This course is oversubscribed. No further expressions of interest will be considered for the 2025 offering.

Led by Sheila Keane, Matt Lamont, and David Johnson, with Felicity Rose as accompanying Elder. This year long course is designed to

• respond to a deep spiritual hunger for more

• deepen/ transform your spiritual life

• establish in you an ongoing rhythm of spiritual practice

• enable you to better discern and live into your own leadings

The course starts with a residential Opening Retreat at Silver Wattle, 7-13 February 2025, followed by weekly offline reading & video materials (a commitment of 3-5 hours per week). Over the year, there will also be 13 live Zoom sessions (held Sunday afternoons) which will include presentations and provide opportunities to explore your spiritual experience. The course topics follow inward and outward movements of the spirit concluding with an exploration of your own leadings toward contemplative action.

The Closing Retreat will be held 6-10 December 2025, also at Silver Wattle.

Click here for more DETAILED COURSE INFORMATION.

Cost: The fee for the course (which includes tuition and two residential retreats) is $1,845 for the year. However, we do not want cost to be a barrier to participation. Financial assistance is available.

led by Jane Hope

This course takes a Quakerly approach to Joanna Macy’s teaching on ‘The Work that Reconnects’, a spiral of practices designed to support us in meeting the multiple crises of our times. The Work unfolds through four stages: Coming from Gratitude, Honouring our Pain for the world, Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes, and Going Forth. The journey helps us experience first hand that we are larger, stronger, more creative - and more deeply interconnected - than we knew.

In this Active Hope course, we will spend time experiencing nature connection, sharing in deep reflection in both large and small groups, singing and eating together, and learning some frameworks and tools for responding with Quaker depth and wisdom to challenging issues in our world. We will look closely at how this body of work connects to Quaker practices and concerns, and how Quakers collectively can use its insights to respond to the confronting situations we face.

Course Fees:

Single room $450 per person, shared room $390 per person, camping $180 per person.

Register here.

Jane Hope manages the Gembrook Retreat in Victoria. She is a Quaker who seeks to follow the radical life of Christ, and works as a Spiritual Director, Retreat Guide, Mentor and facilitator of The Work That Reconnects.

Jane has found that her spiritual life has deepened by developing a greater connection to land, extended periods of contemplation and living a daily life of prayer and work. As her spiritual life continues to deepen every day she is drawn to share and explore the spiritual life with others. You can learn more about Jane here https://www.gembrookretreat.org.au/people

led by Michael Griffith

This course is a week of sharing and discussing some of the world’s great poetry written in (or translated into) English. The focus during this week will be on experiencing and fathoming how poetry can engage us at the deepest level, spiritually, emotionally, physically and intellectually. The time will include a collaborative, structured but unhurried engagement with poetry, as well as time set aside for experiencing the landscape around Silver Wattle, and for personal reflection and creative writing.

Michael Griffith is an experienced teacher of literature and poetry, and his work ranged from Shakespeare to William Blake to Australian poets. Michael has taught literature at the Australian Catholic University for the last 45 years and with many disadvantaged groups through the Clemente program. Now retired, he has published widely on Australian literature and has written poetry. His PhD researched the Australian poet Francis Webb, and was published as God’s Fool: The Life and Poetry of Francis Webb (Harper Collins/ Angus and Robertson, 1991). Still available as an ebook at https://www.amazon.com.au/Gods-Fool-Life-Poetry-Francis-ebook/dp/B0091SJ26K

led by Anne Felton

This course offers hard-to find guidance about the spirituality of ageing and dementia. It caters for those navigating older age, who can learn from, reflect, and share about, their experience of later-life spirituality. The course is also suited to younger people and to those caring for older people, who will gain insight into the life journeys of family, friends and those being cared for as they get older.

There are few opportunities to tell one’s life story to attentive listeners, including our own ageing selves. Telling one’s stories is an important part of older age, helping to counteract the negative messages that society holds about growing older. Telling one’s stories is a spiritual task of older age. It’s a proven way of combating loneliness and disconnection.

Anne Felton has been a Quaker since 1991, attending Meetings in Sydney, Canberra and Honolulu. She currently worships in person with Bega Valley Recognised Meeting, and online with Canberra Quakers and Silver Wattle Quaker Centre.

Anne is a qualified Spiritual Director and has been closely involved with Silver Wattle Quaker Centre from 2010, serving in a variety of roles over the years and co-leading the course “Listening to the Landscape” in 2019, 2022 and 2024.

Anne’s husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2008, and she later wrote about her caregiving experience in Pendle Hill Pamphlet #477 “One Caregiver’s Journey with Dementia” (2022).

Led by Jen Newton, Barbara Huntington and Brenda Roy

This annual retreat is for anyone who would like to be creative. The intention is to create a space that is supportive and nurturing to all, with time to focus on Spirit and Nature, to reflect on your creative practice and to rest in the Spirit knowing you are enough. We will immerse ourselves in the Country and the Spirit to be inspired to create. Some collaboration and sharing may occur as guided by the Divine.

Limit 12 participants.

Jen Newton lives in Mount Stuart on Nipuluna country, the land of the Muwinina people. She is a convinced Quaker and believes that her creativeness is part of her spiritual practice. Inspired by the natural environment, she explores textiles, mixed media, wearable art, photography, basketry, natural dyeing and recycled materials for sculptural pieces.

Barbara Huntington is a textile artist living at Fishermans Reach NSW on the banks of Macleay River on Dunghutti land. She is inspired by her environment, using natural dyes, slow embroidery and weaving to reflect her surroundings. She is a Quaker, inspired by poetry, her relationship to the environment and the Buddhist understanding that we are all connected.

Brenda Roy is a Quaker, gratefully living in Perth, on Whadjuk, Noongar, land. She is a spinner, weaver and natural dyer who finds delight in the colours and textures of the world around her. She follows an Earth Path spirituality, seeing the Spirit in all beings and believes in the power of making clothing and everyday objects which carry sacred intent.

Led by Helen Gould and Rowe Morrow

We live in difficult times with the unfolding climate emergency, species extinctions, global and personal relationship difficulties and more. This course affirms our skills and helps us become more skillful in responding to these interconnected crises. The course draws on Quaker, Buddhist, permaculture, and indigenous practices.

Helen Gould has led courses at Silver Wattle, and Experiment with Light workshops, developed by Rex Ambler based on George Fox’s practices. The workshops draw on the body’s wisdom of the Light from whatever source it comes. The listening practices have helped her become more resilient and more open to guidance. Helen has a “leading” about the life of forests and has become politically active on these issues.

Rowe Morrow is an adult educator in permaculture. In her interactive workshops, she listens for people’s fears and joys and works with these for solutions, with plenty of teaching and learning outdoors.

led by Therese Douglas and Sheila Keane

The course comprises 8 weekly Zoom sessions, Thursday evenings 6:30-8:00pm (AEST) from 11th September to 30th October 2025.

Weekly Zoom sessions are supplemented with readings and guest presentations. Topics include: Exploring the Light, Experience of Early Friends, Heart and Mind Prepared, Meeting for Worship, Your Voice in the Meeting, Leadings & Discernment, Testimony, and How Quakers are Organised.

You will be buddied up with 3 to 4 others in a group which will stay together through the entire course. You can be randomly allocated to a group or choose specific people for your group if you prefer. Please try to attend most if not all zoom sessions so your small group doesn't wind up being even smaller because you were not there!

This course is suitable for newer attenders and inquirers as well as experienced Friends who are seeking a re-grounding in Quakerism.

Contact Sheila if you want more details about the course

Therese Douglas is a member of the Friends Online Recognised Meeting. She has an extensive education background ranging from preschool to adult education in remote, rural and urban settings as well as yoga teaching! Currently she is a member of the Jan de Voogd Peace Fund Committee and recently retired as the Chair of Quaker Service Australia.

Sheila Keane created the original Australian Quaker Basics resource manual 24 years ago, and is an experienced online educator. She is a 1998 graduate of the School of the Spirit (Philadelphia YM) and has facilitated many other courses at Silver Wattle. She currently serves as convenor of the Silver Wattle Programs & Learning committee.

Led by: Doug Amarfio and Michael Griffith. 

Judith Wright lived her last decades in the Queanbeyan–Palerang landscape  (which includes Bungendore, Braidwood and Lake George). She was passionately committed to working on a Treaty for Aboriginals (with her partner Nugget Coombs) and she was deeply immersed in the native flora and fauna. Her deep friendship with Aboriginal poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal gave focus to her twin passions. 

This course will focus on the prose texts (Cry for the Dead and We Call for a Treaty) and poetry that define her relationship to country. The course will begin with an introduction to the landscape around Silver Wattle and its indigenous contexts and will then move into an exploration of the texts. The course will include a visit to Braidwood, the surrounding countryside and the house which Judith Wright built and where she wrote her major last works in the last decades of her life. We will also have an excursion to the National Gallery to explore developments in Aboriginal art that have a direct bearing on Judith Wright’s vision.