First Two July Forums

July 6- FORGIVENESS – INPUT FROM THREE COUNTRIES AND CULTURES -In a new book, Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu tells about the long and difficult struggle he had to forgive his alcoholic father who often abused his mother verbally and physically when Desmond was a boy.Seven years ago, an Amish community in rural Pennsylvania made headlines in every American newspaper by its dramatic acts of quickly forgiving a crazed gunman who had invaded a local school and murdered five Amish schoolgirls.This discussion on forgiveness will review these incidents, as well as the growing popularity of a newly revised forgiveness technique of an ancient Hawaiian spiritual practice, Ho’oponopono. PRESENTERS: Ed and Romella O’Keefe are the coordinators of these Forums.  They are students and practitioners of Ho’oponopono and teach classes in dowsing, prayer and EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique. 

July 13- THE STILL SMALL VOICE - How do we cultivate divine guidance?  How do we refresh our sense of faith and practice today? The Quakers assign great weight to the “still, small voice” that is present inside each of us.  This divine guidance, this internal voice, often runs contrary to the status quo.  Movements have succeeded with one still, small voice leading the way.John Woolman seeded the thought that slavery was immoral years before slavery was even challenged.  Susan B. Anthony sought the vote for women against great odds.  William Penn settled Pennsylvania and was able to establish community largely because he treated the native population fairly.  He went on to establish a public University unheard of at the time. He saw God in the natives, in the merchants, in the children of the rich and poor.  His small voice told him to see God in everyone.How do we see God in ourselves and each other? What is the most alive in us to listen to our own “still, small voice”?PRESENTER: Diane Rhoades. Diane became a Quaker in 1983 in the woods of Shelter Island.  She was amazed to worship in silence in the middle of the woods with no formal minister and where no bulldozer had to make the way open for her to sit and be still.