Radical Faithfulness in Action
Due to COVID-19, this program has been transformed into an online series of eight webinars, “Tools for Navigating, Embracing, and Transforming Chaos.” The dates of these webinars are as follows:
April 29, May 13, May 27, June 10, June 24, July 8, July 22, and August 5, 2020.
For more information about Pendle Hill’s emerging online programs, please contact Lina Blount at 610-566-4507, ext. 122 or lblount@pendlehill.org.
Communities are increasingly faced with chaos and uncertainty, which physiologically elicit the trauma reactions of fight, flight, fawn, or freeze. To create peace with justice in the world, changemakers need a connection to peace internally. That journey asks participants to notice their own reactions, and from there move toward new choices. For example, a climate activist can notice her pattern to organize until she burns out and see how she does this because of her fear for the future of the earth. Then she can take time to grieve for our planet and find new ground to support her activism.
Are you already engaged in organizing for social justice? Does your spiritual life guide and sustain your action in the world? Are you looking to deepen your interconnection, community, and spiritual practices that keep you grounded in your work? Are you called toward action in what Martin Luther King Jr called the “fierce urgency of now”? Radical Faithfulness in Action may be for you.
Radical Faithfulness supports those who are experienced in the work of social change and seek spiritual resources, as well as those embedded in a community and seeking ways to live their values more fully with and in their community. With the encouragement of trainers, a cohort, and the Pendle Hill community, participants build spiritual practices to better serve or challenge their communities.
The program curriculum challenges colonial frameworks by embracing the power and wisdom inherent in participants. Through the experiential pedagogy, as a participant in this program, you will strengthen your capacity to:
➢ listen for Spirit/God/Divine to illuminate pathways that empower you and your communities;
➢ discern and follow where Spirit calls you to action with humility, connection, and power; and
➢ steward prophetic action and ministry for justice in the world.
Building a sense of personal power allows participants to tap into spiritual resources that stretch beyond the individual level. A strong connection with the divine can free us from the cycle of reacting to events to enable us to make mindful and intentional choices. Radical Faithfulness develops seekers and changemakers who can track themselves, their communities, and their surroundings, and thus support resilient strategies, campaigns, and communities.
Between the three campus residencies, the one-hour webinars will connect residency themes to participant’s goals and offer new lessons.
Faculty
Matthew Armstead directs Culture Work Studios – a collaboration hub for strategy development, experiential training, and performance events. She has recently trained Black Lives Matter activists, B Lab executives, Amnesty International USA staff, Canadian Labor Council organizers, Unitarian Universalist ministers, United Nations advocates from the Sexual Rights Initiative, and many others. Matthew has organized for environmental justice, racial justice, LGBTQ liberation, and accountability among masculine-identified people. She serves as faculty convener for Radical Faithfulness in Action – program supporting activists to tap into the divine, follow their calling, and change the world. She is also a core trainer with Training for Change – a global grassroots activist training organization. Matthew weaves together community organizing, activist training, and physical theatre to create performances that engage audiences as active participants. Matthew has a M.F.A. with Pig Iron Theatre Company, and has a B.A. in Theater and Women’s Studies from Swarthmore College.
Erva Baden is a contemporary shaman who weaves together healing modalities with compassion and humor to journey with clients committed to their own deep transformation and healing. She is a Reiki Master and has more than 25 years of experience in facilitating the deep emotional process and release work nationally and internationally in men’s, women’s, and mixed-gender circles. She has studied energy work, chakra healing, and core shamanic techniques, as well as trauma recovery and the intergenerational effects of trauma.
Lina Blount (faculty apprentice) is an organizer, trainer, and nonviolent action strategist and has been working on environmental justice campaigns in the Philadelphia area for ten years. Lina currently works as the Education Coordinator for Pendle Hill and is the co-clerk of the Earth Quaker Action Team board, which she has served since 2013. Lina has also worked with the Divestment Student Network and spent two years as canvasser and anti-fracking organizer in Pennsylvania.
Financial aid may be available. If you are seeking funds to participate in this program, click to review and complete our Financial Assistance Application and a Pendle Hill staff member will follow-up with you shortly. Thank you for your interest.
Travel directions to Pendle Hill. Click to view the flyer. For more information, please contact Lina Blount at 610-566-4507, ext. 122 or lblount@pendlehill.org.
