Tag Archives ⇒ Saturday

Letter of condolence from Friends General Conference

October 29, 2018
· Martin Kelley

FGC’s Cen­tral Com­mit­tee is meet­ing this week­end and wrote a let­ter of con­do­lences to Pitts­burgh’s Tree of Life Syn­a­gogue, site of the recent shooting

We are deeply sad­dened by the bru­tal slay­ing and injuries to mem­bers of your com­mu­ni­ty and the law enforce­ment offi­cers who inter­vened in the attack on your con­gre­ga­tion on Saturday.
That this vio­la­tion occurred dur­ing your wor­ship togeth­er is espe­cial­ly dis­tress­ing to us. We stand unit­ed with all peo­ple of faith in pray­ing for every­one affected. 

You can read the full piece on Facebook

Friends Com­mit­tee on Nation­al Leg­is­la­tion is also shar­ing their Prin­ci­ples for Gun Vio­lence Pre­ven­tion back­grounder, a doc­u­ment that I wish was­n’t new­ly rel­e­vant every oth­er week.

Lighthouse Challenge 2016

October 17, 2016
· Martin Kelley

This week­end was the annu­al Light­house Chal­lenge of New Jer­sey, a two-day cel­e­bra­tion of shore­line sen­tinels dur­ing which every work­ing light­house is open and staffed by vol­un­teers. The tru­ly com­mit­ted dri­ve hun­dreds of miles over the two days to vis­it the eleven light­hous­es open to the pub­lic. Because of a scout­ing week­end for Theo, we just hit one on Sat­ur­day and three on Sun­day. But these are the last four for our lighthouse-obsessed son Fran­cis, who has been to the oth­ers over the course of the summer.

Francis declared the Twin Lights of Navesink to be his favorite of the weekend.
Fran­cis declared the Twin Lights of Navesink to be his favorite of the weekend.

Tinicum Rear Range Light

The fam­i­ly look­ing off in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, of course 
Fran­cis goes full nerd talk­ing about con­struc­tion dates with the light­house volunteers. 
The Tinicum light is closed because of some struc­tur­al bowing. 
The light­house is right in the mid­dle of a bunch of ball fields. A neigh­bor has a great snow cone stand, a tra­di­tion in the town going back to his child­hood at least. 
The area where the Tinicum Front Range light used to be is now a sliv­er pock­et park along the water­side. Pret­ty except sur­round­ed by refineries. 
Fran­cis at Tinicum Rear Range 

Sea Girt Lighthouse

The Sea Girt Light­hous­es is house with a light on top. 
The res­i­dence of the Sea Girt Light is incred­i­bly homey and cute. 
Climb­ing down from the light. 
The lights of the Sea Girt light 
Fran­cis lec­tures on the fres­nel lens. 
Mod­els of NJ’s light­house laid out on a map of the state. 

Twin Lights of Navesink

Some fam­i­ly (Gre­go­ry is behind Julie here) 
The giant 10 ton for­mer lens. 
Hap­py kid 
Sign for the lens. 
Beau­ti­ful work­man­ship on the bilding 
Detail from light well 
Look­ing through the win­dow of the south toward toward the north 
View from atop the light 
Grill met­al­work of the cage of the Twin Lights 
Theo look­ing less wise-guy than normal. 
Gre­go­ry tries the lock to the top of the south tower 
The Twin Lights of Navesink are up a high hill, part of the Pal­isades per­haps, giv­ing our kids a rare hill to roll down. 
Fran­cis looks out over the hill top. 
The Twin Lights of Navesink 

Sandy Hook Light

The Sandy Hook Light­house is on a for­mer base. 
The light­house house hous­es the museum. 
The Sandy Hook is the old­est con­tin­u­ous light in the coun­try, pre­dat­ing the coun­try itself. 
The orig­i­nal light­house was just the out­er mor­tar. Lat­er brick helped shore it up 
Details of bricks 
The set­ting sun com­ing into the Sandy Hook Light 
Detail of stairwell. 
Fran­cis looks across the view 
Two 1000 watt bulbs shine out over 19 miles because of the fres­nel lens. 
There’s a lot of cool old struc­tures up on Sandy Hook. 
Gre­go­ry unsuc­cess­ful­ly tries the heavy door. 
Sandy Hook has pret­ty dunes 
NYC sky­line from an obser­va­tion deck on Sandy Hook. 
Sun set­ting, Gre­go­ry makes a mini sand­cas­tle before we leave North Jersey. 

QuakerQuaker on the move

September 10, 2016
· Martin Kelley

Cross­post­ing from Quak­erQuak­er:

Cardboard boxes in apartment, moving day

The biggest changes in half a decade are com­ing to Quak­erQuak­er. The Ning​.com ser­vice that pow­ers the main web­site is about to increase its month­ly charge by 140 per­cent. When I first picked Ning to host the three-year-old Quak­erQuak­er project in 2008, it seemed like a smart move. Ning had recent­ly been found­ed by tech world rock stars with access to stratospheric-level funds. But it nev­er quite got trac­tion and start­ed dial­ing back its ambi­tions in 2010. It was sold and sold again and a long-announced new ver­sion nev­er mate­ri­al­ized. I’ve been warn­ing peo­ple against start­ing new projects on it for years. Its lim­i­ta­tions have become clear­er with every pass­ing year. But it’s con­tin­ued to work and a healthy com­mu­ni­ty has kept the con­tent on Quak­erQuak­er inter­est­ing. But I don’t get enough dona­tions to cov­er a 140 per­cent increase, and even if I did it’s not worth it for a ser­vice stuck in 2010. It’s time to evolve!

There are many inter­est­ing things I could build with a mod­ern web plat­form. Ini­tial research and some feed­back from fel­low Quak­er techies has me inter­est­ed in Bud­dy­Press, an expand­ed and social ver­sion of the ubiq­ui­tous Word­Press blog­ging sys­tem. It has plu­g­ins avail­able that claim to move con­tent from exist­ing Ning sites to Bud­dy­Press, leav­ing the tan­ta­liz­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that eight years of the online Quak­er con­ver­sa­tion can be main­tained (wow!).

I will need funds for the move. The sub­scrip­tions to do the import/export will incur costs and there will be plu­g­ins and themes to buy. I’m men­tal­ly bud­get­ing an open-ended num­ber of late Sat­ur­day nights. And the per­son­al com­put­er we have is get­ting old. The charge does­n’t hold and keys are start­ing to go. It will need replace­ment soon­er rather than later.

Any dona­tions Friends could make to the Pay­pal account would be very help­ful for the move. You can start by going to http://​bit​.ly/​q​u​a​k​e​r​g​ive. Oth­er options are avail­able on the dona­tion page at http://​www​.quak​erquak​er​.org/​p​a​g​e​/​s​u​p​p​ort. Thanks for what­ev­er you can spare. I’m as sur­prised as any­one that this lit­tle DIY project con­tin­ues to host some many inter­est­ing Quak­er con­ver­sa­tions eleven years on!

In Friend­ship,
Mar­tin Kel­ley for Quak​erQuak​er​.org

Another Saturday at St Nick’s

February 26, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Most Sat­ur­day nights find me fol­low­ing my wife to St Nicholas Ukrain­ian Catholic Church in Mil­lville NJ. I’m often chas­ing kids and this Sat­ur­day was no excep­tion. Tonight I snapped as I chased. Most of these shots have a tou­sled head just off cam­era. It’s a nice lit­tle church. You can learn more at their web­site at http://​www​.stni​cholas​mil​lville​.com.

In album St Nicholas 2/25/12 (8 photos)

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The inte­ri­or from the balcony.

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Do it yourself and don’t get stuck

May 18, 2010
· Martin Kelley

NMCF Pendle HillThis week­end was the long-prepared New Monas­tics and Con­ver­gent Friends week­end at Pen­dle Hill, co-led by myself and Wess Daniels, with very help­ful elder­ship from Ash­ley W. As I post­ed after­wards on Face­book, “I feel we served the Lord faith­ful­ly, nav­i­gat­ing the hopes and fears of the mem­bers of the church who gath­ered into this short-lived com­mu­ni­ty. Not the con­ver­sa­tion we expect­ed, but the con­ver­sa­tion we were giv­en, which is enough (always) and for which we feel gratitude.” 

Wess and I have often described Con­ver­gent Friends as a do-it-yourself cul­ture. But this week­end I real­ized that there’s some­thing more to it. There’s what you might call a “don’t get stuck” ethos. 
On Sat­ur­day after­noon, the con­ver­sa­tion turned to what our local month­ly and year­ly meet­ings aren’t doing well. This is a pret­ty stan­dard phase of any Quak­er gath­er­ing think­ing about renew­al. We had asked for “signs of life” and “what does New Monas­ti­cism and Con­ver­gent Friends look like at meet­ings” but this quick­ly became talk of spir­i­tu­al sick­ness and meet­ings that seem­ing­ly want to die. Fine enough, these exist and a half-session feel­ing sor­ry for our­selves might be cathar­tic, but I’m not sure the work­shop ever ful­ly got out of this funk. Pen­dle Hill was also host­ing a “Griev­ing” work­shop this week­end and I want­ed to ask if all of the par­tic­i­pants were sure they were in the right building.
Part of the shift of that amor­phous group we’ve been call­ing “Con­ver­gent” is not get­ting stuck. We use the offi­cial struc­tures when they’re in place and healthy and help­ful. When they’re not we find infor­mal ways to fill in the gaps. This has been hap­pen­ing for a long time in quasi-official net­works, but the inter­net’s accel­er­at­ed the process by let­ting us find and com­mu­ni­cate with min­i­mal cost or orga­ni­za­tion. Most of us are work­ing offi­cial and ad hoc tech­niques for spir­i­tu­al nur­ture, over­sight and pas­toral care.
My guess is that this infor­mal boot­strap­ping will feed back into for­mal process as time goes on. But more impor­tant­ly, we’re learn­ing and spread­ing a cul­ture of spir­i­tu­al friend­ship and sup­port that is flex­i­ble and spirit-led and not process-dependent. Praise God!

Exciting Philly Convergent Friends opportunity

March 8, 2009
· Martin Kelley

ppThe most excel­lent Peg­gy Sen­ger Par­sons of Ore­gon’s Free­dom Friends Church emailed me today say­ing she and the equal­ly excel­lent Marge Abbott will be co-leading a work­shop at the Philadel­phia area Pen­dle Hill Retreat Cen­ter from 3/27 – 29. These two were cross­ing the­o­log­i­cal bound­aries and pio­neer­ing the Con­ver­gent Friend ethos long before Blogs, Twit­ter & Face­book. The work­shop is called “Are we still a dan­ger­ous peo­ple?” and as rock­ing as that sounds, I’d be will­ing to lis­ten to these two read the Salem, Ore­gon phone book for a week­end. If you have a pil­low stuffed with some extra cash ($200 for com­muters) then you should def­i­nite­ly try to make it (unfor­tu­nate­ly I don’t have a lumpy pil­low­case and can’t afford to take anoth­er three days off). 

Peg­gy wrote that she wants to make her­self “avail­able for the Sat­ur­day after­noon free time for a con­ver­sa­tion with any Friends who want to drop in and crash the par­ty.” That sounds good to me! If I can rearrange some child­care sched­ules, I’ll try to make that. That would be Sat­ur­day the 28th from 1:00 – 3:30pm.

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