A 21st century literary pilgrim's progress towards being Quaker in thought, word and deed.

Quakers, it’s been said, are rude and contrary. They advertise no particular belief system yet engage in civil disobedience. Bloody-minded while gracious, radical but non-partisan, they’re known to defend holiness and speak up for peace and conscientious objection. Creative people, political people, and businesspeople alike swear by Quakers and their silent, unprogrammed Meetings. Oddballs and eccentrics, awkward /and/ outspoken, Quakers have no authority and, according to some, are practical mystics.

Wooding’s literary essays and reviews draw on, explore, and marvel at the outlandish sense and sensibility that belong to modern-day Quakers, as glimpsed in the literary and philosophical works of some of our greatest luminaries. In an age of unbelonging, authoritarianism, and predation, Wooding advocates for the Quakers’ pioneering /Inward Light/ as the primary source of authority, a common birthright understood today as an attentive, liberating, counter-cultural spirit of creative imagination, the witnessing angel of history.