Video Creator & Music Producer
I am so pleased to announce that, after 2 years of discernment, I have found clearness on my next steps.
Dear Friends,
I am so pleased to announce that, after 2 years of discernment, I have found clearness on my next steps. Together with a group of Friends from across North America, we are building a 21st century Quaker media project, dedicated to authenticity, spiritual courage, and speaking out of silence.
Please click below to watch our introduction video, and learn how you can support this important initiative:
in peace
Jon
In 2019 I received a message from Right Sharing of World Resources to see if we might feel called to work together on a series of videos documenting their work supporting women in Sierra Leone, Kenya and India.
In 2019 I received a message from Right Sharing of World Resources to see if we might feel called to work together on a series of videos documenting their work supporting women in Sierra Leone, Kenya and India. Of course COVID delayed our plans, but I’ve spent the past year speaking with board members and hearing about the transformative nature of this work. Last month we finally got to go! I boarded a plane with the Executive Director Jackie Stillwell and we spent a week in Sierra Leone and another week in Kisumu, Kenya.
Even before we arrived, I was inspired by the stories of these women who have banded together to embark on new business ventures that uplift their communities. But meeting them in person has been another experience altogether. I am awestruck by their joy, their gracious playfulness and their collective ingenuity.
Everywhere we went, Jackie and I were met with joy and celebration, and the women we interviewed shared stories of serious challenge and hardship all while praising God and giving thanks. This video is an accurate depiction of the reception we encountered every time we visited a group. Unfettered joy, celebration, welcome.
I’m humbled by the project of telling these stories for a broader audience. Thanks to Right Sharing of World Resources for entrusting me with the task. My job on the trip was mostly to shoot video (and there is a lot of it!) but I couldn’t help but snap some photos while we were in these incredible places. Here are a few of my favorites.
The third leg of our trip was delayed this time due to COVID restrictions in India but as Omicron calms down, it looks like we’ll be able to make it out in March. Prayers appreciated.
Just wrapped a week of filming here in Sierra Leone. Even before we arrived, I was inspired by the stories of these women who have banded together to embark on new business ventures to uplift their communities. But meeting them in person has been another experience altogether. I am awestruck by their joy, their gracious playfulness and their collective ingenuity.
…and I’m humbled by the task of telling their stories for a broader audience. Thanks to Right Sharing of World Resources for entrusting me with this project.
Sharing this short clip in the brief window as we prepare for the next leg of our trip. Hope to share more soon, but first: headed to Kenya tomorrow!
Just wrapped a week of filming here in Sierra Leone. Even before we arrived, I was inspired by the stories of these women who have banded together to embark on new business ventures to uplift their communities. But meeting them in person has been another experience altogether. I am awestruck by their joy, their gracious playfulness and their collective ingenuity.
…and I’m humbled by the task of telling their stories for a broader audience. Thanks to Right Sharing of World Resources for entrusting me with this project.
Sharing this short clip in the brief window as we prepare for the next leg of our trip. Hope to share more soon, but first: headed to Kenya tomorrow!
For the past 7 years, my partner Jess has been working with her family to build these earth sheltered domes on the mountainside of their family property in Redwood Valley, CA. This January I had the opportunity to get some footage in between family visits. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful place, and it was a joy to shoot this footage. The music is an untitled composition I’ve been working on.
Last winter I was streaming live every week from my studio here in Philadelphia. It was so magical to share that space with you, and to see what happened when we all gathered to listen in my studio. As the weather gets cool again, I find myself reminiscing and missing it a bit! Here is one of my favorites.
Last winter I was streaming live every week from my studio here in Philadelphia. It was so magical to share that space with you, and to see what happened when we all gathered to listen together. As the weather gets cool again, I find myself reminiscing and missing it a bit! Here is one of my favorites.
Lately I’ve been challenging myself to learn the work of artists who inspire me. After years of living in my head, this piece by Justin Vernon seemed like a good start. Trying to re-create the magic of this song has been a humbling process, as it took me to school in all sorts of ways.
Lately I’ve been challenging myself to learn the work of artists who inspire me. After years of living in my head, this piece by Justin Vernon seemed like a good start. Trying to re-create the magic of this song has been a humbling process, as it took me to school in all sorts of ways.
Riding donkeys into Bristol, burning instruments, cobbling shoes in the middle of a church service… the early Quakers were nothing if not dramatic.
This Spring marks the 15th anniversary of my first music project, wherein I attempted to tell the stories of some these radical 17th century Quakers. You are invited to come help me celebrate in a virtual concert!
I’m very pleased to be joined by the professor whose storytelling started it all: special guest Max Carter!
Saturday, April 24th
7pm EST
Virtual Concert
I’m in the studio this evening giving thanks. Every moment of this life is a blessing. Sometimes I forget that, and music helps me remember.
I’m in the studio this evening giving thanks. Every moment of this life is a blessing. Sometimes I forget that, and music helps me remember.
You can download this session (and leave a tip!) over at patreon.com/jonwatts
I’ve been dealing with a ton of anxiety over the past couple of days, as I’m sure many of us have. Sometimes when I’m anxious I sit at the piano and play something slow just to remind myself of the beauty that naturally unfolds when I wait and listen and focus on my breath.
I hope you are also finding ways to reconnect to beauty today, even amidst the turmoil, and that this music helps you to get back to your breath, even if just for a minute.
I’ve been dealing with a ton of anxiety over the past couple of days, as I’m sure many of us have. Sometimes when I’m anxious I sit at the piano and play something slow just to remind myself of the beauty that naturally unfolds when I wait and listen and focus on my breath.
I hope you are also finding ways to reconnect to beauty today, even amidst the turmoil, and that this music helps you to get back to your breath, even if just for a minute.
Dear Friends,
Please enjoy this new recording, just released today:
“The Candle Suite was completed during a time of not-knowing. It is about venturing deep into the darkness–with all that entails: disorientation, comfort, envelopment, loss of perspective. And it’s about the ways that we emerge, humbled and new. I hope it serves to comfort and give you hope in times of darkness.”
Clarence and Lilly Pickett were Quakers who lived in the mid 20th century and had an outsized impact on Quakerism and on the world.
Clarence and Lilly Pickett were Quakers who lived in the mid 20th century and had an outsized impact on Quakerism and on the world.
Filmed and edited by Jon Watts
Sponsored by the Clarence and Lilly Pickett Endowment for Quaker Leadership
These Puritan Valentine’s Day cards are so hilarious they may as well be Quaker.
These Puritan Valentine’s Day cards are so hilarious they may as well be Quaker valentine’s day cards.
“Roses are red
Violets are Blue
And neither are useful or necessary
at all.”
“I need you
to help raise
livestock and crops
or surely we will
starve to death
come winter.”
“You almost make
my heart dance
And dancing is
forbidden.”
“Being with you fills
me with impure
thoughts, and I am
ashamed.”
In 2012 I had a dream for a Quaker video project that featured simple, intimate, weekly interviews with Quakers, but I didn’t know where to house it or how to fund it. Two years later I was announcing the QuakerSpeak youtube channel. 223 videos and 6 years later, the channel had accumulated 3.5 million views. Here’s how it happened.
WATCH the the videos mentioned in this story
DOWNLOAD the music from QuakerSpeak
Listen and download the music from QuakerSpeak
One of my favorite parts of my job over the past six years has been to compose all of the music we use throughout the QuakerSpeak season. I’ve compiled all the music that’s ever appeared on the QuakerSpeak channel and made it free to download.
Are Quakers Christian? I talked to 11 Quakers from across the United States and asked about their relationship with Christianity.
Are Quakers Christian? I talked to 11 Quakers from across the United States and asked about their relationship with Christianity.
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Transcript
Lloyd Lee Wilson: Are Quakers Christian? Many Quakers are Christian. Worldwide, most Quakers are Christian. I’m a Christian. I’m a Christian today because there was a place for me in the Religious Society of Friends when I wasn’t a Christian.
Are Quakers Christian?
Chloe Schwenke: Are Quakers Christian? I would almost turn that question around and say, “Ok, tell me what a Christian is.” And it goes to the heart of what I think is the magic of Quakerism, which is that we don’t try to define God. We let God be God and we just experience God. Some of us including myself feel a great connection to the experience and testimony of Jesus Christ. The way that Jesus Christ brought love into the world as a tangible and important and central piece of what it means to be a human being is a very powerful testimony that many, many Quakers would feel absolutely at home with who may not call themselves Christians. But they don’t need to call themselves Christians.
The History of Quakerism
Lisa Motz-Storey: My practice is definitely Christian. But it doesn’t mean that I feel like Christianity is the only way. It’s our history as Quakers, too. George Fox would have answered, “Yes” to that question and everybody else.
David Johnson: Certainly the first Quakers were Christian. Their whole life and spirituality were centered around the light within them, which they experienced as the light of Jesus as the Christ working within them.
A Distinctive Approach to Christianity
Mark Wutka: I would say from its beginning, Quakerism was rooted in Christianity but it wasn’t necessarily the same kind of Christianity that was surrounding it. I would say one of the distinctives is that Quakerism tended to take external things and understand them from an internal perspective.
Gregg Koskela: For me one of the ways that a Friends perspective helps me to follow Jesus is probably best described for when I first walked into this room as a freshman at George Fox College: I was really moved by the attentiveness to the Spirit of God and I remember calling my Mom and saying, “These people believe what all these Christian churches I’ve been a part of have believed but not taken seriously.”
Lloyd Lee Wilson: Much of Christianity is what we might call “cataphatic” spirituality, which you can think of as a list of all the sentences that you could make that begin “God is…” Quakers have lifted up in large part an “apophatic” spirituality, which you can think of as all the sentences that begin, “God is not…” and you fill in all the blanks. Which is not to deny God but to recognize that all our intellectual constructs and our language and our words are not quite it.
Valerie Brown: This is one of the things I really love about Quakerism, is that it is so unconventional. It is noncomformist. I really appreciate that element of the mystery of Quakerism.
The Universal Light of Christ
David Johnson: The Light is a universal light, and that’s clear in Penn’s original statement, that the spirit of God is in every person. That’s taken primarily from the ninth verse of the first chapter of John’s Gospel. I’m sure that that light which comes from a universal spirit of God is experienced by every other person.
Lloyd Lee Wilson: I think that Quaker corner of the big tent of Christianity doesn’t bring anything from outside Christianity, but highlights and lifts up things that were in the Christian tradition always but have been neglected or almost lost over the millennia. One of the things is the direct and immediate and perceptible encounter and relationship with God. That idea that God pours out God’s spirit on everybody, and that’s a life-changing encounter.
Questioning Labels
Tom Hoopes: I personally identify as Quaker. I do not self-identify as Christian. And the reason I don’t choose that identity is for me, the label Christian includes a very large community of people in the world, too many of whom practice a too-enthusiastic form of exclusion and intolerance for me to feel okay with that. I do unite with many of the teachings of Jesus Christ. I specifically am enthusiastic about the Gospel of Thomas.
Jade Souza: I am a Christ-centered Friend, as we tend to call ourselves, or a Christian. It’s fine to call me Christian. I guess my question back is: why is it important for some people that you call yourself Christian when that’s a word that never crossed Jesus’s lips? I think the word Christian is really a worldly term. It’s a contemporary term that has a social meaning and can mean a lot of different things to different people.
Lisa Motz-Storey: When I first came to meeting, I called myself “post-Christian” because if I really believe that everyone has their own spiritual path, then I’m not really Christian, I’m just sort of open and seeking. That was a popular term to use within Quaker circles. But I’ve come full circle, and really embraced that I am Christian.
Chloe Schwenke: The whole labeling thing of “tell me what you believe, tell me who you are” is the antithesis of my experience of Quakerism and the Quaker testimonies. I like the fact that we don’t have a creed. We have testimonies: things we share that seem to be common experiences and ways of being as Quakers that flow from the experience of the Divine, but do not define the experience of the Divine. They’re coming the other way. You’ve got to experience it and you’ve got to stop trying to put God in a box. If we were able to put God in a box, he/she/it would not be God anymore. I mean, come on, we’re only human beings.
How Quakers Fit Into Broader Christianity
Fritz Weiss: I don’t think that this whole teaching that is captured in what we know of Jesus was about individual salvation and hereafter. It was about this world we live in now. It was about what being a people of God, being a community of God would look like in this world right now. When Jesus said, “This is what I command. I command that you love one another,” he meant now, here. How could I not take that commandment up? That is such a clear prescription for what it would mean to be living as people gathered in God’s name.
Gil George: I think the witness that Quakers bring the broader Christian family really is that one of the “priesthood of all believers” as is spoken. We don’t operate with a hierarchy because we recognize that there’s really only one boss, and that’s no human agency.
Lloyd Lee Wilson: I think Quakers remind the rest of Christianity that words are insufficient, that there is something beyond words, something beyond intellectual constructs that is there and is vital about this Christ who lived 2,000 years ago and who we say we encounter today in our worship and in our silent meditation and in our relationship with the divine.
Fritz Weiss: And I think that’s for me the heart of the controversy sometimes about, what do we mean? Do we mean being Christian means accepting Jesus Christ as my personal savior so that in the hereafter I am able to sit at the feet of God? Or do we mean that accepting Jesus Christ and the teachings of Jesus Christ informs my life here and now, in these times, in this culture, in this context? For me it’s the second. It informs how I live my life, here.
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Dear Friends,
I am writing to announce my decision that this will be my last year as the director of QuakerSpeak. This has been such an amazing journey for me, and I’m really proud of the work I’ve done. What an incredible impact the project has had in just 6 years.
When I first had the vision for a Quaker YouTube channel, I never imagined it would surpass 2.5 million views or generate the kind of widespread support it has seen. I am overwhelmed with gratefulness when I think of it. Remembering back to the discernment process that brought about the idea for the project, I am truly humbled and feel more confident than ever that when we listen and follow the leadings of the spirit, we often have an impact beyond our own imagination.
I’ll be staying on at Friends Journal through the end of the year to finish this season and help transition the project to a new director. I am interested and excited to see what a new creative voice can bring to the project and am glad to know that QuakerSpeak will continue beyond my time at Friends Journal.
My plan in 2020 is to give myself some space for reflection and discernment as I seek clarity about my next big project. My work on QuakerSpeak has been a tremendous opportunity to grow in my skills as a videographer, storyteller, and project manager… skills that are incredibly helpful in getting the word out about organizations that are doing good work.
If you, your meeting, or an organization you work with needs help spreading the word about a program or event, feel free to get in touch. I’ve updated my portfolio page to provide a sense of the scope of my collaborations.
I may also do some traveling to share with Friends what I’ve learned in my experience designing and implementing this groundbreaking outreach project, and welcome inquiries about visiting and speaking with Friends in your area.
Finally, if you’d like to follow my journey, I encourage you to stay in touch through my occasional newsletter:
Thanks so much for your interest and support over the years, and here’s to the next leading!
In peace
Jon Watts
As a lifelong artist, Maggie Nelson began to notice some similarities between her experience in Quaker worship and her approach in the studio.
As a lifelong artist, Maggie Nelson began to notice some similarities between her experience in Quaker worship and her approach in the studio.
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Transcript
I have this thing that I do when I’m in the studio, that I think I also should maybe say to myself in worship more often, that is: banishing judgment. I always think of it also with hands because I also draw hands a lot. Just like, “Get out. Go out the door, and I’ll tell you when you can come back in.”
How Quakerism Influences My Artistic Process
My name is Maggie Nelson. I live in Portland, Maine. My pronouns are she/her/hers. I go to Portland Friends Meeting, and I’m an artist, and I also coordinate the young Friends program of New England Yearly Meeting.
I think the turning point that happened for me was when I started learning more about Quakerism. I had been making art my whole life, and I started—I was starting to realize that the way I am… the way that Quakers talk about listening for some inner voice, or the voice of God, or the voice or the divine—that actually feels a lot like something that’s really familiar, which is trying to figure out what to make.
A Focus on Listening
I had thought a lot about how do I set myself up so I can best listen. For me with art, that would look a lot like paring down any sort of elaborate process or materials or anything like that. I just wanted to be able to make marks or images and have there be very few barriers from head to paper or head to canvas or whatever I was working with. And I think about how there’s so many ways to worship. In Quaker worship there’s still a million variables but you have your body and your voice and that’s kind of it. And so we have these limits, but we can go to a million different places. That’s helpful for me to set the boundaries and build this container that I think is really necessary. After that, it’s like, okay, I’ve built the house, and now I just have to step back and let it be filled.
Suspending Judgment
I feel like it’s so common to see people trying to draw who maybe don’t draw that often who are just like, “Oh this is terrible.” And I’m like, “You’ve only drawn, like, two lines.” And they’re like, “Well it’s terrible.”
You can never know where you’ll go if you’re constantly assessing what’s given to you. If you’re constantly sitting in worship and holding what you have in your hands and judging it, then where are you going from there? So I think that process of banishing judgment and seeing what comes out of that is the really spiritual process.
Being Comfortable With Not Knowing
It feels kind of like when you’re in worship and there’s like a million messages. Only after the fact do I try to be like “that person meant that” or “this is how I’m going to relate to what this person said.” I think it’s acknowledging that it’s from God and not from you. It allows me to be like, “I don’t know what it means.”
…which is my favorite thing to say about what I’m making and my favorite thing to hear when kids are making stuff. When I’m like, “Hey, what are you making?” And they’re like, “I don’t know.” And I’m like “Good.”
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How do people concerned with peace and justice operate in times of intense polarization? According to Quaker author and activist George Lakey, it’s a moment of tremendous opportunity.
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An inspiration for me about recognizing how to operate in this time is George Fox’s vision that he had at the top of Pendle Hill. He saw both an ocean of darkness—that’s easy to see now—and also he saw an ocean of light. It reminds me every time I’m tempted to focus on the ocean of darkness: “Wait a minute. I’m selling reality really short.” That’s not the world that created. Not one of darkness only. And notice, it wasn’t an ocean of darkness and a tiny spring of light. It was an ocean of darkness for George Fox and an ocean of light.
How We Win
My name is George Lakey. My membership is with Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, and my work is supporting people to stand up for themselves and make justice here in the world—justice and peace. So my most recent book is focused on how we win, when we do. People often stand up for themselves and win and sometimes don’t and I was very curious. It was a joy to write this book because I got to look back on a hundred years of American history and pull out—it felt like harvesting actually—wonderful examples of people standing up for themselves and moving the dime: moving our country sometimes grudgingly and resistingly toward peace.
The Opportunity of Our Times
I’ve been traveling a tremendous lot throughout the country the last year and a half and find people extremely anxious about the polarization that’s going on in our country, the tremendous lot of division. And what I’ve been bringing is the good news about that, even though heaven knows, there’s lots of bad news about polarization—lots of violence and lots of ugliness that comes with it. But there’s also good news, and I’ve learned that good news from seventeenth century England when Quaker arose in a very polarized world, and from other situations of polarization in which, along with the ugliness and violence, comes an opportunity for change that’s unusually large if people learn how to navigate it.
How I Learned About Social Change
I was very inspired by the Civil Rights Movement. I was a young man and got to watch that unfold, at first from a distance and then threw myself into it as soon as I could. My first time arrested was in a Civil Rights demonstration. I was very moved both by the famous people like Martin Luther King and also by some of the key organizers like Bayard Rustin, who were right in there, often developing strategies for success.
Learning From Quaker History
My mind turns towards history. I’m always very curious “where do you come from?” when I’m getting to know someone. What’s their background? And the same with Quakers. I wanted to know historically, what have Quakers experienced? And so I went back to seventeenth century writing and history to find out what was going on. I was really amazed by the immediacy of the approach that people took. It wasn’t only that God is calling us to live good lives, of course, but also God is calling us to be part of an unfolding truth-telling exercise that we are expected to be participating in.
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As a kid growing up in holiness-influenced Indiana Quakerism, Max Carter was taught to avoid a long list of sins, including soft drinks—“which led to hard drinks!“—and dancing—“a vertical expression of a horizontal desire!”
As a kid growing up in holiness-influenced Indiana Quakerism, Max Carter was taught to avoid a long list of sins, including soft drinks—“which led to hard drinks!“—and dancing—“a vertical expression of a horizontal desire!”
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When I was teaching at Guilford College, looking the way I do–I wear a straw hat, I don’t have collars, I wear gray and all that–people ask me about my upbringing: “Were you born Quaker? Have you always been a Quaker?” And it’s a complicated story.
Growing Up Quaker in Indiana
My name is Max Carter and I live in Greensboro, North Carolina, where I recently retired from teaching at Guilford College. I’m a member of New Garden Friends Meeting which is jointly part of Friends General Conference and Friends United Meeting.
I was born into a Quaker family, 11 generations. I was born into a Quaker community, Quakers had settled that part of Indiana in the 1840s. But the Quakerism I was born into in 1948 was an assimilated Quakerism that after the Civil War had taken on more and more Protestant trappings.
My “Plain Quaker” Ancestors
My great-great grandparents on my mothers side—Robert and Elizabeth Johnson—were plain Friends living in New London, Indiana. My great-great grandparents on my father’s side were Fleming and Rachel Johnson (inbred!) who were also from New London, Indiana. They were all plain Friends. The photographs we have of them show them even in the early 1900s in broad brim hats, bonnets, plain clothes. Both of them attended the New London Meetinghouse, which is a plain, divided meetinghouse after the Civil war: still women on one side, men on the other because of the business meeting structure, with a partition down the middle. Silent meetings. Old, plain Quaker culture.
My great-great-grandparents were ministers in that meeting, adhered to that old, plain Quakerism.
The Influence of Holiness Revivals
Post-Civil War the revivals came through. By 1865 there was a Quaker meeting in Indiana that had already adopted pastoral worship. By the 1870s the revivals were so widespread that many Quakers were beginning to adopt more Protestant traditions of prepared sermons and music and hymns and alter calls. Many people were being converted in these revivals were coming into the Religious Society of Friends from outside the culture.
New London held firm. My great-great-grandparents resisted this enthusiastic religion of the revivalists, but one night the caretaker of the meetinghouse (who was a revivalist in sympathies) “inadvertently” left the basement door unlocked and the revival preacher came in and held a rip-roaring revival in the old Quaker meetinghouse. Many people in the community were converted. The only church in the community was the old Quaker meeting and so they came into membership there and within a decade, it was a programmed, pastoral Quaker meeting and my great-great-grandparents were pastors essentially in that meeting.
Assimilation into the Protestant Mainstream
It happened rapidly, this assimilation into the Protestant mainstream. By the time I was born, you still had Quakers in my meeting (they were called churches by that time) who remembered the old style of Quakerism. Their grandparents were plain and still used the plain speech. They didn’t anymore, but they remembered that style of Quakers and revered their ancestors. But more and more influence came from the revivals, from the Holiness movement, and from a type of Christianity that emphasized a personal relationship with Jesus: a personal conversion, an alter call experience. There were enough similarities to early Quakerism—his devout and holy life, the possibility of perfection—that it was readily accepted by many Friends.
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