New, on Quak­er­S­peak: “A Call­ing to Prison Min­istry and Antiracism Work.” Quak­er­S­peak video­g­ra­ph­er Rebec­ca Hamilton-Levy inter­views Judy Meik­le, who was ini­tial­ly struck by the phrase that tied the modern-day prison indus­try to slav­ery — “from the plan­ta­tion to the pen­i­ten­tiary” — and start­ed vol­un­teer­ing for prison min­istry at Sing Sing. It was quite the jour­ney, as she had to con­front her own White­ness and White sav­ior complex:

I’d like to name that it’s a strug­gle for me on an ongo­ing basis to wres­tle with my own inter­nal­ized racism and when I hear myself talk­ing like I have today about what my join­ery has been like, I hear myself falling into the trap of excep­tion­al­ism, like some­how I’m the good antiracist — I’m not. I stum­ble all the time, I make mis­takes. So I just want to name that and know that I am on this jour­ney mak­ing mis­takes because I want to do bet­ter, and I hope that with the guid­ance of Spir­it oth­ers will join. There are many peo­ple in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends that are already on board with this work, and it’s just my hope that oth­ers will join.

Judy wrote about her expe­ri­ences for FJ last year in “Get Thee Behind the Walls.”

Fea­tured on Friends Jour­nal, Cather­ine Cog­gan with a delight­ful sto­ry about dis­cov­er­ing Friends wor­ship­ing out­side after a life­long inter­est in eccle­si­as­ti­cal archi­tec­ture. I inter­viewed her about the arti­cle in my FJ author chat.

The Pen­dle Hill Cen­ter out­side Philadel­phia is launch­ing The Seed, a new pod­cast, with the first episode sched­uled to drop on World Quak­er Day. From their press release:

The podcast’s host, Dwight Dun­ston, is a West Philly-based facil­i­ta­tor, hip-hop artist, edu­ca­tor, and activist who has brought his cre­ativ­i­ty, care, and com­pas­sion to schools, com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters, retire­ment homes, fes­ti­vals, and sta­di­ums all over the coun­try and internationally.

In the open­ing episode, Dwight Dun­ston and Pen­dle Hill exec­u­tive direc­tor Fran­cis­co Bur­gos share with the audi­ence their dreams for The Seed. They wel­come lis­ten­ers into the pod­cast as an expan­sion of Pen­dle Hill’s spaces of trans­for­ma­tion, a green­house for nur­tur­ing hope­ful visions of the world that is possible. 

Dwight, also known as Ster­ling Duns, is a great choice for a host. FJ inter­viewed him back in 2015 and he’s also the sub­ject of a Quak­er­S­peak inter­view. Pen­dle Hill is a real cross­roads, bring­ing togeth­er spir­i­tu­al seek­ers and change advo­cates since its ear­li­est days. Their decades-long tra­di­tion of dai­ly wor­ship tran­si­tioned to a hybrid for­mat almost imme­di­ate­ly upon lock­down in 2020 and real­ly gave a lot of peo­ple hope in a hard time. It total­ly makes sense that they build upon their con­nec­tions to start a pod­cast. The pro­mo sounds good; I can’t wait for the launch.

The Quak­er pod­cast ecosys­tem has a been a bit touch and go over the years, with great pod­casts com­ing and going. Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing’s pod­cast is one of the few that’s still going strong (I very much rec­om­mend Hen­ry Jason’s series, “Fun­da­men­tal Beliefs of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends”). I know of two pod­cast series cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion in addi­tion to Pen­dle Hill’s. It’s an excit­ing time for Quak­er audio!