Participating in God's Power:

Tending the Root of Our Worship and Witness

"I have seen the Totality, received not in essence, but by participation. When you light a flame from a flame, it is the same flame that you receive."

St. Symeon the New Theologian, 949-1022

About

Participating in God’s Power is a year-long program seeking to take its participants deep into the root which gives life and power to both our worship and our work in the world, enriching and extending both. It is an invitation into an all-encompassing relationship with God, into the Flow of love that is the Divine.

Participants, teachers and elders will seek to enter into the Beloved Community together as we listen each other into our wholeness in ongoing small groups, through experiential spiritual learning, worship, sharing our leadings, and offering each other support and accountability.

We will experiment with how to live lives better connected to the Source, learning to give ourselves over to it, be guided by it, and be empowered through it.

This Program is for you if:

You yearn for a deeper and more consistent connection to the Divine Source.
You are seeking deeper Life in the Spirit and clearer direction in your witness.
You are feeling burned out, dry, or brittle, after following a leading for witness.
You have had some experience of the Life and Power the Quaker tradition promises, and want more of it.
You have a satisfying spiritual life, and yet feel a disquieting sense that you are called to do more, yet do not have a sense of what that might be.
You seek unity of spirituality and action, grounded in Love.

While we envision this program being particularly appropriate for Quakers who yearn for a fuller experience of that Life and Power promised by our tradition, this program is highly appropriate for anyone yearning for a life guided and sustained by a sense of God’s* presence.

We are clear to offer this program as our faithful response to our experience of deep spiritual hunger and yearning among Friends, and to a world moving towards more and more dangerous levels of intolerance, fear, hatred, and divisiveness.

We believe that the Religious Society of Friends has a part to play in the development of the Body of Christ, in the Kin-dom of God, and in the spiritual evolution of the human condition.

We hear God’s call to be part of an overall shift in consciousness, to open more fully to be living vessels of God’s love and power. We seek to invite others into that process.

"The Participating in God's Power program remade my life. The depth of my worship, my relationship with the Divine and other people, and my life's vocation were all marvelously transformed. I found a beautiful community that will always be one of my heart's 'homes.' I am immensely grateful to Christopher, Angi, and the rest of the PiGP community."

Elizabeth Terney, Participating in God's Power participant

The Leadership Team

Christopher Sammond, Core Teacher, brings to this work over 30 years’ experience leading workshops and retreats for Friends, in contexts ranging from monthly meetings to yearly meetings to the World Gathering of Friends. His work has focused primarily on helping Friends to deepen in their direct experience of the Divine through a heart-centered deep dive into Quaker practice. Read more here

Leslie Manning, Elder, is a life-long activist, a member of the Religious Society of Friends whose home meeting is Durham, ME and an interfaith chaplain, a graduate and ordinand of the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine (ChIME). Leslie also has the gifts of holding space for sacred work and intuitive healing, whether in individuals or organizations, and sees herself in this constellation as “a holder of the body”. Read more here.

Cynthia Bourgeault is a modern day mystic, Episcopal priest, writer, and internationally acclaimed retreat leader. She divides her time between solitude in her seaside hermitage in Maine and a demanding schedule traveling globally to spread the recovery of the Christian contemplative and Wisdom paths. Read more here.

Walter Hjelt-Sullivan (he/they) is the Director of Quaker Affairs at Haverford College where he supports religious and spiritual life and develops Quaker and social justice programs. Walter is a member of Green Street Friends Meeting in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. Read more here.

Rebecca Kratz Mays is a member of Westtown Monthly Meeting near Philadelphia. Working with Friends from Friends United Meeting, Evangelical Friends Alliance, and Friends General Conference, she co-founded Quakers Uniting in Publishing. For two decades she worked as the editor of the Pendle Hill pamphlets. At Pendle Hill she also taught a gospels class for a decade. Read more here.

Paulette Meier is a member of Community Friends Meeting, a singer/songwriter, and semi-retired Cincinnati Public Schools educator. Paulette participated in the first year long School of the Spirit program in 2019, (Participating in God’s Power), and is eager to support this next School of the Spirit endeavor! Read more here.

Joann Neuroth found Quakers 40 years ago when she applied for an international position with the American Friends Service Committee, and came home from 2 days of interviews stunned to have found “her people.” She is now clerk of the School of the Spirit’s governance board and an active part of Red Cedar’s Worship & Ministry and Peace & Social Justice committees. Read more here.

Residencies

There are five residencies, all on holiday weekends to minimize time off from work. In between the residencies, we will meet once virtually as a large group on a Saturday to check in and meet in small groups.

First Residency: Connecting With the Root
Thursday evening through Monday lunch President’s Day Weekend, 2024, Pendle Hill Conference Center
Teachers: Christopher Sammond, Walter Hjelt Sullivan; Elder: Leslie Manning

Second Residency: What Does Love Require
Thursday evening through Monday lunch Memorial Day Weekend, 2024, Light on The Hill Retreat Center
Teachers: Christopher Sammond, Joann Neuroth, Paulette Meier, Elder: Leslie Manning

Third Residency: The Light of Conscience
Thursday evening through Monday lunch Labor Day Weekend, 2024, Pendle Hill Conference Center
Teachers: Christopher Sammond, Cynthia Bourgeault, Paulette Meier; Elder: Leslie Manning

Fourth Residency: Living Out an Integrity of Self
Thursday evening through Monday lunch Indigenous People’s Day Weekend, 2024, Light on the Hill Retreat Center
Teachers: Christopher Sammond, Cynthia Bourgeault, Rebecca Mays; Elder: Leslie Manning

Fifth Residency: “Here I am, Lord”
Friday evening through Sunday lunch Either MLK or President’s Day Weekend, 2025, Pendle Hill Conference Center
Teachers: Christopher Sammond, Walter Hjelt Sullivan; Elder: Leslie Manning

Virtual Saturdays

In between the residencies, we will meet once virtually as a large group on a Saturday to check in and meet in small groups.

Process Groups

These groups of 6-7 participants are a forum for exploring how internal blocks, resistances, and old hurts inhibit our “falling into Creator Spirit’s warm embrace”* and impede connection to the Root which gives life and power to our worship and witness. The groups give practice at “listening with our whole being,” listening to each other with our heart, soul, and gut, without falling into the temptations of sharing parallel experiences, imagining giving advice, or otherwise projecting the listener’s own material onto the speaker. Through this process, the group creates a space where those things which impede our fuller connection to the Root can be discovered, named, and transformed. We explore internal resistance, heal old hurts, make conscious old patterns, and through this practice, deepen in self-awareness and our capacity to be present to one another. These groups also serve as a base community within the larger community of the cohort and are a space for integrating some of the experiential learning from the large group sessions during the residencies.

*In Poet Denise Levertov’s words

Spiritual Accountability Groups

In this, the second cohort of the program, we are also adding spiritual accountability groups, helping each other to listen for, and experiment with, leadings for our lives. These groups will draw together 3-4 participants from different small groups, and will meet twice a month virtually, as well as at the residencies.