Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, May 18, 2025

Is this an ordinary day or a special day?  Look at all the amazing flowering things all around us today.  But it happens every spring.  Ordinary or special?

One day follows another and another, and soon you have quite a number of days

Today, we are on day 90,899 since the citizens of this country declared us a new country, founded in the rule of law and “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” as Lincoln put it; or “that all men and women are created equal” as those gathered at the Women’s Rights also  in Seneca Falls in 1848 better voiced it.  That was our hope, a special hope.  Is it not a special day, each day, when we remember and celebrate that hope?  But here we are today, and, if we’re thinking politically, today is probably not a day for celebration or high hopes. 

Today, we are on day 119 of the second presidency of Donald Trump.  Imagining himself like Zeus with lightning bolts, he has sent forth decree after decree that try to overturn so many familiar ways of doing things.  We have corruption in abundance:  meme coins and Qatari 747s and stock market manipulation via tariffs relentlessly in the news.  We have daily threats to the rule of law.  We have attacks on the poor and the vulnerable.  We have trashing of the Constitution’s clear meaning.  (Of course, those are simply my opinions.)

Politically, it’s an unusual day, perhaps a special day.  Some, I suppose, are jubilant, though I know very few.  Most of those around me are in despair; others in doubt.  Many are angry about this wrecking but unsure what to do.

That’s politically.  If we’re thinking geologically, I don’t think this is a special day.  Today the earth is about 4.54 billion years old.  That’s about 1.64 trillion days.  Born in an explosion, in fire, rotating in cold, cold space, it is amazing that the center of the earth is still molten lava – liquid rock – that can burst out unexpectedly and change the face of the earth. 

Are we, too, not like that:  crusty of the outside, but molten inside: formed into a shape and yet capable of being made new again?  Today, like nearly all days, we’ll probably have 55 earthquakes somewhere on the planet.  Special, I suppose for those who live near them and feel them, but pretty ordinary for most of us.  That’s just the way it is every day on this third rock from the Sun. 

What if we think religiously?  Not politically, not geologically, but religiously.

Today we are in year 2025, day 138 since the birth of birth of Christ.  This is how we count days:  B.C. and A.D., Anno Domini, or C.E. – the Common Era.  We’ve kept our dates this way since the 4^th century A.D.  (Before that, if you’re curious, we counted days since the beginning of the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, the Roman emperor who instigated the last major persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, the Era of the Martyrs.) 

Counting days since the birth of Christ is a constant reminder that we think something very important – something special – happened in this world when Jesus was born.  We came into a new relationship with God, one founded in loving our neighbors and in the belief that our sins could be forgiven. 

Today we are about 91,250 days into a continuous presence of Quaker worship here in Durham, Maine – about a year of days longer than the continuous presence of our republic among the countries of this fractious but wonderous world.  Is this day at Durham Friends an ordinary day, or a special day?  That’s my question this morning. 

Today, we are 28 days since Pope Francis passed away.  Already we have a new Pope, Leo XIV, the 267^th Pope.  We’re still learning about him.  Popes are not Quaker officers, but they sometimes teach us. 

Andrew Sullivan said of this past Pope: “Faith for Francis was not rigidity, it was not always certain, and it was not words. It was a way of life, of giving, of loving, of emptying oneself to listen to God without trying to force a conclusion — of discernment, as the Jesuits like to say.”  (Or he might have said, ‘as the Quakers like to say.’)  Here is Pope Francis’s account of how he came to accept his election to the Papacy. 

Before I accepted I asked if I could spend a few minutes in the room next to the one with the balcony overlooking the square. My head was completely empty and I was seized by a great anxiety. To make it go away and relax I closed my eyes and made every thought disappear … I closed my eyes and I no longer had any anxiety or emotion. At a certain point I was filled with a great light. It lasted a moment, but to me it seemed very long. Then the light faded, I got up suddenly and walked into the room where the cardinals were waiting and the table on which was the act of acceptance. I signed it.

That’s a story with which many Quakers can resonate – a story of a special expressive moment.  Emotions.  Settling into silence, emptying out.  An experience of the Light.  And then a clear leading to action.  We mourn his death; we celebrate his life. 

Today, we are at the fourth Sunday of Easter, on our way to Pentecost on June 8.  In liturgical time, Jesus has been crucified and buried.  The disciples are anxious and in disarray.  (The same can be said of us.)  Jesus’s body has disappeared from the tomb; many are unsure what to make of this.  On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit will descend upon these disciples assuring them – us — of the resurrection.  They will go forth in confidence to preach the gospel.  Today, we are in a time of mourning, of doubt and despair.  But we can have faith the Light will come, and with it, clarity.  Each year we go through this same cycle:  Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost.  It is an essential understanding of the human condition. 

Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost: in the liturgical calendar of most Christian churches, we are in a special time of the year.  We will not be back in “ordinary time” until June 9, the day after Pentecost. 

Quakers have long resisted this way of thinking about days, ordinary time and special time.  For Quakers, all days are special days; or (it comes to the same thing) all days are ordinary days.  So much have Quakers believed this that Quaker schools used to hold classes on Christmas and Easter. 

Today:  is this an ordinary day, or a special day?  It may seem to all of us that this is an unusual time, one with new threats and new dangers.  Surely, we have those threats and dangers,  but do these make this a special day? 

What are we called to do this day? 

• What are we called to do this day on a billions-of-years-old earth that still has a molten core, capable of remaking itself every day? 

• What are we called to do this day when we are thousands of years past the birth of Jesus, past his crucifixion and past his resurrection? 
• What are we called to do this day, hundreds of years into the beginning of Quaker worship here in this place, and roughly the same length of time into the birth of this nation? 

• What are we called to do when we are noticing two contemporary professed Christians, one of whom washed the feet of the poor and outcast every day, the other of whom dishes out lies and destruction and cruelty each and every day? 

What are we called to do this day?  I believe that in the most profound ways, all days, our situation is the same. 

There will be troubles, but we are encouraged to “fear not.” 

Some wonderful things but also some terrible things may happen, but we can have faith that God loves each and every one of us.  

People will do those terrible things, but we are nevertheless instructed: “to love our neighbors as ourselves,” remembering that our neighbors include everyone, even those that do not think or behave quite as we do. 

We are not promised a good time or an easy time.  We are promised, instead, love, grace and the forgiveness of sins.  And all days  — not just special days – we are instructed “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God”  (Micah 6:8). 

“Preach the Gospel always. If necessary, with words,” That saying is attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, after whom Pope Francis took his name. 

 I read this earlier:  “Faith for Francis was … a way of life, of giving, of loving, of emptying oneself to listen to God without trying to force a conclusion — of discernment.” 

With Pope Francis, filled as we are with emotions, let us close our eyes, invite the silence, allow the Light to shine over us and to point the way on this ordinary yet singular, special day.  As Psalm 118 puts it, “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” 

Also posted on River View Friend

Craig Freshley’s merssage, “More onn the Rainbow Rule,” given at Durham Friends Meeting on May 4, 2025, can be found HERE.

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.

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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.