Summer 2020 Sunday Forum

Plymouth Virtual Sunday Forum

June 28 Summer Forum (Julie Neraas, Hope)

July 26 Summer Forum (EJ Kelley, Radical Hospitality)

August 23 Summer Forum (K’s Revolutionary Catering)

Summer 2020
9:30–10:20 a.m

Sunday Forum will be held via Zoom webinar.  Please join us using the options below.  No registration is needed.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84128728969

iPhone one-tap :  19294362866,,84128728969#  or +13017158592,,84128728969#

Telephone: 929 436 2866

301 715 8592

312 626 6799

669 900 6833

253 215 8782

346 248 7799

Webinar ID: 841 2872 8969

International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kd0UI7Nsl1

If you would like to attend in person following physical spacing, wearing a mask, and other protocols established by Plymouth; please contact Doug Freeman (dougf@plymouth.org) to register.  In-person attendance in Guild Hall is limited to 10 people.

August 23

K’s Revolutionary Catering is based out of Plymouth’s kitchen.  You may have tasted Chef K’s delicious food at a Wednesday dinner, a memorial luncheon, or other event at Plymouth.  They are not your usual caterers.  The owners, Mariam Omari and Chef K Taylor, are business and life partners from East African and Louisiana Creole traditions.  The sweat and tears they put into making others rich, taught them how to operate their own business and to include their vision of real food for real people. K’s Revolutionary lives by the motto, “It’s Not Healthy, It’s Just Food.”  They want people to know that eating high quality food is affordable and flavorful and their aim is to normalize healthy eating while not losing any deliciousness. Food offers mental and physical healing and in their 35 years of culinary and restaurant experience they saw a need to revolutionize the ideas surrounding what constitutes “real food” within economically deprived communities.

Mariam Omari has been fighting for food justice since 1993 and brings decades of research to shine a light on unethical commercial food practices. Over the years, they have learned how the promotion of processed food within the commercial food industry plays a direct role in the increase of preventable diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cholesterol. 

Chef K Taylor has sharpened her culinary skills by studying in New Orleans, LA and with top chefs like David Fhima in the Twin Cities. She led Youth Farm’s Powderhorn site, utilizing food as a catalyst to develop young people.

June 28

Hope

Covid-19, and the horrific murder of George Floyd and it’s the aftermath, have convulsed our community, state, nation, and world. The anguish and rage about racism’s devastations is deep. There are countless other crises that threaten hope, from millions of people unemployed to 71 million homeless, a planet in peril, etc. Many young people wonder if they even have a future. Where can we find hope that is equal to our times and can bear us up?

Julie Neraas is an ordained Presbyterian clergywoman, Spiritual Director, Retreat Leader, and was an Assoc. Professor at Hamline University. She is the author of Apprenticed to Hope: A Sourcebook for Difficult Times, Seeing the Sacred: A Year in Snapshots, and Hope and Poetry: How They Sustain us. Julie has been part of Plymouth Church since 1986, leading a number of retreats and classes.

July 26

Shifting Frames of Reference: Compassion, Radical Hospitality, and Wholeness

Often we think of compassion as transactional and hierarchical: there’s an act, a doer, and a done unto.  Radical hospitality is compassion that is relational, judgment-free, with no role-playing.  As Kathleen Norris wrote, “[t]rue hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each and every person.”  Join us as we explore how we, individually and as a community, move from acts of Christian charity to true radical hospitality.

E.J. Kelley helps lead Plymouth’s Radical Hospitality Affinity Group. He is also a member of the Plymouth Contemplatives, the Board of Outreach, and the community that supports Groveland Emergency Food Shelf.  E.J. is particularly interested in the intersection of contemplation, love, and justice.