Workshops Open to All

Help! What? Thanks! Whoops! Wow! Perhaps for many of us, prayer is a yearning that pulls at our hearts like the call of a child in the night or the pealing of bells on a Sunday morning, something that reveals to us our human condition. How do we pray?

Do you have experiences and insights to share? Do stories call upon you to tell them? We will explore story presentation, train our listening ear to help each other develop stories, and connect storytelling with our faith and practice. We will have opportunities for telling stories in the workshop and elsewhere.

This workshop will transform the way people view conflict in daily life. Using the LARA method participants will develop their skills to create a space for those in conflict to develop their own solutions and to grow in their ability to act with love toward each other.

When God calls us into discipleship, God wants all of us, body, mind, soul. “It is an overwhelming experience to fall into the hands of the living God … to be, without warning, wholly uprooted…” (Thomas Kelley). Let’s explore together what it means to be faithful and courageous disciples of the living God.

Participants will deepen their worship experience through singing with and listening to others. We will sing short chants (the text of which may or may not be explicitly Christian or Universalist) as many times as we feel moved to -- some Friends may add harmonies. No musical training is required.

Join an ongoing conversation with these two experienced clerks. The workshop will examine the roots of rightly ordered clerking: Worship, Process, Authority, and Leadership. Participants will consider clerking as a spiritual discipline, and examine the great truth that listening in the Light means giving up being right.

How are we to live in a way that nourishes deep intimacy with our inward faith and right relationship with our outward world? Can we learn to share Nature’s abundance equitably and non-destructively with all beings? What is a joyful, spiritually fulfilling response to this transformative crisis of our times?

In worship, we accept God’s invitation to pause and be gathered in the Spirit. There we are held, we are searched, we are known. In holy Friendship with the Eternal and with each other, we find our joy, our peace, our wholeness. We will gather in worship each morning during workshop time.

Each day, we will learn one or two phrases from the Lord's Prayer in the Aramaic in which Jesus taught it. We will then learn to sing and dance each phrase, embodying the way Jesus taught us to pray. Requires purchase of Prayers of the Cosmos (Douglas-Klotz).

Ecology as spiritual practice lessens the boundaries between the perceived separate self, the Creator and the earth. We will acknowledge the Presence throughout Creation during experiential exercises, worship-sharing and small groups emphasizing forgiveness and affirmation. With practice, we’ll re-awaken prophetic justice, yielding a fierce desire for survival seasoned by love.

For 175 years, Elias Hicks’ image has been distorted. Using excerpts from the newly published "Journal of Elias Hicks", along with selections from his letters and other writings, we will examine the faith of this complicated, traditionalist, quietist, yet rationalist Quaker and how he helped shape the Society of Friends.

Hundreds of Friends are reading Fit for Freedom. We will look at the reality behind the myth of widespread Quaker involvement in abolition, the Underground Railroad, and Civil Rights to ground our efforts against the underlying racism in our society. The goal: reflect on the truth of our past to illuminate our future.

We will focus on Friends who have helped to shape our understanding of liberal Quakerism, e.g., William Penn, Elias Hicks, Lucretia Mott, Rufus Jones, Elizabeth Watson, and Phil Gulley. We will look at such issues as continuing revelation; the testimonies; mysticism; and Biblical interpretation.

If you were accused of being a Quaker, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Using queries and real-life scenarios, we will examine how our lives “speak” today and how Friends' testimonies may define what we do and who we are.

Prepare to behold, as our digital photographic journey together of poetry, Taize style chant, and worship, inspires our ways of being, seeing and doing. Gain confident knowledge of the digital camera.

Do we find in Jesus an upholder of “Sabbath economics”— a prophetic voice calling us to right sharing and covenant renewal— or a Wisdom figure with a message of personal transformation? Can Jesus be both? What power does combining these traditions create in the historical Jesus? In us?

A participatory exploration of artistic inspiration as Spirit-led ministry. We will combine meeting for worship with musical improvisation, movement, poetry, visual art and other collaborative forms of expression. In worship-sharing, we will discuss how these alternative forms help us open to new, non-verbal experiences of the Divine.

We will focus on how we create spiritual lives and co-create with the Divine: the relationships, vocation and Friends Meetings that we desire in our lives. Will look ideas of: abundance vs scarcity, tuning into leadings and spiritual guidance, obstacles to faithfulness, and knowing and aligning with our spiritual purpose.

God is everywhere, not just in a meetinghouse or a college classroom. We will be seeking God in the flatlands around BGSU. Expect no hills and lots of bicycling. We will ride at least 10 miles, with some of us riding up to 40 miles.

Godly Play® and Faith & Play are Montessori-inspired approaches to teaching children the Bible and Quakerism respectively. Both require training and practice. This workshop, intentionally small in size, will provide what is needed in a nurturing, worshipful and wonder-filled environment. Participants will also attend one two- hour afternoon session.