In her own words, Sally Hinshaw Rickerman described herself:
Quakerism can be a beautiful multi-colored shawl. It has grades and shades of color for interest. Its richness and strength are shown through its weaving. The disparate threads contained are, in the cloth of a religious society, ready to revolutionize the world and bring the Kingdom of Heaven into its full reality on earth.
— “Growing Up Quaker And Universalist Too” (1988)
Sally was a shawl of many fibers.
With an unusual memory for detail, she could provide us publishers with all manner of interesting arcane information, documented and in her later years undocumented, that sent us scurrying to find sources. Sally was the creator of maps and posters, myriad articles, and handouts for her meeting.
She was a challenge; and could be a joy.
I knew a great deal about Sally because we shared the same linage (on my mother’s side and her father’s) of Irish Quakers and Kansas pioneers. As is inevitable, family lore differed, but the threads from that prairie survival graced us both: a love of Quaker literature and being driven to publish.
It was she who wove the threads that helped keep that first U.S. Quaker Committee on Quaker Universalism alive during lean years, and she who inspired me to come on board. She noted trends in Quaker cycles defending evidence of early Quaker Universalism with its myriad terms for Light.
Quakerism was seemingly her life’s blood; we are the richer for her passionate values and commitment.
Image Source
“Helianthus,” by Lyn Cope (July, 2015)