WES is excited to partner with All Souls Church, Unitarian to offer Beloved Conversations, an intensive learning and workshop series on race and ethnicity, that holds both the tensions and joys of an intentional multicultural community. The framework for Beloved Conversations is a teaching and learning curriculum developed by Meadville Lombard Theological School (a UU theological school, located in Chicago). The curriculum assumes that every conversation with another human being is a cross-cultural conversation, even if your conversation partner is from the same cultural group. Nested inside congregations, Beloved Conversations creates the first step – a learning laboratory – for how to live healthily in a multi-racial, multicultural, and often philosophically diverse community. A 1½ day learning laboratory in the form of a “retreat” will be held on Friday, February 22, 2019, in the evening, and Saturday, February 23, 2019, daytime. Attendance at the retreat is required to participate in the program; it introduces and models the teaching practice and spirit of the overall curriculum, with the intention of forming a learning community. The program itself then unfolds in an 8-week series of small groups, let by co-facilitators. 

If you are interested in being part of Beloved Conversations as a participant, please let Senior Leader Amanda Poppei know at amandap@ethicalsociety.org. If you have interest in applying to be one of the co-facilitators of a small group, please email her as well with that note.