In early Feb­ru­ary I’m lead­ing a young adult work­shop up at New York Yearly Meeting’s “Pow­ell House”:http://www.powellhouse.org. I don’t have any desire to get into the “spir­i­tual work­shop cir­cuit,” but I was asked and it seemed like an oppor­tu­nity to gather some inter­est­ing folks to talk about what we hunger for. The work­shop is called “Food for Fire: Break­ing into the Power of Quak­erism” (already regret­ting the “break­ing in” metaphor–shouldn’t it be “bro­ken in by?”).
I hope that some of the extended Quaker Ranter fam­ily will be able to make it out. This could be a kind of Mid-Atlantic/New Eng­land gath­er­ing of what­ever this of infor­mal movement/network is. Because this is a work­shop model I am expected to impart knowl­edge but while I’ll come with an worked-out agenda, I’m happy to loosen and/or toss it aside if needed. The work­shop descrip­tion:
bq.. Many of the clas­sic themes of Quak­erism speak to the con­di­tion of a world wracked by con­sumerism, war, big­otry and envi­ron­men­tal dis­re­gard. Friends have a his­tory of unit­ing truth and love and turn­ing it into action. We’ll reach into the Quaker attic to dust off gospel order, plain liv­ing, trav­el­ing min­istry, prophetic wit­ness; we’ll try them on and see how they fit into our expe­ri­ences of the liv­ing Spirit. There will be plenty of time to share sto­ries in small groups and together. How are our monthly meet­ings doing rec­og­niz­ing the gifts of min­istry and ser­vice among younger Friends? How are Friends doing spread­ing the good news of the Quaker way? There is a great peo­ple to be gath­ered still but how can we enter into the faith­ful­ness required? Jesus came up the fish­er­men and said “Come, fol­low me;” what would we do if we got that call? Like any pro­grammed Quaker event the work­shop is really an excuse to assem­ble Friends together in prayer and faith­ful­ness to God. The most impor­tant thing we could do this week­end is build friend­ships: friend­ships of sup­port, mutual account­abil­ity, and peer men­tor­ship. Friends from all branches of Quak­erism wel­come, as are the newest of seek­ers.
p. The price is $180 for the week­end (reg­is­tra­tion form) but if that’s a bur­den then try to get your meet­ing to pay–I sus­pect they’ll be happy to see that you’re show­ing an inter­est in Quak­erism. I’ll be dri­ving up from South Jer­sey and will prob­a­bly be able to pick up folks from Philly & New York. Email me if you have or need a ride from other points and I’ll try to con­nect you with other trav­el­ers.
If you’re too old or too impa­tient to wait for Sec­ond Month to roll around, pick up Brian Drayton’s new book On Liv­ing with a Con­cern for Gospel Min­istry and read that instead. Yes, I plugged it five days ago and yes, my pay­check comes from the publisher–but I’ve now now read the first chap­ter and it really is that good. Read­ing it feels like putting that soon-to-be-favorite pop album on the turntable for the first time. Where were you when you first heard Sgt Pep­pers? (for the YAFs in the audi­ence: yes I’m being silly with the Bea­t­les ref­er­ence; if you remem­ber first putting that album on a turntable in 1967 then this isn’t your workshop!).