Report from the 2025 NYC Quakers Retreat

Forty NYC Friends from 0-90 years old gathered at Powell House for the second annual all-NYC Quaker retreat, held Oct, 24-26, 2025. The theme was Revolutionary Kindness — Community, Connections, & Contemporary Witness. Friends enjoyed getting out of the city and were blessed with great weather and peak fall foliage. During the weekend, Friends chatted, worshipped, sang, played games, laughed, read, hiked, stargazed, played ping-pong, burned marshmallows, and made cushion forts, as led. 

The retreat was anchored by a series of deep sessions on the topic of radical kindness. (We used “revolutionary” and “radical” interchangeably.) Throughout the weekend, in worship sharing and in small group discussions, we contemplated a series of queries:

• How are we already practicing radical kindness?
• What resources or practices do we have that help or enable radical kindness?
• What hinders or blocks us from practicing radical kindness?
• What can we try in order to expand our kindness?
• What are some acts of radical kindness we feel led to take?

These somewhat overlapping questions helped us see patterns in our responses. Here are some shared themes we identified:

We Should Be Brave; Fear Hinders Radical Kindness: The main thing that hinders practicing radical kindness is fear. It takes courage to be radically kind, to act in a way that is bold and unexpected. There is fear that the problems are too large. There is fear about safety, that we are putting our selves, property, or community members at risk. Being around other courageous people, and people who have experience with this work, helps with fear.

We Want to Collaborate: To amplify our witness and our effect, NYC Quakers should reach out and work with other small, local organizations doing similar work. We can also share our Quaker experience and beliefs about non-violent protest with others.

We Want to Reduce Loneliness: To be more radically kind, Quakers can expand our “kin” group; we can extend a feeling of belonging to people who are lonely or on the edges.

We Should Invest in Newcomers: Listen to newcomers. Try to find ways to get them involved. Teach newcomers about Quaker process — for example, how to test a leading or where to bring an idea. Introduce clearness committees as a resource they can call upon.

We Should Be Radically Kind to Those We Disagree With. Listen carefully and try to really hear the other person. This helps turn “us” and “them” into individuals. Don’t make assumptions. Stay open to being surprised. Hold space for others to change and to change their mind

Some concrete ideas for future actions kept reappearing in our discussions:

• Food pantry or free store – Brooklyn Meeting’s Community Dinner Committee is working with New York Quarterly Meeting and Brooklyn Frontiers, the high school next door, to offer a food pantry, as a pilot project, in the social hour room at Brooklyn Meeting
• Strengthen the NYC Quaker community through reaffirming Quaker values within and across meetings. Increase opportunities for in-person interaction between meetings. A couple of ideas: childcare collective or date night event for parents; potlucks with discussions on specific themes; follow-up discussions at our local meetings on these retreat ideas
• Quakers might offer non-violence protest training — a “boot camp” — to familiarize fellow activists with the beliefs that ground our actions in non-violence
• Establish a library of resources (a list of organizations and resources) and of acts of kindness (a place where people can offer or request help)
• Arrange community organizing training for Friends in NYC 
• Identify a wayfinder or connecting person to help people navigate Quaker process. Friends with leadings need help connecting with those in the meeting (committees, individuals, funds) that can offer further support.

Friends ended the weekend fired up with energy and inspiration for next steps. If you couldn’t make it to the retreat, or if you were there and have more thoughts to share, please respond to the retreat queries here. Look for follow-up conversations at your local meeting on radical kindness and how we feel led to act at this time.