QEW on the Road

By Nora Lisette Cooke

In June 2022, I was in a house in Calvisson, France, house sitting for local Friends who lived just down the road from the Maison Quaker, where my parents were the amis-résidents (Friends in Residence). I had been on the Zoom call for close to two hours with an old friend, Keith Runyan.

This was not unusual – we had started weekly phone calls that spring and those weekly calls were now almost daily.

For hours, we talked about Eathcare, activism, the Callings we were sensing in our lives, and, recently, whether we were Called to be in a romantic relationship with each other. Keith was clear that he had a Leading to put his work and energy towards actions that would move the world towards Right Relationship. At the same time, I was seeking clarity about my life direction. I had completed a degree in psychology, and I knew that the work of supporting individual and community healing was profoundly alive for me. I knew that exploring the gifts and challenges of conflict was central to that work. I felt pulled into exploring how humans could seek radical reconciliation with the Earth, with ourselves, in our families, our communities, and in the world.

Earthcare has always been so foundational to me that it has often felt strange to name it, as if naming it would then make it separate in a way that does not match my experience. The separation of Self from plants, rocks, animals, and vistas is something that feels learned to me – not our natural state of being. The Pull toward seeking radical reconciliation with Earth comes from a place that longs for the radical reconciliation with ourSelves.

The feeling of disconnection from Self is deeply personal to me. I have experienced that breaking apart. I shattered in my twenties as I sought acceptance and love outside of mySelf. A slow cracking led me into a sea of broken shards. Coming back to Self was a wholly (and holy) joyful experience, a reunification with what was deeply felt and True.

Activism, however, had become a word that brought me discomfort. Growing up in Quaker circles, I learned early on about injustices in the world. As a pre-teen, I was comfortable with activism, sometimes to the point of self-righteousness. It slowly started to dawn on me that there was a separateness that felt wrong in the world. As I grew into myself, I felt Pulled toward examining relationships and how they shape our realities. When I was thirteen I wrote a short story from the perspective of a child laborer in a sweatshop. I wanted to center that reality for others the way I felt it when I walked into our local J.C. Penny. Yet, as I became a Quaker teen, I kept being asked to be more of an “activist.” This meant serving on the Peace and Social Justice Committee, attending marches, and the like. This was not where I felt Called. I wanted to be on committees concerned with the health of the Meeting. Outside of Quakerism, activist circles seemed to demand inherent knowledge I didn’t always have. And if I might disagree with someone, the options seemed to be to figuratively shout the other down with facts as arrows or capitulate to those with the stronger arguments.

As I entered the last years of my twenties, having joyfully reunited with Self, I knew I had ministry leaping in my heart, asking to be outed. As Keith and I talked at length that June day in 2022, I was clear that I needed to step into a new space. I needed to live into my Leadings in order to stay in Right Relationship in mySelf. I needed to start living my ministry—a ministry of wholeness, reconciliation, and integrating the Holy and the Whole.

I also had a clear Leading to become a mother.

“I want to travel the country,” Keith said to me that day.

“How about the world?” I responded. I wasn’t joking.

We both felt the pull toward travel. We yearned to bring our whole Selves to different places, to be grown by them, expanded and contracted, to thresh us towards what we were – and are – meant to be.

Was this possible with a baby? Keith wanted to know.

“I have a deep trust,” I told him, “if I am following that of God in my life all that is given to me is not only possible, but needed.”

We began to weave a dream of bringing our ministry around the country and the world, a dream that included a child or children. And we knew that this was something we needed to deeply test. Was this our Leading?

We spent the next year testing this dream we had been given, the sense of Leading strong in both of our hearts. Everything sped up when I broke my ankle in the Autumn of 2022, and we unexpectedly found ourselves sharing a house in Oakland, California. After three months we decided to officially move in together. We met with our Quaker Elders, both officially and unofficially, as well as our F/friends. Together and individually, we grappled with the truths of our lives in order to find the greater Truth we were being called to live into. We called a clearness committee about having a child together.

Then, in July 2023 we found out we were pregnant. Had God gotten impatient with our deliberating? We had planned to plan! We had been grappling with our individual and combined Leadings, seeking clarity that at times seemed elusive. We were both deeply committed to seeking the steps forward to being true to the Leadings we felt. We knew we had work in the world as a couple while also holding very distinct gifts and asks from the Spirit.

And then we were a family, the circumstances of our lives weaving themselves into a direction that began to gain momentum.

In August of 2023 I decided to defer starting my clinical psychology doctoral program in collective trauma and social healing. In October Keith was hired as the General

Secretary of QEW – a job he had felt so Called toward he had been terrified by the prospect that he could very well not be hired. November we started planning QEW on the Road – this was what God had been preparing us for. We would launch in the summer after our baby was born that coming spring.

Juniper James was born on March 16th next to the land that had nurtured both of us, the land known as Woolman, now being returned to the local Nisenan tribe as the ancient village of Yulića. We sank into our parenting journey with immediate lessons in listening to ourselves and to Juniper. We marveled at this incredible new being while planning for the new path calling us forward.

And now here we are, living into this Leading. It has been only two years since we heard the Call on that day when we were six thousand miles apart but linked in a shared future we were just discerning. We now live in a solar teardrop camper towed by an electric truck. The three of us are visiting Quaker Meetings, Yearly Meetings, and Friends, talking about Earthcare and how we might bring about a hopeful future for us all, how we can move into Right Relationship with ourSelves. We will continue to work in this nomadic way until we feel Released and Called into the next container for our work.

Together, we trust the Call.