Better Than Good: Seven Testimonies for Quaker Caregiving

We often speak of being a “good Quaker” as if to be good and to be a Quaker are synonymous. What do we mean by “good” anyway? Do we mean innocent? Do we mean that we have the right ideas and right language and right actions for any situation? What impact does our need to be “good” have on our pastoral care practices as Friends when so much caregiving must necessarily happen in the midst of crisis, of moral complexity? What happens when we discover in these complicated situations that we cannot just be “good”?

Based on five years of multidisciplinary research, this lecture explores the answers to these questions and offers a vision of community life for Quakers that transcends goodness, freeing each of us and our meetings to build creative, culturally, and theologically appropriate pastoral care responses to the messy issues we face in our lives together.

Leader(s)

Windy Cooler is a member of Sandy Spring Monthly Meeting, Baltimore Yearly Meeting. She lives in Greenbelt, Maryland with her patient and much-loved family. Windy is Pendle Hill’s 2020 Cadbury Scholar.

Travel directions to Pendle Hill.