Showing results by narrator "Valerie Brown" in All Categories

Seventh-grader Viv never looks forward to picture day. It’s just another day where she wears a boring braid and no one notices her. (Her two best friends, Milo and Al, don’t count, of course.) But enough is enough. This year, she’s taking matters into her own hands. Literally. Viv grabs a pair of scissors, her phone for live-streaming, and, well, bye-bye braid. Suddenly Viv is an over-night influencer at Brinkley Middle School. Everyone wants her help planning their next big moment—from haircuts, to dance proposals, activist rallies and mathlete championships.

Coming to Light explores the practice and process of the clearness committee, a means of spiritual discernment used by Quakers that has also proved helpful to many others. The author shares her personal experience of clearness committees, first as a member of the Religious Society of Friends and then as a retreat leader for the Center for Courage & Renewal, which uses the clearness committee as the center of its practice. The pamphlet includes a sample format of a clearness committee and material that may be used as handouts.

Based on the historical record of Bessie’s "confession" to witchcraft in 16th-century Scotland, the episodic structure of the play shows the many characters and events that supposedly made up the catalogue of her crimes, but which in fact testify to her innocence and goodness.