YOU ARE INVITED to the unique experience of a Learning Community of feminist women and men seeking clarity around issues encountered in their daily lives.

Each Thursday conference consists of
(1) An Existential Focus − To set the issue an Advisory Committee member speaks about how the day's topic comes from her life
(2) A Presentation − A guest speaker looks at the topic from their experience and expertise.
(3) Processing − Informal conversation around questions and comments by the entire group together.
(4) Planning − Those present in the afternoon as the Advisory Committee experience the creative side of TOP, the planning of a new series.

Schedule. We begin at 10:00 am by singing one of our favorite Carolyn McDade songs. After a short announcement time our speakers begin at 10:15. The guest speaker ends their talk and responses to questions at 12 noon. At this point the speakers and any of the audience are free to leave while the group continues to process what they have just heard in a participatory discussion through further questions and comments on the topic. At 12:30 the group breaks for lunch. Some of the participants meet downstairs for a support group over lunch, while others find something to eat in Harvard Square or leave for the day. The Advisory Committee reconvenes to plan the series a year ahead between 1:15 and 3:00 pm. All participants are welcome to join in this stage of the process.

Conference topics and series themes emerge from those who participate, using a feminist process of sharing our lives and "issues," and looking there for concerns from which to design future TOP conference series.

The Advisory Committee is an open group of women which meets with the Coordinator to plan TOP's fall and spring conferences. Not everyone comes every time. But over the afternoons of the planning process 30 to 40 women participate in giving shape to each new series.

Since 1973 more than 4,300 have participated. We mail to 1,400 more-recent attenders.

Each series is a "course" on a single theme, with various topics each week. You can come to one conference, several, or to all. You can come to the whole day or to a part of it. Bring a bagged lunch from home or buy lunch at one of the numerous shops on JFK Street or around Harvard Square.

Theology, by its Greek derivation, is "thinking about God" (theos [God] and logos [word]).

But in actual use the word theology has been extended to cover thinking about humans, and then extended still more to cover thinking about our human place in the cosmos.

Theology, thus, is about naming, and that naming has power - the power to shape the way people perceive their lives and their world.

Throughout many centuries male theologians have been unapologetic about making theological statements about human life based only upon their male life experience. And male theologians through the centuries have been unapologetic about projecting their own theological speculations upon females and female life ("Women as like Eve, evil," etc.).

Let us as women then not be reticent about our doing our own theological reflection about our own lives and women's life experience, and our women's search for purpose, spirituality and moral meaning.

Theology in the past, though it presumed to speak for the entire human experience, has been based upon only the life experience of one half - the male half - of the human species. It is our challenge and opportunity as women to explore the theological reflections of the other - silent or unrepresented - half of the human species.

We invite you to this theological opportunity!

TOP began in the fall of 1973 as a Thursday morning fall and spring lecture series by Divinity School faculty for the general public, a public which turned out to be predominantly women.

Over the first decade the women doing the planning - and also those attending - became increasingly feminist, and so did the topics for the lectures. In the late 1970s and the 1980s the series gradually increased in length to ten Thursdays in each series, and in the mid-1980s the sessions became half-day conferences with two or more speakers and now run from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm.

In the early 1980s faculty from other Harvard Schools began to be invited to speak, as well as lawyers, legislators, authors, journalists, environmentalists, psychologists and psychotherapists from the Greater Boston area.

Previous speakers include philosopher and author Sissella Bok, anthropologist and author Mary Catherine Bateson, former Smith College president and author Jill Conway, Federal 1st District judge Nancy Gertner, psychoanalyst and author Jean Baker Miller MD, psychologist and author Irene Stiver, politician and philanthropist Ambassador Swanee Hunt (now at the Kennedy School), elder activist Elsie Frank (Barney's mother), arts activist Alma Lewis, theologians Thomas Berry, Matthew Fox and Harvey Cox, Globe columnists Linda Weltner, Patricia Smith and Derrick Jackson, and innumerable faculty members from the Divinity School and other schools at Harvard and from other colleges and universities in greater Boston, Worcester and the Connecticut Valley Five Colleges.

Between 60 and 80 people, mostly women, usually attend TOP. Our chronological ages range from the 20s to the 80s. In our past and present religious orientations we are Jewish, Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, Unitarian Universalist, Quaker, Buddhist, post-Christian, Goddess and non-religious. We are single, married, divorced, widowed, remarried, heterosexual, bisexual and lesbian. We are daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, aunts, great-aunts and grandmothers. Most, not all, of us are white; most, not all, of us are middle-class. We are teachers, clergy, housewives, psychotherapists, physicists, business women, lawyers, architects, authors, composers, singers, gardeners, caregivers, artists, and craftswomen. Our participants are a very intelligent, sensitive and responsive group to speak to.

We regret we are not able to offer our speakers any honorarium. Even though we nowadays invite outside speakers as well as Divinity School faculty, our budget is shaped by our origins as a faculty lecture series. The $15 admission fee we charge goes to printing, postage, computer services (for the mailing list), and a one-day-a-week stipend for a coordinator, Elizabeth Dodson Gray.

Participants drive up to two-and-a-half hours to come to our Thursday half-days. We mail to about 1400 alumni in Greater Boston, Eastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod, Rhode Island, a few in Hartford CT and the Amherst MA area, a few in Vermont, a considerable number in southern New Hampshire, and a few in Maine. We also mail to 600 churches and synagogues. We typically get 3 to 10 new attenders each Thursday. Most come because a friend brings them.