Gunilla Norris Author Talk – Hints for the Heart: December 7th – Book Cover
Join author Gunilla Norris live at the UNITED Theatre for a conversation about her new book Hints for the Heart presented by Bank Square Books. How we see, touch, hear, and ingest matters. It is a sacred path to dedicate and revere our senses as well as our capacity to stand, walk and talk, work, play, rest, and love. It is not only sensual but it is also embodied and profound. Perhaps use of our capacities in this manner will be an evolutionary key. Becoming love-conscious may be the agency that will be central to the survival of our species and to the care of our planet home. Gunilla Norris is a mother and a grandmother who has been a psychotherapist in private practice for more than forty years. She has published eleven children’s books, two books of poetry, and six books on spirituality.
Jana Noyes-Dakota with the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Chorus: Messiah by George Frideric Handel
Saturday, December 16th 7:30 PM – Harkness Chapel Connecticut College – Program Information
Young Friends – Midwinter Retreat – January 13-15 – Woodman Hill Retreat Center
Young Friends will gather January 13 to 15, 2024, at Woolman Hill Retreat Center in Deerfield, MA, to take a deeper dive into building community and explore the Quaker way together. Want to be alerted when registration opens? Subscribe to the Young Friends email list here.
Friends decision-making workshop – January 20 – 9:00 to 3:00 – Jaffrey, NH
Active participation, clerking, and recording – Jackie Stillwell, Facilitator: Join experienced clerk and facilitator Jackie Stillwell at Monadnock Meeting in Jaffrey, NH, for a day-long workshop on Friends approach to decision making and group discernment. This interactive workshop is for Friends serving or seeking to serve as clerks, recording clerks, or clerk’s elders, as well as for anyone looking to participate more actively in the Friends decision-making process. Read more and register here.
“Living Faith” – NEYM – April 6, 2024 – North Dartmouth, MA
We are excited to announce a next chapter in the ongoing experiment of daylong opportunities for spiritual nurture and intergenerational relationship, what we have called “Living Faith.” On April 6, 2024, we are looking forward to greeting Friends again in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
We are now seeking workshop proposals for the gathering. Our 90-minute workshops provide an opportunity for adult and teen Friends to explore their Quaker faith, connect around an area of interest, and make meaningful connections through activities, conversations, or worship. Do you have a workshop idea? Experienced and emerging facilitators alike are invited to submit a workshop proposal by February 4th. Details here.
Memorial Minute: Shelia Anne Lyons – May 22, 1931 to June 29, 2023
For many years, Sheila would attend our Meeting, and her life actions spoke to our testimonies. She was always seeking and questioning among Buddhists and Episcopalians, as well. She was a mother of six, widowed at age 48, who successfully raised them all to seek and question as well. Read More
Rustin – New Documentary By Netflix
Activist Bayard Rustin faces racism and homophobia as he helps change the course of Civil Rights history by orchestrating the 1963 March on Washington. Rustin, advisor to Martin Luther King Jr., dedicates his life to the quest for racial equality, human rights and worldwide democracy. However, as an openly gay Black man, he is all but erased from the civil rights movement he helped build. Movie Trailer
Quaker Contacts Newsletter
“This is a human crisis, and one thing is very clear: no one will win if this war continues to escalate… As an Israeli who also cares about Palestinian lives, [urging support for a ceasefire] is a meaningful, effective way you can take action to bring us closer to an end to this nightmare.” ~ Odeliya Matter, FCNL Program Assistant on Middle East Policy – FCNL – Quaker Contacts Newsletter
Friends Camp – Dear Friends Camp Community,
Happy fall! Registration opens in one month, and we are already excited thinking about another summer full of new friends, new skills, and new experiences. Registration will open at noon on Saturday, November 4th. Use the “Login/ Registration” button on the top right of the www.friendscamp.org home page.
Evelyn Kirby — Acting Camp Director; Anna Hopkins Buller — Camp Director (on maternity leave until February, 2024)
(207) 877-4302 – director@friendscamp.org
The Peace and Social Justice Committee
Dear Friends, At our last meeting of the Peace and Social Justice Committee, we agreed to forward this link for the video “I Am Not Yet Turned Indian” to the Meeting. This talk was presented by the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice on March 1, 2023. A few years after his official banishment from Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, Roger Williams wrote to John Winthrop, assuring the governor that he had “not yet turned Indian.” At first, it may appear that the statement constituted banter between friends and was written in jest. But Williams was making no joke because his “turning” Indian was not just a possibility; it was expected. This talk traces the interactions between the Narragansett and the English colonists who resided within their community and appraises how conflicting interpretations about the parameters of tenancy within the Narragansett Country informed the discord that created Rhode Island. At the present time, the committee has no plans to follow up on this presentation, but we hope to have a discussion based on it sometime in the late fall or winter.
2023 Gathering – Friends General Conference (Overview)
Dear John, I’m going to level with you: Although I was excited to attend my first in-person FGC Gathering, I did not know what to expect or whether I would truly enjoy myself. I had never been to Oregon, much less the west coast. I had not met many of you face to face just yet, and all of my regular anxieties began invading my consciousness. But Friends, I must say that Gathering was a lot of fun, had a lot of meaning, and was a spiritual experience. With each conversation I had with Friends, I felt anxiety falling away and calm and clarity taking its place. By the end of the week, it seems like the problems I had outside of Gathering now had a clear pathway to resolution. In short, I felt that God was speaking to me through each Friend I connected with, and each conversation was a piece of a larger puzzle that I was solving. In friendship, Rashid Darden. This past July, over 540 Friends came to Monmouth, Ore., for the first all-ages, in-person Friends General Conference Gathering in four years. They came from nearby Salem and Portland, and from as far away as Costa Rica and Vermont. They danced, listened, saw the giant sequoias, and hugged. Overwhelmingly they were glad to be back to almost normal. (Friends Journal)