Judith Favor

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Obituary: Judith Wright Favor

January 5, 2024 By admin

Judith Favor, Author

Judith Favor, Author

Great-Grandmother, Author,
Pastor, Teacher

Judith Lee Wright Favor, a resident of Pilgrim Place in Claremont, died December 8, 2023 at the age of 83 after being treated briefly for congestive heart failure. She was surrounded by her loving family.

Born on February 25, 1940, in Portland, Oregon, Judith’s life was marked by resilience, spirituality, and a profound commitment to service. She married David Favor, with whom she shared the joy of raising three children and the adventurous pursuit of hot air ballooning. Following their divorce in 1977, she embarked on a transformative path, attending seminary at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. Her calling led her to pastor United Church of Christ congregations in the San Francisco Bay Area, leaving an indelible impact on the communities she served.

In 1998, she made her home at Pilgrim Place in Claremont, where she continued her spiritual journey. She found love again with Pete Nelson, whom she married in 2007, and together they navigated life until his passing in 2020. Her influence extended far beyond her personal life as a sought-after facilitator and teacher of spiritual direction. Her wisdom touched the hearts of many, as she taught for Still Point at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, The Claremont School of Theology, and The Religious Society of Friends.

Her legacy also includes her prolific writings, with seven books to her name, including notable titles such as “Spiritual Guide to Sabbath Economics,” “The Edgefielders,” “Silent Voices,” “The Beacons of Larkin Street,” and “Friending Rosie: Respect on Death Row.” She wrote most of her books while a member of the Joslyn Center’s writer’s group in Claremont. She also wrote articles in religious magazines and journals. Her intellectual and creative contributions resonated with a wide audience, enriching the lives of those seeking spiritual guidance and strong characters.

She is survived by her son Michael Favor and his wife Kathy; granddaughter Sarah and husband Eric Gagnebin; great-grandson Jax Gagnebin and her daughter Penelope Wyllie; son-in-law Doug Wyllie and grandson Finn Gunn Wyllie; stepson Kahlil Nelson; grandchildren Andrew Favor and Melody Favor; brother Bob Wright and his wife Robbie; cousins Lorane Dick and her wife Teri Tompkins, and Wanda Dick Iverson and her husband Al Iverson. Other survivors include nieces and nephews Sigrid Wright (Matt Parisi), Kirsten Wright (Thom Kasten), Johanna Wright (Gabe Blair), Cooper Wright (Namju Choi), Jason Wright (Christine Leonard Wright), Jeremy Wright (Kristy Lombard Wright), and Susi Stryker (Steve Stryker), and many other beloved family members on the Dick and Wright sides of the family.

She was preceded in death by her parents Jim Wright and Mildrid (Dick) Wright; her son, Ray Favor; and brother, Jim Wright.

“An active member of The Claremont Friends Meeting, Judith’s spiritual home, and her residency at Pilgrim Place symbolized her deep connection to community and faith,” her family shared. “Judith was a generous donor to many charities and organizations, in lieu of flowers the family requests that donations be made to organizations and causes close to your heart.  And she would encourage you to make it a lifelong habit.”

A celebration of her life will be held at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, January 6 at Decker Hall in Pilgrim Place, 655 Avery Rd., Claremont, CA 91711. Friends and family are invited to join in remembrance of her extraordinary life.


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Filed Under: Announcements Tagged With: Author Event, biography, generational pain, Longtermism, silent meditation

Touchstones: “Generational Pain”

October 10, 2023 By Judith Favor

photo of a Flagstone pathway in a graphic frame

Dear Readers Who Write,
Generational pain prompted my first two books, The Edgefielders: Poor Farm Tales of a Great-Grandmother and Silent Voices. The discipline of discovery writing gave me tools to explore the mysterious forces that tear families apart and the ties that bind families together.
Novels by contemporary authors are reminders that you and I do need not bear generational pain alone. Current fictional favorites include:

  • The Other Americans by Laila Lalami
  • World Light by Halldor Laxness
  • Love by Toni Morrison
  • Gonzalez & Daughter Trucking Co. by Maria Amparo Escandon
  • Mink River by Brian Doyle
  • Take One Candle, Light a Room by Susan Straight

The colorful characters in my four Beacons novels also support readers who may feel alone in bearing generational pain. Love stories & family sagas forge strong connections with readers, despite diversities of race, religion, class and gender identity. Inspiring memoirists include:

  • Living With a Wild God by Barbara Ehrenreich
  • The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation by Richard Rohr
  • Joy Unspeakable by Barbara Holmes
  • I Could Tell You Stories by Patricia Hampl
  • Sisterhood Heals: The Transformative Power of Healing in Community by Joy Harden Bradford

“We are nervous beings, in nervous nations, at an increasingly nervous time,” writes Jen Soriano in Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing. In the September-October issue of Poets & Writers journal, Soriano’s words shimmer with meaning. “I wrote this” she says, “ … for pearls in their shells seeking conditions to shine. My story is just one ripple in an emerging ecosystem of interdependence, where we don’t have to bear generational pain alone.”

Whose writing helps you bear generational pain?


by Judith Wright Favor

Filed Under: Touchstones Tagged With: generational pain, Jen Soriano, Journaling, Poets & Writers Journal, silent meditation, Silent Voices, testimonial, The Beacons, The Edgefielders, writing

Touchstones: “Hush”

September 23, 2023 By Judith Favor

photo of a Flagstone pathway in a graphic frame

Dear Friends Who Read,
Hush and I have a long relationship. When I was very young, we met in Grandma’s lap. “Hush now, hush” she would whisper, warm breath tickling my tiny ear. “Hush, little one, hush.” Eventually I learned to hush myself into a receptive state of stillness. Over time, meditation and prayerfulness deepened my practice. Be still and know. When Hush is good, it is very good. And we want it to be good for others.
I heard too much creative clamor when I started working on The Beacons of Larkin Street, my first novel. My mind was cluttered with ideas and desires, opinions and emotional reactions. Soon the fictional characters began to introduce themselves

  • Lesbian Beka and married Dot arrive fully embodied as a white researcher and a black social worker.
  • Transgender Paige communes with angels, saints and mystics.
  • Widows Hope and Rev Ruth long for connection, seeking to open the author’s heart to their sorrows.
  • Haitian immigrant Millienne prays with her bare feet on Mother Earth.
  • Undocumented Luz suffers in silent misery, unable to bear telling God what is happening to her on streets of San Francisco.
  • Caro from Cleveland brings charisma, addictions and lust to the Haight Ashbury.
  • Arsonist Red aches from maternal neglect and yearns to belong at Saint Lydia’s.
  • They all seemed to know something I did not yet know.
  • All these females need safety to express their truths. How could I protect their vulnerable voices from my authorly intrusion?

The Hush helps me figure it out. Someone said people make the path by walking. Authors say writers make the path by writing. My inner voice says hushing is the path to the heart of my novels. The Beacons and the Rev help me figure out what is useful and what isn’t. First, they say, write up a storm. Set aside the messy first draft, Let the screen of your mind’s eye go blank. Wait receptively. In my busy mind, the Hush creates space for fictional women to articulate hidden traumas, longings and fears.

  • In the Hush, Rev Ruth wrestles with inherited doctrines, gradually discovering which beliefs are false and which ring true.
  • In the Hush, Beka and Dot design an ingenious way to trap and expose their predatory pastor.
  • In the Hush, dialogues between Hope and Rev Ruth, Dot and Beka, Millienne and Paige raise central questions about loss & leadership, faith and practice.
  • In the Hush, Luz heals from sexual abuse by letting the women of Saint Lydia’s care for her traumatized body-mind-heart-soul.
  • In the Hush, Beka and Caro struggle through attraction, betrayal and recovery.
  • In the Hush, Paige befriends firebug Red and assists the congregation in forgiving the girl who torched their sanctuary.

The Hush brings third-person objectivity to a struggling author. Once freed from the weight of my authorly opinions, The Beacons and the Rev showed me a wideness in their path of congregational leadership. These church ladies made the path wide enough to liberate themselves, each other, and females who suffer unjust treatment. In order to hear their truths I had to quiet my own opinions. The Hush gives space for fictional women to reveal when they are fooling themselves and when they are being true to core values as they reckon with the complications of past, present and future.

My four interlocked Beacons novels mirror the racial and gender diversity of church ladies in San Francisco during the 1970s. Earnestly searching for transcendence, the Beacons and the Rev create a sacred chalice for readers, too. Enfolded in the Hush between tensions and conflicts, readers can also grow spiritually alongside the women of Saint Lydia’s. Readers like you can uncover your own interior truths through inward reflection. Some of you already express your faith-based witness through community-based social action. Others are finding your way. Welcome to the Beacons series.

Tenderly,
Judith


by Judith Wright Favor

Filed Under: Touchstones Tagged With: Journaling, silent meditation, testimonial, The Beacons, writing

Touchstones: “Discovery Writing”

August 22, 2023 By Judith Favor

photo of a Flagstone pathway in a graphic frameDear Friends Who Read,
“Writing is an extreme privilege but it’s also a gift. It is a gift to yourself and it’s a gift of giving a story to someone,” wrote Amy Tan. In her new film, Unintended Memoirs, the author ‘speaks with remarkable frankness about traumas she has faced in her life and how writing has helped her heal.” In Where the Past Begins (2017) she wrote, “As long as I kept searching and asking, I would never lose myself. I was the narrator of my life. I could write without loneliness but with purpose: to find meaning in both the past and in the moments unfolding.”

Searching & Asking on the Page

Like young Amy Tan, I liked to write alone in my bedroom. Feelings were routinely stifled in my family, but reading and writing awakened my emotions. I disappeared for hours with pen in hand or a book in my lap, safe from scrutiny and discord. I liked solitude and I also wanted a twin to steady me in times of paralyzing self-doubt, a trusted companion with whom to share laughter and tears in stories of love and pain and wonder. I adored the Bobbsey Twins and longed for a trusted twin brother to share the mess and metaphors of life. My mother laughed and laughed when I told her I wanted a twin brother for my birthday. After that, I confided only in my diary, but developed the lifelong practice of writing to discover Something More.

Discovery Writing

Searching and asking needs to do two things: make me struggle and affirm my insights. Discovery writing stretches me beyond what I do know so I can notice and record what I don’t yet know. Writing is spiritual when it sharpens the inner eye of awareness. And discovery writing is good when it blesses the writer’s soul; then it will be good for the reader’s soul

What happens when you search and ask on the page?


by Judith Wright Favor

Filed Under: Touchstones Tagged With: Amy Tan, Discovery, Journaling, silent meditation, testimonial, writing

The Spirituality of Waiting
— An Advent Retreat led by Stillpoint

November 15, 2022 By Judith Favor

December 3, 2022

9:30am – 2:30pm PT

This retreat will be held online.
All sessions will be recorded
for later viewing.

When the external light lessens, creation takes its deep breath and enters a season of waiting. In her darkest hours creation waits, restoring herself and preparing for a new season of life and growth. But we are not good at waiting, we prefer to keep getting things done. The good news of Advent is that – like creation, we do not wait alone. We wait in community with others.

You are invited to an on-line guided contemplative retreat to pause and wait in the company of others to give attention to what needs restoring and what is waiting in you. Noticing how you are waiting for God, and how God is waiting for you.


RETREAT SCHEDULE

9:00am – 12:00pm PT
Morning Session


Lunch/Screen Break: 12:00pm – 1:00pm PT

Centering Prayer: 12:00pm – 12:20pm


1:00pm – 2:30pm PT
Afternoon Session

COST

$70 registration

Stillpoint desires to keep our retreat registration cost low in order to be accessible to everyone. There are a limited number of “no cost” options available.

REGISTER NOW

email banner image for The Spirituality of Waiting online Retreat at Stillpoint

Filed Under: Announcements, Ghost Ranch, News, Retreats, StillPoint Tagged With: Ghost Ranch, online, seminars, silent meditation, Spirituality & Practice, Stillpoint, workshops

RESTING IN LOVE —
The Healing Balm of Silence: (in-person) Silent Retreat

July 8, 2022 By Judith Favor

September 30 – October 2, 2022

Experience a weekend of quiet in the beauty of the Redwoods. Silence can soothe our bodies and minds in order to better attend to the longings of our souls. To nurture the silence, optional activities will be offered including meditative writing, soul collage, walking meditation in nature, and healing meditation. There will also be opening and closing worship sharing and Meetings for Worship. This retreat is for first timers as well as those who have participated in many silent retreats.


A woman sits quietly in meditation at the Quaker Center

“Sacred places have constancy in them…because we, who worship in them, imbue them with our lives, our hopes, and our concerns. ..Many of us have favorite places where we sit, where friendship with God and each other is brought to mind and heart….where our souls are remembered into presence and service.”
(4–5) Gunilla Norris, Cultivating Sanctuary, PHP 466


About our PROGRAM LEADERS:

Judith Wright Favor portrait photoJudith Wright Favor is a member of Claremont Friends Meeting who also serves Southern California Quarterly and Pacific Yearly Meeting.  She taught at Claremont School of Theology and facilitated AVP workshops in California prisons. Judith’s ministry includes writing for publication, soul companionship and retreat leadership.

 

Judy Leshefka portrait photoJudy Leshefka is a member of La Jolla Friends Meeting.  She helped start the Annual Friends’ Silent Retreat which has been offered in Southern California every Labor Day weekend for the last 25 years.  Silence has been her primary spiritual practice since her teenage years.

for REGISTRATION INFORMATION
watch this space and/ or our website: www.QuakerCenter.org

Map Pinned Location of the Quaker Center near Santa Cruz

Location of the Quaker Center near Santa Cruz, CA

Filed Under: Announcements, Quaker Center, Quakers, Retreats Tagged With: Bay Area, co-presenters, silent meditation, weekends

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    Recent Posts

    • Obituary: Judith Wright Favor January 5, 2024
    • My Last Great Adventure December 5, 2023
    • Touchstones: “Generational Pain” October 10, 2023
    • Touchstones: “Hush” September 23, 2023
    • Claremont Authors Event on 9/30/2023 September 10, 2023
    • BOOK REVIEW: What We Owe the Future August 24, 2023
    • Touchstones: “Discovery Writing” August 22, 2023
    • BOOK REVIEW: The School That Escaped the Nazis: The True Story of the Schoolteacher Who Defied Hitler
      by Deborah Cadbury
      February 2, 2023
    • Meet the Author: Jan 14th/4pm at The Claremont Forum January 9, 2023
    • The Spirituality of Waiting
      — An Advent Retreat led by Stillpoint
      November 15, 2022
    • Book Review: “Living Fellowship Needs Fresh Forms”
      by Daphne Clement
      October 12, 2022
    • “I’m Gonna Be a Part of It, New York, New York!” October 11, 2022
    • Walk With Me — Book Review August 3, 2022
    • Review of Friending Rosie Pamphlet in Friends Journal August 3, 2022
    • RESTING IN LOVE —
      The Healing Balm of Silence: (in-person) Silent Retreat
      July 8, 2022
    • Rosie Review by Judy Lumb in What Canst Thou Say? July 1, 2022
    • Writing Your Ethical Will June 29, 2022
    • Interfaithfully Speaking: Connecting Interfaithfully with People in Prison (Claremont Courier Article) March 6, 2022
    • Friending Rosie Book Review by Jon M. Sweeney February 17, 2022
    • Composing Your Spiritual Memoir January 6, 2022
    • Friending Rosie: Page Publishing October 21, 2021
    • 52 Weeks of Love & Money: The Companion Journal for Sabbath Economics — PUBLISHED! September 25, 2021
    • Epiphany Writing Retreat August 21, 2021
    • Greg Richardson’s Generous Review of Sabbath Economics February 25, 2021
    • First Stack of Author Proofs! December 2, 2020
    • Sabbath Economics published on November 11, 2020 November 10, 2020
    • WRITING FOR CHANGE IN CHALLENGING TIMES September 3, 2020
    • Big-Hearted Democracy August 25, 2020
    • A Mother’s Heartlines December 9, 2019
    • Steady & Clear November 30, 2019


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