Our Life Is LOVE
An evening with Marcelle Martin
WEDNESDAY APRIL 12
7:15 – 8:30 p.m.
Friends are also welcome for
Meeting for Worship 5:30-6:30 p.m.
Simple finger-food potluck/brown bag dinner 6:45 p.m.
Woolman Hill Retreat Center
107 Keets Road, Deerfield MA 01342
What enabled many of the first Friends, and Quakers in our time, to live spiritually empowered, transforming lives?
You are invited to an evening of storytelling, teaching, discussion, and sharing experiences. Marcelle Martin’s new book, Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey (Inner Light Books) describes ten essential elements of the spiritual experience of the first Quakers and contemporary Friends.
Marcelle Martin served for years as a Quaker studies teacher and spiritual nurturer at Pendle Hill. A graduate of the Shalem Institute Program on Spiritual Guidance and the School of the Spirit’s program on Contemplative Living and Prayer, Marcelle has traveled widely to lead workshops and retreats. She works with Friends and their monthly meetings to deepen awareness of God at work within and among them. She has written two Pendle Hill pamphlets, Holding One Another in the Light (PHP #382) and Invitation to a Deeper Communion (PHP #366). Her blog, A Whole Heart, is at www.awholeheart.com.
For more information about the event, contact
413-774-3431 or info@woolmanhill.org
Copies of Marcelle’s book will be available for sale, at a small discount.
Our Life is Love can also be ordered from Inner Light Books in hardback, paperback, and ebook at www.InnerLightBooks.com.
QuakerBooks provides free shipping for books ordered in quantity.
From the QuakerBooks March 2016 “Ellen’s Corner” book review by Ellen Michaud:
The brief but well-crafted stories of 33 early Quakers like Elizabeth Hooten and James Nayler evoke powerful, piercing images that offer concrete examples of spiritual journeys from which to extract valuable lessons, as do the 62 stories of more contemporary Quakers such as Richard Taylor, Eva Hermann, and Thomas Kelly. … As a result, and particularly if one or another of its chapters is read in the meeting community and accompanied by reflection and discussion, Our Life is Love will help each of us recognize who we are as a people, where we’ve been, where we are, and—as Way opens—where we’re being led. It’s an amazing journey. And we are so blessed to be on it.
From the August 2016 Friends Journal book review by Marty Grundy:
Martin uses biblical language and metaphors that were very meaningful to early Friends and can become filled with meaning for Friends today who choose to travel this path. But the language is not the important thing. What is crucial is the experience. This is not “Quaker lite,” the idea that the highest value for Friends is tolerance, that one can believe anything or nothing. This book points to the real thing, a path that is narrow and difficult, requiring surrender and the Cross, while promising unimaginable joy, healing, and freedom within all-encompassing love.
From the Foreward by Carole Spencer:
This book … can build a holy bridge among all branches and traditions of Friends who have the courage to walk across it, so please pass it on! It will also capture the imagination of spiritual seekers of all faiths, far beyond the bounds of the Religious Society of Friends, for the spiritual journey Marcelle describes is not limited to any one tradition. May your encounter with Our Life Is Love surprise you with new and fresh insights into the spirituality of early Friends and reveal hidden moments in your own journey….
Visit Marcelle’s blog: http://awholeheart.com