Be Not Afraid: Living into Love at the End of Life

Aging and dying are times of paradox: ascent and descent, loss and gain, grief and celebration. Immersing ourselves in love, we can transform the paradoxes. We can find the riches of spiritual opening and deepening.  

How could our community embrace these times? How do we let ourselves be claimed by Love? 

Baltimore Yearly Meeting opened this conversation in a gentle manner with its recently published book, A Tender Time. In this lecture, Patti Nesbitt and Kristin Zimet will offer reflections from their own experiences and present queries to challenge and nurture your unique journey. Their experience is a testament to the power of Love.

If you would like to join us for dinner before the event,
please sign up at least 24 business hours in advance. 

This and our other First Monday Lectures are streamed live and available
as recordings on our YouTube channel, Pendle Hill USA.

Leaders

Patti Nesbitt and Kristin Zimet are co-authors of A Tender Time: Quaker Voices on the End of Life, published by Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM) in 2024 and available through the bookstore at Pendle Hill. They recently led three workshops for Pendle Hill called “Hand in Hand: Aging Together in the Spirit.”  

Patti Nesbitt has always been a forward thinker. She was one of the original Earth Day organizers in 1970 and received one of the first master’s degrees in environmental studies in the United States. Her writing, research, and consulting work focused on alternative technologies to protect health through care of land and water. She built a passive solar home and homesteaded with two children.

She graduated from the School of the Spirit’s program Becoming a Spiritual Nurturer in 2000. Over the years, she has been active in BYM camping programs, intervisitation, and the End of Life Working Group. Together with her husband, she travels widely in the ministry under the care of Sandy Spring Friends Meeting in Maryland where she is a member. 

At 55 years old, she went to nursing school, deciding to focus on palliative care and hospice. Surviving cancer made her unafraid of death and willing to companion people with terminal diagnoses. She is currently a registered nurse teaching about end of life choices.    

Kristin Zimet has spent her life in creative approaches to healing, the arts, and environmental activism. As a Virginia Master Naturalist, her current work interprets nature to heal the bond between people and the earth, often by means of writing, images, and performance.   

Kristin was a partner in a creative ministry for children hospitalized with cancer in New York City and an emergency medical technician in rural Connecticut. She is a longtime patient care volunteer, working first for hospice and now for Winchester Medical Center. As a Reiki Master, she has been both a healer and a teacher. At home, she has been a long-term caregiver and a two-time cancer survivor.   

Kristin explores the changing dynamics of the heart through poetry and visual art. Her photographs have hung in museums, galleries, libraries, a hospital, and a care community. She is the longtime editor of The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review and the author of a book of poems, Take in My Arms the Dark.   

A graduate of Swarthmore College, Kristin is a member of Hopewell Centre Meeting in Virginia. 

Thanks to the generous support of the Friends Foundation for the Aging, we’re able to make this and other free, online programs accessible to f/Friends of all ages.