"About Martin":http://martinkelley.commartin "Design Philosophy":http://martinkelley.com/design "Marketing & Publicity":http://martinkelley.com/marketing "Geek Talk":http://martinkelley.com/geek

Some might wonder how I manage to make ends meet with two kids on a Quaker salary and all this blog work. Well, the truth is that I don't. Not quite. Even with pennies pinched the supermarket run is always a struggle. One way I make up the difference is with freelance web work. As of today it now has its own website at "martinkelley.com":martinkelley.com. In the past few months I've put together "Quakersong.org":www.quakersong.org for Peter Blood and Annie Patterson of "Rise Up Singing":http://www.quakersong.org/rise_up_singing/ fame, two lovely folks I know from Quaker & activist circles and most recently through their membership at "Middletown Meeting":http://www.pym.org/pym_mms/middletownpa_cdq.php. I've also put together a customized blog for journalist "James Maguire":www.maguireonline.com who liked the design of Nonviolence.org and asked me to put together his site. My latest FGC design is the brand new Youth Ministries site, "Quakeryouth.org":www.quakeryouth.org, which is our most ambitious & interactive yet! Since coming back from the "Gathering":www.fgcquaker.org/gathering I've spent most of my free time ignoring the latest blogger bruhaha to put together Martinkelley.com. There's lots there about my design philosophy and my experiences with online communities (social and commercial). There's also a few silly features: "Little Known Facts":http://martinkelley.com/martin/facts/ of outrageous claims and "Ask the Expert, Ask the Fool":http://www.martinkelley.com/marketing/expert_fool/ where I invite questions about design and virtual community organizing. Check it all out and tell your friends and business associates! h3. New, 8/2/06: I've added a "web design blog":www.martinkelley.com/blog, a place to talk design philosophy. How do we use the internet to build a community or a movement? What would a Quaker design aethetic for the internet look like? "Sign up (RSS)":http://feeds.feedburner.com/martinkelley or surf over to "martinkelley.com/blog":www.martinkelley.com/blog.

    Julie took Theo on his class trip to "Storybook Land":www.storybookland.com, a South Jersey icon that recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary (maybe sometime we'll raid the photo albums from Julie's youth and post pictures of her childhood exploits there!). Martin and Francis stayed home, alas, with high temperatures, part of a family-wide cold that's affected us all at some point over the last ten days.

Last night "LizOpp":http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com, "Robin M":http://robinmsf.blogspot.com and myself hosted our "FGC Gathering":www.fgcquaker.org/gathering interest group. The title was "On Fire!: Renewing Quakerism through a Convergence of Friends." All morning long we've had Friends grabbing our arms to tell us how powerful and important it was for them. One well-traveled Friend went so far as to say the spontaneous worship that occurred halfway through was the deepest he's experienced in twenty years of Quakerism. The obvious challenge for us hosts is keeping our egos securely tamed from all this praise. The work wasn't ours. We simply set the stage. My first impulse is to say we helped create an environment where the Spirit could break into the event, but that's not really it. We tried to create a space where participants would recognize when the Spirit knocked on the door. ==

Food for Fire participants. Bloggers at the workshop pose for a goofy attacking-one-another photo.

== What happened last night felt similar to what happened in last February's Powell House "Food for the Fire":http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/food_for_fire_workshop_21012th_at_powell_house.php workshop. While I took notes and journaled a lot about it I never gave a followup blog post. It was powerful and I needed to digest it. Luckily participants "Rob":http://consider-the-lilies.blogspot.com/2006/03/lies-mystery-and-ministry.html, "Amanda":http://ofthebest.blogspot.com/2006/02/for-god-is-god-at-hand.html and "Zach":http://quakeranarchist.blogspot.com/2006/02/we-expect-theophany-of-which-we-know.html and "Claire":http://quakerspeak.blogspot.com/2006/02/all-world-together.html all shared about it or its themes in the weeks afterwards. I'd like to share something about the assumptions and preparation that went into these two events. There's no way to create a cookie-cutter agenda to force a deep spiritual high. In fact part of what's needed is to move beyond predictability. Both times I've had a clear sense that a point came when I was no longer facilitating, where Spirit was actively guiding us and participants were actively responding to that process, even eldering us past the control of facilitation. When I came to Powell House I had a workshop description and a keen interest in the topic. What I didn't bring was an agenda. I'm trying to experiment with not being too prepared.* Early Friends held open meetings and while they often bore concerns and had themes that frequently reoccurred in their ministry. Friends today rely very much on models borrowed from higher education: we have workshops that expect agendas, we give talks that expect pre-printed speeches. These are often the opportunities we get for teaching ministries, yet they are very programmed. The challenge is to figure out how to subvert them to allow for unprogrammed surprise. At Powell House I spent time before each session walking around the grounds in prayer for guidance on what to do next. I had brainstormed ideas beforehand but my main preparation had been a lot of Quaker reading and prayer in the weeks preceeding the event. I wanted the sessions to connect to the spiritual condition of the participants, as individuals and as a group. There were a few moments I thought I was nuts. For example, walking around before the Powell House Saturday afternoon session it seemed like reading a chapter of Samuel Bownas's "Description of the Qualifications":http://www.quakerbooks.org/get/0-87574-911-9 would be a good idea, but by mid-afternoon I could see the sleepy faces. We did it anyway and faces and spirit lit up. People wanted to engage with Bownas. As it turns out we read all of chapter three, "Advice to Ministers in a State of Infancy." It was so cool. The real inbreaking happened a little later. The group was tired, dinner was nearing. I started to recommend we go into a circle to break up. One Friend interrupted, looked at another across the room and said “you have something to say, don’t you.” The second Friend said yes, then challenged us that we hadn’t actually answered our queries at all. The main question was still on the table. “What are we called to do?” There was a release. I knew I was not in control of the workshop anymore. We came into a prayer circle and started to talk about some of this. One Friend said something about naming who it is that call us. A theme came out that it wasn't enough for us to find some sort of personal salvation and comfort in our Quaker meetings: we needed to bring all the world into this if it was to be meaningful. It truly felt like the Holy Spirit was in the room. It wasn't necessarily so comfortable and it somehow seemed like not enough, but it pointed to the work we needed to do afterwards. ==

Blogging participants of On Fire! workshop pose together. About fifty people total came out for the Monday night interest group. Click photo for names and links. Lots of discussions happened at the rise of the worship. The semi-impromptu post-discussion group. (Thanks for FGC's Emily for taking & posting this!) FGC Gathering photos on Flickr and Technorati

== Last night, at the FGC interest group, something similar happened. Robin, Liz and I had planned out the first half of the meeting. The most important piece: coming early to sit in prayer and holding it well past the time the interest group was supposed to start. The work of Friends needs to be rooted in worship. We need to be still enough to hear the Holy Spirit. If the medium is the message, our message was about the need to not pack ourselves in with agendas. We started predicatbly enough by asking the fifty-or-so participants to give their names and to name a spiritual practice that gives them joy. We asked for space in between speakers to keep worship at the fore and we were blessed by a self-faciliating group; Friends did hold the spaces in between. Then the three of us told our stories of starting spiritually-focused blogs and coming to find a fellowship that extended beyond our traditional Quaker branches (hence the term "Convergence of Friends"). I went first and explained that I trying to be careful not to do this to lift myself up. My story is simple and like those of many Friends. I was giving testimony. The idea of testimony rang throughout the evening. Robin's story in particular was very grounded and coming last it took us into the unprogrammed agenda-less time we had left free. Friends rose to give testimony of other "convergent" experiences, for example particpation in the Northwest Women's Theological Conferences, events of the Western branch of the Christian Friends Fellowship. At some point a woman I didn't know stood up without being recognized and she had a pose of supplication. My first though, "oh no!" Then I noticed another Friend, worshipful in spirit, who pointed her to us. She said she was going to sing a song. "Oh no again!" I thought. But this was the facilitation coming off our shoulders. This was a Friend rising to name what we needed and another Friend pointing that we needed to go this direction. It was like the two Powell House Friends: one recognizing in the other a need to share ministry and being willing to break through "proper" group process. At the interest group the song was powerful, it brought us to a place where we could be low and thankful. We were now spontaneously in worship. Liz, Robin and I had planned some closing worship but this wasn't the time yet. But it was the time and the suceeding ministry was heartfelt and largely from the Source. The only funny aside was that we felt we couldn't let the group go on past our 8:45 end time, for the simple reason that childcare ended then and we needed to let parents go. We mentioned this around 8:30 but twenty minutes later the worship was continuing. Just then the cellphone of the Friend giving ministry went off: it was his daughter calling to ask where he was! He turned off the phone but it gave us the excuse to close the meeting and invite an extended meeting to continue outside. This was wonderful as there were a number of other similarly-themed interest groups (one on "youth ministries":www.quakeryouth.org, the other on the "World Gathering of Young Friends":http://www.wgyf.org/) and participants from all three groups met outside and continued the sharing for another two hours. Lessons? Simply to ground workshop events in worship, let the agenda be empty enough for the Spirit to intervene (having backup exercises just in case it doesn't is fine!). I don't think this is a foolproof method. A lot depends on the participants and how willing they are to share in the faciliation and worship. A lot also depends on Friends breaking into the agenda, for both times that was what turned the event from a workshop to a gathered meeting.

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* For me the danger is a personal style that has long relied on a last-minute miracles (I was the kind of college student who read all the material through the semester but didn't actually start writing anything until the night before an assignment was due). I don't want my theology to be an excuse for my procrastination and I try to test this regularly. h3. Related posts: Lots of folks have been talking about the Gathering and the Monday night interest group. * Co-faciliator LizOpp "also details some of the process of the Interest Group":http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2006/07/after-2006-gathering.html and of the semi-impromptu multi-generational interest group afterwards. She's also written about the "visits from Freedom Friends Church":http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2006/07/freedom-friends-at-fgc-gathering.html. * Co-facilitator RobinM has the first of a handful of promised posts where she "emphasizes the importance of grounding and starting the session in worship":http://robinmsf.blogspot.com/2006/07/on-fire-renewing-quakerism-through.html. * ChrisM describes how he "couldn't sleep after the Interest Group":http://chrismsf.blogspot.com/2006/07/impressions-from-fgc-week-ago.html. * Dave T has a "quick check-in and description":http://www.davetrowbridge.com/MT/archives/week_2006_07_02.html. * Paul L felt a "real covering of the meeting ":http://showerofblessings.blogspot.com/2006/07/back-home-in-minnesota.html halfway through the Interest Group. * Both "AJ Schwanz":http://ajschwanz.com/2006/07/11/you-mean-youre-a-real-person/ and "Gregg Koskela":http://greggsgambles.com/2006/07/10/new-friends/ have posts about a post-Gathering meet-up of some Friends around a picnic table in Oregon. I'm sure more reaction posts are up there and I'll link to them as I find them. I suspect that in addition to being the "biggest group Quaker blogger photo to date":http://www.flickr.com/photos/martin_kelley/181378686/ ("sorry Gregg!":http://www.flickr.com/photos/gkoskela/187108260/), this will end up being the most blogged about Quaker event yet, at least till "Wess gathers West Coasters together next month":http://theology.wetpaint.com/page/Convergent+Gathering+2006. I counted at least 20 "Quaker bloggers":http://quakerquaker.org/quaker_blogs/ at the Gathering.

Those Quaker Ranters readers who are coming to the "FGC Gathering":www.fgcquaker.org/gathering but haven't lost internet access yet might be interested in some of the events the Advancement & Outreach committee is sponsoring over the week. There will be a flyer in the registration packets (all these events will take place in Admin 203). For those not coming, I suspect I'll have some sort of Gathering round-up post at some point after it's all done. I'm also co-hosting a Monday night interest group with LizOpp and Robin: "On Fire! Renewing Quakerism through a Convergence of Friends." For details, see "Liz's post":http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2006/06/interest-group-at-gathering.html or "Robin's post":http://robinmsf.blogspot.com/2006/06/convergent-travels.html.

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bq.. The FGC Advancement and Outreach committee is sponsoring afternoon events during four days of Gathering. Come share your outreach ideas, learn about FGC and support the growth of Quakerism! *All Friends Welcome, 1:30-3:00* Monday: "What Do Quakers Believe?" Come talk about the range of Quaker beliefs, from Robert Barclay to the present day, and explore what binds us together as Friends. Convened by Deborah Haines. Wednesday: A special welcome to Friends from Pacific, North Pacific and Intermountain Yearly Meetings. Come talk about the spirit, concerns, and Quaker ways of these three independent yearly meetings. Thursday: Visitors from Freedom Friends Church will join us to talk about the witness of this unique independent evangelical Friends Church. *Outreach Hours, 3:15-4:15* Sunday: Visibility. Interested in publicizing your meeting and getting the Quaker message out into your community? Friends are invited to come share their stories and questions and pick up a free copy of our "Inreach-Outreach Packet for Small Meetings." Jane Berger will host. Monday: Isolated Friends & New Worship Groups. Learn about FGC's new service for Friends and seekers who live far from any meeting or worship group. Are you interested in helping to nurture new worship groups? Come find out what resources are available from the FGC Advancement Committee, and share your stories and ideas. Wednesday: Friends interested in affiliation. FGC is an association of 14 yearly meetings and regional groups and 9 directly affiliated monthly meetings. A&O; clerk Deborah Haines will talk about the work of FGC and the benefits of affiliation. Thursday: Spiritual Hospitality. It's easy to feel isolated even within a local meeting. A&O; coordinator Martin Kelley will talk about some strategies to overcome the isolations of age, theology, race, lifestyle, etc. What can meetings do to help these Friends not feel isolated?

I like this Francis photo so much I wanted to make sure it didn't disappear in the Flickr stream. As you can see he's really starting to develop personality. On the movement front, his flinging about is surely becoming crawling and he's chasing after parents and toys all the time. Our little baby!
 
 
 
 

Over on the photo sharing service Flickr, I'm noticing a bunch of photos from this week's Britain Yearly Meeting session. One contributor has tagged (labelled) all her photos with "britainyearlymeeting06" which means they're all "available on one page":http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/britainyearlymeeting06/. Cool, but what would be even cooler is if every Flickr user at the event used the same tag. We'd then have a nearly real-time group photo essay of the yearly meeting sessions. So this year I'm going to tag all my personal photos from next month's "Friends General Conference Gathering of Friends":www.fgcquaker.org/gathering as "fgcgathering06". I invite any other Flickr-using attenders to do the same. While I do work at FGC, please note this is not any sort of official FGC decision, it's just my own idea to share photos and to see how we can use these online networks to share and promote Quakerism. In a few weeks you'll start seeing entries via "flickr":www.flickr.com/photos/tags/fgcgathering06 and "technorati":http://technorati.com/tag/fgcgathering06. I'll probably start with a few pictures of the bookstore truck being loaded for its cross-country trek. *Blog posts:* If your blogging system doesn't support the use of tags, then simply add this line in the bottom of each of your Gathering-related posts:

fgcgathering06

Today was the day we we loaded up a truckload of books, children's toys and this's and that's and sent them on their way to Tacoma. The Gathering starts in eight days!

h4. Looking back at Friends' responses to the Christian Peacemaker hostages When the Christian Peacemakers were taken hostage in Iraq late last November, a lot of Quaker organizations stumbled in their response. With Tom Fox we were confronted by a full-on liberal Quaker Christian witness against war, united with other peace churches yet who was there to explain this as prophetic witness? AFSC? FCNL? FGC? Nope nope and nope. There were too many organizations that couldn’t manage anything beyond the boilerplate social justice press release. I held my tongue while the hostages were still in captivity but I was mad at the exposed fracture lines between religious witness and social activism. Whenever a situation involving international issues of peace and witness happens, the Quaker institutions I'm closest to automatically defer to the more political Quaker organizations like the American Friends Service Committee or the Friends Committee on National Legislation. They're the experts and they have the knowledge and staff to handle this sort of situation yet their institutional culture doesn't allow it to talk about Quakers or Quakerism except to say we're a bunch of nice people who believe in social justice. Now, I appreciate that they have a strong, vital identity and I accept that within those confines they do great work and employ many faithful Friends. It's just that they lack the language to explain why a grocery store employee with a love of youth religious education would go unarmed to Badgdad in the name of Christian witness. The wider blogosphere was totally abuzz with news of Christian Peacemaker Team hostages (Google blogsearch "lists over 6000 posts on the topic":http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q;=%22christian+peacemaker%22&btnG;=Search+Blogs). There were hundreds of posts and comments, including long discussions on the biggest (and most right-leaning) sites. Almost everyone wondered why the CPT workers were there and while the opinions weren't always friendly (the hostages were often painted as naive idealists or disingeneous terrorist sympathizers), even the doubters were motivated by a profound curiosity and desire to understand. The CPT hostages were the talk of the blogosphere, yet where could we find a Quaker response and explanation? The AFSC responded by publicizing the statements of moderate Muslim leaders calling for the hostages' release (I emailed back a query about listing some Quaker responses but never got a reply). Friends United Meeting put together a "nice enough what-you-can-do page":http://www.fum.org/FriendsmissinginIraq.htm that was targeted toward Friends. The "CPT site":http://www.cpt.org/ was full of information of course, and there were plenty of stories on the lefty-leaning sites like "ElectronicIraq":http://electroniciraq.net/ and the UK site "Ekklesia":http://ekklesia.co.uk/. But Friends explaining this to the world? The Quaker bloggers did their part. On December 2 I quickly rejiggered the technology behind QuakerQuaker.org to provide a Christian Peacemaker watch on both "Nonviolence.org":http://www.nonviolence.org/christian_peacemakers/ and "QuakerQuaker":http://www.quakerquaker.org/christian_peacemaker_teams/ (same listings, merely rebranded for slightly-separate audiences, announced on the post "It's Witness Time":http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/its_witness_time.php). These pages got lots of views over the course of the hostage situation and included many posts from the Quaker blogger community that had recently congealed. But here's the interesting part: I was able to do this only because there was an active Quaker blogging community. We already had gathered together as a group of Friends who were willing to write about spirituality and witness. Our conversations had been small and intimate but now we were ready to speak to the world. I sometimes get painted as some sort of fundamentalist Quaker, but the truth is that I've wanted to build a community that would wrestle with these issues, figuring the wrestling was more important than the language of the answers. I had already thought about how to encourage bloggers and knit a blogging community together and was able to use these techniques to quickly build a Quaker CPT response. Two other Quakers who went out of their way to explain the story of Tom Fox: his personal friends John Stephens and Chuck Fager. Their "Freethecaptivesnow.org":www.freethecaptivesnow.org site was put together impressively fast and contained a lot of good links to news, resources and commentary. But like me, they were over-worked bloggers doing this in their non-existant spare time (Chuck is director of "Quaker House":http://quakerhouse.org but he never said this was part of the work). After an initial few quiet days, Tom's meeting "Langley Hill":http://quaker.org/langleyhill/ put together a great website of links and news. That makes it the only official Quaker organization that pulled together a sustained campaign to support Tom Fox. h3. Lessons? So what's up with all this? Should we be happy that all this good work happened by volunteers? Johan Maurer has a very interesting post, "Are Quakers Marginal":http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2006/06/are-quakers-marginal.htm that points to my earlier comment on the Christian Peacemakers and doubts whether our avoidance of "hireling priests" has given us a more effective voice. Let's remember that institutional Quakerism began as support of members in jail for their religious witness; among our earliest committee gatherings were meetings for sufferings--business meetings focused on publicizing the plight of the jailed and support the family and meetings left behind. I never met Tom Fox but it's clear to me that he was an exceptional Friend. He was able to bridge the all-too-common divide between Quaker faith and social action. Tom was a healer, a witness not just to Iraqis but to Friends. But I wonder if it was this very wholeness that made his work hard to categorize and support. Did he simply fall through the institutional cracks? When you play baseball on a disorganized team you miss a lot of easy catches simply because all the outfielders think the next guy is going to go for the ball. Is that what happened? And is this what would happen again?

Over on Beppeblog, "Liberal Quakerism is no longer Quakerism":http://beppeblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/liberal-quakerism-is-no-longer.html, the first of a multi-post series. In part one, Beppe looks at our difficulty articulating a collective voice that might proclaim "Truth." Individualism has really taken a hit on Quakers, that's for sure. In this day and age, how can a group set itself apart as a "religious society"--a coherent community of believers? I don't find fulfillment in my own self and I'm an awfully slow learner when I try to figure out things myself. I need other's wisdom but books and blogs only take me so far. As Dave Carl reminds us in the comments, the inward Christ is available to all, everywhere. But just because you can have a visited while standing in the supermarket checkout line doesn't make the supermarket a religious society or the cashier a minister. Many of our meetings are good for the casual seeker who wants a stress-free meditation center. The RSOF seems to serve many seekers as an in-between point: a place of entry back into the Christian tradition (for those who have been alienated by false prophets) but not a final destination in itself. If you want to get serious you often have to leave. That's a shame, not only for the lost seeker, but for our own religious society which sees a constant "brain drain" leaking-out of gifted ministers. I turn on the TV and radio and hear all sorts of perversions of the gospel being spouted out (yesterday's Memorial Day pap was particularly annoying--hasn't any of these Christians read the Sermon on the Mount?!?). The world still needs the kind of radical, back-to-the-roots Christianity that Quakers have long held up as an alternative. But how can we unite to speak with that prophetic voice if we have no collective voice. I'm not as pessimistic as all this sounds. I think most Friends want something more. We're constantly lifing up the example of dead Friends with prophetic voices and there's a strong pride in our history of social justice. Our modern culture of individuality blinds us to how these voices got nutured and how those old-timey Friends were able to come together to speak out these truths. But Friends have often been lured away from our calling and every age has had faithful Friends who have been willing to hit their heads against the brick walls of frustration time and time again in order to remind us of who we are. The back-and-forth of reaching out into the world and pulling back into our tradition is actually itself part of our tradition and Quaker bodies have often seen healthiest when we've been able to hold both together. PS: Check here for Beppe's second post, which argues that "Liberal Quakerism continues to be Quakerism ":http://beppeblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/liberal-quakerism-continues-to-be.html.

Lazy guy I am, I'm going to cut-and-paste a comment I left over at Rich the Brooklyn Quaker's blog in response to his post "What This Christian Is Looking For In Quakerism":http://brooklynquaker.blogspot.com/2006/04/what-this-christian-is-looking-for-in.html. There's been quite a good discussion in the comments. In them Rich poses this analogy: bq. During the Great Depression and World War II, I have been told that Franklin Roosevelt rallied the spirits of the American people with his "fireside chats". These radio broadcasts communicated information, projected hope, and called for specific responses from his listeners; including some acts of self-sacrifice and unselfishness... Often people would gather in small groups around their radios to hear these broadcasts, they would talk about what Roosevelt had said, and to some extent they were guided in their daily lives by some of what they had heard. Rich then supposes what a listener sitting in front of the radio might by thinking. I thought it was an interesting analogy and thought it provided another way of thinking about the relationship of Quakerism and Christianity and especially of a Quaker-styled Christianity. Let's start with a listener who's figured out that the speaker's a real person and not just electronic fuzz The year is 1933. Twelfth day Third Month. "Cue Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first fireside chat":ftp://webstorage2.mcpa.virginia.edu/library/nara/fdr/audiovisual/speeches/firesidechat_01.mp3 Our listener sitting in front of the radio would hear FDR's voice without knowing who he is. The information would be there but there would be no particular weight attached to it. They might listen to it but they'd be just as likely to turn the knob and catch the much more entertaining Bob Hope special. A bully sitting nearby in the room might rebuke the listener: "Don't touch that dial! Listen to what he's saying! That's the PRESIDENT!" The listener, knowing nothing about our political system, would just hear a call to unearned authority. The bully's rebuke would have the weight of fear--what might the bully do if I don't listen?!?--but it will have taken the listener's attention off of FDR and onto the bully. Let's say that instead there's a gentle soul in the room who gives testimony. They share with our listener how valuable they've found FDR's advice to be in the past. They're simply saying, "it's worth listening to this guy, he says some good stuff." As the listener starts appreciating FDR's counsel, our nearby friend might start teaching about the role of the Presidency in American history. They could introduce concepts like checks-and-balances, they could tell stories of past Constitutional crises, they would talk about other types of political systems. Our listener would slowly gain a vocabularly that wouldn't change the message but which would provide a way of talking about it. The friend would be tapping on the social history of generations of Americans who had struggled to understand how to organize themselves: the friend would be teaching our collective wisdom. By understanding it our listener would be in a better position to effectively act on FDR's advice (perhaps they'd realize they need to lobby their senators to get FDR's next budget passed). A deconstructionist might argue that "The United States of America" is a social construct, but that doesn't mean the Declaration of Independence isn't an amazing, inspiring document that says something profoundly truthful about human existance. Taking the analogy full circle, it's almost as if liberal Friends today are afraid of teaching the Declaration of Independence because it might offend the Russian, Italian and Korean immigrants. We still believe in it and most of the immigrants are figuring out pieces of it hit-and-miss, but we're just incredibly awkward talking about it since we've lost our language. If we just started speaking plainly again, that would give the immigrants a chance to say "hey that's interesting but you know we did it this way back in the old country." I wonder if we'd open up the conversation to a richer level of sharing? The beauty of Quakerism is that we know that the quiet testimony and humble invitation are gifts we can share with one another and with all we meet. I'm thinking again of the Brian Drayton's formulation: bq. 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. The message we share matters not simply because it's Christ's but because it's wise. We have much to share. *Naming the Church* The meeting I attend, "Middletown":http://www.pym.org/pym_mms/middletownpa_cdq.php, is going through Acts in Bible Study and today the clerk forwarded some fascinating commentary from "1863 by a fellow named J. W. McGarvey":http://www.ccel.org/m/mcgarvey/oca/OCA11.HTM. He talks about the names we give one another and the Source and it reminds me of the discussion over on Rich's blog. Here's a sample: bq. The New Testament usage in reference to names is this: When the followers of Jesus were contemplated with reference to their relation to him as their great teacher, they were called disciples. When the mind of the speaker was fixed more particularly on their relation to one another, they were styled brethren. When their relation to God was in the foreground, they were called children of God. When they were designated with special reference to character, they were called saints. But when they were spoken of with the most general reference to their great leader, they were called Christians. A practical observance of the exact force of each of these names would soon conform our speech to the primitive model, and would check a tendency to exalt any one name above another, by giving to each its proper place. The rest of the article is worth a read, though I can't whole-heartedly endorse it. It ends up arguing for the kind of non-denominational Christianity that I find kind of shallow (maybe I just watch too much of "Marcus Grodi":http://www.chnetwork.org/ewtn.htm Catholic conversion shows to buy into this simplicistic Protestanism, though I suspect Fox would have been more sympathetic to McGarvey than to Grodi). *Coming together as church* I'd like to give a shout-out to the Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) ministers who came together a "worship opportunity last Sixth Night":http://www.localquakers.org/Ministers.htm (Saturday to you worldly folks) at "Marlborough Meeting":http://www.localquakers.org/Marlborough.html. The email invitation from Chip Thomas got wide enough circulation among Philadelphia Friends that I saw it three times. The ministry was tender and the fellowship afterwards very welcoming. It was nice to see this form of outreach from Ohio, I'd love to see more. Friends in the Philadelphia area will get another chance when Marlborough hosts another gathering of ministers on Sixth Month 24.

For those keeping track of such things, the "2005 baby name stats are up on the Social Security website":http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/. _Francis_ dropped two places in the rankings and now sits as the 527th most popular newborn boy's name in America, while _Theodore_ crept up slightly to close at 305. Both names are "still far from trendy":http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/unpopular_baby_names_avoiding_the_jacobs_emilys_and_madisons.php. The big winner "according to the New York Times":http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/us/18heaven.html is Nevaeh, a girls name made up of _heaven_ spelt backwards; in only a few years it's come from nowhere to take slot 70 for the girls.

"About Martin":http://martinkelley.commartin "Design Philosophy":http://martinkelley.com/design "Marketing & Publicity":http://martinkelley.com/marketing "Geek Talk":http://martinkelley.com/geek

Some might wonder how I manage to make ends meet with two kids on a Quaker salary and all this blog work. Well, the truth is that I don't. Not quite. Even with pennies pinched the supermarket run is always a struggle. One way I make up the difference is with freelance web work. As of today it now has its own website at "martinkelley.com":martinkelley.com. In the past few months I've put together "Quakersong.org":www.quakersong.org for Peter Blood and Annie Patterson of "Rise Up Singing":http://www.quakersong.org/rise_up_singing/ fame, two lovely folks I know from Quaker & activist circles and most recently through their membership at "Middletown Meeting":http://www.pym.org/pym_mms/middletownpa_cdq.php. I've also put together a customized blog for journalist "James Maguire":www.maguireonline.com who liked the design of Nonviolence.org and asked me to put together his site. My latest FGC design is the brand new Youth Ministries site, "Quakeryouth.org":www.quakeryouth.org, which is our most ambitious & interactive yet! Since coming back from the "Gathering":www.fgcquaker.org/gathering I've spent most of my free time ignoring the latest blogger bruhaha to put together Martinkelley.com. There's lots there about my design philosophy and my experiences with online communities (social and commercial). There's also a few silly features: "Little Known Facts":http://martinkelley.com/martin/facts/ of outrageous claims and "Ask the Expert, Ask the Fool":http://www.martinkelley.com/marketing/expert_fool/ where I invite questions about design and virtual community organizing. Check it all out and tell your friends and business associates! h3. New, 8/2/06: I've added a "web design blog":www.martinkelley.com/blog, a place to talk design philosophy. How do we use the internet to build a community or a movement? What would a Quaker design aethetic for the internet look like? "Sign up (RSS)":http://feeds.feedburner.com/martinkelley or surf over to "martinkelley.com/blog":www.martinkelley.com/blog.

Last night "LizOpp":http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com, "Robin M":http://robinmsf.blogspot.com and myself hosted our "FGC Gathering":www.fgcquaker.org/gathering interest group. The title was "On Fire!: Renewing Quakerism through a Convergence of Friends." All morning long we've had Friends grabbing our arms to tell us how powerful and important it was for them. One well-traveled Friend went so far as to say the spontaneous worship that occurred halfway through was the deepest he's experienced in twenty years of Quakerism. The obvious challenge for us hosts is keeping our egos securely tamed from all this praise. The work wasn't ours. We simply set the stage. My first impulse is to say we helped create an environment where the Spirit could break into the event, but that's not really it. We tried to create a space where participants would recognize when the Spirit knocked on the door. ==

Food for Fire participants. Bloggers at the workshop pose for a goofy attacking-one-another photo.

== What happened last night felt similar to what happened in last February's Powell House "Food for the Fire":http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/food_for_fire_workshop_21012th_at_powell_house.php workshop. While I took notes and journaled a lot about it I never gave a followup blog post. It was powerful and I needed to digest it. Luckily participants "Rob":http://consider-the-lilies.blogspot.com/2006/03/lies-mystery-and-ministry.html, "Amanda":http://ofthebest.blogspot.com/2006/02/for-god-is-god-at-hand.html and "Zach":http://quakeranarchist.blogspot.com/2006/02/we-expect-theophany-of-which-we-know.html and "Claire":http://quakerspeak.blogspot.com/2006/02/all-world-together.html all shared about it or its themes in the weeks afterwards. I'd like to share something about the assumptions and preparation that went into these two events. There's no way to create a cookie-cutter agenda to force a deep spiritual high. In fact part of what's needed is to move beyond predictability. Both times I've had a clear sense that a point came when I was no longer facilitating, where Spirit was actively guiding us and participants were actively responding to that process, even eldering us past the control of facilitation. When I came to Powell House I had a workshop description and a keen interest in the topic. What I didn't bring was an agenda. I'm trying to experiment with not being too prepared.* Early Friends held open meetings and while they often bore concerns and had themes that frequently reoccurred in their ministry. Friends today rely very much on models borrowed from higher education: we have workshops that expect agendas, we give talks that expect pre-printed speeches. These are often the opportunities we get for teaching ministries, yet they are very programmed. The challenge is to figure out how to subvert them to allow for unprogrammed surprise. At Powell House I spent time before each session walking around the grounds in prayer for guidance on what to do next. I had brainstormed ideas beforehand but my main preparation had been a lot of Quaker reading and prayer in the weeks preceeding the event. I wanted the sessions to connect to the spiritual condition of the participants, as individuals and as a group. There were a few moments I thought I was nuts. For example, walking around before the Powell House Saturday afternoon session it seemed like reading a chapter of Samuel Bownas's "Description of the Qualifications":http://www.quakerbooks.org/get/0-87574-911-9 would be a good idea, but by mid-afternoon I could see the sleepy faces. We did it anyway and faces and spirit lit up. People wanted to engage with Bownas. As it turns out we read all of chapter three, "Advice to Ministers in a State of Infancy." It was so cool. The real inbreaking happened a little later. The group was tired, dinner was nearing. I started to recommend we go into a circle to break up. One Friend interrupted, looked at another across the room and said “you have something to say, don’t you.” The second Friend said yes, then challenged us that we hadn’t actually answered our queries at all. The main question was still on the table. “What are we called to do?” There was a release. I knew I was not in control of the workshop anymore. We came into a prayer circle and started to talk about some of this. One Friend said something about naming who it is that call us. A theme came out that it wasn't enough for us to find some sort of personal salvation and comfort in our Quaker meetings: we needed to bring all the world into this if it was to be meaningful. It truly felt like the Holy Spirit was in the room. It wasn't necessarily so comfortable and it somehow seemed like not enough, but it pointed to the work we needed to do afterwards. ==

Blogging participants of On Fire! workshop pose together. About fifty people total came out for the Monday night interest group. Click photo for names and links. Lots of discussions happened at the rise of the worship. The semi-impromptu post-discussion group. (Thanks for FGC's Emily for taking & posting this!) FGC Gathering photos on Flickr and Technorati

== Last night, at the FGC interest group, something similar happened. Robin, Liz and I had planned out the first half of the meeting. The most important piece: coming early to sit in prayer and holding it well past the time the interest group was supposed to start. The work of Friends needs to be rooted in worship. We need to be still enough to hear the Holy Spirit. If the medium is the message, our message was about the need to not pack ourselves in with agendas. We started predicatbly enough by asking the fifty-or-so participants to give their names and to name a spiritual practice that gives them joy. We asked for space in between speakers to keep worship at the fore and we were blessed by a self-faciliating group; Friends did hold the spaces in between. Then the three of us told our stories of starting spiritually-focused blogs and coming to find a fellowship that extended beyond our traditional Quaker branches (hence the term "Convergence of Friends"). I went first and explained that I trying to be careful not to do this to lift myself up. My story is simple and like those of many Friends. I was giving testimony. The idea of testimony rang throughout the evening. Robin's story in particular was very grounded and coming last it took us into the unprogrammed agenda-less time we had left free. Friends rose to give testimony of other "convergent" experiences, for example particpation in the Northwest Women's Theological Conferences, events of the Western branch of the Christian Friends Fellowship. At some point a woman I didn't know stood up without being recognized and she had a pose of supplication. My first though, "oh no!" Then I noticed another Friend, worshipful in spirit, who pointed her to us. She said she was going to sing a song. "Oh no again!" I thought. But this was the facilitation coming off our shoulders. This was a Friend rising to name what we needed and another Friend pointing that we needed to go this direction. It was like the two Powell House Friends: one recognizing in the other a need to share ministry and being willing to break through "proper" group process. At the interest group the song was powerful, it brought us to a place where we could be low and thankful. We were now spontaneously in worship. Liz, Robin and I had planned some closing worship but this wasn't the time yet. But it was the time and the suceeding ministry was heartfelt and largely from the Source. The only funny aside was that we felt we couldn't let the group go on past our 8:45 end time, for the simple reason that childcare ended then and we needed to let parents go. We mentioned this around 8:30 but twenty minutes later the worship was continuing. Just then the cellphone of the Friend giving ministry went off: it was his daughter calling to ask where he was! He turned off the phone but it gave us the excuse to close the meeting and invite an extended meeting to continue outside. This was wonderful as there were a number of other similarly-themed interest groups (one on "youth ministries":www.quakeryouth.org, the other on the "World Gathering of Young Friends":http://www.wgyf.org/) and participants from all three groups met outside and continued the sharing for another two hours. Lessons? Simply to ground workshop events in worship, let the agenda be empty enough for the Spirit to intervene (having backup exercises just in case it doesn't is fine!). I don't think this is a foolproof method. A lot depends on the participants and how willing they are to share in the faciliation and worship. A lot also depends on Friends breaking into the agenda, for both times that was what turned the event from a workshop to a gathered meeting.

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* For me the danger is a personal style that has long relied on a last-minute miracles (I was the kind of college student who read all the material through the semester but didn't actually start writing anything until the night before an assignment was due). I don't want my theology to be an excuse for my procrastination and I try to test this regularly. h3. Related posts: Lots of folks have been talking about the Gathering and the Monday night interest group. * Co-faciliator LizOpp "also details some of the process of the Interest Group":http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2006/07/after-2006-gathering.html and of the semi-impromptu multi-generational interest group afterwards. She's also written about the "visits from Freedom Friends Church":http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2006/07/freedom-friends-at-fgc-gathering.html. * Co-facilitator RobinM has the first of a handful of promised posts where she "emphasizes the importance of grounding and starting the session in worship":http://robinmsf.blogspot.com/2006/07/on-fire-renewing-quakerism-through.html. * ChrisM describes how he "couldn't sleep after the Interest Group":http://chrismsf.blogspot.com/2006/07/impressions-from-fgc-week-ago.html. * Dave T has a "quick check-in and description":http://www.davetrowbridge.com/MT/archives/week_2006_07_02.html. * Paul L felt a "real covering of the meeting ":http://showerofblessings.blogspot.com/2006/07/back-home-in-minnesota.html halfway through the Interest Group. * Both "AJ Schwanz":http://ajschwanz.com/2006/07/11/you-mean-youre-a-real-person/ and "Gregg Koskela":http://greggsgambles.com/2006/07/10/new-friends/ have posts about a post-Gathering meet-up of some Friends around a picnic table in Oregon. I'm sure more reaction posts are up there and I'll link to them as I find them. I suspect that in addition to being the "biggest group Quaker blogger photo to date":http://www.flickr.com/photos/martin_kelley/181378686/ ("sorry Gregg!":http://www.flickr.com/photos/gkoskela/187108260/), this will end up being the most blogged about Quaker event yet, at least till "Wess gathers West Coasters together next month":http://theology.wetpaint.com/page/Convergent+Gathering+2006. I counted at least 20 "Quaker bloggers":http://quakerquaker.org/quaker_blogs/ at the Gathering.

Those Quaker Ranters readers who are coming to the "FGC Gathering":www.fgcquaker.org/gathering but haven't lost internet access yet might be interested in some of the events the Advancement & Outreach committee is sponsoring over the week. There will be a flyer in the registration packets (all these events will take place in Admin 203). For those not coming, I suspect I'll have some sort of Gathering round-up post at some point after it's all done. I'm also co-hosting a Monday night interest group with LizOpp and Robin: "On Fire! Renewing Quakerism through a Convergence of Friends." For details, see "Liz's post":http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2006/06/interest-group-at-gathering.html or "Robin's post":http://robinmsf.blogspot.com/2006/06/convergent-travels.html.

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bq.. The FGC Advancement and Outreach committee is sponsoring afternoon events during four days of Gathering. Come share your outreach ideas, learn about FGC and support the growth of Quakerism! *All Friends Welcome, 1:30-3:00* Monday: "What Do Quakers Believe?" Come talk about the range of Quaker beliefs, from Robert Barclay to the present day, and explore what binds us together as Friends. Convened by Deborah Haines. Wednesday: A special welcome to Friends from Pacific, North Pacific and Intermountain Yearly Meetings. Come talk about the spirit, concerns, and Quaker ways of these three independent yearly meetings. Thursday: Visitors from Freedom Friends Church will join us to talk about the witness of this unique independent evangelical Friends Church. *Outreach Hours, 3:15-4:15* Sunday: Visibility. Interested in publicizing your meeting and getting the Quaker message out into your community? Friends are invited to come share their stories and questions and pick up a free copy of our "Inreach-Outreach Packet for Small Meetings." Jane Berger will host. Monday: Isolated Friends & New Worship Groups. Learn about FGC's new service for Friends and seekers who live far from any meeting or worship group. Are you interested in helping to nurture new worship groups? Come find out what resources are available from the FGC Advancement Committee, and share your stories and ideas. Wednesday: Friends interested in affiliation. FGC is an association of 14 yearly meetings and regional groups and 9 directly affiliated monthly meetings. A&O; clerk Deborah Haines will talk about the work of FGC and the benefits of affiliation. Thursday: Spiritual Hospitality. It's easy to feel isolated even within a local meeting. A&O; coordinator Martin Kelley will talk about some strategies to overcome the isolations of age, theology, race, lifestyle, etc. What can meetings do to help these Friends not feel isolated?

I’ve finally started getting internet video down. Next up will have to be Francis’s “sleepy song.”