Tag Archives ⇒ spiritual

Spirit-Led Evangelism

June 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Spirit-Led Evan­ge­lism

Adria Gulizia guest post­ing on Johan Mau­r­er’s blog: It is hard to talk about God, Jesus and the spir­i­tu­al life in this moment in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Many of our non-Christian neigh­bors find the lit­tle they know about Jesus to be attrac­tive or intrigu­ing, but they know enough about the fail­ings of the church to have very neg­a­tive opin­ions about actu­al Chris­tians. If we do have non-Christian friends, it may be despite our Chris­t­ian faith rather than because of it — we may be seen as the excep­tion that proves the rule.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​a​d​r​i​a​-​g​u​l​i​z​i​a​-​s​p​i​r​i​t​-​l​e​d​-​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​m​.​h​tml

Barking up the family tree

May 10, 2018
· Martin Kelley

There’s a num­ber of com­mon gate­ways for seek­ers to dis­cov­er Quak­ers – activism is a com­mon one (see last week’s Quak­er­S­peak inter­view with Lina Blount), as is plain dress (my posts on the top­ic are my most pop­u­lar), as is child­hood expe­ri­ences at Quak­er schools.

But a big gate­way is geneal­o­gy. Over the years I’ve got­ten count­less emails and phone calls from excit­ed new­com­ers who start off the con­ver­sa­tion with details of their fam­i­ly tree (when I used to answer the Quaker­books phone, I would let these folks go for about two min­utes before gen­tly inter­ject­ing “wow that’s fas­ci­nat­ing!, do you wan­na buy a book?!?”)

One fas­ci­nat­ing fac­toid in this week’s Quak­er­S­peak video comes from Thomas Hamm:

If your fam­i­ly arrived in the Unit­ed States before 1860, there’s prob­a­bly a 50 – 50 chance that you have a Quak­er ances­tor somewhere.

Quak­er Meet­ings should­n’t try to be the gath­er­ing spots for prodi­gal fam­i­ly reunions. The ear­ly Quak­ers were strangers to one anoth­er, join­ing togeth­er because of the fire of their con­vic­tions. Ours is a liv­ing, breath­ing, ever evolv­ing spir­i­tu­al prac­tice. Still: we are also a group­ing of peo­ple. We look for belonging.

The longer I’m with Friends, the more I think ours is a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty that draws strength from the ten­sion of para­dox­es. I have a soft spot for the old Quak­er fam­i­lies. If Jesus brings some of the new peo­ple in through Beliefnet quizzes or Ances​try​.com search results, well, maybe that’s okay.

How to Research Your Quak­er Ancestry

We don’t need God?

May 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Jeff Kisling responds to the click­baity Guardian piece about Quak­er don’t need God

My expe­ri­ence that ‘con­ser­v­a­tive’ Friends do believe in God. But I have heard many Friends say they have not them­selves had a per­son­al expe­ri­ence with God. I often won­der what that means for their spir­i­tu­al life. Hav­ing been blessed to have had such expe­ri­ences myself has been so mean­ing­ful, in so many dif­fer­ent ways, in my own life.

https://​kisling​j​eff​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​0​5​/​w​e​-​d​o​n​t​-​n​e​e​d​-​g​od/ a

Eternities

April 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Sam Barnett-Cormack brings a grammarian’s eye to our use of the old Quak­er phrase, “The Things Which Are Eternal”:

To know one anoth­er in that which is eter­nal is to share our grace, our Light, our spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence. It goes beyond the sort of know­ing that might come from social activ­i­ties and ice­break­ers; indeed, it is of an entire­ly dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter… For it comes down to this – to know one anoth­er in that which is eter­nal is to know the Divine, and to know the Divine is to know one anoth­er in this way; they are two sides of one coin, and we can only pro­mote one by also pro­mot­ing the other.

https://​quakeropen​ings​.blogspot​.co​.uk/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​w​h​a​t​-​a​r​e​-​t​h​i​n​g​s​-​w​h​i​c​h​-​a​r​e​-​e​t​e​r​n​a​l​.​h​tml

Do Friends Query?

April 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Doug Gwyn is next up on Quak­er­S­peak, this time answer­ing What is a Quak­er Query?

The Quak­er Queries are a won­der­ful inven­tion of ask­ing our­selves some sim­ple ques­tions… I’ve heard it said that through­out much of our his­to­ry, we were shop­keep­ers and busi­ness peo­ple, and we were used to doing inven­to­ry all the time. And the queries are a kind of spir­i­tu­al and moral inven­to­ry that Friends do well to keep track of.

It’s become kind of easy to make fun of queries. The clas­sic use was as ques­tions for­mal­ly asked and for­mal­ly answered in Quak­er meet­ings for busi­ness. As Gwyn says they were a form of account­ing. Local con­gre­ga­tions would go though a set list and send them to quar­ter meet­ings to sift and answer so they could in turn send it up to year­ly meet­ing ses­sions. I’ve seen this process fol­lowed at Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing if a bit tedious.

I could imag­ine the process being use­ful if for no oth­er rea­son that it gave Friends a chance to pry a bit into one anoth­er’s lives. Do all the mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty have their alco­hol use under con­trol? Are we real­ly com­mit­ted to peace in our communities?

These days a form of over-simplistic query is are writ­ten on the fly, with an implic­it “or” that I don’t always find par­tic­u­lar­ly help­ful. “Do Friends avoid the use of sty­ro­foam cups?” [or do you all hate the Earth?]. Used this way, queries risk becom­ing a list of busy­body norms to fol­lowed. We con­grat­u­late our­selves for not using paper nap­kins at a con­fer­ence we flew to.

As Doug points out, it helps to have a lit­tle humil­i­ty when it comes to queries. They’re one of the more use­ful items in the Quak­er tool­box. A good query will have some­thing to say to each of us, no mat­ter where we indi­vid­u­al­ly are in our spir­i­tu­al journey.

The Seed as Quaker metaphor

March 28, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Jnana Hod­son’s blog, a look at “The Seed” as a Quak­er metaphor:

Con­sid­er­ing today’s empha­sis on indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, plu­ral­i­ty, and per­son­al psy­chol­o­gy, I believe that return­ing to the metaphor of the Seed holds the most poten­tial for fer­tile spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment and guid­ance in our own era.

I find the evo­lu­tion of Quak­er metaphors fas­ci­nat­ing. Ear­ly Quak­er ser­mons and epis­tles were packed with bib­li­cal allu­sions. I grew up rel­a­tive­ly unchurched but I’ve tried to make up for it over the years. I’ve read the Bible cover-to-cover using the One Year Bible plan (like a lot of peo­ple I sus­pect, it took me a lit­tle over two years) and have been part of dif­fer­ent denom­i­na­tion­al Bible study groups. I try to look up ref­er­ences. But even with that I don’t catch half the ref­er­ences ear­ly ser­mons packed in.

John Wool­man lived a cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions after the first Friends. We Quak­er remem­ber his Jour­nal for min­istry of its anti-slavery sen­ti­ments, final­ly becom­ing a con­sen­sus among Friends by the time of its pub­li­ca­tion in 1774. But oth­er reli­gious folks have read it for its lit­er­ary val­ue. Open a ran­dom page and Wool­man will have up to half a dozen metaphors for the Divine. It’s packed and rich and acces­si­ble. I find a kind of par­tic­u­lar Quak­er spir­i­tu­al truth in Wool­man’s rota­tion of metaphors: it implies that divin­i­ty is more than any spe­cif­ic words we try to stuff it into.

Late­ly Quak­er metaphors have tend­ed to become more ster­ile. I think we’re still wor­ried about specifics but instead of expand­ing our lan­guage we con­tract it into a kind of impen­e­tra­ble code. The “Light of Christ” becomes the “Inward Christ” then the “Inward Light” then “the Light” or “Spir­it.” We’re still echo­ing the Light metaphors packed into the Book of John but doing so in such a way that seems par­tic­u­lar­ly parochial to Friends and non-obvious to new­com­ers. A major New Tes­ta­ment theme is reduced to Quak­er lingo.

Jnana Hod­son’s prob­lem with “the seed” as metaphor is inter­est­ing: “ ‘seed,’ as such, has far few­er Bib­li­cal cita­tions than the cor­re­spond­ing com­ple­men­tary ‘light’ or ‘true’ and ‘truth’ do.” I’m not sure I ever noticed that. I like the seed, with its organ­ic con­no­ta­tions and promise of future growth.  But appar­ent­ly the few bib­li­cal allu­sions were rather sex­ist (spoil­er: it often meant semen) and lack­ing in bio­log­i­cal aware­ness. It feels like Friends are search­ing for neu­tral metaphors like “the seed” these days; we also have a lot of gath­er­ings around “weav­ing.” I cer­tain­ly don’t think we should be lim­it­ed to first cen­tu­ry images of divin­i­ty but I also don’t think we’ve quite fig­ured out how we can talk about the guid­ance we receive from the Inward Teacher.

The Seed, ini­tial­ly, is the most prob­lem­at­ic of the three cen­tral Quak­er metaphors

New York Friends on Climate Change

March 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The March issue of New York Year­ly Meet­ing’s Spark now seems to be online, a good dozen arti­cles on the top­ic of “Earth­care Now.” From the intro­duc­tion by guest edi­tor Pamela Boyce Simms:

The NYYM Friends who have shared their sto­ries here­in are farm­ers, chap­lains, hydro­ge­ol­o­gists, shep­herds, mys­tics, home­stead­ers, local gov­ern­ment offi­cials, nat­u­ral­ists, pro­fes­sors, and Mas­ter Gar­den­ers. They till the soil, herd the sheep, insu­late walls, min­is­ter unto many, com­mune with nature, edu­cate, and mod­el resilience in Itha­ca, Brook­lyn, Clin­ton, East Chatham, and Seneca Cas­tle in New York, and in High­land Park and Mont­clair in New Jersey.

I still have to go through them myself. Some that look par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing are Susan­na Mat­ting­ly’s Quak­ers and Cli­mate Change:

This is a spir­i­tu­al call as well as a mate­r­i­al one, to act not out of fear or through accu­sa­tion, but with hope and love. We rec­og­nize sus­tain­abil­i­ty and care for the earth are inte­gral to our faith and our Quak­er tes­ti­monies as we strive to live in right rela­tion­ship with all cre­ation. As a com­mu­ni­ty, we can make a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to sta­bi­liz­ing the cli­mate and build­ing resilience.

Christo­pher Sam­mond’s “Our Gen­er­a­tion’s ‘Lam­b’s War’ “:

As I have held ques­tions about how to respond to the divi­sive­ness, the fear mon­ger­ing, the racism, and the tsuna­mi of lies and half-truths char­ac­ter­iz­ing our nation’s polit­i­cal life at this time, I have been clear­ly and deeply called to go deep, and to join the many, many peo­ple of faith who are seek­ing to bring about the nec­es­sary shift in cul­ture, a shift in spir­i­tu­al con­scious­ness, which is nec­es­sary if we are to sur­vive as a species. And, like my Quak­er fore­bears, I know that work to begin with­in myself.

Early Quaker “Yearly meetings”

March 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Bri­an Dray­ton is look­ing at an ear­ly form of pub­lic Quak­er wor­ship, who’s var­i­ous names (includ­ing “year­ly meet­ings”) have per­haps hid­den them from mod­ern Quak­er con­scious­ness: From the Quak­er tool­box: “Year­ly meet­ings” and related

These meet­ings often includ­ed gath­er­ings of min­is­ters, and of elders (and some­times the two togeth­er), and meet­ings most­ly for Friends. But the pub­lic wor­ship was care­ful­ly pre­pared for — usu­al­ly more than one ses­sion, often over more than one day, with lots of pub­lic­i­ty ahead of time. Tem­po­rary meet­ing places were erect­ed for large crowds (the word “booth” is used, these clear­ly held hun­dreds of people.

Bri­an’s sto­ry reminds me of when I was a tourist in the “1652 Coun­try” where Quak­erism was born. One of the stops is Fir­bank Fell, where George Fox preached to thou­sands. Most his­to­ries call that ser­mon the offi­cial start of the Quak­er movement.

But Fir­bank Fell itself is a des­o­late hill­side miles from any­where. There was a small ancient church there and then noth­ing but graz­ing fields off to the hori­zon. A thou­sand peo­ple in such a remote spot would have the feel of a music fes­ti­val. And that’s kind of what was hap­pen­ing the week the unknown George Fox walked into that part of Eng­land. There was a orga­nized move­ment that held inde­pen­dent reli­gious preach­ing fes­ti­vals. Fox was no doubt very mov­ing and he might have giv­en the seek­ers there a new way of think­ing about their spir­i­tu­al con­di­tion, but the move­ment was already there. I won­der if the gen­er­al meet­ings of pub­lic wor­ship that Dray­ton is track­ing down is an echo of those ear­li­er pub­lic festivals.

One of my Fir­bank Fell photos: