Upcoming Local Worshiping Communities Events

In response to continuing police shootings, to #BlackLivesMatter, and to the 2015 murders at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, historian Susan Strasser seeks to serve people grappling with contemporary issues of race and racism. Her series of illustrated talks, “A White Historian Reads Black History,” has already discussed slavery and lynching. This new talk offers an overview of African American voting rights, from the promise of Reconstruction through Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement to the issues in today’s news. Dr. Strasser, Richards Professor of American History Emerita at the University of Delaware (www.susanstrasser.net), is a prize-winning historian. Her work on the history of consumer culture has been praised by the New Yorker for “retrieving what history discards: the taken-for-granted minutiae of everyday life.” The program starts at 1:00pm. For more information, contact David Etheridge. (david.etheridge@verizon.net)

Winter is approaching. The days grow shorter. It can also feel like a time of political darkness, one that can trigger dark feelings. How important it is to nurture and share our light! Please come to this conversation, beginning at 9:00am, as we love and enlighten one another. Each will begin at 9:00am. A child says to a parent that she feels threatened by things happening in the world. How to respond? And how to talk (or not talk) to a co-worker or family member on the opposite end of the political spectrum? What to say to a worried immigrant? How to skillfully and lovingly handle these and other hard conversations? —we’ll put our minds and hearts together.

How do we count the cost of bitter conflict to the health and well-being of ourselves, our families, communities, our nation, and to the world? With trauma and fighting so prevalent, where and how can we seek a better way? Sunday, November 19, 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm, the Fauquier Friends Worship Group will lead a panel on the topic of Peacemaking at the Bealeton Library Depot building, 10877 Willow Drive North, Bealeton. Local Quakers (Religious Society of Friends) welcome the community of all beliefs to attend and share on ways to deepen peace in a divided world. Quakers have historically advanced the testimony of peace and are the only religion to date to have been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Yet, the surrounding evidence informs there is much work to be done, both individually and collectively, to bring hearts, minds and actions as living examples of the power of peacemaking. Peace is not just the absence of war and requires justice more than protest, communication more than complaint. Email fauquierfriends@gmail.com for more information.