Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, September 24, 2023

Psalm 46 verse 10: “Be still and know that I am God.”

This morning, I’d like to spend a little time celebrating PBS – not Public Broadcasting Service but the invitation to Pause and Be Still. Like Public Broadcasting Service, Pause and Be Still (this morning’s PBS)  is free and available to all. Tuning into PBS offers access to the most important stories of any day. It is here whether you use it or not. There will never be a pledge drive.

When I truly settle into a moment to pause and be still, the chatter in my mind quiets and the seeking in my heart rests. I sense a clearing opening; I have made myself ready to be more fully present to God in that moment. I have taken a step toward the divine and the divine has sensed my readiness and stepped closer to me. In the stillness, we may dance or cry or laugh or embrace. There is awe. In the stillness, we know each other and are known by each other. And I am reminded that the divine is always here, in me and around me. I just need to pause and be still to remember.

This summer, I began paying close attention to invitations to Pause and Be Still and I have found my connection to the life of Spirit within me deepening and stretching. Granted, my practice of paying attention and embracing invitations to pause was likely supported by the fecundity of the summer season, but even that was a bonus, not the doorway. The doorway is this intention to pay attention to the invitations to PBS.

The doorway has stayed wide open as we enter this season of transition and all the fullness that it holds. The fall equinox invites us to let go of all that summer abundance and to prepare to receive in the fullness of the emptiness of the darker months. Each releasing and receiving is an invitation to pause and be still.

My curiosity about PBS began on the acupuncture table. I have been receiving acupuncture for over a decade and, each time, after I have been poked full of needles, the practitioner asks “music or silence?”. I don’t even have to think about it. Silence is the obvious answer. An hour of silence sounds like heaven ~ but of course it is not silent. As soon as she leaves the room, I hear her receding footsteps, the bird song, the tumble of the dryer downstairs, the neighbor’s car door opening and closing…Laying there immobilized, I tune in to my surroundings. Arriving more fully in the moment, I become aware of the temperature in the room, the heat on my feet, the gentle breeze from the window. The thoughts that have been occupying my mind fall away. A silence of sorts arrives in my being.

Finally after one appointment, I realized that it is not external silence that I am choosing, it is inner silence. Her question “music or silence?” is an invitation that my body has come to recognize as an invitation to pause and be still. PBS.

You may have recognized a similar process of arrival as you settle into Meeting each week.

“Thomas Merton advised, “May we not neglect the silence printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.”

Seeking to tend the silence in the center of my being on a more consistent basis, I have begun to look for and step towards invitations to pause and be still. I don’t need to wait for a weekly gathering at Meeting or a monthly acupuncture appointment, or even a daily meditation practice. Invitations to PBS are happening everywhere all the time! I will share a few of the invitations that I have accepted over the last few months in the hopes that they may help you begin to notice invitations to pause and be still when they arrive in your life:

One morning, I raced out to get a few groceries. Knowing that I had to make two stops before getting back to a work commitment, I raced through the first store only to find myself arriving at the second store 7 minutes before they opened. As I put my timepiece away, I realized I had been granted 7 minutes to pause and be still. PBS! I sat down on the stoop and felt my shoulders relax. Feeling the sun on my face, watching the cars, people and pets pass, and listening to the seagulls overhead, the urgency and self-importance of my task melted away. I was reminded that I am one of many, a single part of the whole in this glorious dance of humanity and divinity. Pause and Be Still.

As I sat, working on this message one evening, I looked up from my computer and was startled to see a young deer standing 15 feet from the house. Calm and unafraid, browsing on the tall grass, I recognized her presence as a gift – an invitation to PBS. I watched her for what felt like a long time, but maybe it was only 3-4 minutes. Over the course of the next hour, we had two more encounters – one outside standing only 10-15 feet from one another. Curiosity, gratitude, wonder, and something that felt like yearning exchanged between us. Pause and Be Still.

The more attention I paid, the more frequently and persistently the invitations arrived. Anything that caught my eye or ear and caused me to do a double take or to catch my breath became an invitation to PBS.

Over the summer, it was:

Microfilaments of spider web suspended from tree to tree

The hummingbird at the feeder, appearing to hover effortlessly while his wings beat rapidly

Strawberry leaves ringed with dew drops

Early morning mists descending on the field

Rain that penetrates every pore

Pause and Be still

The smell of the roses and peonies

The memory of a loved one

The newborn loon baby in the lake

The deer, killed by a passing car

The haunting, far-away look in that gentleman’s eyes

Pause and Be Still

As autumn arrives, I see invitations to PBS in:

The oak leaf falling ever so slowly, held aloft by a breeze so light I can’t feel it

A perfectly whole and beautiful monarch butterfly lying dead among the garden’s tangle

My neighbor singing to herself as she works in the yard

The three-day old chick laying lifeless face-down on the floor of the coop

The little bird’s slow breaths of air and movement of body as I held her in my palm

Pause and Be still.

Accepting these invitations, truly pausing and being still to let wonder and gratitude sink in is a simple and profound way to honor Creation and my place in its web. For me, this is worship in its most humble and profound form.

May you find and accept many invitations to pause and be still this fall season. And, in those PBS moments, may you remember that the divine is always present, always here to be welcomed and known and always waiting to welcome and know you.

__________

Lisa Steele-Maley is the Dean of the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine (ChIME)

Message given @ Durham Friends Meeting, Sept. 17, 2023

“I am a special agent of God.”  True statement.

How about you?  Would you say, “I am a special agent of God?” True or false?

I have to say True.  I am a special agent of God. 

September 1964: that’s when I encountered that question.  It was an item on a psychological test administered to all the members of my entering class at Haverford College.  It had a powerful effect on me:  not just in the sense that I still remember it nearly 60 years later, but in the sense that it made me think – and still has that effect. 

I am a special agent of God.  True or false?

That question came at me when I was in a difficult place in my religious life, as so many young people are when they are just about college age.  Did I believe or did I not?  If I did believe, what was it I believed?  I didn’t know the answers to those questions.  I was in a muddle. 

But this item came at me from an unusual direction.  “I am a special agent of God.”  True or false? I was pretty sure as I read it that the answer was “true,” for me.  And I was just as sure that answering “true” was the crazy answer on this test.  That’s why it has stayed on my mind all these years.  True, and crazy. 

All of us in that entering class took a bunch of tests that first week.  Some of them were placement tests, like the one I took that showed I hadn’t learned enough in high school French to take second year French at this college.  But other tests were psychological tests of a sort I’d never taken before. 

I learned from the sheet on which I was writing answers, true or false in response to each of dozens and dozens of statements (over 500 actually), that this was called the MMPI, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.  Or I know I know it’s also called the ‘Mini Multi.’   It’s still used, still “the most common psychometric test devised to assess personality traits and psychopathology.”

Taking the test that day, I remember there were involuntary giggles around the room as one and another of us came to various statements we should mark true or false.  I remember only one other specific statement from that day.  “I have black, tarry bowel movements.” True or false?  It’s one of the ones that made me laugh involuntarily.  Not because there’s anything so shocking about that item; it’s just such a strange thing to be asked.  I’d certainly never been asked before, whether “I have black, tarry bowel movements.”

Decades later, when I became more interested in psychological tests, I learned that the MMPI can be helpful in diagnosing such things as depression, hysteria, paranoia, psychopathic deviance and hypochondriasis.  (That last one means “excessive concern with bodily functions.”  That’s why that item “I have black, tarry bowel movements,” is on the MMPI.)  I learned the MMPI was developed by faculty members at the University of Minnesota in the 1940s. 

Some other statements I now know are on the MMPI, true or false to each of these:

• I feel uneasy indoors.
• I am sure I get a raw deal from life.
• I believe that I am being followed.
• People say insulting and vulgar things about me.

I’m pretty sure I answered false to each of these. 

But I didn’t need to know any of this about the MMPI to realize that that this test was trying to sort us out psychologically – even to find out if any of us were mentally disturbed or “crazy” as we would have put it in 1964.  All of us taking the test realized this.  That’s probably why all of us laughed at one or another of the items.  Could you really imagine anyone answering “true” to this or that statement?  But I guess people do. 

So there was that item: “I am a special agent of God.” True or false?  As I’ve said, I was pretty sure that the answer was “true,” for me.  And I was just as sure that answering “true” was the crazy answer on this test. 

That day, I thought about it for a bit.  Did I really think I was a special agent of God?  And if so, did I want to say that on this test?  Who knew what would happen next?  Would I be carted off in a strait jacket? Ushered off the grounds?  Those didn’t seem likely, especially for only one crazy person response, so I marked it true.  And it has stayed with me, kind of a marked man. 

Am I a special agent of God?  What does that even mean? What makes me think so?

I wasn’t a Quaker then.  I don’t think I’d yet encountered the idea that God can and will speak to us in the here and now, often in the silence of gathered worship.  But it seemed right to me, even then, that in being given the gift of life, I had been given directions of a sort.  That there were expectations – sacred ones – about what I should do and what I shouldn’t do.  Didn’t those directions or expectations make me an ‘agent’ of God?  I wouldn’t have put it that way without the prompt.  But when faced with the statement “I am a special agent of God,” wasn’t the best answer – the honest answer – True?

How about the “special” part?  Why a special agent?  We all don’t seem to be given exactly the same directions or expectations.  There seemed to be lots of difference, lots of individuality, among humans.  I don’t think I would have picked the word “special.”  That sounded then, and now, much too much like I thought I was better than others, and I was pretty sure that wasn’t so.  I might have said “particular,” as in “I am a particular agent of God.  And perhaps “special” meant something like “beloved” or “loved by.” But who was I to quibble?  There was the statement: “I am a special agent of God.” True or false? 

True, I think.  What do I mean by that? 

It means I try to take direction.  I have a handler.  I try to do what God tells me to do, on those rare occasions when I’m given any guidance at all.  (But isn’t that true of other special agents: they don’t hear from their handler for long stretches?)

It means I feel like I’m accountable.  Someone’s watching to see whether I do what I’m told.  That someone watching me cares for me, but also has pretty high expectations.  It means I submit my will to the will of my handler – and my handler is God. 

And it means I hear voices.  Or at least I try to.  That’s the crazy-sounding part.  To admit you hear voices.

“I am a special agent of God.” True or false?  I still think it’s true.  I think each of you are special agents of God, too.  It may not be much of a belief to one as muddled as I was then and now.  But it’s a beginning. 

I am a special agent of God.  And you are a special agent of God.  Others may think us crazy, but it’s a good kind of crazy. 

Also posted on Rover View Friend

The message at Durhgam Friends Meeting on August 13, 2023 was given by Martha Hinshaw Sheldon, our member now living in Northern Ireland.

Greetings from Coleraine Friends Meeting.  Been in Northern Ireland for two years this summer.  

Busy days!  Helping my parents move and was the registrar for New England Yearly Meeting.  Love the job.  Love the people. Love sorting and packing!

This is in contrast to my not so busy retirement days in Northern Ireland where I volunteer with the National Trust, Corrymeela reconciliation center and other odd activities.

Two weeks ago I spoke of being individuals in a community versus being a community of individuals.  Where do we focus?  On ourselves or on our community?  

At Yearly meeting there were 402 individuals.  Some more attentive to the Spirit and community than others.  In my humble opinion.  Some seemed just interested in hearing their own voices.  As we do. Who am I?  Who are you?  Both.  Sometimes one?  Sometimes the other? 

When growing up in Wellesley Friends meeting I learned of the GreenCircle.  A way of peace and reconciliation, a way of being in community.  In a circle all are equal.  No one is at the head of the table.   No one is in the front or behind.  

Another image.  The Third Way.  Palestinian lawyer, Jonathan Kuttab wrote of a third way in the conflict in Palestine and Israel where I first heard of this concept.  We tend to think of us versus them.  Only two ways to solve conflict.  In the third way there are more than two ways.   Multiple ways.  I believe that is what Jesus taught.  Alternative ways to see the world.  Ways that take into account the whole community rather than the winner and loser.  

Joseph and Jesse Bruchac, from the Abenaki nation, shared stories and music as keynote speakers at NEYM.  Jesse is an author and native languages speaker, Joseph a storyteller.  One story told how animals became smaller when humans were created.  Their telling of this story and others is on the NEYM website.   My summary version is this.  When humans were created the other animals were angry and wanted to be rid of them, these strange creatures.  The creator soothed each creature with a touch, a stroke, a word of calm. This decreased their ferocity and size to not harm humans.  Except for the mosquito.  The vampire spider.  

Because the earth is not for the comfort of humans.

Community is not the stage for individuals.  

Community is for all to be heard and listened to, for all to be equal, for all to hear of the wisdom of the Spirit, the creator, the Other.  Wisdom is not from one voice but from a weaving together of voices. Weaving together of voices that may introduce a third way or more, of leadings based on being open to the wisdom of others, especially those who may be contrary to us.   For when we are not willing to listen to others we are not willing to learn of new possibilities, new solutions.  In our listening I invite you to ask others why they feel or are led in a certain way.   (

I invite you to be willing to be open to a third way, a way led by the Spirit and not our own desires or wants.  I do not believe that our wants and desires are bad and the Spirits are good and that they conflict but that sometimes our wants and desires may not be what is best for the community and from Spirit.

This is not always easy but it does lead to a peace of mind and soul.   This I know.  

At Durham Friends Meeting on August 6, 2023, Renee Cote, co-clerk of Ministry and Counsel, read Isaiah 58:6-12, the theme of this year’s New England Yearly Meeting annual sessions, August 5-9, 2023. “Like a Watered Garden: Open to Grace, Loose the Bonds of Injustice.”

Isaiah 58:6-12 (New International Version)

⁶ “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
    and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
    and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness^[a] will go before you,
    and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
    you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
    with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
¹⁰ and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
    and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
    and your night will become like the noonday.
¹¹ The Lord will guide you always;
    he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
    and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
    like a spring whose waters never fail.
¹² Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
    and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
    Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Craig Freshley gave the message at Durham Friends Meeting on July 30, 2023, titled “What If God Is the Rest of Your Body?” A recording of the message is available at this link.

Update, August 16, 2023: Craig’s message and associated material is now also available on the Thee Quaker podcast hosted by Jon Watts and Georgia Sparling:

In opening worship on July 30 at Durham Friends Meeting, Wendy Schlotterbeck read this meditation from Richard Rohr, posted on the website of the Center for Action and Contemplation.

Recognizing and Appreciating, by Richard Rohr

Thursday, July 27, 2023

Contemplation is a kind of seeing that is much more than mere looking because it also includes recognizing and thus appreciating. The contemplative mind does not tell us what to see but teaches us how to see what we behold.  

But how do we learn this contemplative mind, this deep, mysterious, and life-giving way of seeing and of being with reality? Why does it not come naturally to us? Actually, it does come momentarily in states of great love and great suffering, but such wide-eyed seeing normally does not last. We return quickly to dualistic analysis and use our judgments to retake control. A prayer practice—contemplation—is simply a way of maintaining the fruits of great love and great suffering over the long haul and in different situations. And that takes a lot of practice—in fact, our whole life becomes one continual practice.  

To begin to see with new eyes, we must observe, and usually be humiliated by, the habitual way we encounter each and every moment. It is humiliating because we will see that we are well-practiced in just a few predictable responses. Few of our responses are original, fresh, or naturally respectful of what is right in front of us. The most common human responses to a new moment are mistrust, cynicism, fear, knee-jerk reactions, a spirit of dismissal, and overriding judgmentalism. It is so dis-couraging when we have the courage to finally see that these are the common ways the ego tries to be in control of the data—instead of allowing the moment to get some control over us and teach us something new! 

To let the moment teach us, we must allow ourselves to be at least slightly stunned by it until it draws us inward and upward toward a subtle experience of wonder. We normally need a single moment of gratuitous awe to get us started. [1] 

In her book on spirituality and parenting, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg emphasizes the special awe that arises from paying attention to our ordinary lives:  

The twentieth-century rabbi and theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel [1907–1972] wrote a lot about “radical amazement,” [2] that sense of “wow” about the world, which he claimed is the root of spirituality. It’s the kind of thing that people often experience in nature—at the proverbial mountaintop, when walking in the woods, seeing a gorgeous view of the ocean. But it’s also, I think, about bringing that sense of awe into the little things we often take for granted, or consider part of the background of our lives. This includes the flowers on the side of the road; the taste of ice cream in our mouths; … or to find a really, really good stick on the ground. And it also includes things we generally don’t even think of as pleasures, like the warm soapy water on our hands as we wash dishes. [3] 

References: 

[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Just This (Albuquerque, NM: CAC Publishing, 2017), 7–9. 

[2] Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Macmillan, 1976), chap. 4. Cited by Ruttenberg, Nurture the W0w, 293. 

[3] Danya Ruttenberg, Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting (New York: Flatiron Books, 2016), 56–57. 

The July 23, 2023 worship at Durham Friends Meeting was begun by Richard Brown Lethem reading poems from his recently published chapbook, Roots, Stones and Baggage. It is available from  Bamboo Dart Press.

Roots, Stones & Baggage is a collection of paintings and poems that span over seventy years of his life. Both the poems and the paintings take many stylistic turns that mirror those of his life. Works written and painted in Missouri, Paris, Brooklyn, Maine & California reflect those surrounding sometimes taking flight into the ether and at other turns digging into the core of all things.

The worship message at Durham Friends Meeting was given by Emma Condori-Mamani (Friends International Bilingual Center, Bolivia) and centered on Thessalonians 1:

1 Paul, Silas^[a] and Timothy,

To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:

Grace and peace to you.

Thanksgiving for the Thessalonians’ Faith

² We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. ³ We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith,your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

⁴ For we know, brothers and sisters^[b] loved by God,that he has chosen you, ⁵ because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power,with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. You knowhow we lived among you for your sake. ⁶ You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joygiven by the Holy Spirit. ⁷ And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.⁸ The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, ⁹ for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, ¹⁰ and to wait for his Son from heaven,whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

On July 2, Leslie Manning offered a message that included the Merton Prayer

She also quoted from Advice 27 in Britain Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice:

Live adventurously.

When choices arise, do you take the way that offers the fullest opportunity for the use of your gifts in the service of God and the community?

Let your life speak.

When decisions have to be made, are you ready to join with others in seeking clearness, asking for God’s guidance and offering counsel to one another?