“One of the pieces of Quaker witness I have been carrying in the world for many years now is around gender diversity and using art and storytelling as a way to explore that. This is some of the ministry that I carry.”
Cai Quirk (they/them or ey/em pronouns) shared this reflection with FCNL staff in a late-June Zoom lunch, along with the ways Spirit has been leading them to explore gender, faith, and nature through art.
Cai is a life-long Quaker. After years of spiritual deepening through writing poetry and creating self-portraits, Cai will soon release their first book. “Transcendence: Queer Restoryation” includes words and images that offer an expansive understanding of faith.
In speaking to FCNL staff, Cai showed many of their self-portraits, focusing especially on those exploring gender in the natural world. “I was finding new ways to create new stories that are empowering,” they told us. “Through these self-portraits, I found how far I can go in following Spirit. A lot of these photos were very freeing and empowering and have given me more connection to Spirit.” Cai explained that nature itself holds some inherent queerness; “Even when society tries to erase queer stories, they are still there in the landscape.”
Cai wants to invite Quakers into a more welcoming Religious Society of Friends by creating art that expands the bounds of what ministry can look like.
Cai wants to invite Quakers into a more welcoming Religious Society of Friends by creating art that expands the bounds of what ministry can look like. For example, Quakers rarely engage in rituals. Yet in Cai’s experiences, “these practices of going out into nature and creating these images were helping me expand my Quaker faith in ways that many Quakers weren’t able to in that time. Now I’m attempting to bring that invitation: is it possible that Spirit might lead us to ritual?” They reminded us that faith is not rigid and can evolve in inclusive and inspired ways.
Growing up Quaker, Cai learned the history of the social disruption inherent in Quaker faith. Yet today, Cai has noticed that only certain kinds of social disruption and ministry are accepted within some circles of Friends. “My art is an invitation to see how Spirit invites us all in different ways,” they said. While not all Quaker communities can feel welcome to those who rock the boat, social disruption and rage can be sacred as well. Changemaking occurs in many ways for many different people, and Cai is working to create more spaces where this kind of expansion and ministry are accepted, where more people can exist as their true selves.
“If I change myself to match society’s conventions, then I am not being authentic, I am not being faithful to Spirit,” Cai told us.
“If I change myself to match society’s conventions, then I am not being authentic, I am not being faithful to Spirit,” Cai told us. Can we as the Religious Society of Friends expand our ideas of faith and community to invite everyone in? What would it take to seek and live into that welcoming Quakerism moving forward?
We are so grateful to Cai for sharing their perspective on faith, nature, and art with us at FCNL. Their conversation with our staff deepened our organizational understanding of the Quaker basis of our advocacy work, and their art and their perspectives on faith invite us as a faith community to expand our ideas of what it means to be a Friend today.
