Ministry Beyond Shape: Kody Hersh on Love, Art, and Faithful Creativity
- windycooler
- Aug 20
- 11 min read
In late July, Public Minister Kody Hersh joined me in a Zoom interview we had planned for a while. He's joining me in a series of testimonies about our friends in ministry who have influenced and inspired our own sense of call over the next few months.
At the time of the July conversation I was at the annual session for my yearly meeting, reflecting on some hard relationships I've had and how, through spiritual labor, in the context of relationship, my ministry was called out of me and others. Kody's reflections on the ministries that have formed him felt like a true message to me in the space I was in, not because Kody was talking about conflict, but because Kody was talking about love.
When asked about public ministry, Kody’s mind went to artists this month, especially performing artists. Some may resist this connection—Kody recalled arguing with an older Friend who dismissed cabaret as ministry. But for Kody, art is not only compatible with ministry, it can be a powerful form of it. Performance, when rooted in discernment and love, can open hearts and reveal Spirit.
They offered examples of artists whose work they see as ministry:
Peterson Toscano. In his play Transfigurations, Peterson embodied biblical characters who crossed or confounded gender expectations. For Kody, as a trans Christian, seeing those stories “lived” on stage brought scripture alive in a profoundly real and spiritually healing way. Such performances invite audiences to rethink what they thought they knew—one of ministry’s “favorite things.”
Amanda Kemp. Her Theater for Transformation project, beginning with Show Me the Franklins, reframed Benjamin Franklin’s household through the eyes of enslaved Africans. The work asked audiences to grow, deepen, and change. Kody highlights that Amanda’s art is tested and strengthened in community, reflecting the Quaker conviction that faithfulness is never just individual but collective.
eppchez yo-sí yes. Their performance work, including explorations of the Public Universal Friend, offered ministry through bold creativity and deep witness.
Cai Quirk. A poet and artist, Cai has created the Queer Temple Project—vast tapestries based on photographs of queer and trans people. Their work reimagines mythologies to include queer and trans identities, sending a clear message: the holiness of queer and trans lives. These interventions, whether performed or displayed, are ministry because they open people to new vision and truth.
What emerges from our conversation is not simply a catalog of artists but a living testimony: ministry is found wherever Spirit and faithfulness meet, no matter the form. Whether on a stage, a tapestry, or in a worship circle, the gifts we bring—rooted in love—are how we help one another live into transformation.
Here is the interview in full.
Windy Cooler: All right, Kody, what do you want to share with me today?
Kody: Thank you for this invitation. I was really excited to receive it. I love talking about the gifts people are bringing to the Religious Society of Friends, and how many of the people we’ll talk about today are people I know and love. It’s such a good reminder that love is the ground of ministry when I think about these people, the impact they’ve had on my life, and the way I adore them.
It feels very personal, too. I shared with you by email that your request reminded me of when I was about 19 years old. Someone had just named a gift of ministry in me, and I was trying to figure out what that meant. I had grown up in the unprogrammed Quaker tradition, felt pretty clear that it was my home, and was trying to discern what it meant to have a call to ministry in that context. Since then, I’ve been so blessed to see many people—both within and outside of the unprogrammed tradition—model what a life lived according to a call to ministry can look like. And there’s no single answer to that question. People are living into it in so many different ways.
Each of those ways of embodying a call to ministry is powerful in its own way. For me, the foundational learning has been this: ministry is not about the shape of what you’re doing, but about how you listen for where you’re being led—how Spirit is moving in your preparation, in your discernment, in your collaboration with others, in how you bring a message forward, and in the accountability structures that hold it. Those are the things that define ministry for me now, more than the genre of the message or how it is delivered.
I feel full of praise for creation when I think about the many shapes ministry can take. So many things can touch us spiritually, profoundly—because they are offered with faithfulness.
When you contacted me about living public ministers, I started a list. Once I started, it got long so quickly! Looking at it, I saw different groups of people: those in pastoral ministry, those in organizational leadership among Friends, writers and educators, and artists—many of them performing artists. That’s where I wanted to start today.
I remembered an argument I had with a very dear, somewhat cantankerous older man who has since passed. He was part of the Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns community, which traditionally hosts a cabaret at each gathering. It’s a big talent show—bubbly, wild, colorful, and fun. This Friend was an opera singer, and we got into a heated argument about whether an offering at the cabaret could be ministry. He said, “Absolutely not. This is art. It is craft. I’ve rehearsed my whole life in order to be able to do this.” I replied,
“It doesn’t have to be ministry, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be.”
We really went back and forth in that way you sometimes do in community. I was so frustrated with him, but it taught me how strongly I feel that art and performance can be a spiritual calling and a way of offering powerful messages.
Some of the living public ministers I think of in that light—the first who comes to mind is Peterson Toscano.
I was in my early young adulthood when he developed his play Transfigurations, about characters in the Bible who transgressed gender expectations. The work is part scholarship, part storytelling, but when you’re in the performance it’s profoundly intimate. It was so meaningful to me as a trans person, and particularly as a trans Christian at that time, to hear Peterson not just tell these stories but really live them—to perform as these characters and bring new light to stories that were already familiar to me and to many in the audience.
In my culture, both within and beyond the Religious Society of Friends, performance is often seen as inauthentic. When I was in liberal arts college, we used the word “performative” to mean something fake or crafted just to project an image. But what I’ve experienced in Peterson’s performances, and in similar performance art, is that it is profoundly real, even when it involves imagination.
The impact of Transfigurations on my spiritual life, and on the lives of other queer and trans folks, and even on others who simply reimagined what they thought they knew—it’s extraordinary. That’s one of my favorite things ministry does: unsettle us in what we think we know. And in performance, that unsettling becomes a collective experience with an audience. That makes it even more powerful.
Thinking of other artists who impacted me in similar ways within the Quaker world, I thought of Amanda Kemp and her project Theater for Transformation. The first show she did in that project was Show Me the Franklins, which looked at Benjamin Franklin and his family from the perspective of enslaved Africans.
Taking familiar stories—stories that are part of what I’d call American cultural religion, with Franklin as one of our mythical figures—and moving the perspective so we see them differently was immensely powerful. It asked the audience to grow, to deepen, to see differently.
I knew Amanda when she was at Pendle Hill, right before she started Theater for Transformation, and I witnessed the deep spiritual grounding and discernment that went into the project. That same depth continues in her later work.
Performance art like Amanda’s is often tested and deepened in community. I’ve seen that again and again when people are truly grounded in Quaker community. In Quaker understanding, faithfulness is not individual alone—it is collective. It can’t be only individual. That collective dimension is what marks their practice of art as ministry for me.
More recently, I’ve seen eppchez do performance art that feels similar—a powerful offering of ministry, especially their performance about the Public Universal Friend.
Windy Cooler: …and Cai Quirk.
Kody: I don’t know if Cai would identify themselves as a performance artist, but they are a poet who performs their poetry regularly and also creates art that, in a very profound way, shifts public space and dialogue. Their Queer Temple Project involved creating these enormous, beautiful tapestries based on photographs of queer and trans people. Recently, we used them at the FGC Young Adult and Youth Gathering in Michigan this summer—the entire plenary room was filled with Cai’s Queer Temple tapestries.
I’ve also been part of a queer spirituality event at Pendle Hill where we filled the barn with those tapestries. While that’s not exactly performance, it is a creative intervention that invites people to see things differently than they might be used to seeing them. It carries a message—a really powerful message—about the holiness of queer and trans people and identities.
Another thing that characterizes a lot of ministry—not all ministry, but much of it—is that it carries a message. With Cai’s Queer Temple Project, and also with their photography work, that message is clear. They even published a book of photos and stories reimagining mythology and spiritual archetypes to include queer and trans people. Across these works, the message is about the holiness of queer and trans identities, bodies, and lives.
Another characteristic of ministry, I think, is that it can be very specific to a time and place. Sometimes a person may be given the same message for a long period—even their whole life—but more often, ministry is about listening for what is needed spiritually in the particular moment. In each of these cases I’ve mentioned, I’ve watched people really listen for what is needed now and create something that speaks powerfully to that moment in time.
Windy Cooler: That’s so good.
Kody: Okay, I think that’s the end of the Kody monologue.
Windy Cooler: It was beautiful—magnificent, really. As you were talking, I was imagining how to lay it out on the page: each of these as an example of art. They’ll be delighted—or at least surprised—that they’re suddenly being mentioned in a blog. I’ll make sure to send it to them.
Kody: Oh, I feel so good in my body right now.
Windy Cooler: I do too. When I feel really good, I get this tickly sensation down my arms, and I feel that right now. Your message—it was filled with affectionate love and appreciation for the people we share in our lives. It felt like really seeing them, like a little spotlight shone on each of them as you spoke.
Kody: Yes. I’m just so grateful to exist on this planet at the same time as them, to be in community with them. Especially right now, when I’m struggling with fear, overwhelm, and hopelessness, the only thing that grounds me in a truthful way is remembering that I know these people who are giving their lives to the work of faithfulness and transformation.
Windy Cooler: Yes, exactly. For me too. I’m here at Baltimore Yearly Meeting, and some of this work was going on when I saw you at Southeastern Yearly Meeting (where I was a keynote speaker on rupture and repair at the annual session in 2022)—I was still reconciling with some people.
The first really profound reconciliation I had in my own yearly meeting was also the most profound. There was this Friend who listened to me yell at him—he actually invited me to yell at him. He listened, repeated back what I said, and admitted, “I did that, and I’m sorry.” What I heard was that he loved me and didn’t want to lose me. That was such a gift. Completely transformative.
That’s what’s coming up for me now, maybe because of where I am physically. It’s not that I’ve had horrible conflicts with you or with the others we’ve mentioned, but I feel this truth: we give each other hope.
When I feel desolate—when there’s a desert inside of me—the water I need is the people I’m in community with. The relationships we share are special because we are ministers in each other’s lives. We are called to do the really, really hard work with each other.
This labor Quakers talk about is some of the hardest work you will ever do with another human being—or with yourself. And yet, that’s where the power is. It’s not uselessly painful; it’s productively painful work. And through it, we give each other hope and strength.
Kody: “Water for each other in the desert” is an image I will hold on to.
Windy Cooler: Thank you, and we’ll make another appointment if you like. I’ll send you what I come up with, but your entry probably won’t be scheduled until the end of August. I already have entries set up for the next three weeks, so that will give us a little bit of time. It’s hard for me, though—I always give people gifts too early. I give Christmas gifts too early, birthday gifts too early. As soon as I get them, I try to hang on, but I can’t help it. Having a blog is hard for me in the same way. I’ll have weeks of material queued up and ready to go, and I think, “I’m just going to post it all now.” Then I remember—I won’t have anything left for next week!
Kody Gabriel Hersh (he/they) is a Friend currently living on the lands of Tiwa-speaking peoples in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Their (sometimes) released ministry among (primarily) unprogrammed Friends has included youth work, pastoral care, workshop facilitation, public speaking, and writing. Kody is passionate about the intersections of spirituality, justice, and joy. He is under the weight of a leading to support transgender youth and their families in navigating the current, hostile political climate in the United States.
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