Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
QuakerSpeak is a weekly video series. New video every other FRIDAY!
Read the Common Testimony in full: lifeandpowerquakerdiscernmentonabuse.com/reference/common-testimony
SUPPORT QuakerSpeak! quakerspeak.com/donate
SUBSCRIBE for a new video every other week! http://fdsj.nl/QS-Subscribe
WATCH all our videos: http://fdsj.nl/qs-all-videos
___
Become a Friends Journal subscriber for only $28
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Filming and Editing by Layla Cuthrell
___
Transcript:
For me, continuing revelation is fundamental to what Quakers are, to what Quakers hope to be. It is a theological concept that God is alive in each of us and through our relationships, God is making and remaking the world every day. And God is not a technocrat. God is not a policy maker. God is a force in our relationships. God is love.
My name is Windy Cooler. I use she/her pronouns. I live in Greenbelt, Maryland, and I am a member of Sandy Spring Friends meeting in Baltimore. Yearly meeting. 12 years ago, and I first started really engaging in a public ministry around abuse, thought that good policy was the answer. And it was challenging 12 years ago to even have a child safety policy in a meeting. It was even more of a challenge to have policies that address things like domestic and sexual violence against adults, much less elder abuse and other forms of violence. It came to pass that many meetings had policies that met my wildest fantasies of what a good policy would look like. And I did not see those work.
We had become interested in power, really. Using our social influence to overpower our other people in our religious communities and force them into following a policy that we believe would make us all safe. This is not the way that Quakers make decisions traditionally, and I saw the failure. God is not violent and attempting to overpower other people the way that I did in those early years was itself a form of violence, I believe now. And it resulted in the ongoing violence of people that we love in our communities. I and others who had been really active in anti-abuse work in the Quaker world thought what we need is a listening project where survivors voices are brought forward in a way that is consensual, that is a labor with them, so that the rest of our community can also labor with a presence of violence in our lives.
The common testimony is the culmination of the listening project that has been life and power And was the culmination of the last 12 years of my life's work. This is a tool that makes it safe for survivors to not just feel heard, but be heard in their communities. By having this testimony that is not connected to a person that we know we have a relationship with, we can disconnect our defensive responses from what's actually being said and we can find that voice of God inside of us. I imagine myself sitting in worship with these voices, actually, and that each of these pieces of a story are messages that are arising from the silence.
Our query: Do we live in that life and power that does away with the occasion of abuse?
The first thing I noticed in hearing the query, I was surprised that I felt terrified. I wondered, am I going to do this right? Do I have the right answers? I saw in this query a piece of Quaker culture that is problematic. We have ways of doing things here. When you don't do things in a Quakerly way, there are hurtful consequences.
It's so many layers to it. We can't be the perpetrators? We are the ones on the margins? My wish is for truth to be a practice. Can we share the truth about our experiences? Can we leave the spaces of abuse?
Two black friends stood up at meeting for business and shared experiences of violence at the hands of friends. The stories were sharing pain and because the source of that pain was our shared Quaker space and because people didn't want to hear it, I thought, can this be true?
Then older people in the room began to stand up. I had never seen this before. It was an elder. In practice they began to yell, “Friend, sit down! Friend, this isn't true! Friend, how dare you?” The clerk called us into silence again. My memory is fuzzy, but I think someone said, “we need to deal with this, but not now.” When I look back on this, I think this was violence, spiritual violence. In worship, to not open your heart is spiritual violence. I'm ashamed and I carry that with me now differently.
Here is something, in Quakerism, people don't hesitate to elder me or Benjamin Lay or those confronting the status quo, but there is a deep hesitation to hold those abusively holding up the status quo accountable. Those stories of my childhood and these stories are connected. They're about learning not to speak, not being heard, how white supremacy works.
___
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
QuakerSpeak is a weekly video series. New video every other FRIDAY!
Read the Common Testimony in full: lifeandpowerquakerdiscernmentonabuse.com/reference/common-testimony
SUPPORT QuakerSpeak! quakerspeak.com/donate
SUBSCRIBE for a new video every other week! http://fdsj.nl/QS-Subscribe
WATCH all our videos: http://fdsj.nl/qs-all-videos
___
Become a Friends Journal subscriber for only $28
http://fdsj.nl/FJ-Subscribe
Filming and Editing by Layla Cuthrell
___
Transcript:
For me, continuing revelation is fundamental to what Quakers are, to what Quakers hope to be. It is a theological concept that God is alive in each of us and through our relationships, God is making and remaking the world every day. And God is not a technocrat. God is not a policy maker. God is a force in our relationships. God is love.
My name is Windy Cooler. I use she/her pronouns. I live in Greenbelt, Maryland, and I am a member of Sandy Spring Friends meeting in Baltimore. Yearly meeting. 12 years ago, and I first started really engaging in a public ministry around abuse, thought that good policy was the answer. And it was challenging 12 years ago to even have a child safety policy in a meeting. It was even more of a challenge to have policies that address things like domestic and sexual violence against adults, much less elder abuse and other forms of violence. It came to pass that many meetings had policies that met my wildest fantasies of what a good policy would look like. And I did not see those work.
We had become interested in power, really. Using our social influence to overpower our other people in our religious communities and force them into following a policy that we believe would make us all safe. This is not the way that Quakers make decisions traditionally, and I saw the failure. God is not violent and attempting to overpower other people the way that I did in those early years was itself a form of violence, I believe now. And it resulted in the ongoing violence of people that we love in our communities. I and others who had been really active in anti-abuse work in the Quaker world thought what we need is a listening project where survivors voices are brought forward in a way that is consensual, that is a labor with them, so that the rest of our community can also labor with a presence of violence in our lives.
The common testimony is the culmination of the listening project that has been life and power And was the culmination of the last 12 years of my life's work. This is a tool that makes it safe for survivors to not just feel heard, but be heard in their communities. By having this testimony that is not connected to a person that we know we have a relationship with, we can disconnect our defensive responses from what's actually being said and we can find that voice of God inside of us. I imagine myself sitting in worship with these voices, actually, and that each of these pieces of a story are messages that are arising from the silence.
Our query: Do we live in that life and power that does away with the occasion of abuse?
The first thing I noticed in hearing the query, I was surprised that I felt terrified. I wondered, am I going to do this right? Do I have the right answers? I saw in this query a piece of Quaker culture that is problematic. We have ways of doing things here. When you don't do things in a Quakerly way, there are hurtful consequences.
It's so many layers to it. We can't be the perpetrators? We are the ones on the margins? My wish is for truth to be a practice. Can we share the truth about our experiences? Can we leave the spaces of abuse?
Two black friends stood up at meeting for business and shared experiences of violence at the hands of friends. The stories were sharing pain and because the source of that pain was our shared Quaker space and because people didn't want to hear it, I thought, can this be true?
Then older people in the room began to stand up. I had never seen this before. It was an elder. In practice they began to yell, “Friend, sit down! Friend, this isn't true! Friend, how dare you?” The clerk called us into silence again. My memory is fuzzy, but I think someone said, “we need to deal with this, but not now.” When I look back on this, I think this was violence, spiritual violence. In worship, to not open your heart is spiritual violence. I'm ashamed and I carry that with me now differently.
Here is something, in Quakerism, people don't hesitate to elder me or Benjamin Lay or those confronting the status quo, but there is a deep hesitation to hold those abusively holding up the status quo accountable. Those stories of my childhood and these stories are connected. They're about learning not to speak, not being heard, how white supremacy works.
___
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
