The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope

How do we use art to dismantle colonial narratives and stay grounded in our cultural truth?In this moving episode, host Dwight Dunston is joined by mother-daughter "artivists" Anito Gavino and Malaya Ulan. Together, they explore the intersection of family-centered practice, Filipina identity, and the power of storytelling as a tool for justice and healing.The conversation begins with a quote from environmental activist Vandana Shiva on ecofeminism and our refusal to be divided by race or separated from nature. From there, Anito and Malaya invite us into their creative process—a "living archive" that honors their ancestors while equipping the next generation to lead with love.About the GuestsAnito Gavino is a Filipina multidisciplinary artist, movement scholar, and cultural worker based in Philadelphia. A top 25 Dance USA awardee and Leeway Transformation Award recipient, her work focuses on the intersections between Afro-Indigenous cultures and Filipino archives.Malaya Ulan is a 17-year-old Filipina-American "artivist" and the 2024-2025 Youth Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. A multi-dimensional poet, she merges writing with dance and film, recently delivering a TEDx talk on poetry as activism.Together, they lead the collective Ani Malaya Works, creating theatrical pieces that encourage critical dialogue and education.Key Themes ExploredThe Burden of History: Deconstructing Rudyard Kipling’s "The White Man’s Burden" and its impact on Black and Brown bodies.Hidden Legacies: The history of Filipino involvement in the U.S. military and the origins of police tactics like the baton (Kali/Escrima).Love as Practice: How their relationship evolved from childhood "theater games" to a shared ministry of cultural preservation.The Immigrant Experience: The "growing pains" of moving to new geographies and finding the "village" that sustains revolutionary work."I felt the change started when Malaya came. It was a spiritual connection that is just reuniting... how can I now use what I know to prepare you? This is love." — Anito Gavino✨ Listen in for a conversation on why every act of remembering is an act of resistance.Learn more about Ani Malaya Works: https://www.anigavino.com/NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

In this intimate mini-episode of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope, the roles are briefly shifted as host Dwight Dunston shares his own Quaker journey with guest John Calvi. From an antsy teenager in a Quaker high school to finding his "spiritual home" as an adult, Dwight reflects on the power of silence, memory, and the "upper room" of communal worship.Dwight recalls the bittersweet grief of his final high school meeting for worship, a moment where he realized the profound value of "settling in" with others. "We were bodies in space, but we were also... in a different room," Dwight reflects. After years of traveling and studying poetry abroad, it was a return to Philadelphia during a time of personal loss that led him back to a meeting house, where he finally felt he had found his place.In this episode, we discuss:The transition from "antsy teenager" to a seeker of silent worship.The lasting impact of Quaker education on alumni and their spiritual lives.Dwight’s journey through grief and his eventual "spiritual homecoming" at Merion Meeting.+2How the practices of poetry and faith intertwine in Dwight's work as an artist and facilitator.Related Resources:Dwight Dunston’s Official WebsiteJohn Calvi’s Official WebsiteMerion Friends MeetingKingian Nonviolence Training InformationWWUH Radio: Gay Spirit ArchiveGuest & Host Bios: Dwight Dunston (aka Sterling Duns) is a West Philly-based facilitator, hip-hop artist, and activist. A Level 2 Certified Kingian Nonviolence Trainer, Dwight brings creativity and care to his work in schools, festivals, and community centers to support healing and wholeness in individuals and ecosystems.John Calvi is a Quaker healer and singer-songwriter. For over thirty years, he has offered massage and healing touch to survivors of trauma and those living with AIDS. He is the author of The Dance Between Hope and Fear.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

In this mini-episode, host Dwight Dunston returns to his conversation with Quaker healer John Calvi. They explore the history of John’s seminal song, "The Ones Who Aren't Here," and the weight of carrying love across time and loss.John shares the song's origins, written in his 20s during a time of "personal exile". Reflecting on the "fierce closet" of the early 80s, John notes, "As Pete Seeger said, you build a good building, can be used for a lot of different things over time". For John, the song became a "good building" for those seeking community during the AIDS crisis.The episode features a 1982 recording from WWUH radio. John reflects: "Perhaps ministry is that rare, too rare, song that teaches the pain as it lifts us up towards knowing what is possible".In this episode, we discuss:The social origins of "The Ones Who Aren't Here".Healing touch as Quaker ministry during the AIDS crisis.John’s work with the late nonviolence educator William J. Kreidler.Resources:"The Ones Who Aren't Here" (Song): https://youtu.be/3EANcOHwLbc (1982 Recording)John Calvi: https://johncalvi.com/Suede (Singer - Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suede_(singer)Meg Christian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meg_ChristianLGBTQ Religious Archives Network (Calvi Profile): https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/john-calviWilliam J. Kreidler (Memorial Archive): https://williamjkreidler.com/"Nonviolence in the Classroom" (Reference to William Kreidler's work): https://biblioteca.cejamericas.org/handle/2015/4078Guest Bio: John Calvi is a Quaker healer and songwriter who offered massage and healing touch during the AIDS crisis. A member of Putney (VT) Friends Meeting, he has had his music recorded by artists such as Meg Christian and Suede.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

What does love look like when it moves beyond sentiment and becomes a force for healing, justice, and transformation?In this Season Six finale of The Seed, we welcome John Calvi, a Quaker healer, certified massage therapist, and longtime advocate for survivors of trauma. John began offering healing touch during the AIDS crisis in 1983 and has since worked with survivors of war, torture, sexual abuse, and incarceration—always centering presence, compassion, and deep listening. He is also the founding convener of the Quaker Initiative to End Torture.The conversation is grounded in All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks, including her insistence that “there can be no love without justice.” From there, Dwight and John explore how love is experienced somatically—in the body—and how it becomes power when it refuses domination and instead fosters dignity, accountability, and repair.Reflecting on decades of healing work, John describes moments when the boundary between stranger and kin dissolves, when tenderness reveals both suffering and possibility at once. He speaks candidly about power—how “power over” wounds and constricts, while power rooted in love expands our capacity to remain present even in the face of immense pain.As John puts it:“Pain becomes suffering when it becomes all that we are. The work is to loosen the contraction of the body, of the heart, of the mind—so that pain does not take over our entire existence.”John and Dwight discuss the wisdom of the body, Quaker worship as a deeply somatic practice, and the slow, cyclical nature of healing. John distinguishes between pain and suffering, noting how laughter, stillness, touch, and truth-telling can interrupt despair and make space for hope.In his closing reflection, Dwight weaves together John’s stories with his own experiences of intergenerational care—of children and elders, beginnings and endings—inviting listeners to consider how love becomes real when it is practiced in tangible, embodied ways.This episode closes Season Six with a grounded offering of wisdom: that love, when paired with justice, is not abstract. It is practiced with hands, breath, presence, and courage.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

In this mini-episode of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope, we return to a Season Six conversation with Inaara Neal-Shiraz and ,O—two people whose lives and work embody love as a healing force for justice.Inaara Neal-Shiraz served as the Inclusion and Belonging Coordinator for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, supporting Friends across four states and nurturing communities of care, discernment, and connection—especially among young adult Friends.,O is a longtime healer, educator, and community organizer who has spent more than twenty-five years working at the intersection of social and environmental justice, supporting individuals and communities in healing legacies of harm.In this excerpt, Inaara and ,O reflect on fear not as something to conquer or eliminate, but as something to listen to. They explore breath, nervous systems, worship, and what it means to practice alchemy with our emotions. Fear, they suggest, may carry distorted messages—but also wisdom—inviting us to slow down, breathe, and remain present long enough to hear what is asking for our attention.As Dwight reflects, this conversation points toward a form of love that is not sentimental or passive, but embodied, intentional, and deeply attentive—a love practiced in grocery stores, on train platforms, and in moments when nothing appears to be “wrong,” yet everything is asking for care.To hear the full conversation this excerpt comes from, visit pendlehill.org/podcast or listen on Spotify. What did you notice in your body as you listened?What did fear reveal to you?You can share reflections by emailing [email protected] or connecting with @PendleHill on social media.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

How do we move beyond the "gatekeeping" of our institutions to practice a love that is truly transformative?In this soul-stirring conversation, host Dwight Dunston is joined by Zae Illo and Lisa Graustein to explore the intersection of spiritual practice and radical justice. Together, they challenge us to look beyond "market logic" and historical comfort to find a faith that meets people exactly where they are—on the streets, in the struggle, and in the heart.The episode grounds itself in the words of early Quakers Isaac Pennington, John Woolman, and Catherine Payton, using their 17th and 18th-century visions as a springboard to ask: What does it mean to "restore love to its right place" in a world of broken systems?Zae Illo is a public theologian and street minister in San Francisco. His ministry focuses on the material and spiritual needs of the unhoused, bridging the gap between faith and the harsh realities of urban life. He is the author of Wild Deep Waters and a prophetic voice on the necessity of "transgressive" love—a love that flows outside the bounds of what society deems "normative."Lisa Graustein is a lifelong Quaker, artist, and justice educator. Her work centers on healing, transformation, and dismantling white supremacy within spiritual and secular institutions. She brings a wealth of experience in mutual aid, peacebuilding, and "Afrofuturism," inviting us to imagine a future where resources are shared in common and every gate is opened.They explore:Love as Transgression: Why following the spirit often requires us to break cultural norms and "market logic."The Myth of Private Property: A critical look at the "Diggers" vs. early Quakers and the radical call to hold all things in common.Institutional Gatekeeping: How our organizations (and meeting houses) inadvertently limit access to the "light" and how to dismantle those barriers.Tools for Connection: Lisa’s "Great-Great-Grandchild" framework for finding common ground in a polarized world.The Ministry of the Streets: Why material assistance is a vehicle for hearing the testimonies of those the state deems "disposable."Politics does not determine someone’s character or someone’s essence... What if we were curious as to why?" -Zae IlloHear "radical curiosity" and a call to live into the Kingdom of God as a present, breaking reality.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

In this mini-episode of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope, we return to Season Three for a powerful moment from Dwight’s conversation with artist, facilitator, theologian, and mother Autumn Brown.Autumn reflects on fugitivity, freedom, and what it means to step into lostness so that belonging can find us. She explores how community, agency, vulnerability, and mutual care shape the conditions where people can come home to themselves and to one another.This excerpt comes from Creating the Conditions for Belonging with Autumn Brown Season 3, Episode 2 https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/2032871/13365431-creating-the-conditions-for-belonging-with-autumn-brownLearn more about Autumn BrownWebsite: https://www.iambrown.org/ Autumn Brown is an artist, facilitator, theologian, mother, and freedom worker. She is the front woman of the soul-pop band AUTUMN and the co-host of How to Survive the End of the World, the long-running podcast she creates with her sister, adrienne maree brown.Autumn brings twenty years of experience in movement strategy, consensus process, and racial justice facilitation, and has worked with community-based organizations across the U.S. and internationally. She is a former facilitator with AORTA (Anti-Oppression Resource & Training Alliance) and previously served as Executive Director of RECLAIM!, supporting queer and trans youth in reclaiming their lives from oppression.Autumn will also be the guest host of the Climate Changed podcast, a project of The BTS Center. Learn more at https://ClimateChangedPodcast.orgNEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

How do we speak truth in love—and stay grounded in care, courage, and connection while doing so?In this powerful, heart-centered conversation, host Dwight Dunston is joined by two guests whose lives embody the practice of love as a healing force for justice: Inaara Neal-Shiraz and ,O. Together they explore what it means to balance bold truth-telling with tenderness, to hold anger and compassion in the same breath, and to become “alchemists” of our own emotions.The episode begins with a passage from the Pendle Hill pamphlet Nonviolence on Trial by Robert W. Hillgas, which asks how we might name evil without losing sight of our shared humanity. From there, Dwight, Inaara, and ,O invite listeners into a living meditation on love—as practice, discipline, and transformation.About Our Guests,O is a longtime healer, educator, and community organizer working at the intersection of social and environmental justice. For more than 25 years, they have led workshops and healing circles that support individuals and groups in addressing the legacies of racism, sexism, homophobia, and class privilege. ,O serves as Healing Justice Coordinator at Philly Thrive, is a founding member of Alternatives to Gun Violence, and leads the Quaker ministry Love and Respect Transform, which explores the transformative power of love.Inaara Neal-Shiraz (she/her) served as the Inclusion and Belonging Coordinator for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, supporting 10,000 Friends across four states and nurturing communities of belonging among young adult Friends. She brings her background in education, the arts, and nonprofit work to her ministry of connection—helping Quaker spaces become more inclusive and life-giving for people of all identities and experiences. Elder WisdomThroughout the episode, Inaara and ,O speak from different generations yet a shared spiritual lineage. They remind us that love is not sentimental—it is an ancient rhythm, an elder wisdom that lives in the heart. Love can be fierce, restorative, and revolutionary.Dwight reflects:“What if we weren’t afraid of love—to be seen, to be powerful, to let go of the king’s language and speak from the heart instead?”NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

In this special mini-episode of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope, host Dwight Dunston reconnects with guest Lisa Graustein to explore how art, love, and power intertwine in daily life. Together, they reflect on the creative process as an act of resistance, connection, and renewal.Dwight shares his newest creative project—an emerging genre he calls “Anthropocene Hip-Hop,” a musical form that bridges the natural world, social justice, and lyrical artistry. “I’ve been a hip-hop artist for years,” Dwight says, “but this moment calls for music that recognizes our interconnectedness—with each other, the stars, and the earth itself.”You will hear one of his original songs. Lisa, a potter and educator, describes her recent community projects, including an art show inspired by Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and a new installation called Night Lights, which uses ceramics to create vessels that radiate light through perforated clay forms. “To me,” Lisa reflects, “there’s something metaphorically powerful about a bowl with holes in it. That’s what love feels like—a container that holds, but with space for things to move through.”Through their conversation, Dwight and Lisa consider how love and power, like light and clay, must move freely to remain alive. Lisa says, “If we actually saw every human being as our sibling, every social problem we have would disappear.” Dwight responds, “That’s our human family—to see each other as resource, as places to cultivate belonging and hope.”Together, they remind us that recommitting to love—through creativity, justice, and everyday care—is itself a radical act.Guest Bio A lifelong Quaker, Lisa Graustein is a former middle and high school teacher who now works as a facilitator and trainer in diversity, equity, and inclusion. She has led Young Friends programs, worshiped with the full spectrum of Quakers, co-facilitated Quaker Coalition for Uprooting Racism cohorts, and helped start Three Rivers Meeting. An artist and solo mom, she lives on Neponset Band of the Massachusett land, colonially known as Boston. Lisa’s pottery and art can be found on Instagram at @LisaGraustein.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

What happens when sacred stories are used to justify oppression—and when telling the truth feels like rebellion?In this episode of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope, host Dwight Dunston speaks with Sarah Ruden, an award-winning translator, essayist, and Quaker writer whose work exposes how language, power, and faith intersect. Known for her acclaimed translations of The Aeneid, The Gospels, The Confessions of Augustine, and Perpetua: The Woman, the Martyr, Ruden brings deep historical insight and moral clarity to this conversation about love, responsibility, and truth.Drawing on the biblical story of Hagar and Ishmael, Sarah unpacks how ancient hierarchies still shape the present. She traces the lineage of propaganda around women’s bodies from Ovid’s Rome to today’s reproductive politics—and challenges the spiritual evasions that allow injustice to endure. She also draws on her forthcoming book, Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women.Key Quotes“The silence of women in the Hebrew Bible is very interesting—very provocative to think about.”“People, especially men, don’t want to take responsibility for what actually happens.” “We have to start by telling the truth.”Together, Dwight and Sarah explore what it means to live with integrity in a time of crisis, how Quaker faith can both guide and confuse, and why empirical truth—science, evidence, and witness—matters for spiritual survival.🔗 Resources MentionedReproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women – forthcoming from KnopfPerpetua: The Woman, the Martyr – Yale University PressThe Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible – VintageThe story of Hagar and Ishmael (Genesis 16–21)Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “When Peace Becomes Obnoxious” (1957) https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/when-peace-becomes-obnoxiousGrace Lee Boggs and “The Clock of the World” – The Harvard CrimsonLearn more about Sarah’s work at https://sarahruden.com/NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

This mini episode of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope revisits our most downloaded conversation across six seasons, featuring visionary leader Niyonu Spann. Through excerpts from her full episode, Niyonu shares what it means to live with integrity—wholeness, surrender, and alignment with purpose. She reflects on the origins of her transformative workshop, Beyond Diversity 101, and offers listeners practical invitations to embody integrity in their daily lives.About Niyonu Spann Niyonu Spann is a facilitator, musician, and community leader with decades of experience in and beyond Quaker institutions. As Dean at Pendle Hill in the early 2000s, she created Beyond Diversity 101, a workshop that has transformed communities across the country. She is a prolific musician and founder of the performance group Tribe 1, which has carried songs of peace and justice throughout the U.S. and Nicaragua. Niyonu has also worked extensively with Chester Eastside Ministries in Chester, Pennsylvania.Compelling Quotes from the Episode“It is about wholeness. It is about remembering who we are.” —Niyonu Spann“I didn’t even know I needed that song, but I knew I needed that song. Thank you for that gift.” —Dwight DunstonListen in for wisdom, music, and a reminder that integrity is the keynote frequency guiding us toward justice and belonging.Follow Niyonu on Instagram @niyonus and LinkedIn. 👉 To hear the complete original conversation, visit:https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/2032871/episodes/12356301-integrity-radical-truth-remembering-who-we-are-with-niyonu-spannNEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

In this first full episode of Season Six of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope, host Dwight Dunston speaks with Lisa Graustein, a lifelong Quaker, educator, DEI facilitator, artist, and solo mom.Lisa reflects on the intersections of love, power, justice, and belonging. She shares stories of winding life paths, creating safer spaces, and the importance of daily recommitment to what matters most. Drawing on an Alice Walker quote about love activism, she reminds us that even in disorienting times, joy, truth, forgiveness, and care for the earth can ground us.Together, Dwight and Lisa explore the challenges of uprooting racism, the role of art and community in sustaining hope, and how faith can guide us toward more fluid, interconnected ways of being.Quotes from the episodeDwight: “Sometimes love actually means saying the hard things or showing up in a space even when it’s not easy.”Lisa: “Our faith at its core actively assumes there shouldn’t be norms… Listening to God and doing what God tells you to do today doesn’t mean we’re going to do the same thing all the time.”NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Season Six of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope begins with Francisco Burgos, Executive Director of Pendle Hill. Host Dwight Dunston and Francisco reflect on this season’s theme—love and power—inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?Dr. King wrote: “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”In this wide-ranging conversation, they explore:What love requires of us in the face of injustice and despair.How power, when rooted in service, can become transformative.The resilience of community in times of crisis.The role of testimony and imagination in shaping a more just world.Dwight and Francisco share personal updates, ground themselves in King’s words, and invite listeners to reflect on what social systems and testimonies we need today to build communities of dignity, justice, and hope.📖 Featured Reading: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Episode SummaryToday, we share an episode from a sister podcast, Refugia hosted by Debra Rienstra. Refugia are places of shelter where life endures in times of crisis. From out of these small sanctuaries, life reemerges, and the world is renewed.In this episode of Refugia, Debra speaks with theologian Ruth Padilla DeBorst. She describes life in Casa Adobe, an intentional Christian community in Costa Rica, and discusses what faithful living can look like as we seek to resist complicity in the abuses of empire.Season 4 of Refugia will be released this fall! Listen here or on your favorite podcast platform.Guest BioDr. Ruth Padilla DeBorst is a theologian, practitioner, teacher, and speaker with decades of experience in ministry throughout Latin America. She has served with organizations including The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, Latin American Theological Fellowship, and World Vision International, among others. She is a theological educator, both in Latin America and in the United States with her position at Western Theological Seminary.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Episode SummaryPendle Hill has just released its very first audiobook for our pamphlet series! Listen to the audiobook of Pendle Hill Pamphlet #371, Members One of Another: The Dynamics of Membership in Quaker Meeting by Tom Gates, here. In this episode, we first hear Tom share a little bit of the background to his pamphlet before listening to a sneak preview of the new audiobook.Episode ResourcesListen to the audiobook for Pendle Hill Pamphlet #371 Members One of Another: The Dynamics of Membership in Quaker Meeting by Tom Gates.Visit Tom Gates’ blog to read excerpts from his forthcoming book, Turning Toward the Victim: The Bible, Sacred Violence, and the End of Scapegoating in Quaker Perspective.Purchase a physical copy of Members One of Another from the Pendle Hill bookstore, or purchase an e-book from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.Guest BioThomas Gates is a member of Lancaster Monthly Meeting, student of Quakerism, and now-retired family physician.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

 Episode SummaryThis episode features a condensed version of the recent First Monday Lecture, “The Exponential Impact of Historical and Ongoing Injustice: A Call To Action for Quakers,” that Dr. Harold Weaver delivered alongside Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge at Pendle Hill on February 3rd.Hal’s message is a call for reckoning and retrospective justice around Quakers’ historical participation in slavery. He urges us to re-examine our past in order to take tangible steps towards a more just future.Episode ResourcesWatch Dr. Hal Weaver and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge’s First Monday LectureRead the Pendle Hill Pamphlet that Hal references, Hypocrisy, Racism, and Self-Interest on the Path to Reparations: Quaker Complicity with Slavery (1657–1776) and White Supremacy by Mary Watkins.Read Dr. Hal Weaver’s Pendle Hill Pamphlet, Race, Systemic Violence, and Retrospective Justice: An African American Quaker Scholar-Activist Challenges Conventional Narratives.Read Dr. Hal Weaver’s anthology, Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights.Learn more about the BlackQuaker Project.Guest BioDr. Harold D. (Hal) Weaver, Jr. is the Founder and Director of the BlackQuaker Project (BQP), a ministry celebrating the lives and contributions of Quakers of Color worldwide and documenting and addressing their concerns. It is an outreach and in-reach ministry of his Wellesley Friends Meeting. Hal has spent his life confronting the cancer of white supremacy throughout the world, drawing upon the Quaker testimonies of Truth, Peace, Equality, Community, and Justice.Hal is currently an Associate at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Hal lives in Newton,NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

This episode features a condensed version of the recent First Monday Lecture, “Towards a Just Democracy: Spiritual Grounding and Principled Action,” that Alicia McBride delivered alongside José Santos Moreno at Pendle Hill on November 4th, the eve of the presidential election. Alicia’s powerful message about how we can transform ourselves and our political system by acting with love continues to resonate as the new president now takes office.Throughout the episode, Alicia offers several queries that call us to reflect on our participation in our country’s democracy. They are:What story are you telling yourself about this moment and about your role in it?What would a just democracy centered in love for all our neighbors look like?What part will you play in bringing it about?Guest BioAlicia McBride (she/her) serves as the senior director for Quaker leadership at the Friends Committee On National Legislation (FCNL), where she focuses on connecting Quaker faith, practice, and community to policy advocacy in Washington, DC. Her various roles and more than 20 years of work at FCNL are united by a concern for how to act with integrity at the place where faith and the world meet. She is a member of Sandy Spring Friends Meeting (Baltimore Yearly Meeting), assistant clerk of the Earlham School of Religion Board of Advisors, a parent to two teenagers with her husband Sam Garman, and a yoga teacher.Learn about FCNL’s work at https://www.fcnl.org/. NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Dwight Dunston speaks with Alexx Temeña, a somatic minister, ceremonial artist, and experiential educator, about the transformative power of rest and embodied practices in world-building. Alexx shares insights from her work with the School of Embodied Praxis and her interactive public sculpture, House of Kapwa, which honors Rest, ecological grief, and Filipino indigenous wisdom. Alexx explores how creating rituals and new frameworks can disrupt grind culture and cultivate a sense of safety, connection, and liberation.Later, Quaker poet and activist Zenaida Peterson offers three evocative poems that imagine liberated futures. Zenaida reflects on the power of imagination and creativity to envision new systems rooted in justice, equity, and community. Their work reminds us that dreaming is essential to building the world we long for. Zenaida has competed and coached at national slam poetry competitions, including the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational and the National Poetry Slam, often placing in the top 10. ​Zinaida ​founded ​the ​feminine ​empowerment ​movement ​Slam, ​also ​known ​as ​Femmes. They have ​been ​published ​by ​Pizza ​Pie ​Press ​and ​Button ​Poetry, ​with ​their ​first ​full-length ​collection ​forthcoming ​from ​Game ​Over ​Books.Resources & Links:Learn more about Alexx Temeña: www.alexxtemena.comFollow Alexx: Instagram @alexxtemenaFollow Zenaida: Instagram & TikTok @puppet_mcflyLearn about the Quaker Voluntary Service: https://quakervoluntaryservice.orgRead more about Tricia Hersey and The Nap Ministry: https://thenapministry.comConnect with Bayo Akomolafe’s work: https://www.bayoakomolafe.netNEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

For this episode, we’re sharing a clip from the Quakers Today podcast featuring our recent guest, Keil Trois, who also uses the pseudonym Jeff Walburn. Hear Keil describe the creative campaign he organized with The Yes Men collective against the Mattel corporation.In the summer of 2023, Keil and The Yes Men pulled an elaborate hoax on the media and the Mattel corporation, timed to coincide with the release of the popular Barbie movie. Together with environmental activist Daryl Hannah, they faked a widely published announcement that "Mattel intends to go 100 percent plastic-free by 2030 in all their toys. Mattel was forced to publicly clarify that this statement was false, inadvertently drawing attention to the environmental crisis wrought by plastic waste.Through their artistic interventions, Keil and The Yes Men demonstrate how humor and disruption can drive conversations that inspire real-world change. Keil's work pushes boundaries to offer hope.Guest BioKeil is a filmmaker and a core member of The Yes Men, an art-activism collective known for using creative interventions to tackle issues like climate change and corporate greed. He has collaborated with activist groups worldwide, blending creativity with direct action to inspire social change.Dig DeeperListen to the full Quakers Today episode featuring Keil, “Quakers and Barbie: How Lies Exposed the Truth About Plastic Pollution.”Read Friends Journal’s article on this story, “Speaking Lies to Power.”Explore the rest of The Yes Men’s hijinks.Learn more about this and other campaigns against Mattel conducted by the Barbie Liberation Organization.Find Keil Troisi on Instagram and Daryl Hannah on X.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Dwight Dunston speaks with filmmaker and activist Keil Troisi about the transformative power of art and culture in world-building and social change. Keil shares his experiences with The Yes Men, an art-activism group that creatively disrupts corporate power to inspire long-term hope. They explore how humor, trickery, and creativity can drive real-world impact, especially in environmental and social justice movements.Favianna Rodriguez, an artist and cultural strategist, reads from her essay Harnessing Cultural Power to Heal the Planet and Ourselves, which appears in the anthology All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. Her work calls for a cultural revolution in the climate movement, emphasizing the role of art in reshaping narratives.Listen to Favianna on The BTS Center’s podcast Climate Changed:Favianna appears in Season Three, Episode One of Climate Changed, titled The Power of Ritual and Story, alongside Brian McLaren. Listen to the episode here: https://thebtscenter.org/climate-changed/podcast-season-three-episode-1/.Resources & Links:Learn more about Keil Troisi and The Yes Men: https://theyesmen.org/Follow The Yes Men: X: @theyesmen, Facebook: theyesmenfixExplore Favianna Rodriguez's work: https://favianna.com/Follow Favianna: Instagram: @favianna1Get the All We Can Save anthology: https://www.allwecansave.earth/anthologyPhilly-based - Vanguard SOS collabs:Climate Adaptation Toolkit in Impact Alpha or USA TodayVanguardians of the GalaxyEco-doom carnivalNEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

In this episode, Dwight Dunston and eppchez yo-sí yes delve into the transformative potential of art. Drawing from experiences in reparations work and Quaker business settings, eppchez’s art seeks to disentangle integrity from perfection, instead calling for transmutation processes. This excerpt comes from The Seed Season Two Episode Three, “Integrity & Transmutation: Moving Beyond Cultures of Domination with eppchez yo-sí yes” With “Guided Transmutations,” an interactive audio experiment, eppchez invites us to address this transformation inwardly: What would it look like to move beyond cultures and cycles of domination? How can we use noticing practices in our communities better to align our actions, words, and values?Guest Bioeppchez yo-sí yes is a Quaker playwright, inventor, and spiritual companion living in Philadelphia. Eir work uses historical research combined with channeled wisdom to remember what our culture of domination has tried to erase. eppchez is one of many Friends working to implement a cultural shift toward active anti-racism among Quakers. Ey are called to earnestly and imperfectly model strategies to do reparations and build systems that make integrity and care more possible. To experience more of eppchez's work, visit www.almasengine.com. NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Dwight Dunston brings listeners into a reflective discussion with two Irish writers, Manchán Magan and Shirley Anne McMillan, as they explore Ireland's divided history, cultural resilience, and visions for a more harmonious future.As Manchán and Shirley explore their different experiences growing up in Ireland, they find common ground in their hopes for a peaceful future that honors Ireland's cultural roots and builds a more connected, ecologically balanced society. Their conversations with Dwight reflect visions of Ireland where historical wounds are acknowledged, and diverse identities and histories are woven into a shared, harmonious future.Guest Introductions:Manchán MaganIrish author, documentarian, and host of The Almanac of Ireland podcast, Manchán is known for books like Thirty-Two Words for Field and Listen to the Land Speak, which celebrate Ireland's heritage and linguistic legacy. Social media: @manchanmagan.Shirley Anne McMillanNorthern Irish author and Children’s Writing Fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast, Shirley writes young adult novels exploring activism, identity, and social justice themes. Her latest book, Grapefruit Moon, addresses classism and patriarchy through the lens of art and activism. Follow Shirley on X: @smcmillanwriter.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

In this mini-episode, Francisco shares the inspiring journey of the Pendle Hill online worship community, which emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide a spiritual connection and inclusion space. Beginning as a simple idea born out of necessity, Pendle Hill’s virtual daily worship grew into a thriving, radically inclusive online community.Reflecting on nearly 94 years of daily worship at Pendle Hill, Francisco discusses the challenges and triumphs of transforming Pendle Hill’s worship into a global spiritual community through technology, the unique aspects of online worship, and its lasting impact on participants.Whether physically or virtually, Friends gather during this worship in a meeting room rich in spirit and history, one that has been host to A.J. Muste, Bayard Rustin, Wendell Berry, and Martin Buber, among many, many others.Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship and experience this community yourself! You can also join Dwight, host of The Seed, who will attend this worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 AM to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time).Read more about this online worship community in Friends Journal.Guest BioFrancisco Burgos is the Executive Director at Pendle Hill. From 2012 to 2015, Francisco was the head of school at Monteverde Friends in Costa Rica. He has also served with the Organization of American States in Washington, DC, and the American Friends Service Committee in Baltimore, Maryland.Francisco has a BS in Clinical Psychology from the National University Pedro Henríquez Ureña in the Dominican Republic, an MA in Sustainable Development from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont, and a Doctor of Education from Universidad De La Salle in Costa Rica.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Dr. Riyam Kafri AbuLaban, a former principal at Ramallah Friends School and a writer from Palestine, shares her insights on world-building amidst conflict and the complexities of raising children under occupation. Joining Dwight is Steve Tamari, a Palestinian-American Quaker and historian who offers reflections on the ongoing genocide in Palestine as part of a larger history of colonialism. Steve challenges listeners to understand the power of conscience and integrity in facing the brokenness of our world.Key Highlights:Primary Guest:Dr. Riyam Kafri Abu Laban writes personal essays, poetry, short stories, and articles on Palestine, motherhood, and education. Riyam sees writing as "the tangible outcome of thinking" and believes the first sentence requires the most courage. She describes writing as an incredible gift, a way to bring ideas to life—whether technical, creative, or fictional.Riyam lives in Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine. Follow her on Instagram and LinkedIn.Second Guest Offering:Steve Tamari is a Palestinian-American Quaker and historian. Steve reflects on the ongoing genocide in Palestine, framing it within the history of colonialism. He calls on Quakers and people of conscience to take action against systemic violence. He shared these remarks during his presentation, "Light Within and Light Without," at the 2024 Stephen G. Cary Memorial Lecture.He poses a thought-provoking question: "How do you strive to close the gap between the light within and the world outside so that our lives may be genuinely integrated and made whole?"Special MusicIn this episode, you will hear the song Babylon Breeze by the Sada Trio. Ahmad Al Khatib, Pedram Shahlai, and Feras Sharestan are virtuoso musicians from three parts of the Middle East who now live in Sweden. Ahmad Al Khatib was born in 1974 in a PaNEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Episode SummaryIn our first mini-episode of Season 5, Dr. Riyam Kafri Abu Laban, a writer and educator from Ramallah, explains how Palestinian cuisine is a powerful expression of identity rooted in the land and traditions of the Palestinian people. Forced displacement and cultural appropriation have posed significant challenges to preserving this culinary heritage. Food is nourishment and a bridge to the past—a living memory of their villages and communities. Palestinian food continues to serve as a source of resistance, memory, healing, and celebration.Guest BioDr. Riyam Kafri Abu Laban writes personal essays, poetry, short stories, and articles on Palestine, motherhood, and education. She sees writing as "the tangible outcome of thinking" and believes the first sentence requires the most courage. She describes writing as an incredible gift, a way to bring ideas to life—whether technical, creative, or fictional.With a PhD in Chemistry, Riyam started her career as a research scientist but soon realized her passion was working with people. She shifted to education, first as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and a founding faculty member at Al Quds Bard College in Palestine. She then spent seven years as the Upper School Principal at Ramallah Friends School.As a proud Ramallah Friends School and Earlham College graduate, Quaker values have shaped her life and faith. Today, Riyam is the Educational Lead at AlNayzak Organization, focusing on pedagogy, curriculum design, and training.Riyam lives in Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine. Follow her on Instagram and LinkedIn.Special MusicIn this episode, you will hear the song Sada by the Sada Trio. Ahmad Al Khatib, Pedram Shahlai, and Feras Sharestan are virtuoso musicians from three parts of the Middle East who now live in Sweden. Ahmad Al Khatib was born in 1974 in a Palestinian refugee camp in Irbid, Jordan. He started his musical journey at an early age. In the Sada Trio, the three musicians keep the Middle Eastern music tradition alive, pairing traditional instruments with original compositions.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Episode Summary:In this opening episode of Season 5 of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope, host Dwight Dunston speaks with Francisco Burgos, Executive Director of Pendle Hill, about the theme of world-building. They explore what it means to co-create new systems rooted in cooperation, reciprocity, and love. Francisco reflects on his experiences at Pendle Hill, his childhood in the Dominican Republic, and the prophetic witness that inspires his work.In addition, Dwight introduces the exciting changes in Season 5. These changes include a second guest in each episode who will bring a reflection,  song, poem, or reading.Key Highlights:Primary Guest: Francisco Burgos—Francisco shares stories from his upbringing and how his family's generosity has influenced his worldview. He also reflects on the prophetic role Pendle Hill has played in building a different world since its founding in 1930.Second Guest: Dwight Dunston – As the second guest, Dwight offers insights into his journey with Quakerism, continuing revelation, and how his experiences at Pendle Hill have shaped his vision of world-building. He also reflects on the transformative experience of attending a writing retreat in Ireland in the summer of 2024.World-Building in Practice – Dwight and Francisco discuss what it means to build new worlds in the cracks of broken systems, drawing on their personal experiences and the influence of Pendle Hill.New Features for Season 5:Mini-Episode Preview: This season will include alternating mini-episodes featuring unaired content and new material created on the Pendle Hill campus. These shorter episodes will deepen the season’s exploration of world-building.Two Guests! Each of our full episodes will include a main guest in conversation with Dwight and a second guest who will offer a short reflection, reading, poem, or song.Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

🌱 Welcome to Season 5 of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope! 🌱In this special promo, host Dwight Dunston invites you into a season focused on world-building and imagination, exploring the deep questions about the future we envision and how we can start living it today. This season is packed with inspiring conversations, reflections, and new features designed to expand your sense of justice, love, and peace.🎙️ Episode Highlights:Dr. Riyam Kafri Abu Laban shares a powerful and personal perspective from Ramallah, Palestine, reflecting on the struggles mothers face across the globe in times of violence.Manchán Magan from Ireland delves into the healing power of language and place, offering a glimpse into his deep connection with nature and spirit through gardening.Special guests like Alexx Temeña, Zenaida Peterson, and Steve Tamari bring fresh insights on spirituality, creativity, and justice, bridging the gap between faith and action.✨ What’s New in Season 5:Second Guests in each episode sharing special poems, reflections, or songs.Mini Episodes featuring exclusive content every two weeks.Join Dwight in Pendle Hill's Online Quaker Worship on the last Friday of each month for more connection and reflection.Don’t miss out! Subscribe now and step into a world of radical hope, where imagination meets action, and together, we create the future we want. New episodes drop every two weeks!#Podcast #WorldBuilding #RadicalHope #Imagination #Justice #Peace #Season5NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

In our final episode of Season 4, Valerie Brown, an author, Buddhist-Quaker Dharma teacher, and executive coach, discusses yielding to the realignment of grief, the relationship between self care and social justice, and how Quaker communities are being called to transformation in our current political moment.  Valerie Brown is an author, Buddhist-Quaker Dharma teacher in the lineage of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village tradition, Courage & Renewal facilitator, and executive coach specializing in leadership development and mindfulness practices with a focus on diversity, social equity, and inclusion. A former lawyer and lobbyist, Valerie transformed her high-pressure, twenty-year career into serving leaders and nonprofits to create trustworthy, authentic, compassionate, and connected workspaces. Valerie’s unique and extensive training blends social justice, evidenced-based mindfulness practices, leadership development, and spiritual growth. Of Afro-Cuban descent, Valerie is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and lives and tends a lively perennial home garden in New Hope, PA.To learn more about Valerie's work, visit https://valeriebrown.us/Order and read more about Valerie's newest book, Healing Our Way Home, here: https://pendlehill.org/product/healing-our-way-home-black-buddhist-teachings-on-ancestors-joy-and-liberation/NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Rabbi Mordechai Liebling draws on his decades-long experience in interfaith and interracial activism and organizing to explore the role of clergy in organizing and nonviolent direct action, the power of shared heartbreak across difference, and the current fight for a ceasefire in Gaza.  Rabbi Mordechai Liebling is the Senior Advisor for POWER Interfaith, the largest faith-based community organizing group in Pennsylvania. Prior to that he founded and directed for ten years the Social Justice Organizing Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Previously, he served as the executive vice president of Jewish Funds for Justice (now Bend the Arc); and was the executive director of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation for 12 years. He leads workshops on Race, Antisemitism and Christian hegemony; and on the Work That Reconnects developed by Joanna Macy.He was a co-founder of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights; currently he serves on the boards of Faith in Action (formerly PICO),  the Faith and Politics Institute and The Shalom Center. He is married to Lynne Iser, and they have five adult children. He answered the clergy call to come to Ferguson, Mo.; Standing Rock, N.D.; and Charlottesville, VA amid their confrontations. He is a member of Rabbis 4 Ceasefire.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Felix Rosado is an abolitionist and restorative justice practitioner committed to ending human caging in all its forms. When 'justice' has become synonymous with cops, courtrooms, and cages, how do we begin to envision new ways of truth-telling and reckoning with harm? In our fourth episode of Season Four, Felix and Dwight explore this question, the griefs and gratitudes of freedom, the spiritual groundings of the fight to abolish prisons, and what it means to be 'free-ish.' Felix Rosado escaped a death by incarceration sentence after 27 years via governor clemency in 2022. He is cofounder of Let’s Circle Up, a restorative justice (RJ) education project. He currently serves as Program Coordinator of Healing Futures, an RJ youth diversion program with the Youth Art & Self-empowerment Project (YASP) and adjunct professor of RJ at Chestnut Hill College. He also is a founding member of the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CABDI) and committed to ending human caging in all its forms.Felix will be a facilitator for Continuing Revolution 2024: Restorative Justice as Spiritual Practice, a hybrid conference for young adults (ages 18-35) interested in exploring the connections between their political, interpersonal, and spiritual lives. Join us June 7-10 at Pendle Hill outside Philadelphia, Beacon Hill Friends House in Boston, Friends Place in DC, or online. We hope you'll join us! Learn more and register at https://pendlehill.org/learn/ NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

In this current political moment of polarization and divisiveness, when and how do we commit to staying in fellowship with one another? How do we discern individual and institutional next steps with faithfulness and humility? In this conversation, Adria discusses the ways Jesus’s life and ministry grounds her work, the importance of approaching one another with compassion in disagreement, and her continuing discernment journeys around staying aligned with personal and organizational purpose.You can also watch Adria's Pendle Hill First Monday Lecture, "Embracing Spiritual Gifts," on Pendle Hill's YouTube channel.Adria Gulizia is an attorney, mediator, facilitator, and coach. Her concern for the spiritual formation of Friends of all ages has led her to serve in roles ranging from children’s religious education to Earlham School of Religion’s board of advisors. In collaboration with the School of the Spirit, she is currently exploring what it might look like to step into radical faithfulness across theological boundaries amid the twin temptations of anger and despair. Adria is a member of Chatham-Summit Meeting (NYYM) in Summit, N.J. To learn more about Adria's work, visit  https://shadowofbabylon.com/  NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Parker Palmer is an teacher, activist, and writer whose work explores issues in education, community, spirituality, and social change. He and Dwight explore vocation, aging, and the paradoxes of solitude and community, life and mortality, faithfulness and urgency: How do we embrace paradox to pursue that which is life-giving?Parker Palmer is a teacher, writer, and the founder and senior partner emeritus of the Center for Courage and Renewal, who works on issues in education, community, spirituality, and social change. He is the author of ten books, including Let your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, and most recently, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old. He holds a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and his work has been recognized with thirteen honorary doctorates. Parker Palmer first came to Pendle Hill as a resident student in the fall of 1974, an experience that stretched into an eleven year tenure as the Dean of Studies. His time here catalyzed his relationship with Quakerism and shaped his work, thought, and writings on pedagogy and spiritual communities. This work, and his ongoing contributions to Pendle Hill, continue to have an incredible influence on the study, work and worship here on Pendle Hill’s campus and beyond.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

In this opening episode of Season 4, Dwight and Francisco discuss grief, gratitude, staying grounded amidst uncertainty and polarization, and the guiding queries and themes of the season. 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. Francisco Burgos is the executive director at Pendle Hill and has facilitated spiritual retreats and lectio divina sessions for many audiences. Francisco was a De La Salle Christian Brother for almost ten years, serving in Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, and has been a Friend since 2004. He is a member of Harrisburg Friends Meeting and an attender of meetings including Monteverde Friends Meeting in Costa Rica and Adelphi Friends Meeting in Maryland.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Welcome to Season 4 of The Seed! Join us as we explore what spiritual alignment looks like in this moment of escalating social and political upheaval and violence: How do we cultivate discernment to stay the course and stay connected to our leadings? How are we being called to transform ourselves and our communities to break down systems of oppression and embody new ways of being?Guest voices in order of appearance: Adria Gulizia, Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, Felix Rosado, Valerie Brown, and Parker Palmer. NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

K. Melchor Quick Hall is a popular educator, writer, and researcher. In this final episode of Season 3, she and Dwight explore the importance of nurturing practices of creative play, what it means to honor legacies of liberation and care, and what freedom and hope look like in our lifetimes and beyond.Read the transcript of this episode.–K. Melchor Quick Hall, PhD is a popular educator, writer, and researcher. She is the author of Naming a Transnational Black Feminist Framework: Writing in Darkness, and co-editor, with Gwyn Kirk, of Mapping Gendered Ecologies: Engaging with and Beyond Ecowomanism and Ecofeminism. Advancing racial equity in education and research, she is Executive Co-Director, alongside Cheryl Jefferson Page, of the African American Education & Research Organization (AAERO) @ Melchor-Quick Meeting House (MQMH), an organization founded by her mother and first teacher, Paula Quick Hall. As part of the food sovereignty movement, Hall is also the Director of Education for Global Village Farms.Watch Melchor's June 2023 First Monday Lecture, "Reparations is to Justice as Art is to Freedom: Linking Healing and Creativity," on Pendle Hill's YouTube channel. NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

How do we begin to imagine futures not yet here? What can we do today to embody the liberation we want to see?Matthew Armstead (they/them), an experiential facilitator and performance artist, asks how, right now, we can embody the worlds we want to create. Here, Matthew grounds in the past, present, and future, delving into Nichelle Nichols’s role on Star Trek and a transformative phone call from Martin Luther King, Jr., the current climate crisis, and performance pieces that have transformed their sense of what it means to come home to ourselves. This interview was recorded on Pendle Hill’s campus. The bell you hear in the background during the episode is the bell inviting people to the dining hall for each meal.Read the transcript of this episode.–Matthew Armstead (they/them) first learned about Pendle Hill when studying at Swarthmore College, and years later returned to Pendle Hill to co-develop then teach Radical Faithfulness in Action. Matthew is the Director of Culture Work Studios, where they accompany small, multiracial organizations committed to social justice through change processes to be who they say they want to be, with compassion, creativity, and complexity. At Culture Work Studios, Matthew also makes performance experiences for audiences that are reclaiming power to embody the futures we want to create. At the heart, Matthew helps us practice being the change we want to see. To learn more about Matthew's work, visit cultureworkstudios.com.Watch Matthew's October 2023 First Monday Lecture, "Belonging in Unknown," on Pendle Hill's YouTube channel.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

How can we cultivate a relationship to communal silence? How can practices of silent worship allow us to build trust and open to the unknown?Ingrid Lakey, co-founder of Earth Quaker Action Team, talks with Dwight about her journey to a public-facing role in environmental activism, the power of collective action, and the ways silence allows us to attune to Spirit and embrace a multitude of truths. Read the transcript of this episode.–Ingrid Lakey has been a trainer and facilitator for 25 years, leading workshops on anti-racism, diversity, team-building, non-violent direct action, and conflict. Almost 14 years ago, after the birth of her child, she gave up a career in public radio to follow her leading to be a climate justice activist, becoming one of the founders of Earth Quaker Action Team, a grassroots organization building a just and sustainable economy through nonviolent direct action. She is a member of Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting and lives in West Philadelphia, four blocks from where she grew up.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

How do we create rituals to witness each other and our communities in transformative moments and cultivate a sense of belonging? What role does forgiveness play in our individual and communal spiritual practices? Autumn Brown is a writer, musician, facilitator, and organizer. Here, she and Dwight explore the power of choosing how we want to be witnessed, the vulnerability required to find and create community, and how forgiveness allows us the space to reclaim our senses of self.Read the transcript of this episode. –Autumn Brown is a writer, musician, and facilitator. She co-hosts the podcast How to Survive the End of the World, and supports liberation movements and workplace democracy as a worker-owner of the Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance (AORTA). To learn more about Autumn’s work, visit www.aorta.coop and www.iambrown.org. NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Season 3 is here! As we begin to explore the practices that enrich our connections to ourselves and to each other, Dwight and Francisco share what's been spiritually nurturing them, their relationships to community, and their understandings of radical hope.Read the transcript of this episode. –Dwight Dunston, host of The Seed, 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. His love of people and his belief that our stories and histories hold the key to our healing and wholeness has inspired him to design unique workshops, classes, and programs that support individuals to feel more rooted and heart-opened to themselves and to others.Francisco Burgos is the executive director of Pendle Hill. Francisco comes to Pendle Hill from the Center for Community Initiatives at the Monteverde Institute in Costa Rica. He was born in Santo Domingo, but identifies as an internationalist. Francisco was a poet, an educator, a father, and as a self described dreamer whose visions are grounded in reality.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Welcome to Season Three of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope. This summer, we're exploring the practices that enrich our connections to ourselves and to each other. How do we cultivate relationships in spiritual community? How do these relationships and practices support our work for liberation and justice and transform our sense of what is possible? NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

When systems of oppression are so entrenched, omnipresent, and internalized, how can we discover, remember, and recognize the truth of who we are? Is it possible to transform our deepest-rooted convictions about ourselves? The roots of our essential selves and the constraining narratives we’ve internalized can feel inextricable–for Niyonu Spann and her work as a facilitator, creator, and teacher, this question is central to the possibilities of integrity and wholeness. Niyonu and Dwight discuss the origins and leadings of the Beyond Diversity 101 workshops, witnessing the possibilities of radical love and wholeness beyond guilt/shame/blame cycles, and honoring the interconnectedness of our lives. Read the transcript of this episode.–Niyonu Spann is a facilitator, musician, and community leader with decades of experience inside and outside of Quaker Institutions, including time here at Pendle Hill as the Dean in the early 2000s. She designed the transformative workshop Beyond Diversity 101 which has been attended by hundreds of Friends from around the country. Niyonu is a prolific musician, and the founder and director of the group Tribe 1 which performed songs of peace and justice all over the US and Nicaragua. She has worked extensively in Chester, PA with Chester Eastside ministries and is currently in the process of opening a school called The Academy for Peace & Liberation Education. To learn more about Niyonu’s work, visit http://niyonuspann.com/Watch Niyonu's May 2023 First Monday Lecture, “Integrous Testifying: Body, Mind & Spirit,” on Pendle Hill's YouTube channel.–NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

How do we align our everyday decisions with our ideals to create the world we want to see?Anton breaks down the distinction between morality and integrity, discussing the mystery, fear, and unknowns that arise when our values don’t align with “dominant arbiters of morality.” Drawing on learnings from Walter Brueggemann, Thich Nhat Hanh, and his own work in community with asylum seekers at Casa Alterna, Anton shares his understandings of prophetic imagination, experimentation in loving community, and the importance of self-compassion when striving to live a life of integrity. –Anton Flores-Maisonet is the founding director of Casa Alterna, a ministry offering hospitality, accompaniment, and assistance to individuals and families from over 50 countries seeking asylum in the United States. Anton also serves as the Friend-in-Residence at the Atlanta Friends Meeting and is a spiritual director, writer, speaker, husband, and father.To learn more about Casa Alterna, visit https://casaalterna.org/ –Anton shared the following quote: “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”  Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination–Find the transcript for this episode here.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

What can people of faith offer to broader environmental and other social justice movements? Cherice’s work in ecotheology–a field of liberation theology centered around the relationship between religion and environment–seeks to support communication between communities focusing on theory, action, and reflection. Drawing on early Quaker history and her own ecospirituality, she examines how an insistence on individual integrity can leave us preoccupied with performative virtue, and how people of faith can move away from false charity toward an ethic of liberation. –Cherice Bock (she/her) is a Quaker from Oregon who combines advanced degrees in theology and environmental studies to teach, advocate, and organize with people of faith. Cherice leads Oregon Interfaith Power & Light and is an adjunct professor of ecotheology at Portland Seminary. She co-edited the book Quakers, Creation Care, and Sustainability, and she has a book forthcoming entitled, A Quaker Ecology: Meditations on the Future of Friends. To learn more about Cherice’s work, visit https://chericebock.com View Cherice’s August 2022 Pendle Hill First Monday lecture, “Friends & Sabbath in the Time of Climate Change,” here: https://youtu.be/k6tB3vqebxA–Cherice shares the following quotes: “May we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have any nourishment in these possessions or not.” - John Woolman“False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the ‘rejects of life,’ to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands—whether of individuals or entire peoples—need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.” - Paolo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed–Find a transcript for this episode here. NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

eppchez yo-sí yes, a Quaker playwright, inventor, and spiritual companion, offers ways to practice noticing patterns of faithfulness and patterns of oppression to begin moving through transformations of self and community. Using eir own experiences in reparations work and Quaker business settings, ey and Dwight detangle integrity and perfection, calling us  instead into processes of transmutation. Through an interactive audio experiment, eppchez invites us to look inward: What would it look like to move beyond cultures and cycles of domination? How can we use noticing practices in our communities to better align our actions, words, and values?Read the transcript of this episode.----eppchez yo-sí yes is a Quaker playwright, inventor, and spiritual companion living in Philadelphia. Eir work uses historical research combined with channeled wisdom to remember what our culture of domination has tried to erase. eppchez is one of many Friends working to implement a cultural shift toward active anti-racism among Quakers. Ey are called to earnestly and imperfectly model strategies to do reparations and build systems that make integrity and care more possible. To experience more of eppchez's work, visit  www.almasengine.comNEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Blanca Pacheco, co-director of New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, discusses the relationship between community care and self care, the power of laughter, and the need to elevate personal stories and wholeness in an immigration system that denies resources, rights, and humanity to people of color. Blanca shares the miracles and sacrifices of her own journey, and asks: how can we respect the integrity of ourselves amidst individualism, urgency, and unjust systems?Read the transcript of this episode.----Blanca Pacheco is a passionate community organizer and a single mother with over 15 years of experience organizing with immigrant communities in Philadelphia. She is currently the Co-Director of New Sanctuary Movement, an interfaith immigrant justice organization which she helped found. Throughout her career she has worked on successful campaigns such as stopping collaboration between Philadelphia Police and ICE, and won Sanctuary campaigns with families fighting their final deportation orders. She is currently one of the leaders in the state of Pennsylvania fighting for Drivers Licenses for All regardless of Immigration Status. Watch Blanca's March 2023 First Monday Lecture, "Building Sanctuary within to Build Sanctuary for Others," on Pendle Hill's YouTube channel.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Why a podcast season on the Quaker testimony of integrity? What makes it relevant now? Host Dwight Dunston and Pendle Hill executive director Francisco Burgos give an introduction of the Quaker testimony of integrity and offer their definitions and groundings. Francisco interviews Dwight about the testimony’s relevance to community and authenticity, Dwight’s experience recording The Seed’s second season, and what listeners can expect from upcoming episodes.Read the transcript of this episode.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. His love of people and his belief that our stories and histories hold the key to our healing and wholeness has inspired him to design unique workshops, classes, and programs that support individuals to feel more rooted and heart-opened to themselves and to others.Francisco Burgos is the executive director of Pendle Hill. Francisco comes to Pendle Hill from the Center for Community Initiatives at the Monteverde Institute in Costa Rica. He was born in Santo Domingo, but identifies as an internationalist. Francisco was a poet, an educator, a father, and as a self described dreamer whose visions are grounded in reality.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Welcome to Season Two of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope. This season, we're exploring the Quaker testimony of Integrity: What does it look like to meaningfully live out our deepest spiritual truths with authenticity and grace? NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

“My life’s work is really finding ways to remind people of, and validate, what they already know.” Ricardo Levins Morales thinks of his art as a medicinal practice, dedicated to treating both our cultural immediate diagnoses and the underlying inflammations, helping people to see their realities with more clarity. “The underlying inflammation in our society is hopelessness, despair, and disappointment,” but drawing on the cycles of the natural world, Ricardo reminds us of our places in the deep liberatory cycles of the world, and how awareness of these timelines is a necessary ingredient for hope. If despair shuts down our ability to take in information, hope is the practice of awareness of our current condition and what’s happening beyond our field of vision, bringing us to a greater sense of agency, power, and mutual responsibility to each other and the earth. Using this as a frame, Ricardo and Dwight grapple with what it would mean to embrace the cycles and focus on changing the soil in order to plant the seeds of new worlds.–Ricardo Levins Morales is an artist and organizer based in Minneapolis. He considers his art political medicine to support individual and collective healing from the injuries and ongoing reality of oppression. He was born into the anti-colonial movement in Puerto Rico and was drawn into activism in Chicago when his family moved there in 1967. This began with the Black Panther Defense Committee and has included organizing for labor, racial justice, and environmental struggles.Learn more about Ricardo’s work by visiting https://www.rlmartstudio.com/ View Ricardo’s June 2020 Pendle Hill First Monday lecture, “Planting in an Earthquake,” here: https://youtu.be/DWqBIcwxsTk –The Seed asks guests to share a quote or text that has been transformational to them. Ricardo shared the following quote from Amilcar Cabral’s essay “Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories”: “Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.” –Find the transcript of this episode here.NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

How can we practice courage?  How do we build our “fear toolbox” and find our roles in social change work? In this episode, Eileen breaks down concrete steps for discernment around these questions. Her work as an environmental activist and spiritual writer has long focused on building effective movements that are grounded in love and harness people’s power. Here, she and Dwight break down the turning points and learnings over her career that have transformed her thinking about the relationships between love, power and justice, and about the illusion of separation.–Eileen Flanagan has served as both clerk and campaign director of Earth Quaker Action Team, which uses nonviolent direct action to pressure corporations contributing to climate change. She has also been a Pendle Hill Resident Teacher, a university lecturer on racism, and Trainings Coordinator for Choose Democracy, which trained 10,000 people in nonviolent strategies to prevent a coup in the lead up to the 2020 election. Her online courses on effective and spiritually grounded activism have engaged people around the world. The award-winning author of three books, she tells the story of her leading to work on climate justice inRenewable: One Woman’s Search for Simplicity, Faithfulness, and Hope. Read more about Eileen's work at eileenflanagan.com.Listen to Eileen’s November 2020 First Monday Lecture, “What Happens Wednesday? Preparing Ourselves for the Work Ahead” here. Register for Eileen’s upcoming Pendle Hill workshop, Making Our Activism More Effective through Nonviolent Direct Action, here.–The Seed asks guests to share a quote or text that has been transformational for them. Eileen shared the following quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech “Where Do We Go From Here?”:“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best … is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power, correcting everythingNEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Cai Quirk frames their art and their work expanding gender narratives as a collaboration between themself, the natural world, and Spirit. Despite the continued erasure of queer stories, Cai reminds us that the natural world keeps these stories of the “fluidity and diversity of ourselves…for us to be able to relearn.” In their conversation with Dwight, Cai invites us into those processes of collaboration, expansion, and relearning.–Cai Quirk (they/them or ey/em) is a lifelong Quaker with passions for Witness, personal discernment, and diverse methods of spiritual deepening. With a gender that transcends binaries, Cai is practiced at deeply questioning societal expectations and norms and in shifting towards roots of individual and group integrity. Spiritual deepening, Witness, and integrity are expanded in Cai’s writing, photography, and music practices. Cai’s upcoming book of photography and stories, Transcendence: Queer Restoryation, connects themes of spirituality, mythology, and gender diversity, nature and storytelling. Learn more about Cai’s work here: https://caiquirk.com/Preorder Cai’s upcoming book, Transcendence: Queer Restoryation, here.Listen to Cai’s First Monday lecture, “Myths of Gender,” here.–The Seed asks guests to share a quote or text that has been transformational for them. Cai shared the following quote from Winona LaDuke: “When we start our stories at the moment of harm, we get limited, we lose imagination. What were our stories before the harm? We can reimagine our pasts, imagine the pieces, the stories that weren’t handed down.”–Find the transcript for this episode here. NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/----The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people. Help us to grow The Seed!Share your thoughts with us through our listener survey. Follow us @PendleHillUSA on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released.  To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast. Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.