September/October 2014

Dear Friend,

What an inspiring time it is to worship, work, and study at Pendle Hill.

The leaves are beginning to change and all around the campus we rake some of the fallen ones each day. Many of our meals are made with a variety of root vegetables and squashes. The air is temperate but with hints of cool days to come. A few people in morning Worship have begun to wrap shawls over shoulders or blankets across laps.

Pendle Hill’s atmosphere of simple seeking and caring, and developing programs to suit the times, are evident in our community conversations. Our programs teach, train, encourage, and prepare people (individuals and organizations) to live into their own visions with inspiration and new connections. In addition to our workshops, short courses, monthly lectures, and extended residential study opportunities, we have added some additional programs for 2015:

• Ending Mass Incarceration and the New Jim Crow. A Pendle Hill conference. April 29–May 3.
• Young Adult Friends Conference, Continuing Revolution: Equality. June 5–10.
• Conflict Transformation Institute, through which people will gain experience with and certification in a variety of tools and tactics for working well with conflict and allowing experiences of conflict to be gifts rather than insurmountable challenges in our lives. July 15–August 9.
• Lastly, from April through August, we will be running an exciting new certificate program in social change as an expression of our spiritual lives entitled Answering the Call to Radical Faithfulness. Are you feeling called to engage in faith-based work to heal and repair the world? Would you like to be in an extended learning community to test your spiritual leadings and equip yourself to live into your calling with grace and effectiveness? Our new training program can help you make the transition from being “at the threshold” to “prepared, empowered, and making a meaningful difference” for the cause of peace and social justice. Students will learn to help stop violence and suffering and explore tools for building new ways of living in which there is less cause for violence and suffering. In a program environment centered in radical faithfulness, students will discover their own gifts and draw on the insight, abilities, and experience of more than a dozen teachers, movement leaders, and religious elders. Between April and August 2015, this intensive program includes four short residencies on campus, rigorous online learning between residencies, individual and group work, theoretical and empirical study of nonviolence, and a practicum designed for experimentation and impact. Applications are welcome from individuals and representatives of organizations.

Pendle Hill pamphlets continue to be a vital source of outreach to Quakers and others. Of our 429 total pamphlets, we have digitized over one hundred of them and they are now available for e-readers. We are increasing the number of pamphlets published each year from five to six, effective with our October pamphlet. These can now be purchased on our website and through other online sellers, making our pamphlets accessible to people around the world every day.

As we continue to listen for how we are called and how we can best live into our mission to be “a Quaker center, welcoming all, for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community,” we are strengthened because we hear often from our wider community. This community includes all (of you) who have been involved with us through the years and it grows by hundreds each year. Please write to us, or come visit, and let us know what is on your heart and mind – that we might hold it with you.

In our 84th year, we are in a growing and grateful state. We want to share what we have with you – clear vision, daily worship, extended study opportunities, new programs, improved facilities, sojourning, farm-to-table meals, more pamphlets, and people from a variety of backgrounds on campus each year in increasing numbers. We hope that you will soon come be a part of the people, programs, and place of Pendle Hill. As always, arrive just as you are, and be with us a while in Friendship.

Yours in Peace,

Jennifer Karsten
Executive Director