a­lypse Now’ to psych them­selves up to war:

“With Wag­n­er’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ still ring­ing in their ears and the clat­ter of heli­copters over­head, sol­diers rammed vehi­cles into met­al gates and hun­dreds of troops raid­ed hous­es in the west­ern city of Ramadi”

Mean­while in my home­town of Philadel­phia four teenagers lis­tened to the Bea­t­les’ ‘Hel­ter Skel­ter’ over forty times before attack­ing and beat­ing to death one of their friends.

Hor­rif­ic as both sto­ries are, what strikes me is the choice of music. ‘Hel­ter Skel­ter’ and most of the music on ‘Apoc­alpse Now’ were writ­ten in the late 1960 and ear­ly 70s (the movie itself came out in 1979). Why are today’s teenagers pick­ing the music of their par­ents to plan their attacks? Can’t you kill to Radio­head or Linkin Park? Could­n’t the Philly kids have shown some home­town pride and picked Pink? Why the Oldies Music? Seri­ous­ly, there have been some topsy-turvy gen­er­a­tional sur­pris­es in the sup­port and oppo­si­tion to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Is there some sort of strange fetish for all things 70s going on here?

Uprooting Racism publisher’s note

December 1, 1995
· Martin Kelley

Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, by Paul Kivel.
In 1995, I worked on one of my last books for New Society Publishers, Uprooting Racism, by Paul Kivel. I was both editor and typesetter. It was in my capacity as the former that I wrote this publisher’s note.

 

In this book, Paul Kiv­el is tak­ing on a lot. He’s speak­ing to white peo­ple as a fel­low white per­son about a hush-hush sub­ject: racism. He’s speak­ing with an hon­esty that allows for con­fu­sion and for admis­sion of his own inner prej­u­dices. In an era when many whites express pride of the advance­ment of the civ­il rights move­ment, he asks why so much of our world is still racial­ly proscribed.

Our soci­ety has been built upon a foun­da­tion of racism for so long that it’s become part of the land­scape: always there, sel­dom acknowl­edged. In this book, Kiv­el acknowl­edges and he ques­tions. He asks us where we came from, he asks us what we know. He’s resist­ed the temp­ta­tion to make this a man­u­al of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, and has instead allowed us to share our own prej­u­dices with him as we read.

Kiv­el chal­lenges us to look at our place in soci­ety. Just because we’ve begun to unlearn racism does­n’t mean the per­son wash­ing the dish­es of a favorite restau­rant isn’t still African Amer­i­can. Or that the edi­tor of a favorite mag­a­zine isn’t still a white per­son. Or that the taxi dri­ver we hail isn’t still clas­si­fied an ille­gal alien by a gov­ern­ment restrict­ing immi­gra­tion from darker-skinned regions of the world.

Paul Kiv­el does­n’t give us pat answers to these dilem­mas. He knows there will be no point at which we can sit back and con­sid­er our job com­plet­ed. We must con­tin­ue to wres­tle with these ques­tions, and in the con­fu­sion find moments of con­nec­tion and clarity.

Uproot­ing racism is of course a large task, much larg­er than any one of us. But by work­ing in our com­mu­ni­ties, and by engag­ing with our neigh­bors, work­mates, and friends, we can make a dif­fer­ence. May this book inspire and con­fuse you!

Mar­tin Kel­ley, for the New Soci­ety Publishers

June 2016: Found in the Pendle Hill library:2D02AB99-CB27-4A0E-A1EB-DB33AF5F5A7B