Tag Archives ⇒ spiritual

Sources of spiritual power

March 21, 2024
· Martin Kelley

Craig Bar­nett on types and sources of pow­er for Friends, mod­ern and classic.

Mod­ern Quak­er cul­ture places a strong empha­sis on what Shin­ran would have called ‘self pow­er’ — polit­i­cal activism, the effort to embody eth­i­cal val­ues in our dai­ly lives, and the con­sci­en­tious per­for­mance of social respon­si­bil­i­ties.… Per­haps sur­pris­ing­ly, the orig­i­nal Quak­er inspi­ra­tion was strong­ly focussed on ‘oth­er pow­er’. It was faith in the Inward Guide, rather than their own efforts, that ear­ly Friends relied on to guide their lives and to endure suf­fer­ing and per­se­cu­tion. This Inward Guide, Teacher, Light or Christ was under­stood as some­thing apart from our own resources: it was the pres­ence and activ­i­ty of God with­in each person.

In a sur­prise to no one, I’m a fan of using the inward pow­er as a guide toward out­ward action, but of course they’re two sides the same coin. As we find our inward spir­i­tu­al teacher, our lives begin to con­form to right liv­ing, which in turn helps us to be more sen­si­tive to spir­i­tu­al prompts. It’s a vir­tu­ous cir­cle that brings us clos­er to the Spir­it and also changes what us mod­erns call our “lifestyle.”

I start­ed off as a peace advo­cate in my late teens, spurred into decid­ing issues of vio­lence and force in part because of fam­i­ly pres­sure to enlist in the naval acad­e­my. As I start­ed to explore com­mu­ni­ties of peace I kept run­ning into Quak­ers. I sensed that there was some­thing more to their moti­va­tion than just right-politics and it was that spir­i­tu­al ground­ing that drew me in. Nowa­days I see a lot of Quak­er polit­i­cal action that does­n’t use a vocab­u­lary of faith. I trust that the Friends engaged in the work are being guid­ed and strength­ened by what Bar­nett describes as “the oth­er pow­er” but I wor­ry that we lose the moral force of spir­i­tu­al wit­ness when we don’t artic­u­late the spir­i­tu­al under­pin­nings. Are we embar­rassed by the weird­ness of our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty? Do we think it will put off poten­tial sup­port­ers? Unprac­ticed in its articulation? 

Self Power & Other Power
Self Pow­er & Oth­er Power 

“Here is the real core of the reli­gious prob­lem: Help! Help!” William James, The Vari­eties of Reli­gious Experience…

transitionquaker.blogspot.com tran​si​tion​quak​er​.blogspot​.com

Welcoming families in meetings

April 18, 2019
· Martin Kelley

An account of one British meet­ing find­ing space for families:

It has been the task of the whole meet­ing not just of one or two; there has been an aware­ness that what they are doing now will need to change and evolve. And there has been a care and nour­ish­ing of us as par­ents too, with our own spir­i­tu­al jour­neys and need for nurture.

I know, from talk­ing to oth­er Quak­er par­ents – and, very sad­ly, from par­ents who would love to explore Quak­erism but who have felt dis­cour­aged or unwel­comed – that we have been par­tic­u­lar­ly lucky. Lucky not because we found a Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty with a ready-made chil­dren’s meet­ing, but because we found a meet­ing will­ing and ready to wel­come, to make space, where there was a sense of glad­ness that we were there. 


Welcoming families in meetings

Wel­com­ing fam­i­lies in meetings 

How do we rejoice in the pres­ence of chil­dren in our meet­ings and nur­ture their spir­i­tu­al growth? Alistair…

Quakers Quakers 

What is our vocation?

January 25, 2019
· Martin Kelley

From Johan Mau­r­er, a return to a ques­tion he first pon­dered twelve years ago: do Quak­ers have a voca­tion among the larg­er body of Chris­tians? There’s lots of good obser­va­tions about our spir­i­tu­al gifts, like this one:

A com­mu­ni­ty empow­ered by spir­i­tu­al gifts is not cul­tur­al­ly nar­row. This asser­tion is backed by vast hopes and very lit­tle expe­ri­ence. Many Friends meet­ings and church­es yearn for cul­tur­al and racial diver­si­ty, but seem to be stuck argu­ing about the­o­ret­i­cal ideals rather than choos­ing to exam­ine hur­dles: loca­tion, unin­tend­ed or unex­am­ined “we-they” mes­sages (no mat­ter how benev­o­lent or pro­gres­sive the inten­tion), and a ten­den­cy to see non-members as objects of ser­vice rather than co-equal par­tic­i­pants already part of “us” in God’s sto­ry. But most of all, I believe that spir­i­tu­al pow­er unites while cere­bral analy­sis divides. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​1​/​w​h​a​t​-​i​s​-​o​u​r​-​v​o​c​a​t​i​o​n​.​h​tml

Decolonizing Quaker faith

January 11, 2019
· Martin Kelley

An AFSC inter­view with Oskar Castro:

Me as a Puer­to Rican com­ing into Quak­erism, I find a lot of white par­a­digms, silence in and of itself is not exclu­sive­ly colo­nial­ism, but I think the way that Quak­ers some­times lean into silence beyond the spir­i­tu­al side of it, the con­flict avoid­ance side of being a Quak­er, these are the things that don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly res­onate with me, cul­tur­al­ly speaking 

https://​www​.afsc​.org/​b​l​o​g​s​/​a​c​t​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​f​a​i​t​h​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​a​f​s​c​-​o​s​k​a​r​-​c​a​s​tro

Anointing

November 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Mike Far­ley, of Silent Assem­blies, writes of an ear­ly Quak­er inter­pre­ta­tion of anoiting:

I have been struck by the word “anoint­ing”. Eliz­a­beth Bathurst (as quot­ed by David John­son) wrote: “But I brought them the scrip­tures, and told them there was an anoint­ing with­in man to teach him, and the Lord would teach them him­self.” We are not very used, I think, to the term among Friends today. Among charis­mat­ic Chris­tians it is much more com­mon, and seems to be used in both the sense of being giv­en spir­i­tu­al gifts… But I think Eliz­a­beth Bathurst, fol­low­ing the apos­tle John, as she says, is using the word in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent sense to either of these, and it is a sense we as Quak­ers should recognise. 

Anoint­ing

The Doctrine of Discovery, white guilt, and Friends

November 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er starts with “it’s com­pli­cat­ed” and goes on from there. A pas­sage I find par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is his expla­na­tion of why look­ing at large-scale state-level atroc­i­ties like the steal­ing of native land or the kid­nap­ping of mil­lions of Africans is not just some­thing to be done out of guilt:

Whether you believe in an intel­li­gent Satan (along the lines of Peter Wag­n­er’s ideas) or a more imper­son­al mech­a­nism of demon­ic evil (Wal­ter Wink), we should­n’t pre­tend that such nodes just go away. Their evil per­sists. The basis for apol­o­gy and repen­tance is not white guilt or shame or any form of self-flagellation. Instead, it is to con­duct spir­i­tu­al war­fare against the demons of racism and oppres­sion and false wit­ness, to declare them off-limits in the land that we now share, so that we can con­duct our future stew­ard­ship — and make our pub­lic invest­ments— in free­dom and mutu­al regard. 

I’m drawn to the old notion of “The Tempter” as a force that leads us to do what’s per­son­al­ly reward­ing rather than moral­ly just. I think it explains a lot of inter­nal strug­gles I’ve faced, even in sim­ple wit­ness­es. As Johan says, these mas­sive injus­tices can’t just be undone but they need to be rec­og­nized for the immen­si­ty of their scale. I’ve also seen this weird way in which pro­gres­sive whites can blithe­ly dis­re­gard Native Amer­i­can per­spec­tives on these issues. Lis­ten­ing more and wait­ing for com­pli­cat­ed answers seems essen­tial in my opinion.

Anoth­er good deep-dive for Friends inter­est­ed in this is Bet­sy Caz­den’s Friends Jour­nal 2006 arti­cle, Quak­er Mon­ey, Old Mon­ey, and White Priv­i­lege. It’s one I turn to every so often to remind myself of some of our monied Quak­er norms. Johan gives a pass to William Penn but I think it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that his colo­nial ambi­tions were deeply enmeshed in at least three dif­fer­ent wars and con­ve­nient­ly served the polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions of two empires, the per­fect storm of an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a group of paci­fist idealists.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​1​1​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​a​n​d​-​n​a​t​i​v​e​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​s​-​i​t​s​.​h​tml

Ministers, elders, and overseers

October 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Jnana Hod­son, a list­ing of three types of offices in tra­di­tion­al Quak­er meetings:

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, Quak­er meet­ings rec­og­nized and nur­tured indi­vid­u­als who had spir­i­tu­al gifts as min­is­ters, elders, or over­seers. These roles could be filled by men or women, and their ser­vice extend­ed over the entire congregation. 

Many Friends have dropped the term “over­seers” in recent years, out of con­cern for how the word is so asso­ci­at­ed with slav­ery. As I under­stand it, ear­ly Friends’ use of the word came from its use as an Eng­lish trans­la­tion for Episko­pos in the New Tes­ta­ment. They con­sid­ered them­selves to be re-establishing ear­ly Chris­t­ian mod­els. For exam­ple, Acts 20:28:

Take heed there­fore unto your­selves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you over­seers, to feed the church of God, which he hath pur­chased with his own blood. 

Bible trans­la­tions that were geared toward a Catholic audi­ence tend­ed to stick to Latinized words and went with “bish­op” over “over­seer.” Quak­ers wor­ried about the con­no­ta­tion of the word could pro­pose that we just start nam­ing bish­ops. It’s not as nut­ty as it might seem, as there are anabap­tist church­es who use the term to talk about roles with­in indi­vid­ual church­es. Of course, some­times name changes also mask changes in the­ol­o­gy and I noticed that some of the more lib­er­al Quak­er meet­ings dropped “over­seer” with a speed which they are not oth­er­wise known for. Friends today are a lot more indi­vid­u­al­is­tic than Friends were when our insti­tu­tions were set up — there are many good rea­sons for this in our his­to­ries. But I do hope we’re con­tin­u­ing to find ade­quate ways to notice and care for our members.
 
We need all three – and more

Creeds and stories

August 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith was going to write some­thing about creeds:

I had been kick­ing around writ­ing some­thing on the uses and abus­es of creeds in the Quak­er tra­di­tion, but then I dis­cov­ered that Ben Wood had writ­ten a fair­ly defin­i­tive ver­sion of that essay already. So read that instead.

Ben’s 2016 piece on Quak­ers and creeds is def­i­nite­ly worth a read. I checked my records and I must have missed it at the time, so I’ll share it now. He goes deep into the kinds of creeds that Penn and Bar­clay gave in their writ­ings but also what the ear­li­er Chris­t­ian creed-makers were com­ing from. He also comes to today. Here’s a taste:

we can­not be creed-makers before we are story-preservers and story-tellers. We can­not hope to resolve dif­fer­ences unless and until we dig down into our own Quak­er sto­ry; unless we come to terms with its pow­er and impli­ca­tions. At least part of our sense of spir­i­tu­al malaise is a ret­i­cence to engage with the depth of the Quak­er tale. Part­ly that ret­i­cence is about a lack of teach­ing min­istry among Friends. We haven’t giv­en each oth­er the tools to become skill­ful read­ers of our own nar­ra­tive. We have assumed that peo­ple can just ‘pick this stuff up’ through a mys­te­ri­ous process of osmo­sis. This has led to a frag­men­ta­tion of under­stand­ing about the mean­ing and impli­ca­tions of Quak­er grammar.

In my world, talk of creeds has sprung up recent­ly fol­low­ing the Quak­er­S­peak video of Arthur Larrabee’s nine core prin­ci­ples of unpro­grammed Friends. His prin­ci­ples seem fair­ly descrip­tive of main­stream Lib­er­al Friends to me, but pre­dictably enough the video’s com­ments have peo­ple wor­ried about any for­mu­la­tion: “Espous­ing core beliefs — no mat­ter how well inten­tioned — risks intro­duc­ing a creed.” One of my pet the­o­ries is that the mid-century truce over the­ol­o­gy talk that helped Quak­er branch­es reunite (at least on the U.S. East Coast) has stopped working.

Quak­ers and Creeds