The Spiritual Deepening Program offers eRetreats (online learning opportunities) on the following topics throughout the year. Check out the Events page to see the current scheduled of offerings, or join the Spiritual Deepening mailing list to receive announcements about program updates and opportunities to register for upcoming eRetreats.
Silence & Light
The Silence & Light eRetreat invites you to explore and practice the experience of Quaker worship and silent waiting for an inward encounter with Inner Teacher who leads, guides, and transforms us every day.
Silence & Light for Quaker Newcomers
The Silence & Light for Quaker Newcomers eRetreat invites you to explore and practice the experience of Quaker worship and silent waiting, for an inward encounter with Inner Teacher who leads, guides, and transforms us every day. This session is offered for people who are curious about Quakers or new to Quakerism and will explore the basics of Quaker theology and practice.
Understanding & Healing White Supremacy
This eRetreat offers participants the opportunity to develop their understanding of what racism, white supremacy, and white privilege are, and how they are embedded in our society, Quaker meetings, and lives. You will gain knowledge of historical and current realities of racial oppression in the United States and explore how Quaker faith and practice and provide grounding, tools, and fire for our work against racial injustice. You will explore how Spirit is calling you to action for racial justice while gaining tools for identifying and disrupting racism, white privilege, and white supremacy.
Weaving a Wider Welcome
Do our meetings truly reflect all the faces of God among our members and attenders? FGC has heard from many of you that the answer to that question is often no. We have heard that many meetings wonder why their newcomers stop coming after a few visits– especially LGBTQ folks, families with young children and People of Color. In this eRetreat, we will explore how newcomers experience welcome, mistakes meetings make with newcomers, and what approaches to welcoming have worked in FGC meetings.
In the Weaving a Wider Welcome eRetreat, you will learn:
- Why people don’t come back and why people choose to engage.
- Ways meetings can shift their culture to become more newcomer-friendly
- Effective ways to better reach newcomers, with a special focus on seekers of Color, LGBTQ folks, and families with young children. Spoiler alert: what is enriching for newcomers also benefits longtimers!
Living into Wholeness: Quaker Commitment to Honoring that of God in Everyone
The Living Into Wholeness eRetreat invites you to explore and practice what it means to live into Beloved Community, the ways we are called to recognize patterns of marginalization and exclusion and to act toward justice, and tools for transforming and vitalizing our meetings and communities. This eRetreat has been offered in the past under the name “Beloved Community.”
A Quaker Way of Living with Dying
The A Quaker Way of Living with Dying eRetreat invites you to explore and practice the spirituality of death. Growing old, even when that means facing physical or other changes, can help us focus on what is essential. This eRetreat was previously offered with the title Aging, Death, and Dying.
Building a Meaningful and Connected Life
The Building a Meaningful and Connected Life eRetreat invites you to explore and practice the spirituality of meaning-making, resiliency, renewal, and life transitions. Rather than focusing on death and dying, this eRetreat explores the spiritual gifts of aging across the lifespan.
Becoming Patterns & Examples
This topic explores how Quakers put faith into practice. We will look at how our experience in worship leads us to a shared commitment of living our beliefs through our witness in the world. Friends work to create a world not as it is, but as it should be. This is often referred to as Quaker testimony.
Over four weeks, participants will:
- Explore the testimonies of early Friends and test them against their own inner promptings.
- Listen to hear what other promptings there may be for new and modern-day revelations/testimonies.
- Explore and engage in daily disciplines to create the inward space for more light to be generated.
- Come to understand Friends’ view of social action as prompted by a transformation that reveals the Inward Spirit as the source of all action.