Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

of the Religious Society of Friends

quakers

The Spring Term at Pendle Hill (2022)

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On Campus March 1 – May 10, 2022

Are you curious about your leadings in life?
Are you searching for meaning in your personal and communal journey?
Are you discerning how to embrace action with integrity and creativity?

The Spring Term is a ten-week resident student program based on the daily rhythm of worship, learning, and work that creates space for Spirit-led discernment, community, and guided study within the context of a spiritually-led Quaker community.

This resident study program provides an alternative and experiential adult education that aims to support the formation and renewal of the whole person. The simple framework of study, worship, and work in community offers participants a unique sanctuary in which to develop a deeper awareness of the Divine in daily life and of their own vocation in the world.

For more information or to register, visit:

https://pendlehill.org/events/the-spring-term-at-pendle-hill-2022/

Pendle Hill’s February Reading Group Hosted by Janaki Spickard Keeler

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6:30-8:00pm Eastern Time (US & Canada) via Zoom.

The focus of our February Reading Group is Marcelle Martin’s Invitation to a Deeper Communion (PHP #366). It is being co-sponsored by the PYM Extended Worship group, who are offering Friends the chance to experience extended worship in a hybrid meeting for worship hosted by Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting in Philadelphia. The hybrid extended worship will be from 2:30-5:30pm and the Reading Group will be online-only from 6:30-8:00pm – the Zoom link for both the extended worship and the Reading Group are the same.

Free and open to the public! Register below to reserve your spot.

For more information or to register, visit:
https://pendlehill.org/events/pendle-hills-reading-group-february-2022/

First Monday Lecture: Embodied Quakerism with Katy Hawkins

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An Online First Monday Lecture with Katy Hawkins
7:30pm – 9pm Eastern Time (US & Canada) via Zoom.

How might our spiritual lives deepen by integrating an awareness of the body? This lecture will be an invitation to explore the role of physiological experience in Quaker practices like centering, discernment, and contemplation.

Free to the public! Registration required.

For more information and to register, visit:

Embodied Quakerism

The Work That Reconnects: Discovering Strategies for Going Forth with Lynne Iser and Rabbi Mordechai Liebling

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A weekend with Lynne Iser and Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, facilitating a transformational group process based on the work of the environmental author, activist, Buddhist scholar, and systems theorist Joanna Macy, The Work that Reconnects is a transformational group process that has been offered thousands of times around the world. This workshop builds motivation, connection, solidarity, and vision – renewing our courage to act for the healing of our world.

Registration 4-6pm on the 28th; program ends with lunch on the 30th.
For more information, registration, or to apply for financial assistance visit:
https://pendlehill.org/events/the-work-that-reconnects-discovering-strategies-for-going-forth/

Candlelight Meeting for Worship with Care to the New Year via Zoom

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Free and open to the public!
Join Pendle Hill staff and community members online for our traditional candlelight meeting for worship with care to welcoming in the New Year. We will gather promptly at 11pm Eastern Time and worship together faithfully – and virtually – until the clock strikes midnight. Per tradition, staff in the Barn will be worshiping in the glow of candles.

For more information, visit:
https://pendlehill.org/events/candlelight-meeting-for-worship-2021/

Quaker Houses: Germantown’s Historic Johnson House

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The Johnson House is Philadelphia’s only documented, accessible, and intact Germantown stop on the Underground Railroad. It is open to the public as a place of historic importance. Johnson House was built in 1768 and owned by a family of Quaker abolitionists who worked with free and enslaved people to secure a safe passage to freedom for numerous African Americans.

[Read more…] about Quaker Houses: Germantown’s Historic Johnson House

Quakers in Education: Nitobe Inazo, Elizabeth Gray Vining, and Joseph Wharton

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This is the second in a series of articles about Quakers who’ve impacted the fields of education and contributed to global scientific, medical, political, or economic leadership. The first article was published on September 23 and covered Elise Goulding, Ezra Cornell, and Johns Hopkins.

Nitobe Inazo (1862-1933) was a Japanese Quaker who became the first Under Secretary General for the League of Nations. Nitobe was born into a samurai family on Honshu, the main island of Japan. While in college, he became a Christian and later a Friend. In 1884, He moved to the US for post-graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University. There he began attending Quaker meetings, telling friends, “I very much like their simplicity and earnestness.”

[Read more…] about Quakers in Education: Nitobe Inazo, Elizabeth Gray Vining, and Joseph Wharton

Quakers in Education: Elise M. Boulding, Ezra Cornell, and Johns Hopkins

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Quaker education has always been grounded in basic principles of the Religious Society of Friends. Each child has that of God within, and Friends’ education is centered in truth, practical learning, scientific inquiry, simplicity, and concern for civic society.

Quakers have a long history of questioning power and engaging in social action for human rights and peace. Today, many Quaker schools or Quaker affiliated institutions of higher education frame their learning environments with social or civic responsibilities and define community expectations through the lens of Friends’ values while still honoring the individual.

As the United States grew from colony to nation, the Quakers advocated for and delivered universal pubic education in Pennsylvania, built colleges, and created private Quaker secondary and elementary schools. The motto of the William Penn Charter School; “Good Instruction is Better than Riches” dates back to its founding in 1689 and still serves to describe Friends’ fundamental belief that knowledge outperforms wealth over time.

In the United States, Quakers were key to the founding of Haverford College (Pennsylvania), Guilford College (North Carolina,) Earlham College (Indiana), Swarthmore College (Pennsylvania), Johns Hopkins University (Maryland), Cornell University (New York), and the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania). All that does not mean that Quakers were perfect. As we see in the stories below, the were human and also strongly influenced by their own time and place.

[Read more…] about Quakers in Education: Elise M. Boulding, Ezra Cornell, and Johns Hopkins

Quaker Nobel Prize Winners: Emily Greene Balch, Philip Noel-Baker, Joseph Taylor, William Vickrey

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The Nobel Prize was created through under Alfred Nobel’s November 1895 will. The bulk of Nobel’s fortune endowed a novel effort to award prizes in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace, and the inaugural award was made in 1901.

Friends throughout history have made significant contributions in the fields of science, medicine, peace, art, manufacturing and industry, and economics (to name a few). Some of these Quakers, like Henry Cadbury–who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Quaker relief work done through AFSC–are well known to Quakers today. [Read more…] about Quaker Nobel Prize Winners: Emily Greene Balch, Philip Noel-Baker, Joseph Taylor, William Vickrey