Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, March 16, 2025

 “Be a good ancestor. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Add value to the Earth during your sojourn.” – Marian Wright Edelman

Last fall, when Ingrid, Cindy and I cleaned out the Sunday School cupboard we found a small box labelled “Time capsule” with messages that Durham Young Friends and others created on Childrens’ Day June 12, 2011. Evidently it didn’t get buried in the ground as planned!  It seemed like the start of a message to me and I offered to bring one sometime. The opening to contemplate past voices of Durham Friends arrived this week,and it seems a good followup to Doug’s message last week about the history of our meeting.

Last month I had the privilege to visit the Acoma pueblo outside of Albuquerque NM. This is my understanding of their story and hope it accurately reflects their story. The Acoma people have continuously occupied the area for over 2000 years. They built a town- now called Sky City around 1100  atop a 365 ft mesa.  Until the 1950’s it was only accessible by climbing the stone wall vertically using chiseled recesses in the rock. Everything including water, food, bricks needed to be carried up the steep rock wall. Acoma elders still choose to live there even with no electricity or running water. They are resilient people. In the past 2000+ years,  they have experienced massacres over and over, enslavement and Spanish colonialism, climate change, enforced conversion to catholicism.  In the 20th century, their children were removed by our government and by 1922 most were in Christian boarding schools. 

A remarkable part of the Acoma pueblo atop the mesa is the huge Adobe church built at the command of the Spanish in the 1600’s. Acoma men were forced to walk 30 miles away to fell tall 40 foot ponderosa pine trees and carry them back and up the rockwall to build the church roof.Men women and children were forced to build this church.  No record exists about how many Acoma died as a result of slave labor.  But the church exists today and holds many stories, both painful and miraculous. How Queen Isabella who initially ordered the enslavement and massacre changed her mind and stopped the killing of the Acoma. How President Lincoln singled out the Acoma and several other pueblos and wrote into law their sovereignty.

Our thoughtful and knowledgeable tour guide, Brandon, told the history of the trauma and resilience of his people. He said the Acoma have chosen to share their stories and allow visitors. They have been able to survive by compromising at times but more importantly holding a spirit of forgiveness in order to not be racked with hate. As we stood to walk out of the church, I asked him how he and his community are feeling in the current day. He said they are terrified, angry but resolute in maintaining their culture amid the current political situation. He worries about his kids and the children in the community. He said they have been threatened with deportation and chuckled about the irony- where will they send us back to? His Aunt called him recently and was fearful and depressed. He told her to remember the Beatles Song “Let it be.” Their community will stand together, and band with the other 18 Pueblos in New Mexico to fight injustice both for them and for everyone’s children. 

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom
Let it be
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom
Let it be
And when the broken-hearted people
Living in the world agree
There will be an answer
Let it be
For though they may be parted
There is still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer
Let it be

Our meeting family has been around for many fewer years than the Acoma- only 250. And we have many stories of the people and events that make up the fabric of our community. Last week, Doug gave a wonderful account of some of the tales of our meeting. We have experienced trauma but also the power of the Spirit that has bolstered our resilience and sustains us. And we have shared many sacred hours.

 Each of us also is part of our biological family with its share of love and trauma and resilience and sacred moments. When I was looking through family documents and papers on my recent visit to my dad, I found a letter that troubled me. It was from a family member and was a cruel, vengeful account of several experiences this person witnessed from other family members. I was troubled because it was told from a narrow perspective as each of us is prone to do. This letter accused other family members of damaging our family beyond repair, and in my view were inaccurate and didn’t leave room for discourse on healing.  In talking with a friend about what to do both with this letter and my response she told me about her experience working as a hospice chaplain and the dilemma people face with family stories that reflect a bad decision or human frailty but can be destructive. Some stories become stuck in the past and don’t allow for healing or redemption.  Her wisdom to me was to sort through what family stories are constructive to pass on and what stories may be acknowledged, faced head on, but possibly reframed or not passed on. Allow the story to run its course.  I was reminded of Brandon’s wisdom about holding our stories with a spirit of forgiveness.

My current ruminations are around stories- my family stories, my Meeting family stories and our country’s stories. How do I, how do we, recount our history? We have so many stories- our  conversations, relationships, events. How do we account for human frailty, unkind words, injustice that we have inflicted or received? Which stories have no purpose, which can we reframe to strengthen bonds of love and wholeness? These are all questions I’ve been wrestling with. What legacy do I want to leave my family, my Meeting family, my community, my world?

James Baldwin wrote:

“This is why one must say Yes to life and embrace it whenever it is found — and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is.

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.“

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, March 2, 2025

Did you ever wish you could talk to animals when you were a kid?

I did. As a child, I longed to understand them—not just their behaviors, but their thoughts, their emotions, the stories they held in their bones. But like most childhood dreams, I let it fade as I grew older. The world has a way of convincing us that wonder is something to outgrow.

And I might have believed that—until the day I saw a documentary about Anna Breytenbach, a professional animal communicator from South Africa. In the film, she connected with a black leopard named Spirit who had been deeply misunderstood in captivity. But through deep listening, she was able to hear him—to understand the grief and pain that lived in his body.

Something inside me cracked open as I watched Anna transform Spirit’s life through communicating with him and his human caretakers.

For the first time since I was a child, I believed my dream of being able to talk to animals wasn’t just a fantasy—it could be my reality.

A few years after I saw the documentary, Spirit visited me in a dream.

In the dream, I was leading an animal communication retreat, guiding others into silence, when Spirit emerged from the darkness. His black coat gleamed like liquid night. He pressed his forehead against my third eye, sending a ripple of energy through my body.

“You have forgotten how to listen,” Spirit said.

His voice wasn’t human, but it vibrated through me like I’d always known the language.

“Your purpose is to help humans remember—to teach them to speak with us, with all life.”

I woke with a strong sense of being guided by Spirit, but I never could have predicted what would come next.

About a year later, in the summer of 2024, I was invited to attend the World Plenary Gathering of Quakers in South Africa. It was an amazing opportunity, but what sealed my decision to go was an image I saw online while researching places to visit – a photograph of a leopard named Una, a captive female living at a wildlife sanctuary called the Daniell Cheetah Project. 

Her golden eyes gazed into my soul, almost like she was calling me, and I knew I had to meet her.

In August, I boarded a plane and flew 18 hours to Johannesburg, where I spent two weeks in deep, deep worship with Quakers from all around the world. 

I had a wonderful time at the World Gathering, though I did have a small crisis of faith partway through, which I’m sure some of you can relate to – but that’s a story for another time.

After the gathering, I went to the airport, picked up a rental car and quickly taught myself how to drive on the other side of the road, which was a lot easier in reality than it was in my head, thank goodness!

A few weeks into my trip, I arrived at The Daniell Cheetah Project where I met… 

…Una, the leopard from the photo, and Vega, her male companion.

If Una was the sun, Vega was the storm. Most of the time, he was calm, moving through their enclosure with quiet intensity. But at feeding time, the storm would break…

…and he would lash out, snarling and charging the fence, his frustration spilling over.

The keepers dismissed Vega’s aggression, affectionately calling him special while doting on sweet, gentle Una.

But when I looked into Vega’s eyes… 

…I saw pain beneath his rage.

One evening, I sat quietly by Vega’s enclosure, reaching out to him with the silent language I was learning to trust.

“What’s hurting you?” I asked.

A flood of images and emotions surged through me—vast, open spaces, the scent of wild grasses, the weight of a world he was meant to belong to and the unbearable ache of knowing he never would.

“I don’t belong here,” he told me, leaning his heavy head against the chain link fence separating him from his freedom. 

His grief struck me with the force of a river breaking through a dam as it converged with my own ocean of despair. It was an ancient, aching sorrow that held the weight of generations, of wild instincts caged and freedom taken away. It was betrayal, rage, the agony of knowing his soul was too vast for the bars that held him.

I recognized his grief. I had felt it before—the pain of being trapped in a place that doesn’t fit, the helplessness of having no way out. I had known betrayal, too. I had been hurt by people I trusted, and in some ways, I had caged my own wildness within the confines of fear, expectation, and the silent rules of a world that teaches us to tame ourselves – to trade instinct for obedience, longing for practicality, intuition for logic, and freedom for the illusion of safety.

A world that builds cages not just for animals, but for people – separating families at borders, locking away those deemed ‘other,’ enforcing invisible walls of oppression that tell us who belongs and who doesn’t.

Vega’s captivity was made of steel and chain-link. Mine, like so many others, was built from stories designed to keep us small, afraid, and disconnected from the wildness and freedom that is our birthright. 

I could have turned away. But I stayed. I opened myself to him. 

I let his grief pour through me, hollowing me out with the unbearable weight of our collective pain as I wept for all the captive souls whose freedom will never be known.

I allowed the dense, excruciating energy to move through me like a current, channeling it down, down, down into the Earth beneath me. I imagined the soil drinking it in, transmuting our pain like rain, holding it in the vastness of something ancient enough, strong enough to transform it.

As the energy moved, something shifted. The storm raging inside Vega softened. His breath slowed. His body relaxed. He leaned against the fence and grumbled his thanks, assuring me that “We can walk together on this path towards healing.”

The following night, I returned to find both Vega and Una waiting for me. 

This time, their energy was different—less guarded, more open. They had something to tell me. 

I closed my eyes and listened.

What emerged was less like a conversation and more like a marriage counseling session—two leopards, bound together in captivity, struggling to reconcile their reality with the vastness of what they had lost. Vega’s voice, raw and untamed, carried the sharp edges of grief. Una’s, softer, held the weight of quiet endurance.

They told me they were aware that they were expected to breed and posed a heart wrenching question to me:

“How do we raise a child in captivity?”

It wasn’t a question of biology. It was the kind of question that stretches across species, across time—a question whispered in the aching hearts of parents who have been stripped of the ability to give their children the life they deserve. 

I heard it in Vega and Una’s voices, but I also heard it echoing through the generations of people who have known forced displacement. Parents cradling their babies in refugee camps, undocumented families fearing the knock of an immigration officer, entire cultures severed from their roots, their traditions, their homelands.

“Will our children ever know what it means to be free?”

I felt the depth of their sorrow, the fear that their children would never belong to the vast, open spaces that still lived inside their blood.

“They will know,” I told them. “Because of your sacrifice.”

I assured them that one day their babies would be released into a protected reserve, free to roam and reclaim the wild that is their true home.

I also reminded them that even in captivity, the wild is never truly lost. It lives in the marrow, in the muscle, in the stories that live in our bones. 

And in the same way, the wild within us stirs, moving through us like a quiet rebellion against everything that threatens to confine our spirit.

Two months after I left South Africa, Una and Vega gave birth to their first son, Nico.

Nico’s birth reminded me of a powerful encounter I had with a wild leopard in Kruger National Park.

The leopard was draped across a rocky outcrop, the rising sun painting his coat in hues of fire and shadow. As soon as the vehicle’s engine turned off, he turned his regal head and looked me dead in the eyes as though he’d been waiting for me, like we had a divine appointment scheduled.

In that instant, I felt the invisible thread that stretched between him and Nico, between Vega and Una, between all the caged and the free. 

I thought of Spirit, urging me to help humans remember our connection with the wild world. 

I thought of Una, calling me across time and space to help her and her mate reconcile their fate.

I thought of Vega, of the grief he carries in his body, and the way it had mingled with my own and our collective grief and poured through me into the Earth. 

I thought of Nico…

…born into captivity, but carrying the wild inside him. 

And I thought of us—of humanity, of the ways that we, too, have been severed from our wildness.

We have been told that captivity is normal. That we must shrink to fit within borders, within laws, within cages built of fear and control. That the wild parts of us—the instinct, the longing, the untamed knowing—must be buried, forgotten, domesticated.

But I do not believe that.

Because the wild does not die. It waits. It remembers. It calls.

And all we need to do to hear it is listen.

To listen with the ears of our heart. 

So, I invite you to transfer authority from your head to your heart and listen to the wild yearning within you as we settle into worship.

+++

Briana Halliwell is a member of Vassal;boro Friends Meeting. She is a contemplative activist, creative communicator, wandering mystic, and intuitive interspecies communicator who hears a Divine Call to weave the forgotten web of connection back into the places (both personal and collective) where colonizer consciousness has spread the lie that humans are separate from each other and the Earth. Briana is acutely aware of what she calls the “Cosmic Ache” – as an empath and vessel of Divine Source, she can feel in her body the collective wounds of humanity and the more-than-human beings with whom we share the Earth. She is called to help humanity heal from the deleterious effects of global colonization through helping people to reconnect with their innate belonging to the wider Earth community.​​

You can find information about Briana Halliwell’s current project here.

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, February 23, 2024

Right now, as we meet here in Durham & Portland Maine, Quakers are gathered for worship in Gibara Cuba for the closing Sunday worship of Cuba Yearly Meeting.  With them are eleven Friends from New England, including Kristna Evans and Mimi Marstaller from Durham and Maggie Fiori from Portland, four adults and three children from Dover meeting and one from Providence meeting.

Friends began worship this morning earlier than we did, and will continue after we close. I am hoping to share,  as much as I am able, the experience of worship and of Friends in Cuba.

The church in Gibara is full – everyone has walked to worship this morning- from their homes or from the dormitories. It’s 80 degrees, the front door of the church is open, the breeze off the harbor blows through the windows.

The service begins with song – everyone knows the songs and everyone sings together enthusiastically.  Jesu’s band accompanies the hymns.  I saw a photo of the band earlier this week at Puerto Padre. This year there is a saxophone, a bass guitar, a drummer and Jesu.  

The theme for this years gathering is “a family on a mission” The Chorus is “We are the community of God”. Each year CYM composes a song for sessions. The Verse is Acts 2:42  (Pentacost)

“The Fellowship of the Believers

⁴² They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. “

After singing, a pastor will share a message on the theme and the verse: and the community will participate, sometimes interrupting, sometimes agreeing sometimes arguing.  As Friends everywhere know, Cuban Friends know that we experience god directly and intimately and that authority rests in that experience, not in the person of the pastor.  In Cuba, Friends share during a message, as well as out of the silence.

Judy Goldberger wrote in a recent newsletter from FUM that:

“[In Cuba} I was immersed in communities who KNEW and trusted the constant presence of G*d. Who used their minds and hands and hearts to their full capacity, but knew they were not acting alone, knew they didn’t carry the burden of outcomes.

I’m privileged [in the US]. My intellect knows G*d is by my side, but it’s so easy to fall into trusting the work of my hands, and taking on the burden of outcomes.  In Cuba, so much was out of our hands. The power could go out at any time. We might need to pull over and let the bus engine cool off. The pharmacy shelves were bare of western medicines. The doctors couldn’t run basic diagnostic tests.

But God was always with us, revealing Godself through each other, and giving Cuban Friends power. Not mastery, but power. As I return to the United States, where I’m privileged to be able to get what I want instantly, let me remember that. To confuse power with mastery  is the road to despair. Let us reveal Godself to each other, in our workplaces, in our communities, with power.

Above the cross, in the Friends church in Delicias, it reads, “The place of Your presence.” And it is also everywhere I walk.

[As Jorge Luis , clerk of CYM said} “Somos seres humanos, no somos angeles.” (We’re human beings, we’re not angels.)

Back in Boston after eight days with Cuban Quakers, I don’t even know where to begin. G*d was truly as close as our breathing and moved among and through us. I was witness to the deep joy and deep heartbreak that Cuban Friends live with every day. I miss them already and my heart is a little larger now.” —Judy Goldberger, New England Yearly Meeting

I hear in Judy’s reflection a meditation relevant to the verse that has been at the center of worship during sessions:  Acts 2:42, The Fellowship of the Believers

⁴² They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. (the passage continues)  ⁴³ Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. ⁴⁴ All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵ They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. ⁴⁶ Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.

This verse comes after the community has experienced the spirit descending upon them at Pentecost.  They have been drawn together, have spoken in many languages and understood each other, have been mocked by the community and have been formed into this fellowship of believers.  Judy’s description is a description of a community that has been formed into such a fellowship and that is gathering today praying and feasting together.

I’ve sat with the theme “a family on a mission”.  

One of the realities in Cuba now is that everyone has had people they love leave the island.  They cannot return and they cannot be visited.  Caring for family is complicated. The Cuba Friends are wrestling with how to remain in relationship with those they love who are absent. How to include them in the fellowship of believers.    –    

We in our country are living through a time where those we love are being targeted, because of their identity, their heritage or their job and it is unclear if we can protect them. My daughter works for USAID and she has been called a criminal, a lunatic and corrupt by rich and powerful men. How do we enfold those we love who are in harms way into the power of our fellowship of believers.  In Judy’s reflection she links both the deep joy and the deep heartbreak that Cuban Friends live with as part of their experience of God moving among them. That stretches me – Do I recognize the deep heartbreak that I live with as part of God moving through us?   This theme – “a family on a mission” has felt particularly tender both in the lives of Cuban Friends and in our communities.

After the message the children will lead the gathered community in song. There are a lot of children, singing and dancing enthusiastically.  The whole congregation is singing and dancing with the children.    The Epistle from CYM to Friends everywhere will be read, any new pastors will be installed and any retiring ministers or elders will be honored.  The clerk will offer a prayer at closing and the whole community will gather for a luncheon feast.  Local Friends will walk home, Friends from other meetings will crowd into whatever transport have been found to return home and the New England Friends will go to Holguin Airport and catch the 3:00 flight to Miami.

Revival Sing: ”When the world is sick, ain’t nobody feeling well, and at camp we’re so beautiful and strong.”

Queries:  What have we experienced as a community that has forged us into this fellowship of believers, who gather and pray together and break bread together?

Do we know the feeling of the power of God’s presence among us, how do we recognize this and not mistake mastery of our hands and the authority of the world for the power of God’s presence?

Click this link to play the audio: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mgpAGV5ZATNrBAnjx3ZthbgFdXOL9YKY/view?usp=sharing