Practicing the Testimonies: Self and Society

Five 2-hour sessions: Monday 2/3 – Friday 2/7 (3-5pm Eastern / 12-2pm Pacific) We love our testimonies. We talk about them and teach them. We occasionally answer queries about them. But how often do we immerse ourselves in them? This is an opportunity to soak up that rich heritage of faithfulness and absorb all the…

Workshop Description

Five 2-hour sessions: Monday 2/3 – Friday 2/7 (3-5pm Eastern / 12-2pm Pacific)

We love our testimonies. We talk about them and teach them. We occasionally answer queries about them. But how often do we immerse ourselves in them? This is an opportunity to soak up that rich heritage of faithfulness and absorb all the possible lessons it holds, for our personal lives, our communities, our meetings, and the world around us.

Brought to you by Right Sharing of World Resources, this workshop centers the testimonies in our personal lives, then examines how they ripple into our communities and meetings, the social institutions in which we are embedded, and the wider world of which we are all a part.

We’ll also connect these testimonies to the practice of generosity, lovingkindness, and wisdom, which in Buddhist practice are the antidotes to the three poisons of greed, hate, and delusion. It’s not a stretch to suggest that those poisons have been institutionalized into the structures that govern our society. What would it look like if the Quaker testimonies were institutionalized?

Each day we will explore a different testimony—traditionally named as peace, equality, community, simplicity, and stewardship—with integrity woven into all of them. How do the testimonies manifest in our own lives, the communities we are a part of, and what can we do to better build them “into the bones” of our communities? Through worship sharing, discussion, and a mix of experiential activities to loosen up our imaginations, we will consider:

• What helps to illuminate the core of that day’s testimony, using quotes, stories,  and personal experiences.
• Where we are on solid ground with this testimony, where we know we have integrity.
• What more we want for ourselves personally, and what that might look like.
• How our lives speak to others with regard to this testimony, and how they could speak more clearly.
• The strengths of our meeting with regard to this testimony, and what might be a next step for the meeting community.
• How the core of this testimony is reflected in social institutions around us; ways that those values have been lost, compromised or distorted; and how the opposite of the testimonies seem to have been institutionalized in various ways.
• With Right Sharing of World Resources and a global perspective in mind, what allow us to connect across national/economic/ethnic/language/history lines with this testimony, what stands in the way, and what we need to do to connect more fully.

We will suggest advance reading from a selected Faith and Practice (TBD) to help ground participants in reflection on application of the testimonies. For each day we will invite everyone to bring a quote or reading or story about their relationship to that day’s testimony. We have no additional suggestions for what to bring to the workshop and anticipate no additional costs.

Leader Experience

Nathan has facilitated experiential workshops on conflict transformation through the Alternatives to Violence Project for almost ten years, in-person and online, in prisons and in the outside community, with older and younger folks. He is also trained in facilitating Kingian Nonviolence workshops (facilitating this inside prison only). Through his work at Right Sharing of World Resources, he facilitates various kinds of workshops online and in-person. At the 2024 Gathering, Nathan facilitated a short workshop in the Quaker Earthcare Witness Earthcare Center. In addition to these and other workshops, Nathan is currently co-facilitating monthly Death Cafes, conversations around death and dying, where he lives in Iowa City.

Pamela has been facilitating experiential workshops of various kinds for decades. She has led morning workshops at the Gathering on understanding economics and on building our muscles for peace, justice and an earth restored. She has worked with Friends Peace Teams to expand their Alternatives to Violence workshops to include trauma healing perspectives and activities. In her paid work, she has created a variety of interactive workshops for childcare workers to explore their place in the early childhood education system and to build their leadership, strategy and advocacy skills. She has offered well-received workshops in her home meeting community on exploring gifts and leadings, spiritual friendships, considering our relationship to investments, and reflecting on money, community and economics.