West Hills Friends

Mark Pratt-Russum shares a message about our disenchantment with religious rituals since the Enlightenment and offered the queries: Considering the growing disconnect of the sacred/spiritual from everyday life, how are you engaging in ritual to keep yourself connected and grounded? In this time of turmoil, what do you need to tend to your heart/mind/body/soul? How might crafting da

Mark Pratt-Russum shared a message about holding hands with a girl in youth group and the prodigal son. Mark offered these queries: How has it been carrying around the narrative that you are lost? How much longer must you carry it? What would happen if you were freed from it? Has anyone ever called you lost for something you knew was guiding you home to yourself? How are you reclai

Mark Pratt-Russum shared a message about painter and minister Edward Hicks and the Hicksite/Orthodox split in Quaker history. When asked about your vision for the Kin-dom, what do you say? What do you paint? What do you write? What do you imagine? How do our "Kin-dom" visions sustain us in times when we feel furthest from it's potential? Friends calling us into movements of liberat

Mark Pratt-Russum shares a message about speaking truth to power and offered these queries: In what areas of your life could you use more plain, clear, and honest communication? How might God be moving us to speak Truth to power?

Mark Pratt-Russum shared about surviving the mesocosm, the chaotic middle of the universe called Earth. How does the microcosm inform your spiritual practice? How about the macrocosm? If we are children of the chaotic middle, what emotional and spiritual strategies are you practicing to survive and thrive in the mesocosm?

Mark Pratt-Russum shared about maintaining holy wonder about your place in the natural world. How does a return of spiritual reverence for the forces that surround us lead us into a more wholesome relationship with them?

Kaleen Deatherage shares the story of Virginia O’Hanlon and Francis Church. The famous line, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," comes from an editorial written by Church in response to a letter from eight-year-old Virginia, who asked if Santa Claus was real. This editorial was first published in The Sun, a New York newspaper, on September 21, 1897. How do you reconcile your

Gil George shares a message about the time between the departure of the shepherds and the arrival of the wisemen, and being fully present during the in between times. What does it feel like in my body, mind, and spirit when I am fully present to myself, others, and/or the Divine? What tends to get in the way of being fully present to myself, others, or the Divine? What helps me be

Mark Pratt-Russum shares a message about the themes of joy, hope, subversion, worry, wondering and prophecy in the story of the birth of Jesus. Where are you in the story? How are those themes merging with your life?

Mark Pratt-Russum shares a time in his childhood when he felt heart-sick for a magical place. How do you tend to childlike wonder and imagination about the future?