As the Good Shepherd: Leading & Being Led as Friends

Feb 26, 2025 | News, Publications Videos

The 2025 Michener Lecture with Adria DiCapua

AAdria (Gulizia) DiCapua speaks about being faithful in listening and following the leadership of the Spirit in our Quaker Meetings and communities. How can we prepare ourselves to have faith in God to lead us into the future? What could it look like to move forward in response to the Spirit’s leading, resisting the urge to trust in our own skills and capacities and instead resting in divine presence and power?

As Friends, we trust in the Spirit to lead us directly — an attitude reflected in our waiting worship, our refusal to submit our decisions to majority rule, and in our conviction that the authority and responsibility of Spirit-led service rests on all Friends, rather than following a specific title or position. Yet that trust can be hard to come by when so much in our world feels precarious and vulnerable. How can we prepare ourselves to have faith in God to lead us into the future? What could it look like to move forward in response to the Spirit’s leading, resisting the urge to trust in our own skills and capacities and instead resting in divine presence and power?

Adria DiCapua is a lawyer, mediator, teacher, and mother. She carries a concern for how Friends’ traditional faith and practice translates into an increasingly unstable, atomized, and uncertain world. She is passionate about inviting all into deeper relationship with the Spirit of Christ, which spoke so strongly to early Friends and continues to speak today. She is a member of Chatham-Summit Monthly Meeting (New York Yearly Meeting), the Friends of Jesus Fellowship, and the Board of Advisors of Earlham School of Religion. She has facilitated workshops on a variety of topics, including spiritual gifts, listening as a practice of pastoral care, and Friends’ traditional commitment to the Lamb’s War. Adria’s writing has been published by Friends Journal, Pendle Hill Pamphlets, and Illuminate, a Bible study curriculum written by and for Friends. Her blog, “In the Shadow of Babylon,” can be found at shadowofbabylon.com.