By Pendle Hill
5
3838 ratings
The podcast currently has 32 episodes available.
Dwight Dunston brings listeners into a reflective discussion with two Irish writers, Manchán Magan and Shirley Anne McMillan, as they explore Ireland's divided history, cultural resilience, and visions for a more harmonious future.
Manchán Magan, a writer and documentarian from the Republic of Ireland, speaks about his family’s legacy of preserving the Irish language and culture. “We were isolated,” he says, reflecting on Ireland’s history of being on “the very edge of Europe.” He describes how colonial forces tried to erase Irish culture and language and how his ancestors fought to keep them alive. Now, he feels called to reconnect Irish people to this heritage and the land, bridging the ancient and modern worlds in his work: “For me, world-building is trying to manifest little glimpses… of living in a more harmonious way.” Manchan’s LinkTree.
Shirley Anne McMillan, a children’s author and the Seamus Heaney Writing Fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast, shares her experience of growing up in a Protestant community in Northern Ireland. She recalls her father’s life as a soldier in the British army, a role that brought complexity and danger into their home life. “I knew he checked his car for bombs every morning,” she reveals, underscoring the tension and risk her family faced. Now, Shirley strives to help young people make sense of these complex histories through her writing, creating stories that offer understanding and resilience: “I want them to feel that they can do something good… you can always add to the goodness.”
As Manchán and Shirley explore their different experiences growing up in Ireland, they find common ground in their hopes for a peaceful future that honors Ireland's cultural roots and builds a more connected, ecologically balanced society. Their conversations with Dwight reflect visions of Ireland where historical wounds are acknowledged, and diverse identities and histories are woven into a shared, harmonious future.
Guest Introductions:
The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/
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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.
Please complete our listener survey by January 1, 2025, and receive a special gift.
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.
Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.
This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.
In this mini-episode, Francisco shares the inspiring journey of the Pendle Hill online worship community, which emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide a spiritual connection and inclusion space. Beginning as a simple idea born out of necessity, Pendle Hill’s virtual daily worship grew into a thriving, radically inclusive online community.
Reflecting on nearly 94 years of daily worship at Pendle Hill, Francisco discusses the challenges and triumphs of transforming Pendle Hill’s worship into a global spiritual community through technology, the unique aspects of online worship, and its lasting impact on participants.
Whether physically or virtually, Friends gather during this worship in a meeting room rich in spirit and history, one that has been host to A.J. Muste, Bayard Rustin, Wendell Berry, and Martin Buber, among many, many others.
Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship and experience this community yourself! You can also join Dwight, host of The Seed, who will attend this worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 AM to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time).
Read more about this online worship community in Friends Journal.
Guest Bio
Francisco Burgos is the Executive Director at Pendle Hill. From 2012 to 2015, Francisco was the head of school at Monteverde Friends in Costa Rica. He has also served with the Organization of American States in Washington, DC, and the American Friends Service Committee in Baltimore, Maryland.
Francisco has a BS in Clinical Psychology from the National University Pedro Henríquez Ureña in the Dominican Republic, an MA in Sustainable Development from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont, and a Doctor of Education from Universidad De La Salle in Costa Rica.
The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/
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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.
Please complete our listener survey by January 1, 2025, and receive a special gift.
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.
Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.
This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.
Dr. Riyam Kafri AbuLaban, a former principal at Ramallah Friends School and a writer from Palestine, shares her insights on world-building amidst conflict and the complexities of raising children under occupation.
Joining Dwight is Steve Tamari, a Palestinian-American Quaker and historian who offers reflections on the ongoing genocide in Palestine as part of a larger history of colonialism. Steve challenges listeners to understand the power of conscience and integrity in facing the brokenness of our world.
Key Highlights:
Riyam lives in Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine. Follow her on Instagram and LinkedIn.
He poses a thought-provoking question: "How do you strive to close the gap between the light within and the world outside so that our lives may be genuinely integrated and made whole?"
Special Music
In this episode, you will hear the song Babylon Breeze by the Sada Trio. Ahmad Al Khatib, Pedram Shahlai, and Feras Sharestan are virtuoso musicians from three parts of the Middle East who now live in Sweden. Ahmad Al Khatib was born in 1974 in a Palestinian refugee camp in Irbid, Jordan. He started his musical journey at an early age. In the Sa
The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/
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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.
Please complete our listener survey by January 1, 2025, and receive a special gift.
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.
Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.
This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.
Episode Summary
In our first mini-episode of Season 5, Dr. Riyam Kafri Abu Laban, a writer and educator from Ramallah, explains how Palestinian cuisine is a powerful expression of identity rooted in the land and traditions of the Palestinian people. Forced displacement and cultural appropriation have posed significant challenges to preserving this culinary heritage. Food is nourishment and a bridge to the past—a living memory of their villages and communities. Palestinian food continues to serve as a source of resistance, memory, healing, and celebration.
Guest Bio
Dr. Riyam Kafri Abu Laban writes personal essays, poetry, short stories, and articles on Palestine, motherhood, and education. She sees writing as "the tangible outcome of thinking" and believes the first sentence requires the most courage. She describes writing as an incredible gift, a way to bring ideas to life—whether technical, creative, or fictional.
With a PhD in Chemistry, Riyam started her career as a research scientist but soon realized her passion was working with people. She shifted to education, first as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and a founding faculty member at Al Quds Bard College in Palestine. She then spent seven years as the Upper School Principal at Ramallah Friends School.
As a proud Ramallah Friends School and Earlham College graduate, Quaker values have shaped her life and faith. Today, Riyam is the Educational Lead at AlNayzak Organization, focusing on pedagogy, curriculum design, and training.
Riyam lives in Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine. Follow her on Instagram and LinkedIn.
Special Music
In this episode, you will hear the song Sada by the Sada Trio. Ahmad Al Khatib, Pedram Shahlai, and Feras Sharestan are virtuoso musicians from three parts of the Middle East who now live in Sweden. Ahmad Al Khatib was born in 1974 in a Palestinian refugee camp in Irbid, Jordan. He started his musical journey at an early age. In the Sada Trio, the three musicians keep the Middle Eastern music tradition alive, pairing traditional instruments with original compositions.
The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/
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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.
Please complete our listener survey by January 1, 2025, and receive a special gift.
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.
Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.
This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.
Episode Summary:
In this opening episode of Season 5 of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope, host Dwight Dunston speaks with Francisco Burgos, Executive Director of Pendle Hill, about the theme of world-building. They explore what it means to co-create new systems rooted in cooperation, reciprocity, and love. Francisco reflects on his experiences at Pendle Hill, his childhood in the Dominican Republic, and the prophetic witness that inspires his work.
In addition, Dwight introduces the exciting changes in Season 5. These changes include a second guest in each episode who will bring a reflection, song, poem, or reading.
Key Highlights:
New Features for Season 5:
The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/
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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.
Please complete our listener survey by January 1, 2025, and receive a special gift.
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.
Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.
This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.
🌱 Welcome to Season 5 of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope! 🌱
In this special promo, host Dwight Dunston invites you into a season focused on world-building and imagination, exploring the deep questions about the future we envision and how we can start living it today. This season is packed with inspiring conversations, reflections, and new features designed to expand your sense of justice, love, and peace.
🎙️ Episode Highlights:
✨ What’s New in Season 5:
Don’t miss out! Subscribe now and step into a world of radical hope, where imagination meets action, and together, we create the future we want. New episodes drop every two weeks!
#Podcast #WorldBuilding #RadicalHope #Imagination #Justice #Peace #Season5
The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/
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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.
Please complete our listener survey by January 1, 2025, and receive a special gift.
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.
Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.
This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.
In our final episode of Season 4, Valerie Brown, an author, Buddhist-Quaker Dharma teacher, and executive coach, discusses yielding to the realignment of grief, the relationship between self care and social justice, and how Quaker communities are being called to transformation in our current political moment.
Valerie Brown is an author, Buddhist-Quaker Dharma teacher in the lineage of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village tradition, Courage & Renewal facilitator, and executive coach specializing in leadership development and mindfulness practices with a focus on diversity, social equity, and inclusion. A former lawyer and lobbyist, Valerie transformed her high-pressure, twenty-year career into serving leaders and nonprofits to create trustworthy, authentic, compassionate, and connected workspaces. Valerie’s unique and extensive training blends social justice, evidenced-based mindfulness practices, leadership development, and spiritual growth.
Of Afro-Cuban descent, Valerie is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and lives and tends a lively perennial home garden in New Hope, PA.
To learn more about Valerie's work, visit https://valeriebrown.us/
Order and read more about Valerie's newest book, Healing Our Way Home, here: https://pendlehill.org/product/healing-our-way-home-black-buddhist-teachings-on-ancestors-joy-and-liberation/
The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/
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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.
Please complete our listener survey by January 1, 2025, and receive a special gift.
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.
Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.
This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.
Rabbi Mordechai Liebling draws on his decades-long experience in interfaith and interracial activism and organizing to explore the role of clergy in organizing and nonviolent direct action, the power of shared heartbreak across difference, and the current fight for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Rabbi Mordechai Liebling is the Senior Advisor for POWER Interfaith, the largest faith-based community organizing group in Pennsylvania. Prior to that he founded and directed for ten years the Social Justice Organizing Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Previously, he served as the executive vice president of Jewish Funds for Justice (now Bend the Arc); and was the executive director of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation for 12 years. He leads workshops on Race, Antisemitism and Christian hegemony; and on the Work That Reconnects developed by Joanna Macy.
He was a co-founder of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights; currently he serves on the boards of Faith in Action (formerly PICO), the Faith and Politics Institute and The Shalom Center. He is married to Lynne Iser, and they have five adult children. He answered the clergy call to come to Ferguson, Mo.; Standing Rock, N.D.; and Charlottesville, VA amid their confrontations. He is a member of Rabbis 4 Ceasefire.
The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/
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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.
Please complete our listener survey by January 1, 2025, and receive a special gift.
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.
Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.
This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.
Felix Rosado is an abolitionist and restorative justice practitioner committed to ending human caging in all its forms. When 'justice' has become synonymous with cops, courtrooms, and cages, how do we begin to envision new ways of truth-telling and reckoning with harm? In our fourth episode of Season Four, Felix and Dwight explore this question, the griefs and gratitudes of freedom, the spiritual groundings of the fight to abolish prisons, and what it means to be 'free-ish.'
Felix Rosado escaped a death by incarceration sentence after 27 years via governor clemency in 2022. He is cofounder of Let’s Circle Up, a restorative justice (RJ) education project. He currently serves as Program Coordinator of Healing Futures, an RJ youth diversion program with the Youth Art & Self-empowerment Project (YASP) and adjunct professor of RJ at Chestnut Hill College. He also is a founding member of the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CABDI) and committed to ending human caging in all its forms.
Felix will be a facilitator for Continuing Revolution 2024: Restorative Justice as Spiritual Practice, a hybrid conference for young adults (ages 18-35) interested in exploring the connections between their political, interpersonal, and spiritual lives. Join us June 7-10 at Pendle Hill outside Philadelphia, Beacon Hill Friends House in Boston, Friends Place in DC, or online. We hope you'll join us! Learn more and register at https://pendlehill.org/learn/
The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/
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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.
Please complete our listener survey by January 1, 2025, and receive a special gift.
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.
Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.
This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.
In this current political moment of polarization and divisiveness, when and how do we commit to staying in fellowship with one another? How do we discern individual and institutional next steps with faithfulness and humility? In this conversation, Adria discusses the ways Jesus’s life and ministry grounds her work, the importance of approaching one another with compassion in disagreement, and her continuing discernment journeys around staying aligned with personal and organizational purpose.
You can also watch Adria's Pendle Hill First Monday Lecture, "Embracing Spiritual Gifts," on Pendle Hill's YouTube channel.
Adria Gulizia is an attorney, mediator, facilitator, and coach. Her concern for the spiritual formation of Friends of all ages has led her to serve in roles ranging from children’s religious education to Earlham School of Religion’s board of advisors. In collaboration with the School of the Spirit, she is currently exploring what it might look like to step into radical faithfulness across theological boundaries amid the twin temptations of anger and despair. Adria is a member of Chatham-Summit Meeting (NYYM) in Summit, N.J. To learn more about Adria's work, visit https://shadowofbabylon.com/
The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/
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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.
Please complete our listener survey by January 1, 2025, and receive a special gift.
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.
Online Quaker Worship with Dwight: Dwight will attend the Pendle Hill online Quaker worship on the last Friday of the month from 8:30 to 9:10 AM (Eastern Time). Visit Pendle Hill Online Worship for details.
This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.
The podcast currently has 32 episodes available.
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