I'm Back (I Hope)

Well, this is awkward.

I always knew, with this blog, that I wouldn’t keep up a consistent pace of posts – there would be times when there were many, and there would be breaks.

Then things happened, starting in 2019. I moved home, which obviously is a lot of effort and leaves one with less free time for a while. Then there was Covid. Then I had a mental health crisis – regarding which I have previously posted. Then I got back in the game a bit, albeit slowly. Then it all fell apart again.

For those who have supported me in the endeavour that is this blog, I want to say sorry. Indeed, for any who found my posts interesting or helpful and have missed them, to them also, I apologise. For everyone, I’m going to try and explain.

First though, I want to say that I’m really aiming to get back into this and post regularly again. Maybe not at the pace I was going before 2019, but without long gaps (partly because a long gap makes it harder to get back into it afterwards, as I’ll explain below). I still have a lot to say, a lot of things to explore – the blog didn’t dry up because ideas dried up. I even have a couple of posts ready to go and some that were in-progress when my ability to deal with the blog dried up.

A Christmas Message (2021)

I don’t have a big, Quaker, theological post for Christmas this year (though I encourage you to look at Christmas posts from previous years). I have no Christmas-related written ministry to offer (at least, at the time of writing, that can always change unexpectedly). This year, I’m offering more of a personal message. Life, me, a year in review… well, we’ll see how it goes.

Recent history first. I went a bit quiet again, didn’t I? I won’t deny that any break is still harder for me to come back from, in terms of my mental health, weird (but apparently not unusual) topic-specific anxiety still holding me back a lot. The reason for the break, or at least a contributor to the length of it, is that I was actually physically ill again. Not my usual exacerbations of my balance problems or viral upper respiratory tract infections, either. No, shortly after my first in-person work since the pandemic started, I developed a chest infection. Bacterial. Possibly pneumonia, apparently, though that not confirmed, and if it was it was pretty mild (turns out there is such a thing as mild pneumonia, though such things are obviously relative). Either that or a pretty bad and tough-to-beat more conventional chest infection. I was laid out pretty badly, high fever, needed two lots of antibiotics to beat it (though the first lot broke the fever), and extremely low energy – mentally as well as physically – for a few weeks. I’m fine, now. My wife got a viral cough around the same time, so I suspect I brought home a viral lower respiratory bug and I got a secondary infection with it – it did take a little while for it to get productive in my case.

Now Also on Ko-Fi!

As regular readers will no doubt be aware, I invite those who wish to support this blog to subscribe to my Patreon. I’m gratified by the support that some of you have given – it lets me know that people value what I’m writing, as of course do comments, shares and so on. You can be sure that I also look at my page views and see when a post is popular, which usually means that people have shared it more widely, which is great.

Financial support is not more important to me than that sort of moral support, but is, obviously, different. It means I can spend more time on the blog, and it can mean that my financial situation is a little less precarious, all my sources of income being variable and not entirely within my control. So when you support me and my blog financially, you make a practical difference to my life, as well as encouraging me to write more.

It's Been a While

I’ve been away from this blog for a while. I thought it might be appropriate to talk a bit about why. An exploration and reflection on the past 9 months or so. I also want to thank those who have continued to support my Patreon despite the lack of output for so long; this might be a matter of not noticing, forgetting they had supported it, but it might also be a deliberate decision to continue to support me in this small but very tangible way in spite of my output. For that I am profoundly grateful.

I did post some written ministry recently, but if you read the note at the bottom on when it was written, you will see that it was written as far back as June 2020. I was not completely dysfunctional by then, but was already struggling.

Back from Unplanned Hiatus

As my regular readers will have noticed, I’ve been a little bit lax in posting of late. So, as I’m finally back on track and ready to get on with somewhat regular posting again, I thought I’d let you know something of why.

My posting schedule had become a bit more infrequent when I started some new work around last November. Unfortunately, the nature of the work means I can’t talk about what it is publicly (and if you know, as some of you will, please don’t you talk about it publicly either). Work that pays solid money is always going to have to take priority, at least until such time as this blog somehow earns me something solid towards my living costs (and slim chance of that, though if you think it deserves it please do consider contributing to my Patreon – the more I’m making there, the more reliable my posting will be). So while that work is variable, I’m going to take all the days I can of it in order to be financially not-in-a-crisis. Having this work is good news, it means my wife and I are a little more secure (though not as secure as we would be if it were a reliable, set amount of work), and that’s great. It does mean other things were under a little more pressure and some things got squeezed out.

Reflections on ‘Maxims & Aphorisms’

As I’ve now posted 40 of the very short pieces of written ministry that I’ve been referring to as ‘Maxims & Aphorisms’, I felt that it was a good time to step back, pause them (pause the posting of them, new ones come as they will), and reflect. This weekend I’ll be posting the first of these, a reflection on Maxim 1, and I’ll aim to keep them up weekly like I did the maxim & aphorisms themselves.

These will be my own reflections, and they will also be somewhat influenced by the reactions that I’ve had to each piece. So, if you have thoughts on any of the maxims & aphorisms that you would like to know has fed into the reflection, you can still comment on any of them, or let me know your thoughts by some other means.

The reflections will also be reachable by link on the Maxims & Aphorisms page as they are posted.

Where Things Are, Where They're Going

This blog has been a bit quiet lately. Very few posts other than the Maxims and Aphorisms, and I’ve even missed posting those a few times lately. There are reasons for this that I shan’t be shouting about publicly, but I have been reflecting on where I want to go with a few things.

Firstly, I don’t want anyone to worry, either about me or about the blog. I’m okay, or will be, and the blog will continue much as before, with the same sort of mix of content. For those who have backed my Patreon, I apologise for the lack of updates (though the backing never reached the level where I made a commitment to a certain rate of posting), and that will get better.

Coming Soon – Maxims and Aphorisms

Thanks to everyone's feedback, largely on Facebook, I've come to a decision about how I'll be sharing the very short ministry I mentioned recently.

For the next 16 weeks, or longer if more come to me, I will be sharing one of these pieces, what I call “maxims and aphorisms”, each week. I will aim to do them on Saturdays, around lunchtime (UK time). Hopefully this will mean a lot of you get to digest and reflect on them at the weekend, though that of course supposes that Friends (and others who are interested) tend to have Monday-to-Friday jobs, which is a bit of a problem. However, I have to pick some particular time to do them, and that's it.

What To Do About Very Short Ministry?

Good things in small packages?

What originally drove me to start this blog was my written ministry. This came to me, as I have previously written, with as much compulsion as any spoken ministry in meeting, and after writing it down in obedience to that leading I was led to share it. Once I came to the conclusion that a blog was a good way to do this, it made sense to write what I chose to write as well. I refer to this as “deliberate writing” in order to differentiate it, on the basis of the primary differentiating factor. Such writing has become slightly numerically dominant on the blog, though it swings the other way when I'm going through periods, as recently, with not much time for deliberate writing. Written ministry comes as it will, and I write it down and share it when I have it. Deliberate writing needs me to choose to do it rather than something else.

There is a set of written ministry that I have not yet shared, however, and the leading to do so is generating a considerable amount of discomfort. The problem is that I also know that I should share it in the most effective way that I can, and I have no idea what that would be.

Why I Write a Quaker Blog

It's an interesting time to be a Quaker in Britain – and many other Yearly Meetings are having their own interesting times, albeit over different issues. Here in the UK people seem to worry about theological diversity, about falling numbers, about how we attract and nurture newcomers, about whether we are really giving all the spiritual nourishment we can. Among some pastoral Meetings across the Atlantic, there are also divisions on theology, and on how gender and sexual minorities are treated – welcomed, affirmed, or scorned. Of course, the latter point has a connection with the former, but which is at the forefront varies somewhat.

Here in Britain Yearly Meeting, we are faced with a call to revise our Book of Discipline, which some fear will bring painful differences to a head. We have a declining, ageing membership – where anecdotal reports suggest that many of our newly convinced Friends join us, as members or attenders, in middle age or later. We have quiet, but increasingly vocal concerns being expressed about the quality of our discipline in Quaker processes.

In this context, then, I will answer the question – why do I blog?

Happy Christmas!

So, it is Christmas Day (in most of the world), and in case you've just browsed here for some light reading that fits the season, I've collected up links to my posts, both deliberate writing and written ministry, that relate to this festive season.

In A Quaker Christmas, I look at the Quaker testimony concerning times and seasons, how liberal Quakers do approach the holiday (in my experience), and a look at how we could retool the testimony to fit in with modern life and practice, and how the Religious Society of Friends is now constituted and situated.

In A Christmas Prayer, I share written ministry concerning this time of year. This one actually originally came to me during a Meeting for Worship, when I attended the mid-week afternoon MfW at my local Meeting.

In Modern Christmas and Equality, I look at some of the issues that came up in that ministry, and generally how the way Christmas is now done (at least in the English-speaking parts of the global economic north) interacts with ideas of equality.

In Everyone Can Draw Meaning From Christmas, I put the universalist, new-light-from-wherever-it-may-come, every-religion-has-something-to-teach treatment on Christmas itself, a look at what meaning the story of Christmas can have, spiritually, for those of any faith.

I also wish all of you a fond "Happy Christmas", or good wishes whatever celebration you may be partaking in at this time of year (it's a bit late to wish people a good Yule or Chanukah, but you get the idea). Thank you to all who've commented, here or elsewhere, and given that vital support to anyone writing - the knowledge that people are reading, and thinking & discussing. An especial thanks to those who've shown their appreciation, support and confidence by backing my Patreon. Expect to hear more from me before the New Year!

Your Ideas Wanted for New Post Series

As those who have signed up to my Patreon will be aware, I've been working for a little while on a longer piece, that will be published as a series of posts, looking at different approaches to the Divine and to Quaker business method. This builds on the ideas I presented at Woodbrooke earlier this year, looking at discernment in the context of a religious society that enjoys a wide diversity of beliefs.

In that presentation, I talked about the idea of conceptions of the Divine, along similar lines to those in my post on the subject of such conceptions (which rather drew on the work I did for the Woodbrooke presentation), talked about how they relate to different conceptions of what is going on in a Quaker business meeting, and laid out the traditional (theistic) view of business. I then followed this up with my own non-theist conception, and I was very gratified to see that people could largely accept that, while they could not be considered equivalent, not “the same thing in different terms”, they were compatible.

New Layout on Mobile

Just a quick note to say that I've updated the mobile theme of this blog, which should hopefully improve the experience of mobile users. Please let me know - such as in the comments of this post - if you have any feedback.

You can still access the old site by clicking, near the bottom of the page, on "view web version".

Openings Is Now On Patreon

You may have noticed, in recent weeks, a survey on the sidebar of this blog, asking if you might support a Patreon for this blog, along with my recent post about money. Well, I appreciate those who submitted an answer to that very simple question, and I've decided to move ahead with the idea. I do so in a spirit of living adventurously, not knowing what it might bring – but certain that it won't work if I don't do it, so I may as well do it.

Money (It's a Gas)

It's something Quakers, it seems, don't like to talk about very much. Our personal circumstances especially, but I've even found that we tend to be reluctant to get into too much detail about our organisational finances unless we really need to. Anyway, it's personal circumstances that come into this post.

A lot of Quaker bloggers out there are either retired, or blogging in their spare time while earning from a day job – or even being able to blog in relation to their day job, if they are in a Quaker-related job. I'm not in that position. Indeed, due to various circumstances, I am reliant on state support. While I do various things self-employed, this doesn't earn enough to live on. There is a pretty decent system of support in this situation. Or there was. It's being taken down and replaced with a much worse system, but that is (for now) fortunately not a current issue for me. However, to get the support I do get, I need to be able to demonstrate that I spend my time on things that could plausibly make me money to live on. Not all my time, but enough of it.

Back from Woodbrooke

As previously mentioned, I was privileged to be invited to speak at Woodbrooke's course on The Impact of Diversity of Belief on Quaker Practice: Discernment, Decision Making, Worship. That course is now over, and I'm back home. You may have noticed that I posted a piece of written ministry on Thursday – The Contemporary Quaker Maze. This arose during reflection on an excellent session from Craig Barnett (no relation) on Tuesday morning, leading to a feeling that British Quakerism is in a period of profound transition; where that will take us is hard to know, but it definitely depends what we all do now.

The purpose of inviting me was that I deliver a session specifically on Quaker Business Method, in the context of diversity of belief, specifically non-theism; this session was delivered, over two 90 minute sessions, on Wednesday morning. With a course title and description like that, I had no idea what sort of people would be coming. Would they be open-minded about diversity of belief? Would they be worried about the increasing presence and visibility of non-theism? Would they feel that Christianity is being driven out of British Quakerism? Would they be worried that their own, less traditional beliefs, would be driven out by people who are worried about these things? It made things a bit more nerve-racking, and indeed I was more careful with presentation because of this. It is an issue that is a live source of worry for people with all sorts of positions.

Subscribe by email should now be working

Hi all. Just a quick note about the blog, rather than any new content here. You will see in the column on the right a box to follow the blog by email. This was formerly broken, but should now be working. You have to jump through some hoops to prove you are human and that you're giving it your own email address, but once you've done that, you should get email notification of any new posts on the blog.

Just thought you might like to know.

Update: Normal Service to Resume Shortly

It's been a bit quiet here.

This was not intentional, nor is it reflective of my attitude to the future of this blog. Various personal matters, and my preparation for a Woodbrooke course I'll be speaking at, The Impact of Diversity of Belief on Quaker Practice, at which I'll be focusing on non-theism and business method, have taken time that I might otherwise have used to prepare more material for you, here.

While the rest of my life goes on, the paucity of time that has led to the dry spell on this blog should be coming to an end, and normal service will resume shortly. This includes some pieces of deliberate writing partially coming from my preparation for the course mentioned above, and some written ministry that's brewing and maturing.

So stay tuned!

What is "Written Ministry"?

You'll notice that, at the time of writing, the majority of posts on this blog are in the “ministry” category. As noted in the About page on this blog, this category contains written ministry. As also noted there, this means

“…it is not something I have carefully thought about and written down, revised, and optimised to make the point I'm trying to make; rather it is something I feel compelled to write down, and make very limited choices about myself. In short, it is the same as the Quaker tradition of spoken ministry during Meeting for Worship. I feel called to write it, and like any ministry in Meeting for Worship, I believe it to be divinely inspired.”

However, even to other Quakers, this may still be a very strange and unfamiliar concept, so I will try to write some more about what this means, and what the experience is like.

When we talk about “ministry”, in the Quaker context, there are a range of possible meanings. The most obvious, often, is that of speaking in Meeting for Worship. However, we also talk about the ministry of a person, or an organisation, in terms of the service it does for the Religious Society of Friends, and for wider society. A ministry of teaching, or of hospitality, or of outreach; of service to the poor, or engagement with government. These are all ministries, and some produce written results. In that sense, a great deal of writing by Friends is the product of their ministry, including some names that many would recognise writing today, such as David Boulton, Derek Guiton, and Pink Dandelion. I do not deny the validity of any of that as ministry, but it should be distinguished from what I speak of when I say “written ministry”, as will hopefully be clear from this post.

Posting a backlog...

As you may have gathered, I've been writing down written ministry for a while now. As such, I've developed a bit of a backlog, only starting this blog now.

As you are likely to have noticed, I've been posting this backlog reasonably quickly. I think that it's better that the content is out there to be read, so I'm not introducing any artificial delays.

Once the backlog is all up, the posting tempo will probably drop dramatically.

Update 25/7/17: the backlog of things I'd already typed up now seems to be done, except some very very short pieces that I'm still trying to decide how to present. There's also some I've not typed up yet, in my notepad (as in pen and paper). But the main rush of backlog is done.