Quaker cartoonist Signe Wilkinson gives the Cary Lecture February 18

What do Quakers do best? Come hear Quaker cartoonist Signe Wilkinson present the 2012 Stephen G. Cary Memorial Lecture on Saturday, February 18, 7:30-9:00 pm in Pendle Hill's Barn. This event is free and open to the public.

Actually, Signe's title is Hiding Our Lights: What Quakers Do Best. This theme highlights the gulf between the ways George Fox and modern Friends share their faith. Whoops! Modern Friends DON'T share our faith and our numbers reflect it. What might our next steps be? Come to one Friend's humorous, rueful, and possibly even helpful take on our ability to tell the world what we believe.

Come for a delicious dinner at Pendle Hill before the lecture. To make reservations, please call (610) 566-4507 ext. 137. Please allow 24 hour notice; we cook our meals from scratch!

More about Signe

Signe Wilkinson has been the editorial cartoonist for the Philadelphia Daily News since 1985, when she moved from her first job at the San Jose Mercury News in California. She is past president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, a job the late Molly Ivins compared to running a nursery school. Her most cherished honor was being named "The Pennsylvania State Vegetable Substitute" by the then Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives after she had drawn a cartoon about that body's heroic work to name the mushroom (a fungus) as the state vegetable.

Signe Wilkinson grew up in Willistown Friends Meeting and is now a member of Chestnut Hill Meeting, where she is co-chair of the fundraising effort underway to build a new meetinghouse with a James Turrell skyspace. After the talk, she'll check under your seats for spare change!

The Stephen G. Cary Lectures

The Stephen G. Cary Memorial Lecture, first held in 2007, is supported by the Stephen G. Cary Memorial Fund, established in 2004 at Pendle Hill to make possible the publication of a book of Steve Cary's writings, The Intrepid Quaker: One Man's Quest for Peace, and to support other activities held in Steve Cary's name.

About Steve Cary*

Stephen G. Cary, born in 1915 to a Philadelphia Quaker family, led a life of spirit, courage, and action. A conscientious objector during World War II, Steve co-led the American Friends Service Committee effort to help rebuild Europe after the war. He served the AFSC for six decades and participated in civil disobedience throughout his life. He returned to his alma mater, Haverford College, as vice president and interim president and played a major role in shaping the College's identity as a coeducational institution faithful to Quaker values.

Despite a life of great accomplishment, Steve would rather have been described as a family man, adventurer, fan of Haverford, and storyteller. Through his peace work and leadership in Quaker education, Steve helped shape the changes in Quaker thought in the twentieth century.

In late 1947, Steve was in Amsterdam with a group of exhausted relief workers when word came that Quakers had won the Nobel Peace Prize for their humanitarian work. He later reflected on that moment by saying, "Even though we are tiny, and even though there is a vast world to mend, it's important that we keep on witnessing to what love can do."*

*from the book jacket of The Intrepid Quaker: One Man's Quest for Peace