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Is it Convergent to talk about Convergence?

July 25, 2008
· Martin Kelley

Warn­ing: insid­er Quak­er con­ver­sa­tion to follow.

Over on her blog Robin M has a great post look­ing at the Con­ver­gent Friend con­ver­sa­tion now. It’s kind of State of the Con­ver­gent Friends report. It’s very good and well worth a read and makes me won­der again where exact­ly I stand.

Even though I was around at the ges­ta­tion and birth of the term, and even though it orig­i­nal­ly referred to a small group of blog­gers who I all love, I go back and forth between using and refus­ing to use the label. I don’t feel the need to always be explic­it­ly “con­ver­gent.” Some­times I can just embody the spir­it of it, which as a renew­al move­ment is real­ly just the same old spir­it of Quak­erism, which as its own renew­al move­ment is the same old spir­it of Chris­tian­i­ty, with is just that spir­it which ani­mates the world. 

See: it’s too easy to throw up terms as a defense shield or as a way of boost­ing our­selves. I know I’m prone to this trap. I’ll say “I’m doing this as a [Con­ver­gent Friend/Quaker/Christian]” as if that explains any­thing, as if care­ful lis­ten­ing to the Holy Spir­it isn’t all the author­i­ty that any of us needs.

I think a cen­tral part of the con­ver­gent expe­ri­ence is step­ping out­side of the insti­tu­tion­al box­es and walk­ing into the dis­com­fort zone of our brand of Friends – ask­ing the thorny ques­tions and point­ing out the incon­ve­nient ele­phants. If “Con­ver­gent Friend” ever set­tles down into a set def­i­n­i­tion and annu­al rit­u­als (like a Gath­er­ing inter­est group?), we’ll see our own brier patch­es take root along those incon­ve­nient pathways.

I’ve noticed Friends with bright ideas brand and sell them­selves, and have won­dered to myself how freely the gospel spir­it is mov­ing after ten years of Gath­er­ing work­shops and Pen­dle Hill work­shops. I’m not so much purist that I don’t under­stand that some­times those of us led to the min­istry have to push through doubts and present things we’ve promised to present even if we’re not in the best mood (pray­ing that we find that groove). But I’ve also sat through com­mit­tee meet­ings that felt like the Bill Mur­ray movie Ground­hog Day, where I look around and real­ize the same peo­ple have been sit­ting in the same room hav­ing the same con­ver­sa­tion for twen­ty years, and every­one is just so tired and the feel­ing is they’re all read­ing a script and would want to be any­where but where they are.

A friend­ly amend­ment to Convergent

Just the last thing is that for me if our work isn’t ulti­mate­ly root­ed in shar­ing the good news then it’s self-indulgent. I don’t want to cre­ate a lit­tle oasis or hip­py com­pound of hap­py peo­ple. Friends aren’t going to go to heav­en in our politically-correct smug­ness while the rest of the world is dying off. It’s all of us or none of us. If we’re not active­ly evan­ge­liz­ing <lib­er­al trans­la­tion: shar­ing the spir­i­tu­al insights and gifts we’ve been giv­en />, then we are part of the prob­lem. “Con­ver­gence” is Quak­er lin­go. When we say it we’re turn­ing our back to the world to talk amongst our­selves: a use­ful exer­cise occas­sion­al­ly but not our main work. 

I’ve been read­ing a lot of seek­er blogs where Quak­ers are men­tioned and I’m struck by how so many of the words we rou­tine­ly use in our blogs and self-statements are total­ly alien to others. 

It may be too late to throw a switch on the quickly-gathering-steam train that is the “Con­ver­gent Friends” express. But here’s my friend­ly amend­ment: Con­ver­gent Friends need to be ready to get out of the Quak­er con­fer­ence cen­ters and need to be ready to put aside the Quak­er arcana we’ve accu­mu­lat­ed over the years. If all we’re doing is sit­ting around talk­ing to room­fulls of Quak­ers in our hopeless-inaccessible lin­go then we’re fool­ing our­selves that any real renew­al is happening.

Frankly, I have no idea what this would look like. I’m as clue­less and scared by the pos­si­bil­i­ties as most of y’all. I just know we need to do it. Even if I had all the trav­el mon­ey and time in the world (I have nei­ther), I don’t know if I’d have enough moti­va­tion to get to the next Bar­nesville / Greens­boro / Rich­mond / New­berg / wher­ev­er con­fer­ence (I just real­ized I’m rein­forc­ing my last Quak­er post!). I love meet­ing oth­er Friends and I soooo miss see­ing oth­er Friends in my cur­rent rel­a­tive iso­la­tion. But. But. I wish I had a bet­ter end­ing to this post. I guess I’ll just throw it out to the com­ments: what are we being called to do to send this work into the world?

Reach up high, clear off the dust, time to get started

June 8, 2008
· Martin Kelley

It’s been a fas­ci­nat­ing edu­ca­tion learn­ing about insti­tu­tion­al Catholi­cism these past few weeks. I won’t reveal how and what I know, but I think I have a good pic­ture of the cul­ture inside the bish­op’s inner cir­cle and I’m pret­ty sure I under­stand his long-term agen­da. The cur­rent lightening-fast clo­sure of sixty-some church­es is the first step of an ambi­tious plan; man­u­fac­tured priest short­ages and soon-to-be over­crowd­ed church­es will be used to jus­ti­fy even more rad­i­cal changes. In about twen­ty years time, the 125 church­es that exist today will have been sold off. What’s left of a half mil­lion faith­ful will be herd­ed into a dozen or so mega-churches, with the­ol­o­gy bor­rowed from gener­ic lib­er­al­ism, style from feel-good evan­gel­i­cal­ism, and orga­ni­za­tion from con­sul­tant culture.

When dioce­san offi­cials come by to read this blog (and they do now), they will smile at that last sen­tence and nod their heads approv­ing­ly. The con­spir­a­cy is real.

But I don’t want to talk about Catholi­cism again. Let’s talk Quak­ers instead, why not? I should be in some meet­ing for wor­ship right now any­way. Julie left Friends and returned to the faith of her upbring­ing after eleven years with us because she want­ed a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty that shared a basic faith and that was­n’t afraid to talk about that faith as a cor­po­rate “we.” It seems that Catholi­cism won’t be able to offer that in a few years. Will she run then run off to the East­ern Ortho­dox church? For that mat­ter should I be run­ning off to the Men­non­ites? See though, the prob­lem is that the same issues will face us wher­ev­er we try to go. It’s mod­ernism, baby. No focused and authen­tic faith seems to be safe from the Forces of the Bland. Lord help us.

We can blog the ques­tions of course. Why would some­one who dis­likes Catholic cul­ture and wants to dis­man­tle its infra­struc­ture become a priest and a career bureau­crat? For that mat­ter why do so many peo­ple want to call them­selves Quak­ers when they can’t stand basic Quak­er the­ol­o­gy? If I want­ed lots of com­ments I could go on blah-blah-blah, but ulti­mate­ly the ques­tion is futile and beyond my figuring.

Anoth­er piece to this issue came in some ques­tions Wess Daniels sent around to me and a few oth­ers this past week in prepa­ra­tion for his upcom­ing pre­sen­ta­tion at Wood­brooke. He asked about how a par­tic­u­lar Quak­er insti­tu­tion did or did not rep­re­sent or might or might not be able to con­tain the so-called “Con­ver­gent” Friends move­ment. I don’t want to bust on any­one so I won’t name the orga­ni­za­tion. Let’s just say that like pret­ty much all Quak­er bureau­cra­cies it’s inward-focused, shal­low in its pub­lic state­ments, slow to take ini­tia­tive and more or less irrel­e­vant to any cam­paign to gath­er a great peo­ple. A more suc­cess­ful Quak­er bureau­cra­cy I could name seems to be doing well in fundrais­ing but is doing less and less with more and more staff and seems more inter­est­ed in donor-focused hype than long-term pro­gram implementation.

One ene­my of the faith is bureau­cra­cy. Real lead­er­ship has been replaced by con­sul­tants and fundrais­ers. Finan­cial and staffing crises – real and cre­at­ed – are used to jus­ti­fy a water­ing down of the mes­sage. Pro­grams are dri­ven by donor mon­ey rather than clear need and when real work might require con­tro­ver­sy, it’s tabled for the facade of feel-goodism. Quak­er read­ers who think I’m talk­ing about Quak­ers: no I’m talk­ing about Catholics. Catholic read­ers who think I’m talk­ing about Catholics: no, I’m talk­ing about Quak­ers. My point is that these forces are tear­ing down reli­gios­i­ty all over. Some cheer this devel­op­ment on. I think it’s evil at work, the Tempter using our lead­er’s desires for posi­tion and respect and our the desires of our laity’s (for lack of a bet­ter word) to trust and think the best of its leaders.

So where does that leave us? I’m tired of think­ing that maybe if I try one more Quak­er meet­ing I’ll find the com­mu­ni­ty where I can prac­tice and deep­en my faith as a Chris­t­ian Friend. I’m stumped. That first batch of Friends knew this feel­ing: Fox and the Pen­ing­tons and all the rest talked about iso­la­tion and about reli­gious pro­fes­sion­als who were in it for the career. I know from the blo­gos­phere and from count­less one-on-one con­ver­sa­tions that there are a lot of us – a lot – who either drift away or stay in meet­ings out of a sense of guilt.

So what would a spir­i­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty for these out­sider Friends look like? If we had real vision rather than donor vision, what would our struc­tures look like? If we let the gener­ic church­es go off to out-compete one oth­er to see who can be the bland­est, what would be left for the rest of us to do?

20080608-xcjchpscnwekhsh85kg2hr7nbf.previewI guess this last para­graph is the new revised mis­sion state­ment for the Quak­er part of this blog. Okay kids, get a step stool, go to your meet­ing library, reach up high, clear away the dust and pull out vol­ume one of “A por­trai­ture of Quak­erism: Tak­en from a view of the edu­ca­tion and dis­ci­pline, social man­ners, civ­il and polit­i­cal econ­o­my, reli­gious prin­ci­ples and char­ac­ter, of the Soci­ety of Friends” by Thomas Clark­son. Yes the 1806 ver­sion, stop the grum­bling. Get out the ribbed pack­ing tape and put its cov­er back togeth­er – this isn’t the frig­ging Library of Con­gress and we’re actu­al­ly going to read this thing. Don’t even waste your time check­ing it out in the meet­ing’s log­book: no one’s pulled it down off the shelf in fifty years and no one’s going to miss it now. Real­ly stuck?, okay Google’s got it too. Class will start shortly.

Taking Jeanne’s social class quiz

November 2, 2007
· Martin Kelley

I usu­al­ly skip out on meme games but I thought I’d try out Jean­ne’s class one. Bold are the priv­i­leges I can claim from my youth, ital­ics are ones that I’m unsure of or that are more “yes but” kind of priv­i­leges. My mom’s Luther­an pride kept her from want­i­ng us to look or feel poor. Yes, I did­n’t have second-hand clothes but the rich kids often did. While they might wear scrubs from their par­en­t’s doc­tor prac­tice or vin­tage clothes scored from a thrift-store out­ing, I was in striped button-down shirts from the respectable depart­ment store whose teen depart­ment was always emp­ty of teen cus­tomers. Yes, respectable peo­ple on TV sound like me but that’s because my mom dropped her child­hood Penn­syl­va­nia Dutch accent and was hyper-aware of non-standard accents (a trait I’ve unfor­tu­nate­ly picked up, I correct/mock Julie’s “wood­er” pro­nun­ci­a­tion for water before I can even think about it, it’s like I have a very speci­fic­Tourettes Syn­drome that only applies to non-standard accents). Julie tal­lied up and com­ment­ed on the quiz here in Jean­ne’s com­ments. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to real­ize that although I grew up sig­nif­i­cant­ly poor­er and have less than half Julie’s “steps” she’s much more cul­tur­al­ly work­ing class than I’ll ever be.

Father went to col­lege (he was secre­tive about past, he might have done a semes­ter at St Joe’s)
Father fin­ished col­lege
Moth­er went to col­lege (two year sec­re­tar­i­al pro­gram)
Moth­er fin­ished col­lege
Have any rel­a­tive who is an attor­ney, physi­cian, or pro­fes­sor.
Were the same or high­er class than your high school teach­ers
Had more than 50 books in your child­hood home
Had more than 500 books in your child­hood home
Were read chil­dren’s books by a par­ent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The peo­ple in the media who dress and talk like me are por­trayed pos­i­tive­ly (because we’re good assim­i­la­tion­ists)
Had a cred­it card with your name on it before you turned 18
Had to take out less than $5000 in stu­dent loans in order to go to col­lege
Did­n’t need stu­dent loans to go to col­lege out of high school
Went to a pri­vate high school
Went to sum­mer camp (day camp at the Y for a few sum­mers)
Had a pri­vate tutor before you turned 18
Fam­i­ly vaca­tions involved stay­ing at hotels
Your cloth­ing was all bought new before you turned 18 (pride kept us out of second-hand stores until we lat­er crossed that class bound­ary where thrift­ing is cool pre­cise­ly because its not a neces­si­ty)
Your par­ents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was orig­i­nal art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your fam­i­ly lived in a sin­gle fam­i­ly house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apart­ment before you left home
You had your own room as a child (I was the only child at home after age 7)
Par­tic­i­pat­ed in an SAT/ACT prep course (my mom thought they were cheat­ing)
Had your own TV in your room in High School (most­ly as mon­i­tor for Radio Shack Col­or Com­put­er she bought me junior year of high school)
Owned a mutu­al fund or IRA in High School or Col­lege
Flew any­where on a com­mer­cial air­line before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your fam­i­ly
Went on more than one cruise with your fam­i­ly
Your par­ents took you to muse­ums and art gal­leries as you grew up (we were more zoo/county fair/Independence Hall tour types (hey, they’re all free/low-cost!))
You were unaware of how much heat­ing bills were for your fam­i­ly (n/a: includ­ed in apt rent, besides my mom would nev­er let on that things were tight)

A list like this can nev­er be all inclu­sive but it seems there are some big omis­sions. Where’s any­thing about fam­i­ly struc­ture and finances, like “You had two parental fig­ures liv­ing in your house” and “Both par­ents con­tributed to fam­i­ly income” or “One par­ent stayed home or worked part-time”? In my own instance, my father had a secret oth­er fam­i­ly and nev­er paid for any­thing oth­er than the occa­sion­al trip to Roy Rogers (secret fam­i­ly to “Lit­tle Mar­ty” at least, the women and old­er chil­dren pre­sum­ably noitced he was only around half the time and con­struct­ed some men­tal run-around to explain it away).

The oth­er omis­sion is social net­works. I have no mem­o­ry of fam­i­ly friends. I can­not name one friend of my father and my moth­er’s friends were lim­it­ed to a hand­ful of “girls” at the office. By the time I got to high school I start­ed to see how cer­tain class­mates were able to work the sys­tem to get the best teach­ers and class­es and this was most­ly accom­plished by par­ents swap­ping notes after Hew­brew class or at church or at hock­ey prac­tice. Friends are right­ly not­ed for the strength of their social net­works and I sus­pect these pro­vide a social priv­i­lege that is far more valu­able than parental salary.

Jeanne promis­es to write a part two to her post explain­ing what this all means to Friends. I’m look­ing for­ward to it though I’m unsure just what easy gen­er­al­iza­tion can be made if we’re look­ing at ori­gins. One of the few sur­veys try­ing to be com­pre­hen­sive found Philadelphia-area Friends don’t reflect Amer­i­can aver­ages yet for many con­vinced Friends our par­tic­i­pa­tion has mir­rored (and per­haps been uncon­scious­ly moti­vat­ed by) an upward class mobil­i­ty. Keep an eye on Social Class & Quak­ers for more!

Friends and theology and geek pick-up hotspots

June 4, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Wess Daniels posts about Quak­er the­ol­o­gy on his blog. I respond­ed there but got to think­ing of Swarth­more pro­fes­sor Jer­ry Frost’s 2000 Gath­er­ing talk about FGC Quak­erism. Aca­d­e­m­ic, theologically-minded Friends helped forge lib­er­al Quak­erism but their influ­enced wained after that first gen­er­a­tion. Here’s a snippet:

“[T]he first gen­er­a­tions of Eng­lish and Amer­i­ca Quak­er lib­er­als like Jones and Cad­bury were all birthright and they wrote books as well as pam­phlets. Before uni­fi­ca­tion, PYM Ortho­dox and the oth­er Ortho­dox meet­ings pro­duced philoso­phers, the­olo­gians, and Bible schol­ars, but now the com­bined year­ly meet­ings in FGC pro­duce weighty Friends, social activists, and earnest seekers.”
…
“The lib­er­als who cre­at­ed the FGC had a thirst for knowl­edge, for link­ing the best in reli­gion with the best in sci­ence, for draw­ing upon both to make eth­i­cal judg­ments. Today by becom­ing anti-intellectual in reli­gion when we are well-educated we have jet­ti­soned the impulse that cre­at­ed FGC, reunit­ed year­ly meet­ings, rede­fined our role in wider soci­ety, and cre­at­ed the mod­ern peace tes­ti­mo­ny. The kinds of ener­gy we now devote to med­i­ta­tion tech­niques and inner spir­i­tu­al­i­ty needs to be spent on phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence, and Chris­t­ian religion.”

This talk was huge­ly influ­en­tial to my wife Julie and myself. We had just met two days before and while I had devel­oped an instant crush, Frost’s talk was the first time we sat next to one anoth­er. I real­ized that this might become some­thing seri­ous when we both laughed out loud at Jer­ry’s wry asides and the­ol­o­gy jokes. We end­ed up walk­ing around the cam­pus late into the ear­ly hours talk­ing talk­ing talking.

But the talk was­n’t just the reli­gion geek equiv­a­lent of a pick-up bar. We both respond­ed to Frost’s call for a new gen­er­a­tion of seri­ous Quak­er thinkers. Julie enrolled in a Reli­gion PhD pro­gram, study­ing Quak­er the­ol­o­gy under Frost him­self for a semes­ter. I dove into his­to­ri­ans like Thomas Hamm and mod­ern thinkers like Lloyd Lee Wil­son as a way to under­stand and artic­u­late the implic­it the­ol­o­gy of “FGC Friends” and took inde­pen­dent ini­tia­tives to fill the gaps in FGC ser­vices, tak­ing lead­er­ship in young adult pro­gram and co-leading work­shops and inter­est groups.

Things did­n’t turn out as we expect­ed. I hes­i­tate speak­ing for Julie but I think it’s fair enough to say that she came to the con­clu­sion that Friends ideals and prac­tices were unbridgable and she left Friends. I’ve doc­u­ment­ed my own set­backs and right now I’m pret­ty detached from for­mal Quak­er bodies.

Maybe enough time has­n’t gone by yet. I’ve heard that the per­son sit­ting on Julie’s oth­er side for that talk is now study­ing the­ol­o­gy up in New Eng­land; anoth­er Friend who I sus­pect was near­by just start­ed at Earl­ham School of Reli­gion. I’ve called this the Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion but at least some of its mem­bers have just been lying low. It’s hard to know whether any of these historically-informed Friends will ever help shape FGC pop­u­lar cul­ture in the way that Quak­er acad­e­mia influ­enced lib­er­al Friends did before the 1970s.

Reread­ing Frost’s speech this after­noon it’s clear to see it as an impor­tant inspi­ra­tion for Quak­erQuak­er. Parts of it act well as a good lib­er­al Quak­er vision for what the blo­gos­phere has since tak­en to call­ing con­ver­gent Friends. I hope more peo­ple will stum­ble on Frost’s speech and be inspired, though I hope they will be care­ful not to tie this vision too close­ly with any exist­ing insti­tu­tion and to remem­ber the true source of that dai­ly bread. Here’s a few more inspi­ra­tional lines from Jerry:

We should remem­ber that the­ol­o­gy can pro­vide a foun­da­tion for uni­ty. We ought to be smart enough to real­ize that any for­mu­la­tion of what we believe or link­ing faith to mod­ern thought is a sec­ondary activ­i­ty; to para­phrase Robert Bar­clay, words are descrip­tion of the foun­tain and not the stream of liv­ing water. Those who cre­at­ed the FGC and reunit­ed meet­ings knew the pos­si­bil­i­ties and dan­gers of the­ol­o­gy, but they had a con­fi­dence that truth increased possibilities.

Maguire​On​line​.com

May 18, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ist James Maguire came to me with an exist­ing site built in Mov­able Type. I’ll redesigned the nav­i­ga­tion, cre­at­ing cus­tomized side­bars that changed accord­ing to the cat­e­go­ry. He’s done great stuff with his site and it’s well worth look­ing through. Favorites of mine: his video appear­ances on talk shows and his 100 Books Worth Read­ing list.

Vis­it: James Maguire Online.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Visiting a Quaker School

April 18, 2006
· Martin Kelley

I had an inter­est­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty last Thurs­day. I skipped work to be talk with two Quak­erism class­es at Philadel­phi­a’s William Penn Char­ter School (thanks for the invite Michael and Thomas!). I was asked to talk about Quak­er blogs, of all things. Sim­ple, right? Well, on the pre­vi­ous Tues­day I hap­pened upon this pas­sage from Bri­an Dray­ton’s new book, On Liv­ing with a Con­cern for Gospel Min­istry:

I think that your work will have the great­est good effect if you wait to find whether and where the springs of love and divine life con­nect with this open­ing before you appear in the work. This is even true when you have had an invi­ta­tion to come and speak on a top­ic to a work­shop or some oth­er forum. It is wise to be sus­pi­cious of what is very easy, draws on your prac­ticed strengths and accom­plish­ments, and can be treat­ed as an every­day trans­ac­tion. (p. 149).

Good advice. Of course the role of min­istry is even more com­pli­cat­ed in that I was­n’t address­ing a Quak­er audi­ence: like the major­i­ty of Friends schools, few Penn Char­ter stu­dents actu­al­ly are Quak­er. I’m a pub­lic school kid, but it from the out­side it seems like Friends schools stress the ethos of Quak­erism (“here’s Penn Char­ter’s state­ment”). Again Dray­ton helped me think beyond nor­mal ideas of pros­e­ly­tiz­ing and out­reach when he talked about “pub­lic meetings”:

We are also called, I feel to invite oth­ers to share Christ direct­ly, not pri­mar­i­ly in order to intro­duce them to Quak­erism and bring them into our meet­ings, but to encour­age them to turn to the light and fol­low it” (p. 147).

What I shared with the stu­dents was some of the ways my inter­ac­tion with the Spir­it and my faith com­mu­ni­ty shapes my life. When we keep it real, this is a pro­found­ly uni­ver­sal­ist and wel­com­ing message.

I talked about the per­son­al aspect of blog­ging: in my opin­ion we’re at our best when we weave our the­ol­o­gy with with per­son­al sto­ries and tes­ti­monies of spe­cif­ic spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences. The stu­dents remind­ed me that this is also real world les­son: their great­est excite­ment and ques­tion­ing came when we start­ed talk­ing about my father (I used to tell the sto­ry of my com­plete­ly messed-up child­hood fam­i­ly life a lot but have been out of the habit late­ly as it’s reced­ed into the past). The stu­dents real­ly want­ed to under­stand not just my sto­ry but how it’s shaped my Quak­erism and influ­enced my com­ing to Friends. They asked some hard ques­tions and I was stuck hav­ing to give them hard answers (in that they were non-sentimental). When we share of our­selves, we present a wit­ness that can reach out to others.

Lat­er on, one of the teach­ers pro­ject­ed my blogroll on a screen and asked me about the peo­ple on it. I start­ed telling sto­ries, relat­ing cool blog posts that had stuck out in my mind. Wow: this is a pret­ty amaz­ing group, with diver­si­ty of ages and Quak­erism. Review­ing the list real­ly remind­ed me of the amaz­ing com­mu­ni­ty that’s come togeth­er over the last few years.

One inter­est­ing lit­tle snip­pet for the Quak­er cul­tur­al his­to­ri­ans out there: Penn Char­ter was the Gur­neyite school back in the day. When I got Michael’s email I was ini­tial­ly sur­prised they even had class­es on Quak­erism as it’s often thought of as one of the least Quak­er of the Philadelphia-area Quak­er schools. But think­ing on it, it made per­fect sense: the Gur­neyites loved edu­ca­tion; they brought Sun­day School (sor­ry, First Day School) into Quak­erism, along with Bible study and high­er edu­ca­tion. Of course the school that bears their lega­cy would teach Quak­erism. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, the his­tor­i­cal Ortho­dox school down the road aways recent­ly approached Penn Char­ter ask­ing about their Quak­er class­es; in true Wilbu­rite fash­ion, they’ve nev­er both­ered try­ing to teach Quak­erism. The offi­cial Philadel­phia Quak­er sto­ry is that branch­es were all fixed up nice and tidy back in 1955 but scratch the sur­face just about any­where and you’ll find Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry atti­tudes still shap­ing our insti­tu­tion­al cul­ture. It’s pret­ty fas­ci­nat­ing really.

Friends Familiar with My Struggles

May 5, 2005
· Martin Kelley

A Guest Piece from ‘Quak­er­s­peak’ C. Reddy.

On April 23 I flew to Ore­gon to serve on an edi­to­r­i­al board for a book that QUIP is putting togeth­er of young Friends’ expe­ri­ences of Quak­erism. After arriv­ing in Ore­gon but before I met with the edi­to­r­i­al board for this, I served on a pan­el with the oth­er young Friends on the edi­to­r­i­al board in a QUIP meet­ing (as we had arrived at the end of a QUIP con­fer­ence for our meet­ing) about how media, print­ed or oth­er­wise, inspired us spir­i­tu­al­ly. As we relat­ed our expe­ri­ences as young Friends (and grow­ing up as Quak­ers), a num­ber of issues sur­faced rather quickly.

As young Friends move through high school and enter the [young] adult world, there is often a gen­er­al lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between young Friends and adults in Meet­ings, as if there’s some ten­sion about it. Per­son­al­ly, as a young Friend in Durham Friends Meet­ing (NCYM(Cons.)), I’ve found that I know cer­tain adults — ones with whom I have inter­act­ed more specif­i­cal­ly over the years as I have grown up. Often these are par­ents of oth­er young Friends in the Meet­ing or peo­ple who have been involved in youth group events. What’s miss­ing is the con­nec­tion to the rest of the adults in Meet­ing; I’ve been attend­ing Durham Friends Meet­ing since I was born (with a peri­od dur­ing mid­dle school where I was most­ly absent, but for the last few years I’ve been quite reg­u­lar in atten­dance) and I feel like most of the meet­ing has no idea who I am. In addi­tion to that, I’ve not known how to com­mu­ni­cate my involve­ment and ded­i­ca­tion in var­i­ous nation­al Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties, such as being cho­sen as one of six co-clerks of the HS pro­gram at FGC Gath­er­ing this sum­mer, my par­tic­i­pa­tion in Young Quakes, my atten­dance at a Pen­dle Hill Clerk­ing work­shop last fall, my involve­ment in this QUIP book, or how I have been read­ing many Quak­er books over the last few months, all of which have been VERY inte­gral in my spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment. Even Friends in Durham Friends Meet­ing with whom I do con­verse some­times after Meet­ing do not know of all these things with which I am involved.

Also, when I stopped attend­ing First Day school in Jan­u­ary of my junior year in high school (a lit­tle over a year ago) and began attend­ing the full hour of Wor­ship, I spoke to two youth lead­ers about it briefly so they would under­stand, and then there was no fur­ther response. Look­ing back on this, I feel that the Meet­ing should be more involved in such a tran­si­tion for all young Friends — not just those adults direct­ly involved in the youth group/First Day school, but every­one should be more aware and atten­tive of the young Friends in Meet­ing and their involve­ment in Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties out­side of Meeting.

One thing that each of us felt is very impor­tant yet very lack­ing is men­tor­ship with­in Meet­ing for Wor­ship. There need to be adults who are not nec­es­sar­i­ly First Day school teach­ers, youth group lead­ers, or par­ents who are will­ing to have a rela­tion­ship with a young Friend as some­one who has had more expe­ri­ence with Quak­erism and can nur­ture a young Friend’s spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment. A young Friend who was in Ore­gon with me relat­ed her expe­ri­ences with a men­tor she has at Earl­ham (she is a second-year there, cur­rent­ly), and how she sees him about once a week; often she even receives books to read from him.

As the only active young Friend at my school (I’m sort of the ‘token’ Quak­er around), I usu­al­ly do not have any­one to talk to about my spir­i­tu­al find­ings and lead­ings. As I have con­tin­ued to devel­op spir­i­tu­al­ly, I find more and more I need oth­er Friends to talk who are famil­iar with my struggles.

These are issues not only with­in Durham Friends Meet­ing, but in Meet­ings across the coun­try. I rec­og­nize that there are efforts to improve youth pro­grams every­where, but it nev­er hurts to start locally.

As a grad­u­at­ing senior this year, and as an involved Friend, I would like to improve my rela­tion­ship with the Meet­ing as a whole and make way for bet­ter rela­tion­ships between mem­bers and young Friends in the future. This, how­ev­er, needs to be ful­ly a double-sided effort.