2022 Walton Lecture

Wonder & Welcome: Holding Our Family of Friends in the Light

The 2022 Walton Lecture
presented by Windy Cooler & Melinda Wenner Bradley

We want a vibrant multigenerational community, but what stands in the way? What lights the way? What stories do we carry about our families, our meetings, and our faith that invite or discourage our wonder, our welcome, and our inclusion of all ages in community?

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Windy Cooler is an embraced public Friend whose ministry is held under the care of Sandy Spring Monthly Meeting, Baltimore Yearly. She is a frequent guest of monthly and yearly meetings in the US where she has researched, lectured and given workshops on the connection between robust pastoral care responses, Quaker family life, and social justice in peer to peer ministry. Her work incorporates ethnography and the Quaker tradition of discernment processes to help communities move forward in the Light. She lives with her husband Erik and son Ob in Greenbelt, MD, and has an adult daughter, Maggie.

Melinda Wenner Bradley (she/her) is an advocate for families in Quaker spaces whose ministry weaves together interests in children’s spiritual lives, all-ages program development, and support for parents and teachers in Quaker meetings and schools. She is a co-founder of the Quaker Religious Education Collaborative and the Director of Communications and Training for Faith & Play Stories; she co-authored and edited Faith & Play: Quaker Stories for Friends Trained in the Godly Play Method. This method of storytelling, facilitation, and spiritual nurture, grounded in “wondering,” finds its way into almost everything she does.a member of West Chester Meeting, and currently serves as Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Youth Religious Life Coordinator.