retreat

Truth and integrity retreat

Martin Kelley — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 00:43:05 +0000

My weekend online retreat went well, I think, at least many of the 15 participants said they appreciated it. It’s the first multi-day event I’ve led in awhile and as I wrote here earlier, I felt strongly led to plan a flexible, Spirit-led event. It was a bit terrifying to be working so from-the-seat-of-my-pants, but it was a great group of people, who could maintain the pacing on their own. There was a lot of very deep sharing (I set confidentiality as a value early on) and we let people share for longer or share something different than asked if they felt it important. There were a few moments when it felt like a long statement might be bringing in too much centrifugal force but it pulled back and we were the richer for it. The hardest time for me was around 4pm Saturday but that’s such a hard time to be alert.

The two-day, three-part retreat was part of Windy Cooler’s “Testimonies to Mercy” series, co-sponsored by New York’s Powell House and Ben Lomond Center. Some random phrases and ideas:

Integrity=Love, Integrity=Faithfulness, Integrity=Presence.
Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy: the much-quoted adage, attributed to Warren W. Wiersbe on sketchy quote websites.
Disciples are followers who aren’t motivated by punishment.
The image that truth can chase us.

One of the more surprising moments was when I brought in Hugh Barbour’s Five Tests for Discernment. Participants had been talking about the meaning of Truth—Is there only one? Are there many? How do we know to continue when others disagree?—and I thought Barbour’s list would be an easy one to lean on. He developed it in the early sixties as findings for research for his 1964 book, The Quakers in Puritan England and I remembered it as a revelation when I first came across it probably twenty years ago. But the insistence on “moral purity” and “inward unity” didn’t sit well with a group with members that have sometimes had to buck Quaker cultural mores and institutional inertia to follow a leading. We started brainstorming different tests we’ve developed more experientially. I’d love to tease these ideas out more someday.

Weekend online retreat on Integrity, now with scholarships

Martin Kelley — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 17:39:15 +0000

I’ve been told there’s now scholarship money available for this weekend’s online retreat—and even a buy-one-get-one sale (I’ve never been BOGO’ed before!). It starts at 7pm Friday night—come join us.

I must admit I used to get some of my leather-free shoes at Payless’s BOGO sales.

From the expanded description:

Have you felt anxious about something you think might be true, wondered about sharing this—and how you might share the truth with wisdom—and even if you can believe the hard truth yourself? Join the senior editor of Friends Journal, Martin Kelley, in a three part online retreat on facing the truth when the truth is hard to face. It is about finding integrity.

Times are 7–8pm Eastern Friday the 10th (how does the truth prosper with thee?) and 12–2 (the truth within us) and again at 3–5pm Eastern on Saturday the 11th (speaking truth in the world). Register here: https://www.powellhouse.org/testimonies-to-mercy

This virtual retreat on truth is part of the Testimonies to Mercy series sponsored by Powell House and Ben Lomond Quaker centers and convened by public minister Windy Cooler. This retreat is normally $125 to attend because we are compensating for labor but we have some money for scholarships now and we are also offering Buy One Get One: if you register you can choose a friend to bring with you for free. If you have questions or need some help with a scholarship please get in touch with Windy here or at WindyCooler at gmail.

https://www.powellhouse.org/testimonies-to-mercy

Truth and integrity online retreat next weekend

Martin Kelley — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 04:59:22 +0000

What does integrity mean in our family and spiritual lives? I’m leading on online retreat on Feb. 10 and 11th as part of the “Testimonies to Mercy” series. Learn more and sign up at Powell House’s website.

New Monastics & Convergent Friends update

Martin Kelley — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:52:34 +0000

My workshop partner Wess Daniels just posted an update about the upcoming workshop at Pendle Hill. Here’s the start. Click through to the full post to get a taste of what we’re preparing.

Martin Kelley and I will be
leading a
weekend retreat at Pendle Hill in just a couple weeks (May 14–16)
and I’m starting to get really excited about it! Martin and I have been
collaborating a lot together over the past few months in preparation for
this weekend and I wanted to share a little more of what we have
planned for those of you who are interested in coming (or still on the
fence). During the weekend we will be encouraging conversations around
building communities, convergent Friends and how this looks in our local
meetings. I wanted to give the description of the weekend, some of the
queries we’ll be touching on, and the outline for the weekend. And of
course, I want to invite all of you interested parties to join us!

Read the full post on Wess’s blog

Exciting Philly Convergent Friends opportunity

Martin Kelley — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:37:12 +0000

The most excellent Peggy Senger Parsons of Oregon’s Freedom Friends Church emailed me today saying she and the equally excellent Marge Abbott will be co-leading a workshop at the Philadelphia area Pendle Hill Retreat Center from 3/27–29. These two were crossing theological boundaries and pioneering the Convergent Friend ethos long before Blogs, Twitter & Facebook. The workshop is called “Are we still a dangerous people?” and as rocking as that sounds, I’d be willing to listen to these two read the Salem, Oregon phone book for a weekend. If you have a pillow stuffed with some extra cash ($200 for commuters) then you should definitely try to make it (unfortunately I don’t have a lumpy pillowcase and can’t afford to take another three days off).

Peggy wrote that she wants to make herself “available for the Saturday afternoon free time for a conversation with any Friends who want to drop in and crash the party.” That sounds good to me! If I can rearrange some childcare schedules, I’ll try to make that. That would be Saturday the 28th from 1:00–3:30pm.

Call off the search parties

Martin Kelley — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 20:46:51 +0000

The retreat at the Carmelite Monastery was nice. Here’s some pictures, the first of those “long-remembered”:/if_i_dont_make_it_back.php tall stone walls and the rest of the beautiful chapel:

It was a silent retreat–for us at least. There were three talks about “Teresa of Avila”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_Avila given by Father Tim Byerley, who also works with the “Collegium Center”:http://www.collegiumcenter.org/about.php, a kind of religious education outreach project for young adult Catholics in South Jersey (I mentioned it “a few months ago”:https://www.quakerranter.org/teaching_quakerism_again.php as a model of young adult youth outreach that Friends might want to consider). Much of what Teresa has to say about prayer is universal and very applicable to Friends, though I have to admit I started spacing out by around the fourth mansion of the “Interior Castle”:http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2.toc.html (I’ve never been good with numbered religious steps!).
I’m in no danger of following my wife Julie’s journey from Friends to Catholicism, though as always I very much enjoyed being in the midst of a gathered group committed to a spirituality. The idea of religious life as self-abnegation is an important one for all Christians in an age where “me-ism”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScWdek6_Ids&eurl has become the “secular state religion”:http://www.walmart.com/ and I hope to return to it in the near future.