Friends,

This summer, Kristina and I are teaching a course in Quakerism at Pendle Hill. The majority of those in attendance will be young adults that are part of the Young Adult Leadership Development Program (YALD), plus some other students and staff people. Along with the usual exploration of various aspects of our faith and practice as a Religious Society - we have an emphasis on discovering together how we talk about our experiences. We'll turn, of course, to Early Friends for guidance -- but, we are interested in hearing from contemporary Friends, as well, as to their experience of, opinions about, and beliefs regarding our Society's Faith, Practice, and grounding in community.

In other words - we're interested in knowing what all sorts of folks think/feel/experience.

As part of our class we want to give students an opportunity to hear your voice and thoughts too! Over the next six weeks, we'll post a new survey pertaining to the next class topic every week. The questions are intended to serve at least two purposes.

First, they are information gathering questions so that we can get input from the wider Quaker world (or, at least the wider internet-using Quaker world) to share with the folks taking our 2009 Pendle Hill Summer course in Quakerism, giving them opinions other than just our own and those found in published books and pamphlets. Answers are optional and as long or as short as you feel inclined to submit.

Second, we hope that these questions serve as a set of queries of sort, prompting you, as readers, to consider some things that you might not have considered for a while as they might seem basic or simple. Often times we don't always communicate our experiences of Quakerism, and thinking about what we do think and feel can be important in helping us talk about our faith. It would be awesome if reading these questions resulted in reflection and deepening!

To this end, each week we will send out a survey which includes some Queries on the next week's class topic. You are invited to respond to these queries at length or briefly, with your name attached or anonymously. You can respond to one set of queries, or you can respond to several, or to all of them. Maybe they will just serve to prompt your private reflection and you won't respond at all. Any or all of the above are great options, and we hope that however you choose to participate serves you in some way. Week One's survey is already up and can be found here.

At the end of the week the results will be posted here to Callid's blog on QuakerQuaker.org. Here they will be available to the students in the Quakerism Course and whomever wanders across them from Web World.

To find surveys to take, go to http://tinyurl.com/QuakerSurveys.
To sign up for updates when new surveys are available, go to http://tinyurl.com/QuakerCourseSurvey.
To find out more about our class go to, http://tinyurl.com/QuakerismClass

Thanks and blessings,

Callid and Kristina