Creating the Conditions for Belonging with Autumn Brown

Welcome to Season 4 of The Seed! Join us as we explore what spiritual alignment looks like in this moment of escalating social and political upheaval and violence: How do we cultivate discernment to stay the course and stay connected to our leadings? How are we being called to transform ourselves and our communities to break down systems of oppression and embody new ways of being?

Guest voices in order of appearance: Adria Gulizia, Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, Felix Rosado, Valerie Brown, and Parker Palmer. 

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The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center, open to all, for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people.

Follow us @pendlehillseed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released. To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

K. Melchor Quick Hall is a popular educator, writer, and researcher. In this final episode of Season 3, she and Dwight explore the importance of nurturing practices of creative play, what it means to honor legacies of liberation and care, and what freedom and hope look like in our lifetimes and beyond.

Read the transcript of this episode.

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K. Melchor Quick Hall, PhD is a popular educator, writer, and researcher. She is the author of Naming a Transnational Black Feminist Framework: Writing in Darkness, and co-editor, with Gwyn Kirk, of Mapping Gendered Ecologies: Engaging with and Beyond Ecowomanism and Ecofeminism. Advancing racial equity in education and research, she is Executive Co-Director, alongside Cheryl Jefferson Page, of the African American Education & Research Organization (AAERO) @ Melchor-Quick Meeting House (MQMH), an organization founded by her mother and first teacher, Paula Quick Hall. As part of the food sovereignty movement, Hall is also the Director of Education for Global Village Farms.

Watch Melchor's June 2023 First Monday Lecture, "Reparations is to Justice as Art is to Freedom: Linking Healing and Creativity," on Pendle Hill's YouTube channel. 

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The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center, open to all, for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people.

Follow us @pendlehillseed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released. To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

How do we begin to imagine futures not yet here? What can we do today to embody the liberation we want to see?

Matthew Armstead (they/them), an experiential facilitator and performance artist, asks how, right now, we can embody the worlds we want to create. Here, Matthew grounds in the past, present, and future, delving into Nichelle Nichols’s role on Star Trek and a transformative phone call from Martin Luther King, Jr., the current climate crisis, and performance pieces that have transformed their sense of what it means to come home to ourselves. 

This interview was recorded on Pendle Hill’s campus. The bell you hear in the background during the episode is the bell inviting people to the dining hall for each meal.

Read the transcript of this episode.

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Matthew Armstead (they/them) first learned about Pendle Hill when studying at Swarthmore College, and years later returned to Pendle Hill to co-develop then teach Radical Faithfulness in Action. Matthew is the Director of Culture Work Studios, where they accompany small, multiracial organizations committed to social justice through change processes to be who they say they want to be, with compassion, creativity, and complexity. At Culture Work Studios, Matthew also makes performance experiences for audiences that are reclaiming power to embody the futures we want to create. At the heart, Matthew helps us practice being the change we want to see. To learn more about Matthew's work, visit cultureworkstudios.com.

Watch Matthew's October 2023 First Monday Lecture, "Belonging in Unknown," on Pendle Hill's YouTube channel.

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The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center, open to all, for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people.

Follow us @pendlehillseed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released. To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

How can we cultivate a relationship to communal silence? How can practices of silent worship allow us to build trust and open to the unknown?

Ingrid Lakey, co-founder of Earth Quaker Action Team, talks with Dwight about her journey to a public-facing role in environmental activism, the power of collective action, and the ways silence allows us to attune to Spirit and embrace a multitude of truths.

Read the transcript of this episode.

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Ingrid Lakey has been a trainer and facilitator for 25 years, leading workshops on anti-racism, diversity, team-building, non-violent direct action, and conflict. Almost 14 years ago, after the birth of her child, she gave up a career in public radio to follow her leading to be a climate justice activist, becoming one of the founders of Earth Quaker Action Team, a grassroots organization building a just and sustainable economy through nonviolent direct action. She is a member of Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting and lives in West Philadelphia, four blocks from where she grew up.

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The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center, open to all, for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people.

Follow us @pendlehillseed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released. To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

How do we create rituals to witness each other and our communities in transformative moments and cultivate a sense of belonging? What role does forgiveness play in our individual and communal spiritual practices? 

Autumn Brown is a writer, musician, facilitator, and organizer. Here, she and Dwight explore the power of choosing how we want to be witnessed, the vulnerability required to find and create community, and how forgiveness allows us the space to reclaim our senses of self.

Read the transcript of this episode.

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Autumn Brown is a writer, musician, and facilitator. She co-hosts the podcast How to Survive the End of the World, and supports liberation movements and workplace democracy as a worker-owner of the Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance (AORTA). To learn more about Autumn’s work, visit www.aorta.coop and www.iambrown.org. 

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The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center, open to all, for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people.

Follow us @pendlehillseed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released. To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Season 3 is here! As we begin to explore the practices that enrich our connections to ourselves and to each other, Dwight and Francisco share what's been spiritually nurturing them, their relationships to community, and their understandings of radical hope.

Read the transcript of this episode.

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Dwight Dunston, host of The Seed, is a West Philly-based facilitator, hip-hop artist, educator, and activist who has brought his creativity, care, and compassion to schools, community centers, retirement homes, festivals, and stadiums all over the country and internationally. His love of people and his belief that our stories and histories hold the key to our healing and wholeness has inspired him to design unique workshops, classes, and programs that support individuals to feel more rooted and heart-opened to themselves and to others.

Francisco Burgos is the executive director of Pendle Hill. Francisco comes to Pendle Hill from the Center for Community Initiatives at the Monteverde Institute in Costa Rica. He was born in Santo Domingo, but identifies as an internationalist. Francisco was a poet, an educator, a father, and as a self described dreamer whose visions are grounded in reality.

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The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center, open to all, for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people.

Follow us @pendlehillseed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released. To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Welcome to Season Three of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope. 

This summer, we're exploring the practices that enrich our connections to ourselves and to each other. How do we cultivate relationships in spiritual community? How do these relationships and practices support our work for liberation and justice and transform our sense of what is possible? 

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The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center, open to all, for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people.

Follow us @pendlehillseed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released. To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

When systems of oppression are so entrenched, omnipresent, and internalized, how can we discover, remember, and recognize the truth of who we are? 

Is it possible to transform our deepest-rooted convictions about ourselves? The roots of our essential selves and the constraining narratives we’ve internalized can feel inextricable–for Niyonu Spann and her work as a facilitator, creator, and teacher, this question is central to the possibilities of integrity and wholeness. Niyonu and Dwight discuss the origins and leadings of the Beyond Diversity 101 workshops, witnessing the possibilities of radical love and wholeness beyond guilt/shame/blame cycles, and honoring the interconnectedness of our lives.

Read the transcript of this episode.

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Niyonu Spann is a facilitator, musician, and community leader with decades of experience inside and outside of Quaker Institutions, including time here at Pendle Hill as the Dean in the early 2000s. She designed the transformative workshop Beyond Diversity 101 which has been attended by hundreds of Friends from around the country. Niyonu is a prolific musician, and the founder and director of the group Tribe 1 which performed songs of peace and justice all over the US and Nicaragua. She has worked extensively in Chester, PA with Chester Eastside ministries and is currently in the process of opening a school called The Academy for Peace & Liberation Education. To learn more about Niyonu’s work, visit http://niyonuspann.com/

Watch Niyonu's May 2023 First Monday Lecture, “Integrous Testifying: Body, Mind & Spirit,” on Pendle Hill's YouTube channel.

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The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center, open to all, for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people.

Follow us @pendlehillseed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released. To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

How do we align our everyday decisions with our ideals to create the world we want to see?

Anton breaks down the distinction between morality and integrity, discussing the mystery, fear, and unknowns that arise when our values don’t align with “dominant arbiters of morality.” Drawing on learnings from Walter Brueggemann, Thich Nhat Hanh, and his own work in community with asylum seekers at Casa Alterna, Anton shares his understandings of prophetic imagination, experimentation in loving community, and the importance of self-compassion when striving to live a life of integrity.

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Anton Flores-Maisonet is the founding director of Casa Alterna, a ministry offering hospitality, accompaniment, and assistance to individuals and families from over 50 countries seeking asylum in the United States. Anton also serves as the Friend-in-Residence at the Atlanta Friends Meeting and is a spiritual director, writer, speaker, husband, and father.

To learn more about Casa Alterna, visit https://casaalterna.org/

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Anton shared the following quote: 

“The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”  Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

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Find the transcript for this episode here.

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The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center, open to all, for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people.

Follow us @pendlehillseed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released. To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

What can people of faith offer to broader environmental and other social justice movements? 

Cherice’s work in ecotheology–a field of liberation theology centered around the relationship between religion and environment–seeks to support communication between communities focusing on theory, action, and reflection. Drawing on early Quaker history and her own ecospirituality, she examines how an insistence on individual integrity can leave us preoccupied with performative virtue, and how people of faith can move away from false charity toward an ethic of liberation. 

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Cherice Bock (she/her) is a Quaker from Oregon who combines advanced degrees in theology and environmental studies to teach, advocate, and organize with people of faith. Cherice leads Oregon Interfaith Power & Light and is an adjunct professor of ecotheology at Portland Seminary. She co-edited the book Quakers, Creation Care, and Sustainability, and she has a book forthcoming entitled, A Quaker Ecology: Meditations on the Future of Friends. 

To learn more about Cherice’s work, visit https://chericebock.com 

View Cherice’s August 2022 Pendle Hill First Monday lecture, “Friends & Sabbath in the Time of Climate Change,” here: https://youtu.be/k6tB3vqebxA

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Cherice shares the following quotes: 

“May we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have any nourishment in these possessions or not.” - John Woolman

“False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the ‘rejects of life,’ to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands—whether of individuals or entire peoples—need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.” - Paolo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

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Find a transcript for this episode here. 

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The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center, open to all, for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people.

Follow us @pendlehillseed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released. To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.