Tag Archives ⇒ uncomfortable

What gifts of the Spirit are we marginalizing?

August 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Pow­er­ful warn­ings from Adria Gulizia about what hap­pens when a faith com­mu­ni­ty doesn’t exer­cise all of its gifts :

Even worse, when we rou­tine­ly mar­gin­al­ize cer­tain gifts, we begin to see their exer­cise as dys­func­tion­al and their absence as nor­ma­tive, rather than the reverse. When the prophet chal­lenges us with uncom­fort­able truths, rather than using our dis­com­fort as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for reflec­tion and dis­cern­ment, we tell her to tone it down, com­plain that she is “unwel­com­ing” and, if she doesn’t get the mes­sage, we run her off.


Welcoming the Gifts God Sends Us

Wel­com­ing the Gifts God Sends Us 

In order to remain healthy and faith­ful, we must nur­ture all spir­i­tu­al gifts, not just the ones that…

In the Shadow of Babylon In the Shad­ow of Babylon 

Words and Wounds: Reflections from Britain Yearly Meeting

May 10, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Words and Wounds: Reflec­tions from Britain Year­ly Meeting

I was par­tic­u­lar­ly moved by the pres­ence of our inter­na­tion­al Quak­er vis­i­tors. To trav­el all that way just for our lit­tle gath­er­ing! It struck me that, when we say ‘our diver­si­ty is our strength’, this must include all the ways that Quak­erism is expressed through­out the world. It must even include those expres­sions of Quak­erism that make us uncom­fort­able. For our diver­si­ty to tru­ly be our strength we must pay a price, and that price is the need to have deep and dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions with each oth­er, face to face, about what we hold most dear.

Words and Wounds: Reflec­tions from Britain Year­ly Meeting

Sowing seeds

April 4, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Mike Far­ley looks at Quak­er sto­ries of East­er and the dif­fi­cul­ties of dis­tract­ing the Holy Spirit:

I am at least as sus­cep­ti­ble as any­one I know to self-deception and wish­ful think­ing, to being untrue to myself and to God, and to look­ing out­side myself, at the exter­nal aspects of thought and prac­tice among peo­ple of faith, try­ing to dis­tract myself from the work of the Spir­it in my heart. But it is less easy to dis­tract the Holy Spir­it, and so I have been called back again and again to these uncom­fort­able, at times down­right dan­ger­ous, places, out in the salt­marsh­es of the heart.

The sow­ing of seeds

“It’s light that makes me uncomfortable” and other Googlisms

April 6, 2004
· Martin Kelley

I think it’s fair to say that inter­net search engines have changed how many of us explore social and reli­gious move­ments. There is now easy access to infor­ma­tion on won­der­ful­ly quirky sub­jects. Let the Super­bowl view­ers have their over­pro­duced com­mer­cials and cal­cu­lat­ed con­tro­ver­sy: the net gen­er­a­tion does­n’t need them. TV view­er­ship among young adults is drop­ping rapid­ly. Peo­ple with web­sites and blogs are shar­ing their sto­ries and the search engines are find­ing them. Here is a taste of the search phras­es peo­ple are using to find Mar­tin Kel­ley Quak­er Ranter.

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The Passion of Uncomfortable Orthodoxies: Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ”

February 24, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Mel Gib­son’s movie _The Pas­sion of Christ_ is a chal­lenge for many mod­ern Quak­ers. Most of the rich metaphors of co-mingled joy and suf­fer­ing of the ear­ly Friends have been dumbed-down to feel-good clich­es. Can the debate on this movie help us return to that uncom­fort­able place where we can acknowl­edge the com­plex­i­ties of being fer­vent­ly reli­gious in a world haunt­ed by past sins and still in need of con­vic­tion and comfort?

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