Judith Favor

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The Art of Spiritual Direction

February 3, 2017 By Judith Favor

Judith Favor in discussion at Ghost Ranch

The Art of Spiritual Direction

Monday, November 13-Monday, November 20

Price: $2,395.00 – $2,895.00

This experience nurtures openness to the many ways God enlivens both participants and their companions on life’s spiritual journey. Rooted in the Christian contemplative tradition, we draw on and study the wisdom from many traditions. An experienced staff of distinguished spiritual directors facilitates sessions using role-plays, presentations, discussions, spiritual practices, demonstrations, contemplative exercises and prayer.

Participants who apply and are accepted in the program will travel to Ghost Ranch for four, one-week (7 nights) residential intensives. In between the residential intensive weeks, field work and assignments will occur.

Go to Ghost Ranch webpage for more details

Filed Under: Ghost Ranch, Spiritual Direction, StillPoint, Workshops Tagged With: Ghost Ranch, seminars, The Edgefielders, weeklong

About My Writing

September 2, 2014 By Judith Favor

What would you call this category of writing?
The Edgefielders is my great-grandmother’s hidden story. Public records show only birth, marriage and death dates so I composed a biographical novel to knit imagination into these bare facts. I invented scenes and dialogues to illustrate what happened before and during her four years at Edgefield.

How does imagination work with facts?
Margaret Mary was born in 1869 in rural Ontario and erased from family lore after she died in 1938 at the Multnomah County Poor Farm. I’d not heard of her until Aunt Margo handed me a stack of genealogy documents including a death certificate. Place of Death: Multnomah County Poor Farm. What? How could this be? Who sent my elderly ancestor to an institution for paupers?

Stories hold us together but hers had been deleted. I had to find out, even though it felt risky to probe into family shadows and secrets. Remaining elders had erased memories of Margaret Mary and they resented my questions. Shame went deep, it seemed, the shame of allowing Grandmother to end her life on the dole among strangers. I hate to stir up conflict but could not let this go. Someone had to bring Margaret Mary out of the dark and into the circle of light.

What did you hope to accomplish here?
Beyond telling a good story, my real purpose was to capture the truth of Margaret Mary’s soul and to illustrate the power of mutual spiritual care. The Edgefielders’ tales show how each person – no matter how poor – can contribute to compassion and generosity in the wider community.

And how did you do that?
Soul-seeing is tactile so I sat with my dearly departed ancestor and kept quiet, waiting for “something” to arise. The song of a canary evoked one story. The sensation of fingertips on a tiny golden cross brought forth romance. Cold bacon grease beckoned me into her melancholy, keeping watch with Margaret Mary where “the ocean moaned, tossing eternal waves of sadness against the shore.”

Where do meditation and imagination meet?
In stillness. And in love. Meditation offers a way to be with dread and fury, anxiety and confusion, to stay present to all those vulnerabilities we usually try to avoid. Meditation invites us to see through the surface of things to the light source of everything. Imagination arises from the power of love, the force of love between the generations. In this book, meditative imagination is the active, conscious practice of finding my way – with Margaret Mary – to the heart of Presence and recording what is revealed there.

Image link to Powell's Books The Edgefielders order page

Filed Under: Books, Questions Tagged With: The Edgefielders

The Edgefielders

August 2, 2014 By Judith Favor

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The Edgefielders bookcover imageThe Edgefielders: Poor Farm Tales
of a Great-Grandmother

by Judith Wright Favor (2013)

The Edgefielders tells of a vibrant community of individuals from different cultures and faiths who were forced to live at Oregon’s state-run poor farm during the Great Depression.

Judith Wright Favor, a retired pastor and Portland native, was in mid-life before she came upon a document that shed light upon the dark secret: in 1935 her great grandmother, Margaret Mary Wright, was sent to the poor farm and erased from the family lore. Judith was outraged to learn that her great grandmother died among paupers at Edgefield.

She felt compelled to unravel the mystery. Why did her grandfather commit his mother to a public institution? What were the circumstances that led to this decision? What was Edgefield like during the Depression? Who did Margaret Mary live with in her final home? How did she get along with strangers of different races and religions?

With little to go on but a death certificate, Judith set out to discover the truth. Through the process of contemplative writing, she constructed a fictional story of her lost ancestor intertwined with strands of family memoir. Judith listened for lost experiences, explored layers of inherited guilt and gave voice to women and men whose livelihoods and homes disappeared during the Great Depression.

As the Greatest Generation passes on, stories of the Depression go with them. The Edgefielders: Poor Farm Tales of a Great-Grandmother  keeps these stories alive for future generations.
The times were incredibly difficult, but their fates are not as desperate as you might think. Margaret Mary and her new friends adjusted. Tales of friendship, romance, marriage and even redemption arise from these times of hardship. The Edgefielders bridges this gap, conveying the love of ancestors as it crosses the threshold of time.

Image link to Powell's Books The Edgefielders order pageLook for The Edgefielders, available in print and as an e-book, on CreateSpace and Amazon, or order it from Powell’s!

 

What people are saying about
The Edgefielders …edgefieldersMockover_uprightBold

 

“Sitting on the porch in the spring of 1936, Margaret Mary notices she feels free. Simply free, like seeing the sun after a wild winter storm.” 
Such a sense of “freedom” in a “poor house”
strikes me as an oxymoron. Can one be really free under such dire conditions?   This story is poignant, yet realistic.   It takes sturdy yet delicate writing to capture the challenges of making new friends in old age while wondering about one’s absent family.  This author does a wonderful job describing both!

Joanne Hummel,  Local elementary teacher;  observer of Edgefield Poor Farm for over forty years

This book will be especially compelling for those who  know the importance of shedding light on family secrets,  for readers interested in Oregon’s history, and for those  who are drawn to Edgefield.

Dale Stitt,  co-founder/director

A Journey Into Freedom – “When I listen, my whole life becomes the voice of God,”  says Nurse Rachel.  Judith composed these stories by  listening to her great-grandmother and other inmates as they knitted new lives from tangled ends.  Margaret Mary’s healing begins when a physician honors her goodness and godliness by first sitting with her in stillness, then querying her into self-understanding, strength, and forgiveness.

Charleen Krueger,  Registered Nurse; Knitter

Within a decade or two the Great Depression will no longer be a conscious memory in our country.  We will know it only through the history books. The personal experiences will disappear, except for novels like The Edgefielders. This is a rich and earthy tale of those who came before us.  The author describes the challenges they faced and how they survived that trying time.  This book is reminiscent in time, location, and even style of Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams.

                                                                        Tim Sunderland, Writer

The characters are very engaging.  Vivid descriptions brought them to life; each one has such a gripping story.   I can see how this book could be adapted into a screenplay.  With more development of the characters, it could make an interesting television series. It probably wouldn’t sell on the regular networks but would appeal to a public television audience.

                                            Judy Leshefka, Meditation Instructor

Who would have known that a progressive government in Oregon created this “poor farm” to provide housing and work for people like Judith Favor’s great-grandmother during the Depression after her husband walked out and her children could no longer care for her?

The author paints a vivid picture of friendship, romance, creativity, resilience and the mostly-harmonious blending of religions, races and worldviews in this lovely story of Margaret Mary and the Edgefielders.

                                                Claire Gorfinkel,  Activist, Writer

These stories gave me a chance to vicariously experience living in the Poor House, touching into the hardships, newfound friendships and down-to-earth spirituality of the Edgefielders.  This book is a treasure, offering a glimpse into how freedom is discovered in the most unlikely places.

Barbara P. Anderson, Presbyterian pastor

This beautifully written book, with fully developed characters, is a personal story of life beyond economic loss. How many of us wonder where today’s poor, unemployed people go when they “vanish”?

The wondrous building of relationship between fragile economic survivors described in this book leads me to wonder about today’s homeless shelters.   Unlike Edgefield, shelter placements – when available today – are usually transient.  Thus, in our time, relationships between economically disadvantaged people are sadly transient as well.

In describing a hidden, even shameful, secret about residents at a poor farm from the past, I wonder if the author causes us to reflect on the possibility of the community formed at Edgefield.  This possibility of community is mostly absent in our treatment of the homeless today.

An incredibly good read.

Karen Vance, Kindergarten Master Teacher

 

 

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: The Edgefielders

The Edgefielders – the book

August 1, 2014 By Judith Favor

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Filed Under: Books Tagged With: The Edgefielders

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