The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope

Episode Summary: In this opening episode of Season 5 of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope , host Dwight Dunston speaks with Francisco Burgos, Executive Director of Pendle Hill, about the theme of world-building. They explore what it means to co-create new systems rooted in cooperation, reciprocity, and love. Francisco reflects on his experiences at Pendle Hill, his childhood in the Dominica...

🌱 Welcome to Season 5 of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope ! 🌱 In this special promo, host Dwight Dunston invites you into a season focused on world-building and imagination , exploring the deep questions about the future we envision and how we can start living it today. This season is packed with inspiring conversations, reflections, and new features designed to expand your sense of just...

In our final episode of Season 4, Valerie Brown, an author, Buddhist-Quaker Dharma teacher, and executive coach, discusses yielding to the realignment of grief, the relationship between self care and social justice, and how Quaker communities are being called to transformation in our current political moment.   Valerie Brown is an author, Buddhist-Quaker Dharma teacher in the lineage of Zen Master...

Rabbi Mordechai Liebling draws on his decades-long experience in interfaith and interracial activism and organizing to explore the role of clergy in organizing and nonviolent direct action, the power of shared heartbreak across difference, and the current fight for a ceasefire in Gaza.  Rabbi Mordechai Liebling is the Senior Advisor for POWER Interfaith, the largest faith-based community organizin...

Felix Rosado is an abolitionist and restorative justice practitioner committed to ending human caging in all its forms. When 'justice' has become synonymous with cops, courtrooms, and cages, how do we begin to envision new ways of truth-telling and reckoning with harm? In our fourth episode of Season Four, Felix and Dwight explore this question, the griefs and gratitudes of freedom, the...

In this current political moment of polarization and divisiveness, when and how do we commit to staying in fellowship with one another? How do we discern individual and institutional next steps with faithfulness and humility? In this conversation, Adria discusses the ways Jesus’s life and ministry grounds her work, the importance of approaching one another with compassion in disagreement, and her...

Parker Palmer is an teacher, activist, and writer whose work explores issues in education, community, spirituality, and social change. He and Dwight explore vocation, aging, and the paradoxes of solitude and community, life and mortality, faithfulness and urgency: How do we embrace paradox to pursue that which is life-giving? Parker Palmer is a teacher, writer, and the founder and senior partner e...

In this opening episode of Season 4, Dwight and Francisco discuss grief, gratitude, staying grounded amidst uncertainty and polarization, and the guiding queries and themes of the season. Dwight Dunston is a West Philly-based facilitator, hip-hop artist, educator, and activist who has brought his creativity, care, and compassion to schools, community centers, retirement homes, festivals, and stadi...

Welcome to Season 4 of The Seed! Join us as we explore what spiritual alignment looks like in this moment of escalating social and political upheaval and violence: How do we cultivate discernment to stay the course and stay connected to our leadings? How are we being called to transform ourselves and our communities to break down systems of oppression and embody new ways of being? Guest voices in...

K. Melchor Quick Hall is a popular educator, writer, and researcher. In this final episode of Season 3, she and Dwight explore the importance of nurturing practices of creative play, what it means to honor legacies of liberation and care, and what freedom and hope look like in our lifetimes and beyond. Read the transcript of this episode . – K. Melchor Quick Hall, PhD is a popular educator, writer...

How do we begin to imagine futures not yet here? What can we do today to embody the liberation we want to see? Matthew Armstead (they/them), an experiential facilitator and performance artist, asks how, right now, we can embody the worlds we want to create. Here, Matthew grounds in the past, present, and future, delving into Nichelle Nichols’s role on Star Trek and a transformative phone call from...

How can we cultivate a relationship to communal silence? How can practices of silent worship allow us to build trust and open to the unknown? Ingrid Lakey, co-founder of Earth Quaker Action Team , talks with Dwight about her journey to a public-facing role in environmental activism, the power of collective action, and the ways silence allows us to attune to Spirit and embrace a multitude of truths...

How do we create rituals to witness each other and our communities in transformative moments and cultivate a sense of belonging? What role does forgiveness play in our individual and communal spiritual practices?  Autumn Brown is a writer, musician, facilitator, and organizer. Here, she and Dwight explore the power of choosing how we want to be witnessed, the vulnerability required to find and cre...

Season 3 is here! As we begin to explore the practices that enrich our connections to ourselves and to each other, Dwight and Francisco share what's been spiritually nurturing them, their relationships to community, and their understandings of radical hope. Read the transcript of this episode . – Dwight Dunston, host of The Seed, is a West Philly-based facilitator, hip-hop artist, educator, a...

Welcome to Season Three of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope .  This summer, we're exploring the practices that enrich our connections to ourselves and to each other. How do we cultivate relationships in spiritual community? How do these relationships and practices support our work for liberation and justice and transform our sense of what is possible?  NEW Video Version available at P...

When systems of oppression are so entrenched, omnipresent, and internalized, how can we discover, remember, and recognize the truth of who we are?  Is it possible to transform our deepest-rooted convictions about ourselves? The roots of our essential selves and the constraining narratives we’ve internalized can feel inextricable–for Niyonu Spann and her work as a facilitator, creator, and teacher,...

How do we align our everyday decisions with our ideals to create the world we want to see? Anton breaks down the distinction between morality and integrity, discussing the mystery, fear, and unknowns that arise when our values don’t align with “dominant arbiters of morality.” Drawing on learnings from Walter Brueggemann, Thich Nhat Hanh, and his own work in community with asylum seekers at Casa Al...

What can people of faith offer to broader environmental and other social justice movements?  Cherice’s work in ecotheology–a field of liberation theology centered around the relationship between religion and environment–seeks to support communication between communities focusing on theory, action, and reflection. Drawing on early Quaker history and her own ecospirituality, she examines how an insi...

eppchez yo-sí yes, a Quaker playwright, inventor, and spiritual companion, offers ways to practice noticing patterns of faithfulness and patterns of oppression to begin moving through transformations of self and community. Using eir own experiences in reparations work and Quaker business settings, ey and Dwight detangle integrity and perfection, calling us  instead into processes of transmutation....

Blanca Pacheco, co-director of New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, discusses the relationship between community care and self care, the power of laughter, and the need to elevate personal stories and wholeness in an immigration system that denies resources, rights, and humanity to people of color. Blanca shares the miracles and sacrifices of her own journey, and asks: how can we respect the in...

Why a podcast season on the Quaker testimony of integrity? What makes it relevant now?  Host Dwight Dunston and Pendle Hill executive director Francisco Burgos give an introduction of the Quaker testimony of integrity and offer their definitions and groundings. Francisco interviews Dwight about the testimony’s relevance to community and authenticity, Dwight’s experience recording The Seed’s second...

Welcome to Season Two of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope. This season, we're exploring the Quaker testimony of Integrity: What does it look like to meaningfully live out our deepest spiritual truths with authenticity and grace?  NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page . The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/ ----...

“My life’s work is really finding ways to remind people of, and validate, what they already know.” Ricardo Levins Morales thinks of his art as a medicinal practice, dedicated to treating both our cultural immediate diagnoses and the underlying inflammations, helping people to see their realities with more clarity. “The underlying inflammation in our society is hopelessness, despair, and disappoint...

How can we practice courage?  How do we build our “fear toolbox” and find our roles in social change work? In this episode, Eileen breaks down concrete steps for discernment around these questions. Her work as an environmental activist and spiritual writer has long focused on building effective movements that are grounded in love and harness people’s power. Here, she and Dwight break down the turn...

Cai Quirk frames their art and their work expanding gender narratives as a collaboration between themself, the natural world, and Spirit. Despite the continued erasure of queer stories, Cai reminds us that the natural world keeps these stories of the “fluidity and diversity of ourselves…for us to be able to relearn.” In their conversation with Dwight, Cai invites us into those processes of collabo...