To friends of Quaker Center everywhere,
We’re sending warm winter greetings from our place to yours, and more upcoming reasons to visit, or plug into an online program.
Our programs thus far this year, in-person and online, have been substantive, well-attended and a joy to host.
— Nico Wright, Director
The 2025-26 Year-End Retreat
Dorothy Henderson and Nora Lissette
Sunday, December 28, 2025,
to Thursday, January 1, 2026
Grounded in Romans 12:1-2a, we will bring our bodies and the Bible to the year-end retreat at Quaker Center. We will explore being fully present in the Casa, the labyrinth, our sleeping space, the Orchard and Redwood lodges, the waterfall, the Redwood Circle. Sinking down to Spirit within our bodies in these beloved spaces, we will bring our curiosity to the Bible as a possible guide to transformation and worship in our everyday lives.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Remaining open to continuing revelation, we imagine exploring daily practices to deepen our body consciousness, daily activities to bring us fully into the spirit and places of Quaker Center, and invitations to daily Bible readings integrating and deepening our experience of our bodies in this place and this moment – what does this experience have to tell us?
Some activities will include mindful walking in groups and alone, reading select Bible passages within a worship sharing format, practicing breath and grounding exercises in chosen Quaker Center places, responding to select Bible passages in journal writing, or offering of a Bible reading for first thing in the morning and the last thing at night.
We hope that questions, wonderings, and challenges about the Bible will be a part of our daily journey together. Through all of these practices in our bodies in the spaces of Quaker Center, the Bible will be offered as a guide, a friend, an instigator, a troublemaker, and a continuing source for waking up to what is Holy.
No previous experience with the Bible is needed or expected. We will all come anew to the Bible.
Those who wish to arrive a day early on Saturday, December 27th, will be welcome. We will not have meals or activities planned until the Retreat begins with registration on December 28th, Sunday afternoon, and dinner at 6:00 p.m. on Sunday.
Childcare will be provided for kids 4 and up during the program sessions, and children are welcome to come along for free.
About the program leaders:
Dorothy Henderson. I am a member of Grass Valley Friends Meeting. At age 78, I understand that my biography has been built in community. My Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly Meetings sustain and inspire me. I have been in the presence of and studied the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and Marshall Rosenberg. I have attempted to live their teachings and have taught Marshall’s Nonviolent Communication over the past twenty years. I am an elder, and a member of the Eldering Subcommittee of the Ministry Committee of Pacific Yearly Meeting. My teacher for that pioneering practice is Elaine Emily. Stephen Matchett introduced me to the Bible as a Quaker, and his teachings have guided my offerings of Bible Study over the past ten years. I only recently understood that Jesus has come to teach me himself. I am currently writing a book about the experience of walking with Jesus. My time as a Kenneth L. Carroll Biblical Scholar during the 2024 Spring Semester at Pendle Hill has helped me integrate these teachings into my writing. My early morning conversations with my husband, Doug Hamm is helping me integrate these teachings into my life. My four adult children bring me continuing revelation.
Nora Lisette. I am a Quaker committed to living faithfully in alignment with the Divine and Quaker testimonies. Raised among Quakers, seekers, and activists, I became a convinced Friend in my early teens. A lifelong dancer, my practice of dance and other movement arts and movement meditation are at the center of my spiritual life. I experience Quakerism as an embodied faith.
After completing the Woolman Semester and a Quaker Studies minor at Guilford College, I began a career as a postpartum doula, called to accompany families, individuals, and communities in redirecting rivers of trauma into paths of healing. While at Guilford, I first studied the Bible and was deeply struck by Romans 12. This passage continues to shape my conviction that faith must be lived in and through the body.
In 2021 I returned to university to pursue Psychology, but paused my studies in 2023 to pursue a long-awaited calling: motherhood. I will return to complete a PsyD in Collective Trauma and Social Healing in 2026. After welcoming our son, Juniper James, in 2024, my partner, Keith Runyan, and I have been traveling in the ministry as a family. I bear a witness that conflict is sacred and the Quaker testimony of Community cannot be passive.
Program cost
Like all Quaker Center programs, this program is priced along a sliding scale – we encourage you to contribute an amount that you are comfortable with and that enables you to attend. We hope the suggested cost ranges below will help you to do this.
Standard rate: $200-400.
Welcome rate: $75-150.
You can learn more about Quaker Center’s program costs here.
An in-person event
December 5-7, 2025
Led, as always, by participant leaders
It’s the FIFTEENTH ANNUAL Music and Dance weekend!
On the first weekend in December, this beloved event returns to Quaker Center – now fifteen years running. Join us for a weekend of celebration, music, singing, dancing, workshops, hanging out, great food and more, here in the redwoods.
We encourage musicians, singers, dancers, and those who just enjoy listening to attend. No particular dancing or musical talent necessary to enjoy this all-ages event. In past years, activities have included folk dancing from around the world, ukulele workshops, round singing groups, hymn singing, instrumental jamming, songwriting sessions, children’s songs, and more. If you have an activity or workshop you’d like to share, we’d love to hear about it!
We’ll gather after dinner on Friday evening, Sessions of this program will be participant-led, with the exception of a professionally called community dance on Saturday night, with a fiddler and band.
Early risers may begin the morning with meeting for worship, a Quaker Center daily practice.
Children are welcome and some childcare will be provided.
Overnight lodging will be in the Orchard Lodge bedrooms and Redwood Lodge bunkrooms. Camping is also available, and commuters staying at home or elsewhere are welcome.
Delicious vegetarian food will be prepared by Chef Tod Nysether.
All Quaker Center programs are on a sliding scale, with the following suggested contribution amounts:
Standard rate: $200-350.
Welcome rate: $75-150.
For more information about our program fees, click here.
an in-person program
with Eileen Flanagan
October 24-26, 2025
We are all one – and if we don’t know it,
we will learn it the hard way.
-Bayard Rustin
Whether you consider yourself a Friend (Quaker), or a friend of Friends, come find wisdom and strength in the Quaker tradition of resistance grounded in love. At this workshop, we will combine lessons in strategy and spiritual grounding to help us navigate this period of political and ecological crisis.
