Our annual fall retreat will be at Orchard Park Friends Meeting House, Saturday, October 21, 2023. Participants are asked to bring a dish to pass for lunch and paper and pen for the afternoon session.
Orchard Park will have coffee and tea ready by 8:30 AM and muffins will be available at that time. The retreat begins at 9:00 AM with worship and introduction. The agenda will be presented with times and activities as well as the community agreements. Addressing Economic Inequality will begin at 9:30 AM.
For those who were at last year’s retreat, the first morning session of this year’s workshop will be a review. The second morning session will begin with what last year’s presenter didn’t get to, something economists call “financialization,” a very immoral form of government that is at the center of what continues to drive Runaway Inequality. During the morning’s final session, we will focus on envisioning a just, fair and moral economy—the antithesis of financializaton. We will consider some of the local social change organizations that are working to reduce poverty in our community—any one of which Buffalo Meeting and Orchard Park Friends Meeting might accompany.
At the rise of meeting November 12, 2023, Rodney Pierce and Anne Huiner will continue last October’s retreat session on discernment. This will be an opportunity to put discernment into practice and unify Buffalo Friends’ desire “to do something” as a meeting to right economic wrongs.
At 11:55 AM announcements will be done and our potluck lunch will follow.
At 1:00 PM Nadine will lead a workshop to teach us how to form spiritual companion groups in order to experiment with being inwardly guided by Spirit, love and conscience to shape and guide our private and public lives.
At 2:30 PM Virginia, Kathy S. and Sally will lead us in an introductory experience of Church in the Wild, an eco-spiritual movement that seeks to reconnect us to Nature in a deep and meditative way. Weather permitting, we will be outside of the OP Meetinghouse for this experience, so please dress warmly in layers.
At 3:15 PM Closing circle for reflection on the whole day.