Journey Inward, Journey Outward: The Genius of Pendle Hill

This program is an elective of the Pendle Hill Spring Term resident student program. Admitted Spring Term students will be automatically given the option to participate. Participants not enrolled in The Spring Term are invited to register as commuters, and are also invited to book a sojourn at Pendle Hill to live on campus for any or all of the course.

If you are seeking funds or alternate payment options to participate in this program, please wait to register and first complete our Financial Assistance Application.

If you would like to join us for dinner before any of the sessions, please sign up at least 24 business hours in advance.

“Genius is something we already possess… (it) is both a specific gift and a possibility that has not yet occurred: a conversation to be followed, deepened, understood, and celebrated.” —David Whyte

For more than 90 years, activists and artists, prophets and poets, and seekers and singers have come to Pendle Hill to find renewal, gifts, and new possibilities. What gifts are you seeking to deepen, and what possibilities are you seeking to follow? What life transitions and questions of vocation are you facing? What growing edge might be emerging?

We will be exploring these and other questions in the company of fellow seekers, grounded in the Circle of Trust® approach developed by Quaker writer Parker Palmer and the Center of Courage and Renewal®. We will create a brave and trustworthy space where participants support one another in listening to the voice of the soul. We will use poetry, story, music, and art, attend to the beauty of natural world, listen to our own inner teacher, and gather in small and large group settings to “hear one another into speech.”

Experience the genius of Pendle Hill as we co-create a community that can nurture, inspire, and support our journeys and help us to discover what we can give to “this beautiful and needful Earth” (Clarissa Pinkola Estes).

Leader

John Baird has served as clerk of two Friends meetings, head of two Friends schools, a board member at Pendle Hill and the Friends Council on Education, a religion and a biology teacher, and a Friend in Residence at Pendle Hill and Woodbrooke Study Centre. He has been prepared as a facilitator by the Center for Courage & Renewal and has led retreats and workshops for schools, meetings, conference centers, and churches. He loves working collaboratively to create space for listening to one another in such a way that we can hear our Inner Teacher, discover our gifts, and support and encourage each other in bringing them into the world. John is a member of Durham (NC) Monthly Meeting. He and his wife are the parents of three grown children.

Travel directions to Pendle Hill. Please make sure to review our health and safety expectations at https://pendlehill.org/stay/covid-19-information/.