Hospitality

In-Person at Powell House
June 2-4, 2023

Our keynote speaker is Rhiannon Grant, who will be joining us online from the UK. Her remarks will be about moving, in our communal homes, beyond more chairs and a bigger table to a new menu: embracing deep hospitality and exploring our changing Quaker community as we welcome different forms of theological and social diversity.

Susan Wilson will join Windy as the co-leader for this retreat, exploring this message in embodied, curious ways. Expect this to be a time of discernment and exploration.

“Testimonies to Mercy” is a seven-part traveling series based on the lecture Better Than Good: Seven Testimonies for Quaker Caregiving, given at Pendle Hill in June of 2021 by Quaker practical theologian and public minister Windy Cooler.

Facilitators

Susan Wilson (she/her) is a former Co-Director of the Ben Lomond Quaker Center, and member of the Plainfield Monthly Meeting (Vermont), New England Yearly Meeting.

Rhiannon Grant (she/her) teaches for Woodbrooke as well as researching and writing about Quakers. Her recent books include Quakers Do What! Why? (Christian Alternative, 2020) and Hearing the Light: the core of Quaker theology (Christian Alternative, 2021). She also edited The Quaker World (Routledge, 2022) with Wess Daniels.

Lament

Online
March 10-11, 2023

Lament can be described as an expression of the suffering, grief, and sorrow we feel at a soul level. It is a way to be honest with ourselves, the Divine, and one another about those deeply felt places of vulnerability that can bring us to our knees while also creating openings for spiritual depth during our faith walk. 

Schedule:

(Times listed for both west and east coast)

Friday: 4:00pm -5:30pm PST | 7:00pm - 8:30pm EST

Saturday: 12:00pm -1:30pm PST | 3:00pm - 4:30pm EST

Saturday: 3:00pm -4:30pm PST | 6:00-7:30pm EST

Lynette Davis (she/her) is a writer, spiritual companion, and mental health peer advocate. She believes stories can change the world and create meaning in life and enjoys holding sacred space for healing and spiritual deepening through the expressive arts, especially for queer creatives and changemakers. Additionally, Lynette partners with nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and private practice healers implementing their communications and digital outreach strategies and currently serves as the Outreach Coordinator for The School of the Spirit Ministry. 

Lynette is also the author of Success To Die For: Breaking Down Assumptions About Anxiety, Depression, & Suicide and Their Impact on Business Women and a contributing author of the Illuminate Bible study series by Barclay Press. 

She earned her MA in Theopoetics and Writing from Earlham School of Religion and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Rutgers University with a BA in Sociology. Lynette has been a convinced Friend since 2016 and is a member of Ujima Friends Meeting. Connect with Lynette at http://sacredpausetoday.com 

Truth

Online
February 10-11, 2023

Telling the truth can be hard. It sometimes makes us anxious. Wilmer Cooper contended that all Quaker testimonies, including truth, can be seen as originating from a concern with the testimony to integrity. How can we get in touch with our integrity when the truth scares us, feels complicated, or causes us to doubt something or someone we are invested in?

Martin Kelley (he/him) is an American Quaker, writer, blogger, workshop leader, and editor. Much of his focus is on outreach, renewal, and the Christian roots of Quakerism. Martin has been sharing the story of Quakers as senior editor of Friends Journal magazine since 2011. He has been blogging as the Quaker Ranter for even longer and is founder and admin of the QuakerQuaker discussion forum.

Equality

Online
January 6-7, 2023

Intersectionality is a way of looking at community experiences of oppression and empowerment as webs of relationship that impact freedom and equality. In this retreat we are going to take a deep dive into what it might mean to engage in freedom work for and with everyone.

Khalila Lomax (she/her) is Baltimore Yearly Meeting's STRIDE (Strengthening Transformative Relationships In Diverse Environments) Coordinator. STRIDE is dedicated to creating accessibility and inclusion in BYM's camps and other outdoor experiences. To get a sense of Khalila’s ministry work in Baltimore Yearly Meeting, please see the attached report from 2021.

Emotional Separateness & Openness

Online
November 11-12, 2022

Boundaries are vital to real intimacy. When we are able to separate our needs from the needs of others we can see people for who they are, not who we want them to be -- or what we fear about ourselves. We can be more fully present, and offer our gifts more skillfully and wholeheartedly. In this retreat, we will explore how emotional separateness and openness, despite their apparent tension, work in unity for greater faithfulness and more deeply loving community life.

Kody Gabriel Hersh (he/they) is a queer, trans, Quaker youth worker with roots in traditional Timucua, Seminole, and Miccosukee territory (Florida, U.S.). Their public ministry among Friends has touched on building robust intergenerational community, nurturing the spiritual lives of young people, liberatory sexuality and sexual ethics, abuse prevention and response, solidarity with marginalized peoples, decolonization, and nurturing faithfulness in oneself and others. For a QuakerSpeak video in which Kody speaks about how Jesus affirms their queerness, please follow this link.

Time to Be Tender

Online
October 21-22, 2022

How does anyone have the time to really be present to the people in our communities? To ourselves? To the sacred? What might it mean for Friends to cultivate communities where spaciousness in our daily rhythms - time for ministry, for recreation, for our relationships with each other and with God - is part of our commitment to each other and to the Spirit?

Adria Gulizia (she/her) is a lawyer, mediator, teacher, and mother. For the last few years, she has carried a concern for how Friends’ traditional faith and practice translate into an increasingly unstable, atomized and uncertain world. In her ministry activities and in her daily life, Adria is passionate about inviting all into deeper relationship with the Spirit of Christ, which spoke so strongly to early Friends and continues to speak today. She is a member of Chatham-Summit Monthly Meeting (New York Yearly Meeting), the Friends of Jesus Fellowship, and the Board of Advisors of Earlham School of Religion, which she will serve as clerk starting in the autumn of 2022. She has facilitated workshops on a variety of topics, including spiritual gifts, listening as a practice of pastoral care, and Friends' traditional commitment to the Lamb's War. Adria’s writing has been published by Friends Journal, Pendle Hill and Illuminate, a Bible study curriculum written by and for Friends. Her blog, In the Shadow of Babylon, can be found at shadowofbabylon.com.

Education

In-Person at Ben Lomond
September 2-4, 2022

Friends of all ages are invited to a joyful and interactive weekend of listening “to what is alive in all of us through religious education, grounded in the now and in truth.” Participants will leave this weekend with an experience of hearing and being heard, as we practice creative listening skills while discerning together what Friends’ future can be as a multi-age, diverse and often widely dispersed community. All ages are encouraged and welcome.

J.T. Dorr-Bremme (he/his) is a convinced Friend with 10 years of varied Quaker experiences on both coasts of the United States and in Mexico City as well as with the FGC Gathering, FWCC Section of the Americas, and more. In 2018 and 2019, he participated in the first iteration of Marcelle Martin's Nurturing [Worship, Faith, and] Faithfulness program and as a teaching assistant and elder for Marcelle in her fall 2021 Exploring Spiritual Practices course. Beginning in 2020, JT has been an elder with his partner-minister Johanna Jackson in the ministry known as Forward in Faithfulness. A key component of this ministry is the Listening Project, a series of Spirit-led conversations with Friends from around the US from ages 14 to 79 about their experiences of Quaker culture, spirituality, and possible futures for the Religious Society of Friends. He carries a gift of deep listening and a concern for transformation that will help heal our ailing world.