• An Update & Next Steps

    Dear Friends,

    I wanted to offer a little update since you haven’t heard from me in awhile. I am doing well and enjoying my sabbatical (read more about that below).

    What I wanted to let you all know is I am moving towards publishing solely from my blog: gatheringinlight.com. You can visit and subscribe to via email just like any other service. I considered just importing all emails over there but I wanted you to have the choice to opt-in.

    I will keep this Substack so you don’t need to unsubscribe. There are almost 500 of you here and I don’t want to lose contact with you. But I will be posting almost exclusively from my blog. I will use this account for major announcements and bigger updates.

    If you want to keep following along, jump over to my site “gathering in light” and subscribe with your email.


    Why move back to the blog?

    The reasons why are simple: I want to control my own data, make sure you all aren’t being unnecessarily tracked and your information being misused, and more recently, and I like writing there more. It’s the site I’ve been running for more than 20 years. And when I write, I want to keep investing in what I’ve built there rather than giving money to someone else who I don’t know or trust. Having said that, Substack has some egregious moderation policies that make me not want to be here or support their project. Others have been leaving too.

    The more internet services like this and others continue down their own monetization paths and terrible moderation policies, the more I want to have control of all of my data and writing again.

    Anyways, take a look around gathering in light. If you’ve never been on their before, I think you’ll like it.


    On that Topic: Are We Living in a Post-Social Media World?

    Here’s a recent interview I did with the folks at the Thee Quaker Podcast on the Question: Are We Living in a Post-Social Media World?

    Thee Quaker Podcast brings stories of spiritual courage to your ears each week.

    Quakers have always wrestled with big questions in their search for spiritual truth. Thee Quaker Podcast is a continuation of that 400-year-old tradition — we’re digging deep to search for innovative stories that explore themes of faith, conviction, and doubt. Listen and subscribe at QuakerPodcast.com.


    Sabbatical

    I am currently on Sabbatical and have been busy building a writing studio in my back yard. Now that the studio is complete, I love using it for writing, reading, and creating. I am still moving in but I am very happy with the space.

  • Q&A: A Quaker Perspective about the Issues of Empire and the US

    Ebony Watkins – Resisting Empire

    I received a question of email recently that prompted me to put together a response here:

    “I wonder if you would have one or two of your own articles or lectures that you could share with us, where you bring a Quaker perspective about the issues of Empire and the US?”

    In this post, I am going to share previous written and recorded resources on this subject. I am currently working on some new material that I will share here as it gets developed.

    Before sharing these resources (below), I wanted to trace my own process back a little bit:

    I have been reflecting on the question of empire from both a Biblical perspective (as in what does the Bible say about empire?) and the Quaker tradition since I took a seminar at Union Theological Seminary’s, then-known-as, “The Poverty Initiative” in 2013. I had been using the language of empire and seeing it as an intepretive framework since I heard Wes Howard-Brook interviewed on the podcast Iconoclast in 2010. But it was the 2013 meeting where I really learned how to apply this framework more broadly and made friends with a community of people thinking this way. That seminar, which I was invited to by Rev. Shelly Fayette and Aaron Scott, was transformative. It is where I met Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Colleen and John Wessel-McCoy, Crystal Hall, Jessica Williams, Willie Baptist, Charon Hribar, and many more great folks who have impacted my own thinking and faith. The Poverty Initiative later became the Kairos Center which is most notably-known as some of the folks behind the Poor People’s Campaign. In fact, here is an interview I did with Willie Baptist and Colleen Wessel-McCoy of the Kairos Center a number of years later about some of my work that was influenced by the folks mentioned above.

    Add to this, the influence of the writing of Wes Howard Brook, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Dorothee Soelle, Ched Myers, James Cone, James Alison, and Kelly Brown Douglas and I found myself get a second education in the anti-poverty, Liberation Theology methodology. This was mostly all new stuff for me because Fuller Theological Seminary, where I went to grad school, largely did not focus on Liberation Theology (and some pushed against it). Thus, in this later context where I served as a pastor of a Quaker meeting, in a small town and community that struggled with questions of poverty and wealth, houselessness, and hunger that I began to make progress in how I understand these things.

    (more…)
  • New Garden Friends Meeting Pastoral Search

    Hi all,

    I wanted to post this here in the hopes of helping spread the word about New Garden Friends pastoral search here in Greensboro, NC they are just about to undergo. Read through the description below and see if this resonates with you or someone you might know. Feel free to share around.

    Thank you,

    Wess


    Pastoral Minister Job Opening – Online Job Description

    New Garden Friends Meeting, Greensboro, NC 

    New Garden Friends Meeting, steeped in Quaker tradition since its founding in 1754, is a progressive,  open and affirming faith community, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Our meeting emphasizes peace,  social justice, and the belief that there is that of God in everyone. We are seeking a full-time pastoral minister to provide leadership through inspired preaching, compassionate pastoral care, strong support  of our community service and social justice efforts, enablement for our members and attenders as  partners in ministry, and support and guidance for staff. Our community values the Quaker belief in  continuing revelation and welcomes light from many sources and spiritual traditions, including, but not  limited to, Christianity and the Bible. Warmth and humor are appreciated in our faith family. A parsonage or a housing allowance is available. Salary, if it includes a housing allowance, will range between $70,000 and $90,000 and will be based on a candidate’s qualifications and experience. Additional compensation in the form of a benefits package, and relocation expenses will also be provided. 

    Membership in the Religious Society of Friends is preferred, but not required. If you are an experienced  Quaker or Quaker-friendly pastoral minister and are interested in becoming an integral part of our  community, please send a resume/ profile, a one-page statement of faith, and a cover letter to  NGFMSearch@gmail.com. Applications will be accepted through March 15, 2024 or until the position is filled. For more information about New Garden Friends Meeting, please visit http://ngfm.org/founded1754

    NGFM is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate or tolerate discrimination in  employment because of race, color, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, marital status, veteran  status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other protected category.

    For more information please go to: https://ngfm.org/pastoral-minister-job-description/

  • Sharing: Hush – Songs for Christmas by Seth Patrick Martin

    A favorite drawing of mine from Nan Young Lee, Seth Martin’s wife. This is called, We were flowers and trees (Miryang). 2013

    If you’ve been around the site, or me much, you know I love the music – and friendship of Seth Patrick Martin. He’s just shared a new Christmas album with us that I wanted to link to here. He produced it with his friend, Joe Kim in Seoul. 

    The album is called: Hush: Songs for Christmas. It is free to stream on Bandcamp and can also be purchased for download. 

    I’ve already been able to get through the album once today (and more times as the day goes on!). It is beautiful, haunting, and represents so much of what I love about Seth’s music: the song choices, Seth’s incredible musicianship without being showy, the minimalism of instruments and voice (only as much as you need), blended beautifully together, the overlapping vocals and harmonizing, and the overall atmosphere that pulls you in to the story. Well done, Seth!

    Here is Seth in his own words about the album:

    These are not exactly easy listening, feel-good jingles. But neither is the Christmas story. It is a wonderful but also scary, awe-inspiring tale–a story that “comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable”–and that is one reason it continues to change the world.

    This EP attempts to honor the darker, heavier, and deeper substance of Christmas: the somber but liberating message the carols hold of the God of Love incarnate, born as a poor boy to refugee parents under brutal colonization; ignored or sought out for destruction by the powers that were; hailed, embraced, adored, and comforted by Angel troops, lowly shepherds, barnyard animals and wise “foreigners”-not to mention Nature herself.

    Joy to the World!

    Thanks to all mothers!

    And thank you, deeply. Please share widely, if you like what you hear. Listening is free, but making albums isn’t, and neither is living, as we all know. Your support is precious to me, friends. I don’t take it lightly. Thanks and merry Christmas!.
    -Seth

    Listen on Bandcamp to Hush: Songs for Christmas.

  • Are We In A Post-Social Media World?

    TheeQuaker.Org

    I was lucky enough to get to talk with Georgia Sparling of Thee Quaker Podcast a little while back about social media and some of the things I’ve wrestled with as a Quaker theologian, educator, parent, and person who has been actively online for 20+ years.

    That episode published today and I wanted to share it here for those of you who might be interested. In the interview, I talk about some of my own journey around social media and getting off of Facebook. I also talked some about what is going on now with the network formerly known as X, and some of the things we’re discussing in my class called, “The Practice of Silence.”

    Since the interview, I’ve deleted Instagram from my phone (I still have an account but it’s amazing how little I even think of IG with it not being on my phone) as another step. I have found that the advertising algorithim of IG to be extremely agreesive to the point that I could scroll for 10 minutes and never see any of my friends on the timeline. I got tired of the ads and IG thinking it knew what best I wanted to see from my timeline so I took it off my phone. We’ll see where that goes.

    More and more I am convinced that Social Media, as we knew it in the Web 2.0 days, is over. And in this post-Social Media world we now have Interactive Advertising Platforms. All of these big company networks are advertising platforms where we tell them what we like and don’t like and then it spits out things for us to consume. Capturing and holding our attention, because our attention is the root of this new economy, is the only concern these algorithms, and the people and companies who design them, now have. I think we need renewed, and different, conversations around what it means to be so active on these habit-forming platforms today. Saying this starts to make me feel like I’m getting a little grumpy, but I’m seeing the effects of these networks and apps in my children and in my students and it concerns me.

    You can listen here:

Publications


Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance (2019)

Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance looks at Revelation from the perspective that Revelation is not about predicting the end times but is instead a handbook for early Christian resistance and survival against empire.

Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation on Bookshop.

A Convergent Model of Renewal: Remixing the Quaker Tradition in a Participatory Culture (2015)

A convergent Model of Renewal lays out a model for working with congregations and communities alike, interested in maintaining their tradition while also becoming more connected to their context and needs of their community.

A Convergent Model on Bookshop

Image of the cover of the book The Quaker World
The Quaker World Co-Edited With Rhiannon Grant – 2022

The Quaker World is a book with over 50 authors around the world covering sections such as global Quaker history, to spirituality, and embodiment and emphasizes global Quaker diversity and biographies of Quakers.

The Quaker World on Bookshop.


More books and publications by Wess