Loved this post from Rebecca Solnit:
When people tell me that there’s been no resistance to the Trump administration, I wonder if they’re expecting something that looks like a guerrilla revolution pushing out the government in one fell swoop or just aren’t paying attention, because there has, in fact, been a tremendous amount and variety of resistance and opposition and it’s mattered tremendously.
I’ll be speaking at this panel discussion on the pros and cons of seminary in a couple weeks. This event is being put on by Public Friends.
Register below:
Birthday Adventure This Weekend
My wife and I had a little holiday this weekend to celebrate both of our birthdays. We visited some new places and enjoyed almost 24 hours on our own. It was quite lovely.
Crazy Alan’s Emporium was the highlight for me. An amazing stationary store in Chapel Hill. Hands down my favorite new place to find.
We visited Raleigh Denim, a fantastic denim shop in Downtown Raleigh. We didn’t buy anything but it was really fun to look and try on some things. Actually, I did buy a bundle of scraps for some mending projects I’m working on.
We had dinner at East End Bistrot in Raleigh. We did small plates so we could try different things and it was fantastic. Some of the best food I’ve had in recent memory. We sat at the bar which was a lot of fun getting to chat with the bar tenders and other folks sitting there. A highlight was a drink the bar tender made for us because we were celebrating birthdays he called “bar stories.”
In September, the pope told journalists, “Someone who says I am against abortion but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”
Let America Be America Again
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain— All, all the stretch of these great green states— And make America again!
A Virtual Duplicate
A virtual double-vision where two things are the same but appear differently:
Today a friend on a zoom call mentioned that sometimes on zoom, when someone is already there and also arriving on a new device at the same time it is disorienting because you often see the same person from two different perspectives and its enough different that it looks like two versions of the same person.
My book, A Convergent Model of Renewal, is currently 50% off at the publisher. Shipping is free. A great deal!
Use coupon code: CONFSHIP
The Wander Society: I love this website: www.thewandersociety.com and the video here.
cc/ Austin Kleon
A photo from the Mountaineer ride this past weekend from Jonny Ramirez.
About 2 months ago, I got really interested in doing the Mountaineer ride and started getting ready. I opted to do the 65 mile route which I’m glad I did for how beautiful the ride was but it was really hard. I underestimated the difficulty of the climbs and overestimated my ability to do them. I ended up cutting the ride a little short and headed down Bald Mountain around mile 45. But I am really glad I did it and I’m looking forward to the next event.
This is Tree Wess. Last night we had our Quaker Leadership Scholars Program Halloween party and we all dressed up. This is what I came up with.
From New Seeds of Contemplation:
The life of contemplation implies two levels of awareness: first, awareness of the question, and second, awareness of the answer. Though these are two distinct and enormously different levels, yet they are in fact an awareness of the same thing. The question is, itself, the answer. And we ourselves are both. But we cannot know this until we have moved into the second kind of awarenessness. We awaken, not to find an answer absolutely distinct from the question, but to realize that the question is its own answer. And all is summed up in on awareness - not a proposition, but an experience: “I AM.”
Thomas Merton, p. 4
Took a 20 mile ride this morning on the greenway. It started out at 50 degrees and was very cold but the ride was wonderful. I lost my phone on the ride but a good samaritan took it to the lost and found at the nearby park.
I’m really looking forward to my first gravel ride event with the Appalachian Mountaineer next week. I’m planning to do the non-competitive 65 mile ride.
Boat Build Update
We’re building at boat at Guilford College.
My colleague, Damon Akins, came up with the idea. The hope for the project is to build stronger connections between students, faculty, and staff; help learn practical skills of building and problem-solving; and create an opportunity for a positive outlet in the midst of many challenges. We’re having a lot of fun with the project as you can imagine.
Here are a few photos from the work we did yesterday building part of the frame of the boat.
Deep Listening Practice
Here’s the outline for the Deep Listening practice I did today with my First Year Seminar Class.
Deep Listening
“To listen to another’s soul into a condition of disclosure and discovery may be the greatest service that any human being ever performs for another.” Douglas Steere (Quaker author)
Questions (you pick one that you feel you can talk about for at least a few moments. Pick which one you feel interested in sharing about).
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What is one challenge in life you have faced and how did you overcome it? What did you learn from the experience?
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Talk about the pets you’ve had in your family—or, if you haven’t had any, the pets you wished you had. How did they come into your family, what has your connection been, what have you learned from them, etc? (Via Damon Akins)
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What’s a problem you’d like to solve in the world? Why do you care about it? What are ways you are interested in work on that problem?
Outline of Practice
1 min - take a min to pick your question and think of a response 3 mins - Share - try to use all the space 1 min - Listener can ask one open-ended question or a follow-up question 1 min - Time for response 1 min - Listener offers an affirmation
Guidelines for Listener
- Be still and listen
- Try to not draw any attention to yourself with your responses
- Make eye contact
- Remain engaged in your listening
Debrief Notes
After process take some time to talk about the experience and how it was for folks.
I’ve been thinking about a post I did last year on making a new hymnal:
The music we sing together in community should not just be a means to an end, but something that gets to us and carries us into the heart of the music itself. Music is mobile and can be there for you when you need it, like a mantra, a short prayer, a good song can change you from the inside out. It can go where you go and in a moment’s notice be there to lift you up. What would it look like for our congregations to have a broader view of the power of song in community and what we sing together? How do we bring younger generations into this more as well?
QUNO Geneva seeks a Peace & Disarmament Representative
The Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) seeks a committed and motivated person with considerable knowledge and experience to carry forward work on Peace and Disarmament in the QUNO Geneva office.
Leading the Peace & Disarmament Programme, the Representative will maintain QUNO’s long-term Quaker presence at the United Nations. As a senior staff member and part of a small team, they will help ensure the effective and efficient management of QUNO Geneva.
Full details and instructions on how to apply are available in the document below.
**The closing date for applications is 13:00 CET Monday 3 November. **
Full details and how to apply are here.
The Friends Historical Association is hosting a free talk with scholar Marcus Rediker about his new book “Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea.”
This year’s event will feature a talk given by Marcus Rediker on his new book, Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea. Rediker is a distinguished professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh. His already-acclaimed work, published earlier this year, documents ‘hidden waterfront networks and battle zones within the fight against slavery.’
A Community of Symphony
Loved this quote from the book “Living the Questions - Essays Inspired by the Work and Life of Parker J. Palmer:”
From Chapter Four - Opening Space for the Inner Life
Part of the magic of music is that it synchronizes the participants into one whole. The field of neuroscience today is helping us understand why and how this happens. According to William Benzon, “for individuals sharing a common musical culture, there is a strong and systematic similarity between the tonal flow of music and its neurophysiological substrates that allows a tight coupling between the brains of those individuals. While participating in music those individuals constitute a community of symphony.” Benzon goes so far as to say that such practice is essential: “When we deliberately coordinate our nervous systems with each other-this is when we become human.” He came to the conclusion that Descartes and others who begin with individuals and the rational mind as the basic building block of reality and philosophy were wrong. He did not begin his research with this thesis. Rather, he says, “it was forced on me as I thought about how people make music in groups. I do not believe that you can understand human community by starting with individuals and trying to derive interaction and community from rational self-interest.”