We are delighted to welcome Windy Cooler to Annual Sessions again this summer to present her workshop, “Holding Our Families in the Light: A Candid Assessment of Quaker Pastoral Care for Families.” Windy’s workshop will be on Friday, July 26 at 3:00pm in the Family Neighborhood Lounge of Hausdoerffer Hall.
Last year Windy was hosted by eight yearly meetings, including PYM, as she traveled across the country, ultimately interviewing 92 Friends about the health of our families in monthly and yearly meetings. The research and ministry was supervised by Earlham School of Religion and embraced by her yearly meeting, BYM. Windy intended to come away from the summer of 2018 with a list of best practices for supporting families in monthly meetings. The results of these conversations, however, are fruitful and of interest to Friends more broadly, at once both obvious and surprising, transcending the original purpose of the research and delving into what it really means to be in our community as a Friend. What do we share with our meetings and what do we hold back and why? What kind of power do we have in one another’s lives? How do we want to use our power?
In this workshop, styled as a kind of traveling threshing session, we will engage in understanding and responding to this urgent, tender testimony of Friends from a pastoral care perspective with radical implications for the Religious Society of Friends.
Windy is a member of Sandy Spring Monthly Meeting, BYM and is the 2020 Cadbury Scholar at Pendle Hill. She is currently writing a book about this research and its implications. We hope Friends will come to participate in gathering around this vital topic, and will reach out to Windy during other times at Sessions to learn more about her ministry among Friends.
