Quaker outdoor worship in the Pine Barrens

This time, we learn to listen.

Quaker foundations are never built only in silent waiting it is impossible to live into all the spiritual experience open to a lifetime or all the living beings. We seek relationship with Truths. This is a relationships of truths newly gingering converging into a faithfulness. I faith FULL and impermanent ever changing, newly revealing creation. Alive in its thusness to us. We know this experimentally: “Inner Light,” a light that shines not only in souls but everywhere –in rivers, minerals, pines, live soil.

At 2026 Tri-Quarter Gathering, we are joining with thee. We will meet you back by the Pine Barrens, not to collect in any certainty more answers, but to relearn listening. Community listens: to the wind in the canopies, to the stories the Lenape left on this land, to the call to walk humbly and do justice.

“Creator’s blessing rests on the ones who walk softly and in a humble manner. The earth, land, and sky will welcome them and always be their home.”

September 25–27, YMCA of the Pines. Workshops, walks, star gazing and planetary witnessing, s’more singing at music round the campfire. Canoeing, more stars, more outdoor worship. Quiet listening.

What have we learned in 350 years with the Lenape?

South Jersey Quakers Gathering in 2026: “Owning Land” to “Being Welcomed by this Land”

A history of Jersey Quakers is a context that needs to woven tighter to a fate of Lenape people, the original inhabitants when we came to West Jersey seeking religious freedom. Lenape are living here millennia. That history holds both ideals; peaceful coexistence, silences of displacement and erasure.