Hi all, I know I've been quiet here in recent months. That's because I've been hard at work on a number of projects. I will post them separately for ease of archiving and search later.

For now, I want to share the recording of my talk from the plenary I gave this past weekend (8/2/2026) at New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM). This is on the subject of the attention economy, silence as a practice of resistance, and some of what I've been doing with students at Guilford on the subject. Some of which I have been writing about over the last few years.

At Guilford, we're talking a lot about this as "attention education" and is something a group of us faculty and staff are weaving throughout our classes. This summer, along with two faculty colleagues, I helped coordinate and plan a 3-day faculty development workshop where 13 faculty met to develop attention-based pedagogies that can help us meet the needs (which include mind, body, spirit, and community) of our students, and frankly, ourselves. Then, two weeks ago, some of the Friends of Attention from the Strother's School of Radical Attention paid a 3-day visit to work with over 40 staff and faculty at Guilford on deepening our understanding of practices of attention. This group included coaches, alumni, board members, administrators, staff, and faculty and was quite frankly a ground-breaking moment since I've been at Guilford.

All of that is in the background of this talk I gave at NEYM.

The title of the talk was: The Practice of Silence as Resistance in the Age of Attention Fracking and draws on books like Attensity! by the Friends of Attention and Stand Out of Light by James Williams.

Here's the plenary with special thanks to Brian Drayton for accompanying me, Kristina Keefe-Perry for reading Scripture at the opening of my talk, and for Betsy Cazden also holding the space in prayer.

Here is more information I shared during the talk for folks who want to read more or know where I pulled ideas from:

NEYM Public Resources - Nurse Log Notes - Obsidian Publish
NEYM Public Resources - Nurse Log Notes - Powered by Obsidian Publish.
Obsidian Publish

My visit to NEYM was really lovely. It was my first time and I not only felt welcomed but saw many familiar faces and Friends I hadn't seen in a long time. I also really enjoyed an evening book talk about my Pendle Hill Pamphlet that published last week. Francisco Burgos, executive director of Pendle Hill, and friend of mine, was there for the day and participated in the conversation that evening which made the whole thing extra special.

All in all, I felt my time there was well used and blessed. Thank you to the NEYM Friends for the invitation to work on this.

Wess Daniels