Pages tagged "Biography"

To the editor: Thank you for sharing excerpts from Lee and Asia Bennett’s presentation at Horizon House in the May/June issue. What a meaning-filled, interesting and spiritually rich journey these two “socially inexperienced young people” have shared for more than sixty years, since marrying halfway through their sophomore year in college! I had the pleasure of knowing Asia while we were both involved with the AFSC, and I recall her leadership with much affection and gratitude.

Many books use the title, “The Essential So-and-So,” and here’s another. This book depicts a Quaker who proved himself essential. However, reading Elias Hicks is not “more essential” than reading, say, Fox, Penn, Mott, Dyer, or Woolman. So at the beginning of this review, I would like to suggest that Inner Light Books and Charles Martin, Publisher, consider producing more of the same, more books of this caliber that are “Essential.”

I really enjoyed this short book by Matilda Hansen, who grew up in Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) in the mid-1900s. Luckily for us, Hansen decided to research and document her Norwegian Quaker ancestors. The resulting book has a lot in it – a love story, a story of conscientious objection, immigration, travel, a Quaker split, and the Underground Railroad. If you are interested in the history of western Quakers in twentieth-century America, you will also likely be interested to read about some of the roots of that history in nineteenth-century Iowa.

To be precise, the title of this book is: Memoir of the Life and Religious Labors of Lloyd Lee Wilson, a Minister of the Gospel of the Religious Society of Friends, Particularly of North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative), to describe the workings of the Lord in the various stages of my life, showing how God is at work in all things for good, whether we perceive it so or not, and how our surrender to divine providence allows God’s work to be done in and through us for the advancement of the Realm of God.