February 2010
NYTimes Review: International Civil Rights Center... →
Nice review of a new civil rights museum in Greensboro NC:
In the museum’s 30,000 square feet of exhibition space, the mundane luncheonette reminds us that a cataclysmic social transformation took place over the right to be ordinary. For that was what was at stake — not subtle and arcane matters of law or obscure practices that challenged eccentric codes of behavior, but the basic acts of daily...
January 2010
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Robin M on Quaker Life's New Quaker issue →
In Quaker Life:
I don’t hear anyone calling for the formation of new “convergent” institutions. I suspect we have become burdened by our inheritance of our spiritual grandparents’ treasures and their neuroses. Perhaps we need to break free of the weight of our inheritance, sort the treasures from the junk, and wait to see where God is leading us.
Part of my response in the comments:
I’m...
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Scott Wagoner: What Does a New Kind of Quaker Look... →
From the “New Quaker” issue of Quaker Life:
The old kind of Quaker wants to make sure we pass on buildings, property and programs to the next generation. The new kind of Quaker wants to make sure we pass on a living faith, a demonstration of faithfulness and a heart of integrity to the next generation.
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WatchDusting off the Elders of Balby
One of the blueprints for Quaker community is the “Epistle from the Elders at Balby” written in 1656 at the very infancy of the Friends movement by a gathering of leaders from Yorkshire and North Midlands, England. It’s the precursor to Faith and Practice, as it outlines the relationship between individuals and the meeting. If remembered at all...
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WatchAdding a Local Dimension to a Ning Site
This is a companion video to the article Going Local with Ning on the Ning Creator’s site. This video is also posted there. Yes I’m doing a lot of screencasts these days. There are actually more for a private client’s Ning site.
The Red Electric: On calling ourselves "friends" →
I fear that, in our own way, we Quakers have also done a grave disservice to the word “friend.” Jesus did not say “Friends” with a capital. He said lower-case “friends.” It’s fair to assume he meant…
Chuck Fager imagines Friends getting to Mozart →
[The traveling Friends minster] sees musical notes on them as the flames light up and then consume the sheets. “So much for worldly vanity,” he says with grim satisfaction. “Your new life will be…
Practical Mystic: Ministry in Quaker Meetings →
Meetings are not about just meant to be totally in silence – although of course, many times a meeting can go by with no ministry. Nor, are they about friends preaching merrily. Ministry is a…
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Howard Zinn RIP →
From the Boston Globe:
For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. Dr. Zinn’s best-known book, “A People’s History of the United States” (1980), had for its heroes not the Founding Fathers — many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out — but rather the...
AmyOutlaw: What Good is Prayer? →
Being a Quaker, I know, that is, I experience (not always but enough to ‘know’), the light I have within me. It can be hard to let on, even to myself, how much I care, because then I must bear some…
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Ban on Food and Fluids in Labor Has No Benefit,... →
Well, duh! Fought doctors on this one. It’s amazing how much of child birth medical knowledge is based on poorly conducted and outdated studies. From the Times:
Maternity wards have long forbidden women in labor to eat or drink. Even when labor goes on and on, the bill of fare is usually limited to ice chips. Now a systematic review of existing studies has found no evidence that the...
Joanna Hoyt: Reaching Through Despair →
Even in the times when I don’t seem able to see and be glad in these things, on some level I continue to remember God—to remember that there is life and light and meaning that can’t be destroyed by…
Wess Daniels on the Final Word →
As history shows, if the community isn’t rooted in discipleship, the study of Scripture and the apprenticing of leaders it can move from a participatory practice to a passive one, from an “open”…
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Conan O’Brien’s Undoing Reflects Media Choices of... →
From the NYTimes:
In the tumult that surrounded NBC’s late-night shake-up last week, one thing was certain: If even a small fraction of the additional younger viewers who flocked to Mr. O’Brien’s show last week had turned up regularly in his earlier ratings results, he would almost surely still be hosting “The Tonight Show.”
I think last week was the first time I’ve watched Conan in...
Petitions opposing Assumption/St. Ann's Merger →
The group who has been opposed to the merger of St. Ann’s and Assumption parishes will formally be sending petitions against the decision on Wednesday.
BBC News: How did Quakers conquer the British... →
Cadbury, which has been sold to US firm Kraft, is one of several great British firms founded by Quakers. But how did they gain such a stranglehold on the chocolate industry and why were they so…
Wess Daniels: cultivating community as a Quaker... →
I long to help cultivate this kind of community, to be a part of the picture Paul is painting here. (And who doesn’t?) I think one of my challenges as a Quaker preacher is to not assume that I have…
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Quakerinfo.org: Responding to Arguments →
In fact, when I respond by using argument to try to prove that I’m right and my accuser is wrong, usually, by the time the exchange is over, I go away feeling more resentful, more defensive, more…
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Clues on how Google ranks tweets →
From MIT’s Technology Review:
The tweets are a mainstay of Google’s real-time results, but Google has not previously discussed how it ranks them. A fundamental Google strategy for identifying tweet relevance is analogous to that used by Google’s PageRank technology, which helps find relevant Web pages with traditional Web search. Under PageRank, Google judges the importance of...
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What if Conan dumped the boob tube altogether... →
An interesting scenario from the NYTimes blog:
Mr. O’Brien argued last week “Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet, a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the ‘Tonight Show,’ I believe nothing could matter more.” I’m sure nothing could matter more on spreadsheets and in traditional advertising meetings. But with the 18- to 34-year-old crowd, who have shown undaunted...
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Quaker Quakers
I was able to make up this list that displays QuakerQuaker.org membership profiles and upcoming gatherings in a geography-focused way.
Countries
Australia Belgium Canada France Germany Greece Ireland Kenya Mexico Netherlands New Zealand United Kingdom United States
Select Cities
London Philadelphia New York Richmond Greensboro Portland Seattle Birmingham Boston Minneapolis San...
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Robin M tries to define a Meeting for newcomers →
At first glance, it is our gathering for worship. (In other denominations, the equivalent may be called the service or the mass.) Quaker worship can be programmed, with prepared sermons and music, or…
Linda WIlk: the courage of early Friends →
We were talking about how ‘milk-toast’ Quakers have become compared to our forebears. We were talking about the notion of people who felt so called to ministry that they felt they had no choice but…
Passionate Ashley on leadings for committee work →
The problem for me is that whenever I agree to serve on a committee without a sense of leading, things go badly. Committee meetings feel like a burden, conflicts arise, and the work is not smooth. I…
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WatchSeattle Times reporter Mark Rahner takes a satirical look at how Bill “Bix” Bichsel, 81, broke into Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor. (via The Seattle Times: Video)
Emergency Relief for Friends in Haiti (via... →
In Haiti we have about a dozen Evangelical Friends Churches under the direction of Evangelical Friends Church-Eastern Region with 2000-2500 attenders. They are located 30 miles northwest of…
Infinite Daniel on the ocean of darkness still... →
Of late, like the psalmist of the Jewish Bible times and George Fox at the start of the English Civil War, I have despaired observing the ocean of darkness that is again inundating, drowning this…
C Wess Daniels: Tuesdays With the Elders →
Each person was chosen to be an elder for different reasons. “We need this person because our meeting really needs this right now,” and so on. While there was a feeling that we are not cut out for…
Sheffield Craig: Threshing our Meeting →
My own experience is that I rarely feel nourished by our Meeting for Worship on a Sunday morning. This is not just about having ‘too much’ ministry, but more importantly the kind of spoken ministry…
Linda Wilk: Community as the people you don't want... →
What are the covenants we each carry with us when we join a spiritual community? I am fairly certain none of us entertains the thought as we start out that Parker Palmer posits: that true community…
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“Terrific energy is expended—civilizations are built up-excellent...”
– C.S. Lewis on the consequences of running on our lives “on the wrong juice.” Mere Christianity, p. 39 (1958 edition).
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Scot Miller: Admiting I'm not marginalized, the... →
Scot of Sandhill CSA blog posted on QuakerQuaker:
I felt like I was on the margins of both groups of Friends, but now that I think of it, I may have the best of the spiritual world at my fingertips. Perhaps God has brought me to a space in the middle because I can learn valuable spiritual truths from both groups.
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Save Wildwood Catholic High School →
A new website opposed to Diocesan church-and-school closures. From their description:
A Group dedicated to ensuring that quality Catholic school education is available to Cape May County families, and endeavoring to save Wildwood Catholic and its traditions for the children.
They have two Facebook groups: SaveWildwoodCatholic and Keep Wildwood Catholic High School Alive. Here’s some...
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Joanna Hoyt: Whose burdens do we bear? →
Sometimes the needs around and within me exceed the apparent strength around and within me, and I am discouraged. Then I have to remember that we are all in God’s hands, and I am not God. It isn’t up to me to figure out how to make everything come out right; only to do my part as faithfully as I can, and then let the rest go and give thanks for all the good gifts that come to us each day, beyond...
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Chuck Fager starts a Committee On New Quaker... →
From Chuck’s post:
It isn’t that I’ve turned against “nurturing,” or what the term is supposed to evoke. It’s rather that the word has become like the tires on my car: they’ve gone round and round so many thousands of times the tread is worn off and they won’t hold to the road anymore.
My reply to Chuck:
The vagueness of it all seems usually to be the point. We want to sound deep and...
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Chris M. on the roles of hard and easy business... →
With today’s meeting as a frame of reference, it now seems to me that last month we were plowing fertile, if perhaps fallow, ground. We had to break up the clods and ready the soil for the seeds. And so today the sprouts were appearing.
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Wess Daniels starts a 6-mo Quaker Preacher Project →
I’m not going to be writing about much of anything else in the next six months, I won’t be posting my sermons as much, and will shy away from academics. This is really just going to be about my experience as a Quaker preacher. I want to sit with the tension this calling holds for me, share the aspects of my life where the paradox is evident, and show where I strike a balance between these two...
Julie making the first pizzelles →