An Open Letter to Martin Kelly

Goodbye For Awhile

Friends, I am away for about a month or so. I don't know if I will be able to post to the blog... so, some thoughts for awhile.

For many years we lovingly waited for Richard Nixon to come to clearness... we held him to the light and he refused to meet for clearness. It is not the evil he did as president which leads me to shudder when he is referred to as the second Quaker president, is the fact that he felt no call to come to the well of the water of life that is clearness.

For some two months, I have followed Gospel order, in hopes of clearness with fFriend Martin Kelly for clearness on comments which I made which he felt were anti Christian, and his comments which I feel are ageist and anti Semitic. Friends and institutions have reached out to him, and he is adamant that there he feels no desire to meet for clearness. Friends should know, that this is still gospel order. We hold others to the light, such as we did Nixon, when all stages of attempts at clearness are exhausted. I do this in love, as I believe Martin is a loving, well intentioned Friend, who is taken by something, - anger, ego, habit... I wont make an assumption, I will only say that he will not be moved towards love. It is not the mean spirit of the letter he sent to me, it is not the aparent racializing of my Jewish ethnicity in his comments which leads me to say I will be away for the next month with stones in my shoes and a weight on my heart, it is the fact that someone who believes himself non-violent, would refuse the process of clearness which is how we mold the beloved community.

He has removed this blog from his links, and in that has declared it beyond his appreciation of Quakerism. Ye will note, his is still in my links. Friends do not shun. In his letter he misquotes and misrepresents my view of Christianity. He declares in his letter knowledge of my personality, though we never met. I have offered to go to him, to meet for clearness as we are advised to do, and as the sermon on the mount tells us in no ambiguous terms is our Christian way.

What is clearness? It is not an inquiry or trial, it is not, as Martin says of me in his letter, a laying down of the law... it is building a loving community, it is the glue that holds a community together. Without it, we are as guilty of waging war as any other warrior community. I invite any Friend who would like to travel to facilitate a meeting for clearness, and to urge our fFriend that without clearness we cannot call ourselves a non-violent people. He has done me tremendous violence not with his words, which some find are excluding of love and excluding of understanding, but violence with his refusal to enter the peaceable kingdom with me through clearness.

I have tried first one to one. A fFriend wrote to so we tried two by two, Powell House spoke to him... and in all, I do not judge him. I invite him to clearness. Now I ask ye, fFriends, help him come to clearness. The violence we do others we visit on our selves. I often see in his posts dissatisfaction with others. Well, then lovingly engage, don't remove thy heart from thy community. That is Quakerism 101.

Thine
and see ye ... eventually
lor