Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, February 17, 2019

I woke up with a set of expectations this morning. I knew I would rise before the sun, do some gentle yoga, eat breakfast, drive here and spend the morning with all of you. I knew I would be nervous but grateful to share this message. And I knew that, there is always more that I don’t know than I really do know. That’s a little unnerving – but it’s also exciting.

This morning, I trusted that in my not-knowing, I would be met by your open hearts and open minds… After all, you didn’t know what to expect from me either. When people come together in mutual unknowing, as we have this morning, our limits dissolve and a new space emerges, a grace-filled space where Love has room to work amongst us. In this space, speaking meets listening, giving meets receiving, and past and future dwell fully in the present…I would like to illustrate this idea.

About six years ago, my Dad retired. His already quiet and reclusive life seemed to become increasingly isolated. He stopped visiting family members and meeting friends for golf or lunch. He began to lose weight and became nervous and tentative. He said he was happy, but he didn’t look or act like he was.

When Dad invited me to attend a routine exam that required anesthesia and a driver, I had a chance to step in a bit.Dad was so grateful for the practical support I offered on that visit that I began visiting for one extended weekend per month. Together we sorted mail that had accumulated, paid bills, did laundry, went grocery shopping, and attended appointments. We also made time for long walks, healthy meals, and plenty of laughter and conversation.

On one visit, I arrived late due to a rainstorm and Friday night traffic. I had called dad a few times to give him updates and offer a revised ETA. When I arrived, Dad was peering through the window by the door. He gruffly asked what took me so long. Exhausted from the drive and unprepared for this icy reception, I snapped back – something about traffic and calling a half-dozen times – and then caught myself. He had probably been waiting for some unknown visitor for my entire 5 hour drive. No longer able to track time, he could not possibly interpret the meaning in my phone calls. Maybe he also could not connect my voice with my face or my presence.

Dad had begun to live in the unknown all of the time. Dementia was robbing him of capacity to understand, sort and organize experiences, people, objects and events. For him, every moment was a step into an unknown.

After hitting dead—ends trying to get information and support from my Dad’s doctor, I scoured the internet and the library shelves for help. I wanted a definitive medical authority or a rule book, the equivalent of a map and compass that would tell me where on earth we were and where we were heading…And while I did find some resources that offered clues and perspective, I never found an outside authority that I could really settle into.

But, I found my Dad – obscured by his illness but patiently and persistently kind, loving and intelligent. And I found myself. Even better, I found that I was enough.

While I had been looking to the world around us for guidance, I was also just spending a lot of time with Dad. As we navigated challenging, curious, and mundane details of life together, our relationship was deepening. I was learning to dwell with him in the unknown – and in the sacred space that formed between us, there was safety, love, trust, and joy sufficient to carry us both along the challenging path that unfolded over the next few years.

As Dad became less verbal, we often walked together in silent communion. If Dad felt like making conversation, he would ask, “So, what have you been up to?” After I answered, we would often fall into silence again. Within a few minutes he would ask again, “So, what have you been up to?” He never remembered asking and remained as genuinely curious and interested on the 5^th asking as he was on the first. Each asking became an opportunity for me to share a bit more deeply about my life. Though he didn’t remember my responses after a few seconds, he listened to each one with real interest and attention. I offered new responses each time he asked. “So, What have you been up to?“  It was like an invitation to peel away the layers of my life like an onion, sharing myself ever more deeply, while pulling Dad in closer.

As special as my relationship with my Dad was, it does not need to be unique. We don’t need to wait until dementia or any other life change nudges us into deep, loving relationship.

Humans are social creatures. We are meant to step in close, to walk through the peaks, valleys, and meadows of our life with others. We can practice a more intentional engagement with everyone we are in contact with – it’s as simple as a smile, an open hand, a moment of vulnerability, or an act of generosity. We will suddenly notice that there are fewer strangers around us and more friends. And we notice that the lines that separated us get a little blurry. The distance between us grows smaller and less significant.

When we honor the unknowing between us with open hearts and open minds, we create that nurturing grace-filled space where Love flows freely, speaking meets listening, giving meets receiving, and past and future meet the limitless present. We meet there in worship. Let us meet the wider world there in our words and our actions too.

From a message given at Durham Friends Meeting, February 3, 2019

In the Bible, Samuel is a boy who has been apprenticed to old Eli, the priest at Shiloh.  One night Samuel hears a voice calling him, and he goes to Eli, but Eli hadn’t called him.  It happens again, and again.  Finally Eli tells Samuel it is the Lord calling him, and Samuel says ““Speak, for your servant is listening.”

The story is presented to us in a way that says God spoke to Samuel. God did not speak to Eli or to his wicked sons.  But I’m not sure that’s how we should hear it.

Here’s another story, one especially important to Quakers.  The times are troubling.  There’s war, there is inequality, there is corruption and deceit.  Sound familiar?  A confused young man, let’s call him George, is trying to understand how to be a good person, how to know what God hopes he knows and how to do what God expects him to do.  He asks a lot of wise people (let’s call them the Elis of this world) to help him figure this out, but they don’t prove much help. 

Then one day George is out for a walk, a long walk, wondering, thinking, praying, and he hears a voice say to him “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.”  That George, of course, was George Fox.  The year was 1647; Fox was 23.  And so begins the movement, the spiritual revival we call Quakerism.  We gather here today and every first day inspired by that Leading. 

What Fox hears that day, what Fox realizes, is that God will speak to each and every one of us, if we still ourselves and listen. 

This suggests a different slant on the Samuel story, I’m thinking.  It is not that God spoke to Samuel and not to Eli and not to Eli’s wicked sons.  It’s rather that Samuel heard what God was saying, and Eli and his sons did not.  God is talking to all of us all the time.  That is what George Fox realized.  

We gather here each Sunday in that confidence, that God will speak to us if we still ourselves and listen.  The question is, will we listen? Can we hear what God is saying?

How do we hear God’s call to us?  It is clear we can miss it.  That’s the main burden of the Samuel story.  Samuel was in the best place, right there at Shiloh, but he was still confused at first. How do we prepare ourselves to hear God calling?  Eli helped Samuel hear what God was saying. 

Perhaps we can help one another. 

My friend and mentor Paul Lacey wrote a wonderful Pendle Hill pamphlet on “Leading and Being Led.”  He uses another example to understand leadings: the example of John Woolman.  Woolman was an 18^th century Quaker who was among the first to call attention to the evils of slavery and to press his fellow Quakers to renounce it as well.  And Woolman made striking efforts to befriend the indigenous peoples of North America.   

But after discussing Woolman’s efforts, Paul Lacey says “his example is instructive and inspiring, but ‘be like Woolman’ may not be helpful advice to those of us still struggling to be ourselves with integrity.”

That speaks to my condition.  I am still struggling to “be myself with integrity.”

And then Lacey adds: “Perhaps more apposite advice is to be “like members of Woolman’s meeting:”

“Learn with and from one another how to listen and probe and wait ;

“Help each other to be faithful to leadings;

“Bear with one another’s confusions and shortcomings;

“Persist in expecting the best from one another;

“Practice speaking the truth in love.”

The entire message is available at Doug’s blog, River View Friend

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, March 18, 2018

Like many of you, I wake up grateful for a new day and a desire to treat others with love and respect. The past few days I have heard birds singing despite the snow! And then I listen to the news and am saddened and angry about what is happening to the children, people of color, the immigrants, refugees, veterans, our food, the earth’s atmosphere, the animals, the list goes on and on. I wrestle with the questions: To what burning issue should I give my energy? How do I make that decision? How do I hear God’s voice? How do I structure my day-to-day activities, fit it all in, with the important work of helping our world? This is my current spiritual dilemma.

Last year, two messages helped me find balance.

Maggie Edmondson talked about the importance of breath – breathing in and breathing out – both equally important for life. We become still and centered, breathing in spiritual strength, then need to breathe out using that strength to do good work. We can’t take another breath in without emptying our lungs. We need spiritual strength to do good work. Then, we need to be out in the world to activate our spirituality.

Craig Freshley called finding balance “savor and save”. Here is this concept in my own words: We become still, savoring the lovely, the beautiful, and then have energy to attend to whatever needs saving.

One and a half years ago New England Yearly Meeting implored all of us, both individually and as Meetings, to take concrete steps focused on two issues:

1. reducing our impact on climate disruption, and
2.  examining the scourge of white supremacy in our Quaker culture and practices.

I have valued immensely the discernment of the people gathered to bring focus to these two problems. We have taken steps to work on this and I am grateful to be in a community that takes these issues seriously. I have found this focus helpful as I wrestle with how to decide where to put my energy.

How do we find balance in our Durham Friends community – breathing in as well as out, taking time to both savor and save?

Friends Committee on National Legislation is a lobbying organization in the public interest founded in 1943 by members of the Religious Society of Friends. FCNL works for social and economic justice, peace, stewardship of the environment, and good government in the United States.

FCNL asked Meetings to discuss the content from the booklet The World We Seek.  In addition, Durham Peace and Social Concerns committee wanted us to read this as a Meeting. They asked us to consider a focus area and gather at a special meeting in March of 2018 to discern “what stirs the heart of Durham Meeting,” what issue calls to us to WORK ON TOGETHER, as a corporate concern or project.

In this booklet are 4 areas.

1. We seek a world free from war and the threat of war
2. We seek a society with equity and justice for all
3. We seek a community where every person’s potential may be fulfilled
4. We seek an earth restored

After reading the booklet, I resonated with everything mentioned… and felt totally overwhelmed by the scope of changes needed to bring about the world we seek!

So, the questions: What issue rises to the top and how do we choose where to put our energy as a Meeting and individually? How do we find balance? What’s the value in addressing an issue? What’s the harm/risk if we don’t?

I struggle with the knowledge that even having this choice is a privilege. I don’t experience the terror of war in my neighborhood or state and have never witnessed war and its aftermath. I am free to travel and work and walk through my community free of the harassment that many others feel daily. I had a good education, a good job with a spacious house and yard, and clean water to drink, good food, good health, good friends. I do not experience the impending fear that tomorrow my life may be in ruins.

I also feel two things:

I feel impelled to work for change because I see the signs that our society and world are being irreparably harmed. As those who try to base our actions from love and the belief that there is that of God in everyone, how do we answer that call?

I also feel weary, because there are so many wrongs that need to be righted. Without a focus, expending energy on all these issues is not sustainable. What is rising in your heart? How will you find balance?

I will close with the words from a song by Donovan from the movie Brother Sun, Sister Moon about St Francis of Assisi. “Do few things and do them well” has become a mantra for me, a goal that is currently out of my reach,  but my hope for the future.

If you want your dream to be,

Build it slow and surely.

Small beginnings greater ends.

Heartfelt work grows purely.

If you want to live life free,

Take your time go slowly.

Do few things but do them well.

Simple joys are holy.

Day by day, stone by stone,

Build your secret slowly.

Day by day, you’ll grow, too,

You’ll know heaven’s glory.