Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, June 7, 2026

Alicia McBride is Senior Director for Quaker Leadership at the Friends Committee for National Legislation, and a member of Sandy Springs Friends Meeting

Last weekend I was in Richmond, Indiana at the memorial service for Mary Garman. Mary was my “bonus mom” (a phrase I use to avoid the negative associations of “mother-in-law”). She was also a mentor, teacher, and cheerleader in my journey to recognize my work as a form of ministry.

Among the stories told at her memorial, one kept returning to me as I prepared this message about integrity. For a period of time, before the Supreme Court upheld marriage equality, Mary stopped officiating weddings.

This was a matter of personal integrity. Some people had access to the legal and social protections of marriage, while others didn’t. So, for a time, she stopped participating in that system.

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Integrity is one of those concepts that comes up a lot among Quakers. Often we refer to it as one of our testimonies.

This morning I want to consider this testimony more deeply –what it means to have integrity as a Friend, and what integrity means for our Quaker meetings, organizations, and institutions.

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I want to begin by offering a metaphor, to clarify what I mean by integrity.

This metaphor draws on a model developed by Dr. Darya Funches, which I first encountered in a workshop led by Niyonu Spann.

Imagine a water lily. There’s a flower floating on the surface of the pond, the thing you can see most easily. Depending on how clear the pond is, you might be able to see the stem that holds up the flower. And down at the bottom of the pond, there are roots – growing in the sediment, and supporting both the stem and the flower.

Here comes the metaphor.

The flower is what others can see. It’s what we do, the actions we take, how we show up in the world.

The stem is what we say about who we are: our mission statements and “about us” pages.

Roots: Core assumptions, core beliefs, what we are grounded in.

All three of these parts of the water lily need to be aligned for the flower to bloom. The roots support the stem, which holds up and nourishes the flower.  Out of our secure grounding, our words and actions align to testify to our beliefs.

When all these pieces fit together, we have integrity.

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Let’s talk about the roots.

In the original model, the roots are described as values, core beliefs, or our worldview. Those are indeed things that people can root themselves in.

But, as Friends, our roots are deeper and wilder. We are rooted in what we experience when we center down and listen to God.

In the Pendle Hill pamphlet, The Testimony of Integrity in the Religious Society of Friends, Wilmer Cooper draws a clear distinction between values and testimony. He writes, “Values are projected ideals or goals which are rationally determined, whereas Quaker testimonies are derived from religious faith and experience fashioned out of a life of prayer, devotion, and worship, joined with spiritual discernment and commitment.”

More succinctly, in his consideration of Quaker testimonies, Paul Buckley writes, “Values are things we decide on. Testimonies are products of the Inward Light.”

We have integrity when our words and actions are rooted in that experience of the Inward Light and when we are faithful to it. We testify, in all sorts of ways, when we have integrity.

To come back to Mary Garman – what we can see is her action, not to perform marriages. In declining requests, she shared her discomfort with a system that discriminated against same-gender couples. What was going on in the roots – I never had the chance to talk to her about it. Knowing Mary, God (or “Gahd” as she would say in her Chicago accent) was involved somehow.

In the book of Matthew, chapter 7, Jesus uses architectural rather than botanical language, but he’s getting at a similar idea of the importance of action stemming from God’s teachings.  He compares a listener who acts on his words to a wise man who builds his house on a rock. Despite rain and wind, the house stays up because its foundation is strong. Those who hear Jesus’s teaching and do not act, on the other hand, are like a foolish man who builds on sand. When those same storms come, the house falls down – losing its structural integrity. (7:24-27)

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Integrity is what happens when we hear God’s word and put it into practice – thought, word, deed. The house holds up. The flower blooms.

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Simple, right?

Reminds me of one of my favorite descriptions of Quaker worship –Michael Birkel, in his book Silence and Witness: “[Quaker worship] is like flying a jet; you take off, you go somewhere, you land; you quiet yourself, you encounter God, you refresh and perhaps redirect your life.”

This is what we aspire to as Friends- to be directed by that inward teacher, to live a life consistent with the promptings of that still small voice.

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This is not a solo project.

We need all the help we can get from those around us to discern, to seek clearness, and to test what right action, with integrity to the prompting of the Inner Light, means. As Paul Buckley notes, “the voice of the inward light may be infallible, but our ears are not.”

There is also an important role to recognize that infallibility with humility and grace, for ourselves and others. We are human, we are impatient, we make mistakes. We might think we know where we’re going, where God is directing us to go, but sometimes – often – we might get off track.

When my son Howard was small, his solution to every challenge was to run head first at it. Sometimes that was a literal solution (he once knocked Mary, his beloved Granna, over while trying to give her a hug); sometimes he just needed to have an answer immediately and would not let something go until he did. This was often not the best way to solve problems.

Quakers call this tendency “outrunning our guide” – when our words and actions get ahead of God’s direction. Maybe this looks like our water lily flower starting to drift away from its roots. We need to be able to notice that drift, accept that it’s happening, and come back to the center. As St. Benedict wrote in his rule, “Always, we begin again.”

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When I talked about Mary’s actions around marriage, I had to speculate about the roots. It might be obvious, but we don’t know what’s happening under the ground, literally or spiritually.

In our own lives we may feel the alignment that signifies right action– that sense of spiritual snapping into place. We don’t always have that same insight for other people.

There’s a challenge in that but also a beauty. Each of us shares our encounter with the divine refracted through the lens of our own identity, experience, and unique perspective. Our roots grow in the same soil, but our blossoms are different. It’s like the bush in Hawaii a coworker told me about, which produces many colors of flowers, all from the same plant.

When we come together and share how we experience the divine, seek clearness together on how we are led, our perspective widens. We encounter God in new ways. Our hearing sharpens.

Yet because we can’t see what’s happening underground, there can be a tendency to focus on what we can see – the flower, the fruits of our actions. We can mistake what we do with what it means to be a Friend, and to focus on the purity of our actions at the expense of a focus on the faithfulness of our leadings.

This is not just a modern issue. I know that my Quaker meeting wrote people out of the community for fighting in the Civil War, or for marrying outside of the Quaker faith. (For a fictional take, the novel Flowers from the Storm, by Laura Kinsale, is, among other things, a fascinating story about God and human love at one of these high-judgement times in Quaker history.)

Today, someone might talk about how they’re a “bad Quaker” because they don’t compost, or because they order from Amazon, or because they avoid talking to the annoying person next door, or because they pay taxes even knowing that money supports U.S. war and imperialism.

And maybe that is true – maybe this person has a leading against these things and is not acting faithfully. Maybe they are not seeking to practice integrity and bring their words and actions into alignment with what they hear from God.

Or, maybe, they are trying. They are doing their best with what they have, in the situation they find themself in. They are listening with their fallible ears, and discerning how they are led to live a life that testifies to their particular divine calling. And maybe that call is more than a set of rules that we expect people to follow to be a “good Quaker.”

One more quote from Paul Buckley’s reflection on the testimonies:  “Ultimately there is only one testimony, to faithfully follow the word of Spirit breathed within our hearts. What may be named as separate testimonies are merely different flowerings from the same root.”  We testify to our integrity, ultimately, in the ways our lives testify to the world.

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So far I’ve been talking about personal integrity and how each of us might demonstrate our experience of the Divine. And I’ve noted that those personal leadings happen in community. Now I want to come back to the idea of integrity – not just in community, but as community.

Another example, from FCNL:

Aftermath of 9/11, foundations were concerned that they would be accused of financing terrorism. They began requiring grant recipients to certify that their board members were not part of a terrorist organization. FCNL’s Executive Committee discerned that FCNL would not comply, even if it meant losing foundation support. Instead, they decided they would send a letter along with their grant requests, explaining why they were not complying as a matter of conscience.

As with Mary’s decision not to perform weddings, here we can notice the layers of action, explanation, and leading. We can also imagine the judgement from someone who, on the one hand, wonders why FCNL is engaging with this compromised system in the first place; or on the other, is jeopardizing money that could do good work.

As with personal integrity, corporate integrity requires cultivating our spiritual roots. We need to consider: Where – in our meetings, organizations, schools – are the spaces where foundational, deep listening and worship happen? How are we building relationships, trust, and common understandings? How do we help people distinguish personal opinions from the pull of the divine in discerning that next right step?

Once we know how we are led, collectively, we also need to have the courage to say it, and to act from that knowledge – in an environment that may be less than ideal.

            —

Matthew 10:16 Jesus sends out his disciples into the world “like sheep among wolves.” “Therefore,” he tells them, “be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”

This is our work as Friends too. To understand the world, to interact with it, but not to be co-opted by it. It’s part of why I became a Friends – to expand my faith beyond what happened in one hour, in one building, one day of the week.

In some ways, Jesus is describing an impossibility. Snakes are predators. Doves are prey. How are we meant to be both?

That is the challenge of being a Quaker in the world – and, even more so, the challenge of being a Quaker organization trying to function in a complex web of laws, norms, expectations, and conventional wisdom. Our meetings own property, pay taxes, hire employees. Our schools face financial pressures and receive endless advice on how to “compete.” Our organizations, like FCNL, interact with and work within political systems that are often unjust. The world is a messy place to be. 

It can be easy to be swayed by the assumptions and norms around us, to feel we have to just go along. To be shrewd, but not innocent. How do we navigate without becoming unmoored from our roots, having them migrate from rock to sand? How do we keep alignment and witness to God’s message with integrity?

Our organizations and institutions need the touchstones of worship, discernment, and spiritual grounding to be able to recognize when conventional wisdom or cultural norms might diverge from the roots of God’s message to that community.

Sometimes, the organization might go along with the norms. Having influence on the world means we can’t opt out entirely, or die on every hill. But it’s important that those choices too are discerned, that we don’t just fall into a direction. All our choices speak  about who we are and how we are aligned with the promptings of the Spirit. Every time we do this challenging work, of acting from a grounded place, of grappling together to discern the next faithful step we can take with integrity, we build our spiritual capacity to do it again.

In her book Against Purity, Living Ethically in Compromised Times, the anthropologist and philosopher Alexis Shotwell asks us to consider how, “under conditions of oppression and exploitation, [we might] enact practices of freedom that can shape worlds we currently cannot imagine.”

When we faithfully listen to and follow the promptings of Spirit with integrity, we can be part of shaping that world.

My wish for you is that your roots grow deep and your actions shine brightly.

Read at DMM business meeting, May 17, 2026

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, May 17, 2026

Ellen and I were in Florence, Italy on Easter Sunday, and we saw an unusual celebration.  A wooden tower on a cart was pulled by white oxen into the square in front of the cathedral.  Thousands of people crowded the adjacent streets the allowed a view of the square.  In the middle of their Easter mass, inside the cathedral, the archbishop lit a fuse on a metal dove mounted on a wire.  The metal dove flew down the cathedral nave, out the front door, and lit another fuse on the tower.  The dove then flew on, back into the cathedral to where it started.  What followed were fireworks on the wooden tower, and they erupted in sequence over the next twenty minutes: rockets and explosions and catherine wheels and fountains and more.  It was an unusual feast for the eyes and the ears and the nose.  The Florentines have been doing this every Easter for over 500 years.  Once a year on Easter, the Scoppio del Carro, the exploding cart. 

Is this extravaganza of sight and sound and smell a spiritual event?  Perhaps for some.  A tourist experience?  Probably for many others.  It has stayed on my mind because it led me to wondering what it takes to help people have a spiritual life. 

Many people I know don’t have spiritual lives.  They don’t consider themselves as ‘being religious’ or ‘being spiritual.’  They don’t belong to a church; they don’t go to church.  If they think about those of us who do, I imagine they think of us as decent enough folk but perhaps a little silly or foolish.  Foolish to believe such things, whatever it is that we believe.  I’m not disparaging such folks who don’t have spiritual lives.  I’m simply observing that they don’t see a way into the spiritual realm.

And what is it that we believe, those who us who do have spiritual lives – or lives with a spiritual dimension.  I’m not sure I can say, quite varied things, I’m sure, but I can’t really say even about myself. 

Still, I think we believe this, in common.  We believe there is something deeper, something beyond, something very important.  What we can see, touch, taste, feel, smell:  let’s call that the ‘ordinary‘ world.  Or the ‘sensible’ world.  Is it the ‘real’ world?  A lot of those who don’t have spiritual lives think so, I think.  But those who do have spiritual lives think there is something quite real, maybe more real, beyond what we can see, touch, taste, feel, or smell.  There’s something even more real that is deeper, that is beyond or beneath or above this ordinary world. 

Is this making sense to you? 

So I ask myself, is there a door to that deeper reality?  A portal?  Let’s call it that:  a portal that we may not see until one day we do.  And the more we make use of it, the more confidant we become that the portal is there – and there for everyone. 

Many people live in a world where there is no such door, or where there appears to be no door.  Perhaps we have to provide it – not just for ourselves but also or especially for them.  What might that portal to the spiritual realm look like?

Earlier in our spring trip to Europe — and I hope you’ll forgive me if I talk a little more about how we spent our spring vacation — we spent a day in Reims, in the north of France, to visit the cathedral there. It was once the site of coronation for all French kings.  The current cathedral was largely built in the 13^th century, so it is over 800 years old.  It is one of the pinnacle accomplishments of high gothic architectural style. 

That cathedral has arched and vaulted ceilings; it has towers, and flying buttresses on the sides.  All these features allow considerable height.  The cathedral interior is over 125 feet high floor to ceiling, and the towers and spire are more than twice that height.  The cathedral soars above every other building in the city.  It can be seen for miles from every direction across the surrounding fields.  The exterior view is awe inspiring.  The interior height draws you into a different reality.  It was intended to be a portal to a spiritual realm, completely different from everything else in everyday life.  It does this by providing an experience of heightened sensory experiences of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. On this basis you can see the Scoppio del Carro as a dynamic add-on on sight, sound and smell in motion that adds to the heightened sensory experience.

There are other features of this cathedral, and all the other high gothic cathedrals built in the late middle ages that give you sensory experiences that transport you.  At one time, the floor was a labyrinth to walk in prayer.  The towers contain bells that weigh over 10 tons.  There are gorgeous stained glass windows.  There are hundreds of carved statues on the façade and on the sides.  Inside there are relics of saints and candles.  At religious services, likely incense will be burned.  The spiritual realm may be beyond our five senses, a different reality, but this portal is constructed to draw you towards a different reality.  In sight and sound and smell, even in feel, the cathedral seeks to carry you to a different reality, a spiritual reality, one that lifts your eyes and your hands and your heart and your mind to God. 

On our travels in March and April, we saw other versions of this same high gothic setting:  in Paris, at Notre Dame (now completely restored after a terrible fire); in churches in smaller cities and towns in France and Germany and Switzerland; and in soaring cathedrals and basilicas in Italy in Milan, and of course in Florence where we saw the Scoppio del Carro, the explosion of the cart in front of the door to the cathedral. 

The cathedral is not the whole of the portal.  All the delight for the senses that comes with high gothic cathedrals provides a setting for a religious ceremony, the Mass.  The Mass is a recreation of Jesus’s Last Supper with his disciples.  That celebration of the Mass – the Eucharist – is intended to be the essential part of the portal to the life spiritual.  Those who consider themselves Roman Catholics have been celebrating the Mass, providing that portal together, for two thousand years – since the decades after the crucifixion. 

As Friends, as Quakers, we don’t use that kind of portal.  Quite explicitly, even defiantly not.  What you see and hear and smell and touch here in this Meetinghouse, in any Quaker Meetinghouse, is something quite different.  There are no vaulted ceilings, no soaring heights, no spires, no stained glass, no sculptures, no pictures, no relics, no incense.  And of course there is no ritual – no communion, no saying the same words week after week.  Our portal depends on minimizing sensory experience of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. 

We do have a portal, I think, but it’s a quite different one.  Our portal is, in appearance to the five senses, the complete antithesis of the portal of a high gothic cathedral and the Mass.   Simple surroundings, no sensory distractions, a gathering in silence.  Here at Durham Friends, we do allow for some hymn singing and a prepared message.  But on the whole, we don’t provide an experience that is larger or richer or more ornate than everyday life; we provide an experience that is quieter, emptier.  It is meant to be a very different kind of portal to the life spiritual.  Instead of going higher, we provide a portal that goes within. 

The creation of this different portal, this turn away from the high gothic cathedral, started with Martin Luther and the Reformation.  Quickly, all over Europe, people sought something more authentic, more personal – more intense because more simple.  They created alternative spiritual bodies  — today we call them denominations.  No group carried that simplification farther than Quakers. 

Does our portal work better?  For some?  If so, for whom?  That’s what I’ve found myself thinking about.  I know it works better for me.  What about those others who do not see the door?

We should remember that the Reformation was proceeded and, I think, propelled forward by the invention of the printing press.  On our trip, we visited the site of that invention in Mainz in Germany.  In a space of a few years, the Bible became available to own and to read to thousands and then tens of thousands and then millions more people.  Having the Bible to read was itself a different kind of portal. 

The high gothic cathedral provided a setting for telling the gospel story visually, in paintings and sculptures that told the story.  With the printing press, ordinary people began to read the Bible for themselves.  They didn’t need those paintings and sculptures – and maybe those paintings and sculptures undermined the Bible.  For some Reformation protestants, the Bible became the one true portal, the one and only. 

But remember, not for Quakers.  From the beginning, Quakers revered the Bible but viewed the Bible as only a “secondary” rule, one subordinate to the inward, immediate revelation of the Holy Spirit — the “Inner Light”.  As Robert Barclay put it:  we esteem Scripture as a “true and faithful testimony” of the Spirit, but insist that the Spirit—not the Bible—is the “primary ground of all Truth”.  Listening to the Inward Teacher became our portal. 

This is our portal to the life spiritual:  seeking the Holy Spirit (by whatever name) in simplicity and stillness and silence. 

It seems to work for us, few though we may be in number.  But does it work for the many?  Does it work for the many, and does it work for those without a spiritual life? Does it work in an era of graphic novels?  Of logos and brands? In an era of reality TV?  In an age of cell phones? In a time of social media and Artificial Intelligence?  Those are the questions I found myself thinking about. 

How do we provide – how do we find – a portal to the deeper spiritual reality.  I hope you’ll ask, regularly, is this a door to a deeper spiritual reality?  And I hope you find one.

Also posted on Riverview Friend

Message given on Mother’s Day, May 10, 2026, at Durham Friends Meeting. On June 16, 2025, Shelley Randall also brought a Father’s Day message to Durham Friends.

Welcome and Happy Mother’s Day!

And its complicated! Mothers and daughters are complicated, mothers and sons are complicated, mothers and children are complicated period. And then as luck would have it sometimes the children become the mothers as their mothers age or get sick or become unavailable. How complicated is that?

Sometimes the children parent the mothers throughout their childhood, sometimes the mothers never let go of trying to parent their children as if they never mature – and maybe they don’t.

And sometimes men mother their children.

I am not a mother in the traditional sense, I have not carried a child to term or given birth nor raised children under my roof. And I have the utmost respect for those that do take on this endeavor. Especially in these times of discord and uncertainty.

I can only imagine the worry, the frustration and resentment, the knee jerk call to defend that mothers experience each and every day, alongside the heartfelt pride, love and joy that comes with raising a child.

But I am a mother nevertheless, in the broadest of terms. I have nurtured others in a variety of situations professionally and personally, as a friend, as a substance abuse counselor. As a Guardian Ad Litem for children, a lawyer for parents and children involved in the child protection system. I have witnessed countless women being told they are unfit to raise the children they birthed. And I have seen children that were removed from their mothers return once they are 18 despite the circumstances being unchanged: substance abuse, violence and mental illness. The bond is strong and most often unresolved.  

We are, afterall, flawed human beings. That is all we are and ever will be. Some of us strive towards perfection; some of us don’t give a damn. And some of us toggle back and forth between the two on any given day.

My mother decided to manage her four children from the collective view of her generation with regard to mothering. Making sure we had the right attire, that we went to the right school, played the right sports and knew the right people. She wanted us to succeed in her world. So that is what she gave us and asked of us.

But what I really craved was her attention to who I was and not what she wanted me to be, I craved her acceptance. I wanted her to be a mother that could plumb the depths of emotions, dig deep into the meaning of life. She wanted to skate on the surface and have fun, why couldn’t I, I’m sure she wondered.

My mother was not perfect in my eyes and I was not a perfect daughter to her but we grew to respect one other once we let go of our expectations that we carried – You know – She should be more like me!

And I certainly was a thorn in her side. You see I didn’t buy into her world view. And in fact I disdained it, not only in my teens but into my twenties until I could make my own decisions about what path I needed to walk. Once I was able to do that my disdain slowly fell away but the damage was done. Our relationship had become grounded in mistrust of each other and each other’s world view. 

We were at an impasse. And this impasse was unacceptable to me, I needed my mother.

So I did what I could to spend time with her and my stepfather on their terms without compromising my values. I’d visit them in the winter time on Martha’s Vineyard when there were no parties to attend, no one to impress. And I curbed my curiosity about her inner workings; how she felt about things. For her part, she did not judge my quiet and notably unsocial life, my lack of husband and children.

We took walks together peaking through windows of empty summer homes and entering newly constructed houses commenting on design and interior decorating. She fed me serving lovely meals in front of the fire.

Then my mother started to call me in the mornings when the furnace in their 18^th century salt box failed and the temperature was 50 degrees. I listened and watched giving her the space to come to her own conclusions.

She made some decisions privately, without complaint, without discussion.

And I waited.

She decided she and my stepfather would move to an assisted living facility outside of Boston, near where she grew up.

My stepfather did not do well there – essentially he went to bed and got up only to accompany her to dinner so that she could dress and wave and nod at the other dressed and nodding residents.

He died about a year after they landed there. And my mother took up with another resident who could accompany her to dinner.

I waited and figured out how to visit just her and not go to dinner with the new beau.

The most precious memories I have of my mother and me are of sitting together on her loveseat in front of the t.v. watching British mysteries, shoulder to shoulder, holding hands in her apartment when she was in her nineties.

Decades of effort to bridge a seemingly unbridgeable divide yielded simple expressions of love that I had craved. And I am at peace because of it. As she was, her last words to me the evening she died at the age of 95 were “I love you Shelley”. And off she went – after I had left, privately as she always did everything.

And now Motherhood is ever more complicated as we watch unfold sons and daughters that make choices that did not seem possible a generation ago. It seems like more and more of our children are experiencing a fundamental conflict between their soul and their bodies that causes them despair. Girls are telling their parents that they are in the wrong body, they need to be in a boy’s body and vice versa. How did this come about – we want answers around the origin of this “trend” we want data and statistics, potential influences that has caused this. We want someone or something to blame for this “anomaly”.  We shake our heads in incomprehension and misunderstanding. Yet how could we possibly understand what it would be like to have such a fundamental disconnect? This is all too much for us.

It was difficult for me to feel and then know from an early age that I did not fit in to my mother’s social construct and therefore I did not fit into my family – it was an impossibility – I was not that person. That understanding, that sense of disconnect from my biological family caused me a great deal of distress over decades – trying to fit in, trying not to fit in, trying to keep my mouth shut, not keeping my mouth shut and finally just staying away from my family altogether. And all the terms were cast about – it’s just a phase, she’ll come around -why can’t she just fit in!

So I can only imagine what it must be like to feel like you do not belong in your own body. The shock and horror and despair one must feel. And the panic. Who is going to love me? What will my mother think, say, do?

The mothering attributes raised up entail nurturing and taking care of and loving and we all hold those capabilities no matter our genders. And as such it is our job to nurture, take care of and love our children, all of them.  And keep them out of harm’s way. But what does that look like with a child that says to us, I’m in the wrong body? And putting that child in the appropriate body entails cutting things off that the child was born with, that they came out of the womb with? How do we manage that? With a blind eye? With dismissal? Its just a phase?  Or do we listen with our hearts and move along the unfamiliar path together with our children, listening to their heartfelt expressions of who they are and holding their hands.

I do not have any data or statistics – in fact I have only personal experience with a friend, and friends who are parents of trans kids. And I’ve watched from a distance at the courage and strength of love it takes to commit to a path that is integrous to the child’s soul but maybe far out of the norm of experience. I’ve watched with awe and the utmost respect at the expansiveness of heart this path requires, the nurturing of one’s child’s Spirit and the belief it takes in one’s child’s own heart and soul to walk this path.

And I’ve also seen the outcomes – my friend becoming softer as he settles into his true nature, no longer having to wear armor or move about burdened with a secret. No longer self-destructive or using drugs. I’ve watched the anguish of parents of trans kids turn to relief that they no longer have to worry about suicidality as they watch their children fully enter who they were meant to be, their children now feeling safe enough to express themselves truly, become productive members of the family and society. Knowing and feeling that they are loved and can love others honestly. This is what a mother yearns for her child.

And we are all mothers, we all have the ability to fall into our hearts to find the love and nurturing that was cast upon the one gender, women, throughout the ages. It is incumbent upon us all, now, women, men, mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts, to recognize the energy spent in our minds, the rational arguments, the “it didn’t used to be like this”, the science and economic rationales. We must enter into our hearts to find the love for ourselves and all of our flaws and thusly find the love for all others despite perhaps not understanding but learning to allow and accept. As we do that for others, we do that for ourselves. And we are richer for having found this expansiveness in our hearts and the possibility to reach out and put ourselves in another’s shoes, to learn about our own hearts and its capacities for encompassing others.

This is the path of love.

MAY WE ALL BE MOTHERS

May we all embody those attributes we find in the Sacred Mother

May we nourish and nurture ourselves and our human brothers and sisters in all their forms and bodies

May we care for our children and all children throughout the world

May we find interdependence and connection with all Beings

May we find our inner mothers to shower this world with love and the abundance of joy and satisfaction today and always.

May it be so. Blessed Be. Amen

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, May 3, 2026

It’s wonderful to be here with Durham Friends again. I wish we could be there in person. Thank you Leslie for the invite and for serving as elder for the whole body. Thank you Ken Jacobsen, my partner, for serving as my elder.

Wunee keesuq-Good Day.  Nutus8ees- I am called Gail Melix also known as Greenwater. I am a member of Sandwich Monthly Meeting on Cape Cod, and a member of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe in Patuxet, Ma, the land’s first name, also known as Plymouth. I have two faith communities, Indigenous and Quaker which share many of the same values. I find that they fit together well in beauty and in truth. 

I was flooded with ideas of messages to bring today. After worship with discernment I found myself deeply led to speak of Joy, and to do this by sharing some of my stories that express HOW I experience Joy. I’m finding that the presence of joy, peace, and kindness is needed everywhere I go.  Joy, peace and kindness is the presence that is needed now, paired with love. The despair that many of us are experiencing cries out for this Joy… to balance us into well- being.  Can we go about cheerfully sharing our joy with one another?

I climb trees, I decided I couldn’t surrender this childhood joy. One day, I was in the arms of a white pine: silent, holding completely still. A blue heron lit on a branch, two trees down, about a yard from me. I waited and watched wondering when she would notice me. She did. We locked eyes for a good two minutes, before she hopped up and off the branch with a six-foot wingspan and flew, maneuvered—I don’t know how—through that dense thicket of pine branches, and with such Grace. I wanted to shout: Yes. Yes. Teach me that. Teach me that form of grace! Sometimes our hearts are made to be full to bursting with longing.  I’m often suddenly surprised into joy when I’m in the natural world and I find that my faith accompanies me.

I have my favorite trees and anticipate the sighting of them. When I place my hands on a tree I feel an exchange of energy: a back and forth greeting and a response of shared delight. There is a sense that we are comforting one another. Even as a child, I had trouble keeping my hands off my favorite trees, and why should I? Is it a surprise that we should have favorite trees, the same way that we are drawn to a closeness and fondness for certain aunts, uncles, and grandparents?

When I hold completely still and quiet, hidden in a tree, all life around me loses the tension that exists when I am visibly present. The birds and the two- and four-leggeds come back out into the sun and air, once again. I sometimes wonder if we become invisible when we are so still. I’ve had songbirds light on me as if I’m a limb on the tree. I do know that if I sit long enough in stillness day after day, there will come a time when I transform into a feeling of oneness with all life; my separateness disappears. I am a part of the pulse of life, just one being in the web, no more or less important than other life. No hierarchy. I am fortunate to have this traditional knowledge, received from my F/father, my ancestors, and from Nature’s teachings. It is reaffirmed by Creator every day. One day while looking up into the tops of several very tall white pines that the sun was streaming through, I became aware of how very small I am. I am not the center of the world. Giving up ego for the reward of greater potential becomes a gift. I was given to understand that the face of Creator can be seen everywhere in the beauty of creation, and the Joy this brings is given freely to us.

I acknowledge and honor the relationship that I have with water during my walk by squatting on the bank of the Santuit River and submerging both hands in the water long enough to leave my scent in the river. I anoint my forehead with river water from one hand and the nape of my neck with the other hand, so as to carry her scent. I am in the river, and the river is in me. We are one. After all, we are 50-75 % water, the average being  60 percent water. Of course we are related: kinfolk. Some days I am given to singing or humming to the river. A soft singsong that has words or not, maybe hummed, is pleasing to do and appreciated by the river. If the songs have words, they always express gratitude and may be the same words repeated over and over. Wampanoags have appointed water keepers, always women, whose service it is to sing to the water. If we bear witness to the beauty of Nature And witness to the ways she suffers, we might be led to discern what is ours to do.; perhaps to be the voice for those who have no voice. What we love we protect, but for the desire and commitment to do so.

Creator and Christ are in the Joy I feel when communing with Nature. Because of this deepening relationship I have a greater ability for peace, deep listening, reverence and joy. These are sacred experiences, where joy and healing are being co-created by God and humans. There’s a reawakening to wonder that has created a wider path to my heart, and thus, to love.

I love to tell the story of the buttercups and me. Worshipping outdoors in the grass one day my attention was drawn to a patch of buttercups I was sitting next to. I love that deep yellow shade and their cheerful faces. I decided to hold them in the Light from a place of gratitude…. Suddenly, during worship, I realized that the buttercups were holding me.

I come to the path with this question, where will I find delight and joy today?

And now I’m asking you, where will you find joy today and how ill you share it?

I’m reminded Jesus came to teach us how to find joy. He said, “Never stop walking this road of love…as you walk in my ways my love will remain in you. I am saying this so your hearts will be filled with the same joy I have.” John 15: 9-11. First Nations Version of the New Testament, an Indigenous Translation

This joy that permeates the natural world that we discover in Quaker worship also permeates our shared inner universe of love.

Thank you friends. I love worshipping with you.  Let’s move into this worship now.

Today’s message included excerpts from the article, The Delight of Being Alive, by Gail Melix, Friends Journal, February of 2025: https://www.friendsjournal.org/the-delight-of-being-alive/

A message for the Durham, ME Quaker meeting, April 19, 20

Thank you for inviting me to bring a message.

My name is Lori Milner. I live in Chelsea, I attend UUCC, the Unitarian
Universalist Community Church in Augusta, and I know Leslie Manning
from our mutual affiliation with the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine, or ChIME.
I’m honored to be here with you today.

Earth Day is this week, but for those who love the Earth and are concerned
about her health, every day is Earth Day.

My opening words are those from Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things”

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

In the midst of the human-created chaos that is the daily news cycle, I
often look out my window or go outside. Even in the midst of our concerns
about climate change, the sun still rises and sets; the moon shows her
lovely face, shining in my windows at night. The stars are brilliant,
especially in crisp cold air. The trees are standing tall, patiently waiting for
the changing of seasons and their leaves to bud and unfurl. Birds are
singing. Grass will grow, and I will have to mow it. Over and over. I live on a
road that ends in Butternut Park, across from Hallowell. My dog, Sarayu,
and I walk down the hill to the park and the Kennebec River. The geese
and ducks are back. An eagle soars overhead, coming in to rest in the top
of the pine tree where the nest is waiting for eggs. The Maine sky is the
blue of Mother Mary’s robe. I’m finding solace and refuge in the natural
world.

Now, I’m not your typical outdoorsy person. I don’t like going barefoot. I’m
afraid of ticks and I had a nice run-in with brown tail moth rash the first
summer after I moved back to Maine. Welcome home. I like the sun, but
when it’s out, you’ll find me in the shade. I’ll go in the water, but I wear
swim shoes. I don’t like getting rained on. I hate sweating! Yet, here I am,
about to begin a practice of wandering in the outdoors, engaging in sacred
interaction with the natural world surrounding me. Not to use the Earth and
nature to make me feel better, but to get to know and love Creation in a
reciprocal way that is new for me. And I’ll be inviting others to do it with
me, as I am starting a wild church in the Augusta area.

In her book Church of the Wild, How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred,
Victoria Loorz shares her story of falling in love with the natural world
outside her door. Restoring relationship and entering into conversation
with the more than human parts of creation, taking her pastoral ministry
from indoor churches into the holy wild, with respect and reciprocity.

Some definitions:
Wild: not out of control, but pertains to the natural world itself, not tamed
or domesticated.
Church: an opportunity for intentional connection with the sacred through
nature.

The heart of a wild church gathering is the invitation to wander in the area
with a sense of wonder and curiosity. See if something calls to you, that is,
it catches your attention. Or it may not be one thing, but the entire scenery
around you that draws you into relationship with All That Is. “Sauntering is
an ancient spiritual practice of slowly and reverently wandering through
nature, open to the possibility of an encounter with a particular place, wild
being, and the unknown.” (Field Guide to Church of the Wild, pg 102.)
Sixteenth century mystic St. John of the Cross wrote about his sauntering
(Field Guide, pg 103):

I was sad one day and went for a walk;
I sat in a field.
A rabbit noticed my condition and came near.
It often does not take more than that to help at times – to just be close to
creatures who are so full of knowing,
so full of love that they don’t – chat,
they just gaze with their marvelous understanding.

In the book of Job 12:7-8 in The Message translation it says:
Ask the animals what they think – let them teach you:
let the birds tell you what’s going on.
Put your ear to the earth – learn the basics.
Listen – the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.
So today I would like to invite you into a saunter, a “wander and wonder”
time. We won’t be going outside, but as you came in, each of you was
offered a pine cone. Is there anyone who didn’t get one?

I suspect you all are masters at sitting in silence, listening for the voice of
Spirit. And I think that will happen later in the service. For now I want to
invite you into a little different experience of listening to Spirit. This is an
invitation to engage with your pine cone, hold it with curiosity, see if it has
something to tell you about itself, or the Creator and/or Creation. We will
take five minutes to listen, and then offer the opportunity for a few minutes
of sharing.

There are pens and paper available if anyone wants to journal. I’ll keep
time for us.

[Pause]

Would anyone like to share what you heard, or what this was like for you?

My final invitation is to come forward if you like, and place your pine cone
somewhere on the mandala. If you want to keep your cone, feel free to
take another from the basket and place it.

I thank you for your time. Blessings to all of you