This weekend I got to enjoy the company of 40-some Quakers in upstate New York for the 2010 Brooklyn Quaker Meeting Retreat, which I helped organize. It was one of those times that reaffirm everything that I love about Quakers as a community. The locale was the historic and quaint retreat center called Powell House…
Category: The Spirit
A Fantastic Weekend with the Brooklyn Quakers up at Powell House
I'm sure I will have more coherent comments about the past three days once I've had some more sleep and time to think about it. For the moment, let me just say that this weekend totally rocked. I was up in the beautiful retreat center run by the Quakers called Powell House along with about…
Krumping as Transcendent Expression
This morning at Quaker Meeting I couldn't stop thinking about krump. Krumping, of course, is the hyper-energetic, aggressive dance style that emerged out of some of the roughest neighborhoods in LA in the 90s, and has since become an international phenomenon. I've long had difficulty understanding krump as an artform. It appeared to me to…
Going Back to Cali: Moving back to the Bay in 2011!
So I've been alluding to some major life changes on the horizon. It's time to come clean: Sometime in early 2011 I'm moving back to the San Francisco Bay Area. It's something I have been pondering for the past year or so. Over there I've got a wonderful (an enormous) extended family that I feel…
Learning to Slow Down and Embrace the Silence
The following is the message I delivered at Quaker Meeting this morning: So I was talking with my friend Rafi, who is a practicing Buddhist, about the recent month-long silent retreat he just came back from. I asked Rafi how it went. He replied that it was great but that he wished that he had…
If I have learned one thing in my 41 years on this planet, it is this…
DON'T POSTPONE JOY. Seen at Luna Park in Coney Island.
Quakers March for Justice & Equality in Pride Parade! (video)
I was proud to march with a group of about a dozen New York Quakers in the Gay Pride Parade yesterday in Manhattan, along with hundreds of other groups and tens of thousands of onlookers. It was a glorious, if hot, day in the city, and everyone seemed to be in good spirits. Local Quakers…
“Abraham’s Children” Chronicles Lives of Muslim Youth in NYC (video)
My friend Nina sends out word that the premiere of her new documentary "Abraham's Children" last week was a big success. "Abraham's Children" tells some of the stories of the thousands of young people in New York City, where every 10th child is Muslim. I'm sad I missed the premiere, but hoping that I can…
Living the Quaker Values: Wrap-Up
So over the past week, I've re-examined some of the core values of Quakerism, trying to be honest about my own feelings and experiences with each of them. I think I've a long way to go in fully integrating silence, worship, truth, simplicity, service and nonviolence into my daily life. At best I have flashes…
Living the Quaker Values: Nonviolence
One of the most emblematic and powerful values of the Quaker faith is nonviolence. From our earliest days in England, Quakers stance against physical violence as a means of solving disputes has put us in jeopardy and difficulties both with the local government and others in the community. Quakers have at great personal inconvenience and…