Saturday

Letter of condolence from Friends General Conference

Martin Kelley — Mon, 29 Oct 2018 16:20:59 +0000

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

Martin Kelley — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 22:50:41 +0000

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.

Tinicum Rear Range Light

Sea Girt Lighthouse

Twin Lights of Navesink

Sandy Hook Light

QuakerQuaker on the move

Martin Kelley — Sat, 10 Sep 2016 15:01:11 +0000

Crossposting from QuakerQuaker:

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/quakergive. Other options are available on the donation page at http://www.quakerquaker.org/page/support. 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 QuakerQuaker.org

Another Saturday at St Nick’s

Martin Kelley — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 07:09:57 +0000

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.stnicholasmillville.com.

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

The interior from the balcony.

A few grainy pics from Saturday’s retirement party for Friends Journal’s…

Martin Kelley — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:58:45 +0000

A few grainy pics from Saturday’s retirement party for Friends Journal’s Susan Corson-Finnerty and Bob Dockhorn.

In album Friends Journal dinner Oct 1, 2011 (5 photos)

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Update your atlases

Martin Kelley — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 03:55:26 +0000

My 7yo will love this.

Embedded Link

It’s official: South Sudan a new country
South Sudan took a seat at the world’s table early Saturday as citizens of the new country took to the streets to celebrate.

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Do it yourself and don’t get stuck

Martin Kelley — Tue, 18 May 2010 10:29:20 +0000

This 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

Martin Kelley — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:37:12 +0000

The 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.