Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, April 19, 2020

Good Morning Friends,      

In Brooklyn Meeting where I attended for many years, we had a young man who quite often fell asleep in meeting for worship. which was one thing, but being stout, he also snored rather heavily.  As you can imagine, Friends felt some consternation.   

Those worshiping near him questioned, should we wake him with a gentle poke in the ribs, or should we incorporate the snores into our worship as we did the more gentle noises of the children, the coughs and the ticking of the clock.    Since his Faith brought him regularly to worship and into his profound experience of silence, perhaps our faith, that God might speak to him in dreams, would happen, as it often did with the prophets of the Old Testament.

Today in the visual world and with the mute button, we are not faced with that dilemma!

As in my previous messages I am most comfortable speaking out of my personal journey. It was George Fox who cautioned, Speak from experience.  I have spoken in meeting when moved, but briefly, I have never preached. My way in life, has been as artist, carpenter, art teacher… so what I have to say, is simply, personal testimony. And, if I ramble, forgive me. I hope it will come together.

These past weeks have been solitary.  After the first week of this enforced retreat, this Query came to me: God and Nature in Her silent knowing, have plunged us into the mystery of life … and death. Can we decipher it?   Is it leading us towards desired goals of ending wars, healing our environment and right sharing of the world’s resources?  And how might I be a part of that consciousness change? Wow! some query.

Faith must come before understanding.  This piece of meditational wisdom has gotten my attention more than once, most recently, I believe in Richard Rohr’s daily meditations.  The quote immediately rang a bell for me since at age 30 I had experienced a revelatory vision that put to rest the question of God’s presence in my life. That brief epiphany, an experience of pure faith, based on grace, and, in time of desperate need, was indelible.  At that moment GOD was the only reality.                       

That awareness stayed within me, as a lodestone but in seed form.  My active life of work and marriage … and kids took precedence.

 Despite my Christian upbringing, my resistance to the miraculous aspects of the New Testament Gospel persisted.  My university education and low-keyed protestant experience prepared me for the Prophet of Love, not the God incarnate. My intellect and understanding kept getting in the way of the extension of my Faith, however it did bring me to Quakers.

When I became a Friend, I embraced the mystery of God’s presence in all persons.  Something I had intuited often… Also, I embraced the truth of ongoing revelation. In both my life and in the world at large.

Larry Floyd was an older Quaker in Brooklyn Monthly Meeting who hired me to do some carpentry work on his house in the mid 80’s.  On a break one day we talked about our faith and my lack of understanding of the mysteries surrounding Christ.   At one point he said casually, you might think about the Christ Within.  Despite my long struggle after that with the misuse of Christ or Christianity in fundamentalist religion, he had planted a slow growing seed.  I have grown to accept that idea. It refused to abandon me. If as I believed as a Quaker, “There was that of God in every person, that could mean that in each of us there is a transubstantiated seed of Christ, That “still small voice,” “The Christ Within,” a beautiful and inspiring metaphor.

The human body and mind, in all its complexity is truly a miracle.  Craig made that point so well last week! The birth of my three children remains a miraculous experience.

AND … Though questions remain, the seed expands, as my own limitations become clear.  New levels of transformation surface.  We are a work in process.  The seed becomes a bridge.  Along that life bridge the seed of Christ’s essential role in my acceptance of God’s will emerges.  I believe God awaits our acceptance and resolution of the material world with the Spiritual world of God.  That process illuminating and incorporating our lives into the body of God must proceed in stages. The first stage available to human understanding is opening to the seed, The Christ Within.                     

Is this not the beautiful message of Jesus in the New Testament?

                        The journey of the seed,

                                    The seed within the Light of On-Going Revelation        

                         journeys to Union with God,

                                    Through The Christ WithIn. 

When I joined Durham Meeting, Sukie gave me a large print copy of the New Testament. I see that as symbolic of a new acceptance of love and opening to community, embodied in this Meeting.

Excerpt from a message given at Durham Friends Meeting, May 10, 2020

…….It turns out we aren’t so different from the virus.  It can’t exist by itself/on its own.  But neither can we. 

This is one lesson we’ve all been learning as we have been shut up in our homes, distancing ourselves from one another: that we need one another.  But it’s more than that: we need each other in a relationship of love that connects us with God because that is what gives us life.  The Gospel of John expresses this in a powerful metaphor:  Jesus says:

⁴ Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.⁵ I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. …

But there is another lesson, harder, but at least as important about ‘being alive.’  In this time of virus, in this time of dying, it is easy to fall into thinking that ‘all living things are good.’ What lives is all part of God’s glory, all to be nurtured, all to be celebrated, all to be saved.  It’s easy to think that — especially easy as spring blooms around us. 

As we gather here separated from one another, however, we know this is not so.  There are bits of creation that are not so good, and this virus is one of them.  The cancers that afflict too many of us: they are another.  Murder wasps: we’ve just started hearing about them.  Black flies.  Typhus and typhoid and smallpox.  I mean all these things, but there’s more. 

There are also bits of ourselves that live all too commonly within us, things that are not good:  selfishness, pride, envy, greed, wrath – things like that.  These things become a part of us all too easily, and they are things that should not live within us.  We might think of them as like a virus.  They live within us, become a part of us, even take over our lives.  They infect us. 

They are little bits of us – within us – that should not be living. 

Jesus asks us to let these things die within us so that we can live a new and transformed life.  Some of the hardest parts of the New Testament are about this. 

Says Paul in Colossians:  ⁵ Therefore put to death the parts of your earthly nature.   In his letters to the Romans, Paul says:  ¹³ For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

And in Ephesians, Paul reminds us:  ²² You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; ²³ to be made new in the attitude of your minds; ²⁴ and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Can we think of these things, our “deceitful desires” that too easily become a part of us, as like a virus, having life only because they latch onto us and work their own purposes?  Can we think of these things as parts of us that must die so we can truly live?  Can we think of them as infections – even infections we carelessly pass from one to another?  If we can, we know the cure:  to love one another in the vine.  

Can we find ourselves a new life by ridding ourselves of these, by loving one another?  This is the transformed life to which we are called.

The entire message can be found on Riverview Friend.

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, April 26, 2020

Since I was a child, I’ve heard that there’s no such thing as a solitary Quaker. You could say that we are a people defined by gathering.

When you think about it, gathering feels so essential to who we are that a collection of Quakers—really of any size—is called a “meeting.” Even more than other churches or spiritual communities I know, gathering in various forms shapes our common life. The calendars of Friends across New England are filled with “meetings”—meetings for worship, monthly meetings, quarterly meetings, any number of other meetings. One of our most beloved origin stories speaks about George Fox’s vision, on Pendle Hill in England, of a “great people to be gathered.” Gathering, it seems, is in our DNA as a People.    

And yet, here we are. Click here for the rest of the message.

These are the opening words of the message that Noah Merrill, General Secretary of New England Yearly Meeting, brought to Durham Friends on April 26, 2020 — brought via Zoom. Three dozen or so Friends heard this message in their homes as Noah spoke from his home many miles away. Follow the link to the NEYM website for the rest of his message.

[Velasco Friends Meeting is our Sister Meeting in Cuba]

Easter (or Resurrection Sunday) Commemorates the resurrection of Jesus.

Luke 24: 1-7; Matthew 28: 1-10; Mark 16: 1-8; John 20: 1-10). Mark-16: 1-8 He is risen!

One thing is certain: If Jesus had not risen, we would never have heard anything about Him. The attitude of the women was that they had come to offer the last tribute to a dead body. The attitude of the disciples was that everything had ended in tragedy.

By far the best proof of the Resurrection is the existence of the Christian Church. Nothing else could have changed those sad and desperate men and women into people radiant with joy and inflamed with courage. The Resurrection is the central fact of the entire Christian faith. Because we believe in the Resurrection, certain things are followed.

1- Jesus is not the character of a book, but a living Presence. It is not enough to study the history of Jesus as we would study the life of a great historical figure. We may start from that, but we must go to meet Him and this encounter leads to transformation, change, witness to a new life.

2- Jesus is not a memory, but a Presence. The dearest memories fade away. The Greeks had an expression to describe time, which means time that erases everything. Long ago, time would have erased the memory of Jesus if it were not for the fact that He has remained a living Presence with us forever. Jesus is not someone we argue with, but someone we meet.

3- The Christian life is not the life of a person who knows about Jesus, but the life of a person who knows Jesus. There is an insurmountable difference in the world between knowing something about a person, and knowing a person. Almost everyone knows something about the President of Cuba or the President of the United States; but not so many know them. The greatest scholar in the world who knew everything there is to know about the Jesus of History is less than the humblest Christian, who knows Him.

4- The Christian faith has an endless quality. It must never stand still. Because our Lord is a living Lord there are new wonders and new truths waiting all the time for us to discover them. But the most precious thing about the passage (in Mark) is  in two words that do not appear in any other gospel. “Go,” said the messenger, “tell His disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee- there you will see him, as he told you.” How Peter’s heart must have been moved by that message when he received it! He must have been tortured with the memory of his disloyalty, and suddenly a special message arrives for him. It is characteristic of Jesus to think, not of the evil that Peter had done to him, but of the remorse that was besieging him. Jesus was far more interested in comforting the penitent sinner than in punishing his sin. As someone has said: The most precious thing about Jesus is that he confirms his confidence in the same terrain in which we have suffered defeat.

Thanks to Nancy Marstaller for forwarding this.

Domingo de Pascua o de Resurrección: Conmemora la resurrección de Jesús (Lucas 24:1-7; Mateo 28: 1-10; Marcos 16: 1-8; Juan 20:1-10). 

Marcos-16:1-8-! Ha-Resucitado

Una cosa es segura: Si Jesús no hubiera resucitado, nosotros nunca habríamos oído nada acerca de Él. La actitud de las mujeres era que habían ido a ofrecer el último tributo a un cuerpo muerto. La actitud de los discípulos era que todo había acabado en tragedia.

Con mucho la mejor prueba de la Resurrección es la existencia de la Iglesia Cristiana. Ninguna otra cosa podría haber cambiado a aquellos hombres y mujeres tristes y desesperados en personas radiantes de gozo e inflamadas de coraje. La Resurrección es el hecho central de toda la fe cristiana. Porque creemos en la Resurrección se siguen ciertas cosas.

1- Jesús no es el personaje de un libro, sino una Presencia viva. No basta con estudiar la historia de Jesús como estudiaríamos la vida de una gran figura histórica. Puede que empecemos por eso, pero debemos pasar a encontrarnos con El y este encuentro lleva a transformación, cambio, testimonio de una nueva vida

2- Jesús no es un recuerdo, sino una Presencia. Las memorias más queridas se desvanecen. Los griegos tenían una expresión para describir el tiempo, que quiere decir el tiempo que borra todas las cosas. Hace mucho que el tiempo habría borrado el recuerdo de Jesús si no fuera porque Él ha seguido siendo una Presencia viva con nosotros para siempre. Jesús no es alguien de quien discutimos, sino Alguien con Quien nos encontramos.

3– La vida cristiana no es la vida de una persona que sabe de Jesús, sino la vida de una persona que conoce a Jesús. Hay una diferencia insalvable en el mundo entre saber algo acerca de una persona, y conocer a una persona. Casi todo el mundo sabe algo del presidente de Cuba o del Presidente de los Estados Unidos; pero no tantos los conocen. El más grande erudito del mundo que supiera todo lo que se puede saber acerca del Jesús de la Historia es menos que el cristiano más humilde, que Le conoce.

4- La fe cristiana tiene una cualidad interminable. No debe quedarse nunca parada. Porque nuestro Señor es un Señor vivo hay nuevas maravillas y nuevas verdades esperando todo el tiempo a que las descubramos. Pero lo más precioso de este pasaje está en dos palabras que no aparecen en ningún otro evangelio.  Id -dijo el mensajero, decid a Sus discípulos y a Pedro. ¡Cómo tiene que haber emocionado el corazón de Pedro ese mensaje cuando lo recibió! Debe-de haber estado torturado con el recuerdo de su deslealtad, y de pronto llega un mensaje especial para él. Es característico de Jesús el pensar, no en el mal que Pedro Le había hecho, sino en el remordimiento que le estaba asediando. Jesús tenía mucho más interés en confortar al pecador penitente que en castigar su pecado. Como ha dicho alguien: Lo más precioso de Jesús es que nos confirma Su confianza en el mismo terreno en que hemos sufrido una derrota.

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, March 22, 2020

Go here for an audio version and a song. Read on for a written version.

Well, I had a different message planned. It was gonna be really great, by the way. It has stories and quotes. I was even gonna play a song for you at the end. The message came to me a month ago. I called Martha and said, “I got one for ya!”

That was a month ago. That message was not about coronavirus.

I tried to hang onto that message. I told myself, “Well that’s okay. I’ll start this morning by telling everyone that this message is not about coronavirus. I’m gonna give you all a break and take you to a different place.”

But a new message has come to me. It’s about coronavirus. This is the place where we are.

As I struggled with, you know, what message to give – still hanging onto the old – I realized that the things I have to say about coronavirus are things that might be hard to say or even impossible to say a few weeks from now. The time is now.

As Quakers we’re supposed to be open, and proceed as way opens. I’m trying to do that.

And I am going to tack on a little song at the end. I love singing in this place and I think you might like it. Okay ready? I hope so. Let’s hold on.

What if the virus is medicine? What if the virus helps and heals, rather than hurts and harms.

Imagine a little chat between the Mistress of the Universe and the Master of the Universe. Reading the morning paper back in November 2019.

You know? Earth is in trouble?

I know! Those people are going to burn the place up?

Think we should do something?

I don’t know, maybe?

Like what? What would we do?

I don’t know. Something, something that slows them down for gods sake.

Right, and maybe…maybe it should start small and slow and give them plenty of time to adapt.

Right yeah, but it needs to be something that has real impact. You know, give nature a serious break.

Oh yeah, totally. We should do something.

Hmm. Want to try the old plant a microbe trick? We could start with just one microbe in one person.

That might work.

Well you do it this time.

No you do it.

No you.

Okay, okay maybe I can get to it next week. Right, well this will be interesting.

Pass the toast.

This is a provocative conversation, I know. The idea that God is intervening to save the earth. The idea that God is intentionally curtailing a specific species to save the earth.

I’m simply offering a different point of view. Looking at this from a different perspective. My little “Mr. and Mrs. Universe” conversation; I don’t mean to make light of this crisis. It is going to get bad. This is going to have real implications for real people. People are going to get sick and people are going to die. And when that starts happening it would have been way harder to bring this message. It is easier to talk at a high level before stuff gets real on the ground.

So let’s talk. What if the virus is medicine?

Some good things are happening. I heard that in the Wuhan Province, where the virus started, people are seeing blue skies for the first time. Some people there have never seen blue skies in their whole lifetime. People are hearing songbirds for the first time. For some people, the first time hearing a bird in their whole lifetime.

The great global industrial machine that scoops up natural resources and spits out pollution is being slowed down. Grinding to a halt in some places. Nature is being given a chance to recover, to heal.

When I look out the window of my house, I see  people out walking more than ever before. I bet that we are all seeing that. Carol and I have noticed a fox hunting in the field. We have time to notice. It is kind of fun, the fox tends to show up about 6 o’clock every night. We’ve gotten to calling it Fox News! It’s way better than the other Fox News.

Fishing season usually opens April first, but have you heard that our governor changed the rule? She’s encouraging us to go fishing now. Do what Mainers do and get out on the water.

I saw two photographs on Facebook, side by side, maybe you have seen this too? The parking lot at Wolfe’s Neck State Park in Freeport: full. The parking lot at L.L.Bean in Freeport: empty.

Isn’t this the world that some of us have been hoping for?

I’m simply offering another way to look at it. Another perspective. In my work, and running Make Shift Coffee Houses- you know I have learned that there is always another perspective. Always another valid perspective. You could say that is it just a matter of perspective.

And a matter of values. It’s really a classic dichotomy, one of the great yin yangs of our existence: “me first” or “we first?” Do I want to help me? (Hoard toilet paper) Or do I want to help my community? (Give toilet paper.) Do I want to help my business? Or do I want to help the economy for everyone?

These questions go on. Do I want my race to thrive? Or do I want my species to thrive? How big is the perspective? When we ask that question, “me first” or “we first”, how big is the me? How big is the we? Do I want my species to thrive, or do I want the world ecosystem, mother earth to thrive?

These are not simple choices, and it’s never just one thing or the other. And, I change my answers depending on a situation, depending on what answers I find within. Sometimes, I’m all about “me first”. Sometimes I’m all about my neighborhood first, my people first. Sometimes I’m all about “we first;” I’m all about my community, my earth community.

I’m not bringing you an answer. I’m bringing you a question: What if the virus is medicine? This is our Quaker tradition, to bring questions and encourage you to look within for the answers. Honestly, I was afraid to bring you this question. So many of us are dealing with so many hard questions right now. And here’s another one! My thinking is, that if you and I can get even a smidge of clarity on this question, it might help with some other questions.

As Quakers we try to be always open to other views, always open to questions, and are led to proceed as way opens.

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, February 26, 2020

I have been reading a book of Greta Thunberg’s speeches. As you probably know, Greta is the Swedish student who is striking for action on the climate “emergency”.  She has had the opportunity to speak to political and business leaders throughout the world using the extensive work of scientists as her message, Greta is attempting to reach the most powerful, those with the ability to address the climate crisis in a way that brings necessary and lasting change. Why are her impressive words not eliciting more action at the top? What is it that motivates us to respond to the climate crisis or not. I think we know what motivates inaction – money and probably fear of having to give up the comforts of an unsustainable lifestyle.

Greta is motivated by the science and the desire for a livable planet for her’s and future generations. This should be enough. The science is clearly telling us a livable future is not possible at our current rate of consumption. It is obvious that our children and grandchildren will face many challenges as a result of our inaction. That is enough for me, although there are other motivators. For many, a spiritual connection to the natural world drives their response. In a December message we were reminded of the Bible’s call for caring for the natural world and offered up Christian moral convictions as a reason to respond to the climate crisis. “We are called to be stewards of God’s creation. When we keep the Earth, then we do God’s will.”

For the indigenous people of this country a belief in the interconnection of all living things is central to their spiritual beliefs, and it guides their daily way of life and an activist agenda. I read a poem attributed to a Taos elder:

Now this is what we believe.

The mother of us all is earth.

The father is the sun.

The grandfather is the Creator

Who bathed us with his mind

And gave life to all things.

The Brother is the beasts and trees.

The Sister is that with wings.

We are the Children of Earth

And do it no harm in any way.

Nor do we offend the sun

By not greeting it at dawn.

We praise our Grandfather for his creation.

We share the same breath together-

The Beasts, the trees, the birds, the man.

Sherri Mitchel, a member of Maine’s Penobscot Tribe, expresses similar thoughts. I quote:

Our “way of life is about living close to the Earth, close to our kin, and remaining ever mindful of our responsibilities to the sacred agreements that we have with every living being. It is about the sustainability of the Earth, our relationships, and our spiritual connections.

“Everything is interconnected and interdependent; the well-being of the whole is determined by the well-being of any individual part…. This belief forms the foundational understanding weaving through all of our other values. It’s the thread that ties them all together.”

I will briefly review three of the values Sherri discusses in her book Sacred Instructions:

• We all have enough, meaning that everyone should be ensured they have enough to live with dignity and a sense of security and that community has enough to thrive.
• Harmony is an inner state of equilibrium, in spite of life’s challenges we are asked to understand the dual nature of the universe and recognize the beauty in everything. When we are connected to the source of life we develop greater compassion and patience.
• Harmony with the natural world teaches taking active steps to live in harmony with the rest of creation. Quoting Sherri, “We cannot even see ourselves as being stewards of the Earth. We are only keepers of a way of life that is in harmony with the Earth…. This understanding is very different than the belief that human beings are chosen above all others.’

These beliefs and values are shared across Native tribes and communicated through ceremonial dances, chants, and folk tales/stories passed down from generation to generation.

I repeat: We all have enough, Harmony is an inner state of equilibrium, and Harmony with the natural world.

This reverence for the natural world was central to the Native way of life long before the colonists came to this country and it did not take long for the colonists to impact the New England environment. In 1855 Thoreau wrote in his journal about the ecological changes to New England that resulted from the colonists way of life. He was comparing his observations with those of William Wood, who recounted his observations in a 1633 book, New England’s Prospect. Some of these changes resulted from clearing forests to send timber to England, others from their farming practices. Colonists had a very different relationship with the natural resources of New England than the original Americans.

Today, motivated by these beliefs, Natives take civil action to protect the environment. Nick Estes, of the Sioux Tribe, writes about the belief that “water is a nonhuman relative who is alive and that nothing can own her (referring specifically to the Missouri River) and she cannot be sold or treated as a piece of property.” It is this belief that motivates the native camps of protesters attempting to block building of the Keystone XL Pipeline. In the February Friends Journal find an article by Shelley Tananebaum, a Quaker Earthcare Witness, who spent time in a camp in Standing Rock.

These are all strong motivators for caring for the natural world. I too believe in the interconnection of all living things and the importance in maintaining the health of the many ecosystems that sustain the natural world. I wish I were as sure about a path forward as I am about why we need one. I don’t know how to motivate those who have not bought into any of the values I have shared here.

I sometimes play a game imaging a world that resulted from the Colonists learning care of the land from the first residents of this country. This is fantasy I know, but maybe it has some value.  At least it puts my mind in a happier place. Imagine for a minute what kind of economic system we might have if its health was not based on how much we are consuming? What kind of trade deals would we have with other countries? Would they be designed to increase production and sales? Or think about the Industrial Revolution. There would have been one, of course, but how might it have been different if there was more concern for preservation of natural resources? Or how would farming be different if we cared about the health of the soil and the ecosystems that large farms disturb? Or think about the value “we all have enough” and how public policies would differ if that was a commonly held value.  

What else might have evolved differently and how might we mine these ideas for use in creating a sustainable future for our children and grandchildren. How can we move backwards to a time of less consumption, more preservation of our natural resources? Isn’t that what reducing our carbon footprint is all about? We are not going to reverse climate change by composting and recycling. But we are working to find a life style that provides a sustainable future for humanity.

I leave you with a quote from the Harvard entomologist, E.O. Wilson,

“Natural philosophy has brought into clear relief the following paradox of human existence. The drive towards perpetual expansion – or personal freedom – is basic to the human spirit. But to sustain it we need the most delicate, knowing stewardship of the living world that can be devised.”

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, January 19, 2020

Good Morning, Friends.

There are lots of ideas about guidelines for the speaking part of worship and our oral ministry to ourselves and others. Here is a specific one and a general one:

Specifically, Never give Gene the microphone.

Generally, here is a four-part one with a title like those quartets that were ubiquitous back in 1940s and 1950s popular music:

This is an old Quaker guideline for being heard and appreciated in Meeting. I call it the 4 “S”s, or Three Sues and a Syd😊 (Su, Su, Su, Sd):

1. Stand up (to be recognized);
2. Speak up (to be heard);
3. Shut up (to be appreciated);
4. Sit down (to be invited to speak again).

**This could be enough of a main message this morning, but try and stop me from telling you my:

  Backing-out-of-the-driveway story.

In this story, there will be no names mentioned to protect the innocent, the guilty, and the pretty good relationship of the two!

My driveway (pause), with which some of you are familiar, slopes slightly upward into the yard. It also bends slightly to the right as one proceeds up the incline. It’s not long enough to drive in, then turn around somewhere, then later drive out. We have to drive in and back out. Or we have to _back_ in to be able to _drive_ out. But that requires forethought and determination.  Harried from our time away, we are in a hurry to get resettled into the comfort and calm of domesticity. So, we drive in.

Later, when a new errand calls, we usually are (again) in a hurry, now to do what must be done in the bigger world, we must back out. It is easy, when backing out, to forget the slope and the bend, then wind up slightly to the north side of the driveway, or to have a midcourse correction and oversteer into a slightly southerly position toward the road end of the driveway. Straying off the northerly side of the driveway is problematic for the rock border of the flower garden – the rocks are taller than the clear space under most moving vehicles☹. [It has happened.] The southerly side usually is not much trouble, as straying off the driveway would take one only into the lilac bush. [It, too, has happened.]

The aforementioned innocent, and guilty, have survived (so far) all the trials of navigation of the driveway. They _are_ still enjoying that pretty good relationship😊.

But recently, there was a snowstorm with a lot of pretty wet snow, after which the newish snowblower broke most of its shear pins, and the replacements would take a week to arrive. So, the innocent (or the guilty, we don’t recall which) shoveled a vehicle width path in the driveway to permit traveling – in the bigger world.

Later in the day, it was time for one of those travels. The innocent (or the guilty, depending on one’s current frame of mind) cranked up the car and began to back out of the driveway in the appropriate fashion. OOPS, quite completely stuck in the un-shoveled portion on the southerly side of the driveway, not quite into the lilac bush. [innocent and guilty worked together (with help of four-wheel drive truck) to extricate the car and get the innocent (or guilty) abroad in the bigger world.

How did this happen? Whichever (guilty or innocent) had this occur under their respective drivership, the other has had hardly ever such an occurrence. How does each of them negotiate backing up – in this driveway, in other driveways, out of (or into) parking spaces? Could there be a difference that is significant?

After much introspection by innocent (or guilty), there was this thoughtful conversation by both:

When you back out of the driveway, where is your right foot?

[Long pause] On the gas.

[Long pause] Problem?

Yup. Brake, poised at the top of the brake pedal’s travel. Let the car back down by itself?

Uh-huh. Then, there is more time to watch where the vehicle is going, being ready to apply the brakes, if needed.

OK, that’s good😊

Remember the slope? If we are backing uphill, we need to apply gas; downhill, be ready to brake. The car’s automatic transmission will power it backward ever so slowly, if we are on a downslope, or it might just roll.

Reflecting on this tale of woe and resolution, one might ask oneself:

“Am I a foot-on-the-gas person?

“Or am I a foot-on-the-brake person?”

“Do I know when to steer … with my foot on the gas, when to steer … with my foot on the brake?”

“Is there more I could know, and can learn, about making conscious choices?” 

Somewhere in the Bible, there is a statement about freedom of choice. Elsewhere in the Bible is commentary and implication about what God gives us along with this life opportunity, how we use what we are given, and the responsibility we have to make good, useful, and effective choices.

Excerpt from a message given at Durham Friends Meeting, December 15, 2019

Here’s one way of looking at it.

Take the four gospels.  Each tells a story of a life.  For the moment, put the Christmas story, the birth, to one side.   And also put to one side the stuff at the end about the end of Jesus’s life: about Jesus coming to Jerusalem where he’s arrested, crucified and resurrected.  Now without that beginning and that end, we have the story of a preacher and healer who wanders the countryside doing and saying attention-getting things.  Fresh things.  World turned upside down things.  Be humble. Be so generous as to give away your only coat.  Love your enemy no matter what.  In that big middle story, Jesus gets crosswise with the religious leaders of his time.  He heals on the sabbath, for example.  But Jesus really doesn’t encounter a soldier or a policeman.  He’s never really in danger.  He never gets a ticket or a fine.  He never spends a day in jail. 

In the middle of the story there’s no mention of the Emperor or the Romans. And they’re in control, we need to remember.  The Romans have conquered Israel and Judah and subjugated them.  Their Empire is the greatest, the mightiest ever known.  At the end of story, when Jesus comes to Jerusalem, Jesus does get in trouble with the authorities.  Crucifixion is a Roman penalty for the most serious crimes – for challenging the authority of the Emperor. 

If we remember how it ends, that puts the Christmas story in a new light.  The Christmas story announces the birth of a king: not just a mighty king, but the mightiest of all.  It announces the birth of a king who will sweep away all worldly kings, even the Roman emperor.  Born in a stable, laid in a manger.  But here is a baby to whom the wisest of kings bow down.  Here is a baby attended by angels.  Here is baby who is hunted by a wicked king, but a baby who escapes and triumphs.  And here triumphant is a new kind of king who triumphs through love not through the sword. 

“This is the Anti-Empire,” we might call this story.  This is the empire out-empired.  The story at the end is the same story told at the beginning.  Christmas and Resurrection are versions of the same story. 

[The full message can be found at River View Friend.]

Excerpt from a message given at Durham Friends Meeting, November 17, 2019

I’ve been thinking that Meeting for worship is a little like building a fire.  It takes at least a few of us gathered together in worship.  One person alone can hardly do it.  Even two or three doesn’t feel like quite enough, though I suppose it can be. 

When I’m here at Meeting and watching people come into the Meeting room, it fills me with gladness to see us gather.  Oh there’s that person and that person; I was hoping they’d be here.  There’s so-and-so: I wish we saw her more often.  Ah, and some folks I haven’t seen before, that’s terrific.  It takes all kinds to build a good fire, one that will catch and burn for a while. 

As we gather and seat ourselves, I can see us building a fire together. We have to leave room for God, or the Spirit.  Perhaps that’s why we ask that there be silence between spoken messages.  That silence is like the oxygen the fire needs.  Together we invite the presence of God. 

There’s magic in the fire, but we make the preparations that invite the magic. 

Britain Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice has this Advice: “We can worship alone, but when we join with others in expectant waiting we may discover a deeper sense of God’s presence. We seek a gathered stillness in our meetings for worship so that all may feel the power of God’s love drawing us together and leading us.” 

“A gathered stillness:” that’s what we need.  A gathering in stillness.  If you want to put a fire out, you pull it apart; you scatter it.  Scattering chases away the magic.  Once a fire dies down, it takes effort and time to make it blaze again. For us, scattering is latecomers, the opening and closing of the doors, bustling about, people entering and leaving after we’ve gathered. 

We want to welcome and encourage everyone to come, but we want everyone to remember we are building a fire together. 

A Southeastern Yearly Meeting Advice says “Be prompt and diligent in attendance at meetings.” That discipline is what it takes for us to build a fire together: to be prompt in gathering and then to join together in stillness.” That means:  Come on time to meeting.  Once in the room, settle yourself for the hour or so.  Stay settled; Together, in stillness, we invite the presence of the Divine. 

An old hymn says,

Lord, I have shut the door, Speak now the word Which in the din and throng Could not be heard;

Hushed now my inner heart, Whisper Thy will, While I have come apart, While all is still.

Without that stillness, we may not find our way to God.

In the stillness, the fire can ignite.  God is invited to come near. 

[A copy of the full message can be found on River View Friend.]

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, November 3, 2019

I came across a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke that I want to read. It is from his Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.

 Go to the Limits of Your Longing

 God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
 then walks with us silently out of the night.
 
 These are the words we dimly hear:
 You, sent out beyond your recall,
 go to the limits of your longing .
 
 Embody me.
 flare up like a flame
     and make big shadows I can move in.
 Let everything happen to you:  beauty and terror.
 Just keep going.  No feeling is final.
 
 Don’t let yourself lose me.
 Nearby is the country they call life.
 You will know it by its seriousness.
 
 Give me your hand.
 
 (Book of Hours, I 59) 

Doug’s words last week on getting past the “ME land” experience in waiting worship were telling.

My experiences of Quakerism since joining in 1971 have given me an understanding of corporate worship that  is thrilling, when it happens and  keeps me coming back for that deeper sense of community. The combined energy of an aggregate of Friends in deep expectant silence can produce what Friends call, there gathered meeting. 

 It’s a powerful experience of worship the requires few words, but produces the mindfulness of being in the now.

Finding that still, small voice of God within each of us requires an emptying out of the worldly noise and the personal ego as Doug reminds us.   Bringing that level of immersion in Silence and Communion is a goal.  I don’t often achieve this, but I know it is attainable.

I want that experience of the gathered meeting because it releases love and validates my belief in Prayer as expectant waiting.  It opens in me a clearness, an opening to love that I yearn for. To the extent that prayer channels and focuses my experience of love  it is self serving.  But is that not what God wants for us?

In my art work when I am deeply involved in process I experience a similar opening and being in the now. clearness that I associate with being in touch with  loss of self and ego. An energy that makes me keep coming back for that experience of the Spirit that is a renewal.   

There is a popular refrain that goes “Only the good die young.”  Some of us sinners have to live to a ripe old age to even approach that experience of devotion to god that St.Theresa of Avila and Thomas Kelly speak of. 

Especially those who have “gone to the limits of your longing’ and have loved the world of experience. 

We need to reach out for that hand.

Excerpt from a message by Doug Bennett at Durham Friends Meeting, October 27, 2019

A lot of the time I’m pretty taken with myself.  I admit that.  I know that.  Many days, maybe most days, I can float on a river of “me-ness.”  I’m in “me-land” much of the time. 

It’s my concerns I’m thinking about; my needs, my wants, my worries, my hopes, my pleasures, my pains.  Me Me Me Me Me Me Me.  There’s a lot of me in my world. 

I may be worse in this regard than most people.  I don’t really know, but maybe.  I certainly don’t think I’m better at getting away from me-land than most people. 

Still, I do notice that most other people most of the time are wondering around in me-land. 

It can be a comfortable place to be, even when I’m annoyed or unhappy about something.  I’m the most important person in me-land.  What I want is the most important thing.  My thoughts are the ones I want to hear – and often the ones I want others to hear.  My hurts, my pains are the ones that seem to most need attention. 

How about you?  Are you number one in your feelings and thoughts most of the time? Are you in Me-land much of the time? 

I don’t believe I’ll ever fully escape Me-land, but I think I’m better for getting out as often as I can. I know I’m going to wind up back in Me-land but I don’t give up trying to escape. 

Where’s the door?  Where’s the pathway out?  Where’s the secret tunnel or hidden stairway?  How do I get outside of Me-land?  How does anyone? 

Actually, I’ve come to think there may be many ways to escape.  Some work better for some people; some work better for others.  (Number 6 found a different way to try in each episode of The Prisoner.)   If you want to escape and are willing to try, you have to find the way or the ways that work for you. 

Here’s one way that works for me – one pathway:  waiting worship. 

In Meeting for Worship, I try to lay down all the Me-ness.  I try to quiet the voices in my head that I know are “me” voices.  I try to lay aside the voices that are talking about my wants, my needs, my hopes, my concerns, and see if I can hear another voice – let’s call it the voice of God. 

Is it really God’s voice?  (How do I know who or what God is? I don’t know. That’s ‘beyond me.’)  All I know is that sometimes I can find another voice, and it’s not mine.  It’s a voice ‘beyond me.’  It’s more than me. 

Making friends with that voice is important to me.  Making friends with that voice settles me, makes me more aware.  Makes me (I think) a better person. 

It’s a voice that connects me.  It connects me to ‘whoever-that-voice-is’ (call it God or Spirit or Light).  But it also connects me to other people.  It helps me know them better – and in a way that’s less colored by “me-ness.” 

Do you have someone in your life who really knows you well?  Who’s honest with you, always, but always tells you things in a really tender and loving way?  I hope so.  (Actually, I’m pretty sure you do.)

It’s great if that someone is another person: a partner, a child a friend.  That bond of knowing you well, that connection, is love. 

But there’s something else, I believe, that can know each of us really well – who loves us.  That’s the voice of God I seek in worship.  That’s the voice we seek together. 

And the connection that voice makes with us is love.  Love: that’s what’s “beyond me.”

The entire message can be found at Doug’s blog, River View Friend.

Two poems read by Amy Kustra on Children’s Sunday, June 2, at Durham Friends Meeting

On this day, we pray for tender compassion on all the little ones, whose souls, so fresh from the light, shine in our midst with a darling adorable brightness.  May we honor them deeply, learn from the truly, respecting the deep wisdom they carry.  Make us wise in our nurturing of then, generous in our loving, unending in our compassion, expansive in our wisdom, kind in our intelligence, and graceful with our hearts.  Let us give to them and receive from them, and let it be known among us that they are neither our projects nor our possessions, but messengers of light, illuminations of love.     – Daphne Rose Kingma from the book A Grateful Heart 

Today with Spring here finally we ought to be living outdoors with our friends. Let’s go to those strangers in the field and dance around them like bees from flower to flower building in the beehive air our true hexagonal homes.  excerpt from “The Whole Place Goes Up,” – Rumi

Message at Durham Friends Meeting, May 19, 2019

We celebrated my Dad’s 100^th birthday two weeks ago.  He wasn’t with us; he died in 1990.  But I made him a cake and we celebrated his good life.

He taught me a lot of things.  More things than I learned: I should have paid better attention.  One thing he taught me was how to drive.  I wanted to get my license so I did pay attention to that, and so I learned.

He was a pretty tough, demanding driving instructor.  Good enough wasn’t good enough for him, so he made sure I knew how to handle difficult situations of all kinds.  For example, this was in Rochester, New York, and he wanted to be sure I could handle icy roads.  So there was a Sunday we went down to a supermarket parking lot.  There weren’t any cars because supermarkets weren’t open on Sunday when I was a teen.  And for an hour and a half he had me get up to speed in our family sedan, slam on the brakes, and then deal with the resulting skid.  Over and over again, skid after skid.  He wanted me to be comfortable behind the wheel with the car out of control.  He wanted me to have that experience. 

We also had a little Renault that he drove to work.   It had a five speed manual transmission.  Evening after evening, after dinner, he’d take me to a dirt road on a nearby county park and make me practice with that manual gearshift. Often the road was muddy so starting up was harder.  And after I sort of got the hang of it, he had me start the car in second gear.  When I got the hang of that, he’d find a little hill and have me start the car moving in second gear on that little hill.  It all felt a little severe at the time, but I’m glad he made sure I learned to drive well. 

Learning to drive has been on my mind because now Ellen and I are teaching Robbie to drive.  He’s had his learner’s permit for several months, and his first times behind the wheel, at least legally, came in his driver’s education course.  But since he’s had his permit he drives every chance that comes his way. 

I just said “Ellen and I are teaching Robbie to drive.”  Now I know that isn’t quite right.  It’s rather: “we’re helping him learn to drive.”  There’s a big difference. 

What gets done, what gets learned, he has to do.  We’ve introduced him to a succession of challenges and he’s figured out how to handle them.  Instead of a Renault Dauphin, he’s learned to drive a stick shift in our 1987 Jetta, which has sadly just failed a basic safety check so he can’t take his driving test in that.  I’ve had him start the car up in second.  I’ve looked for muddy dirt tracks up at the Topsham Fairgrounds.  He’s dealt with starting up a stick shift on hills.    He’s handled a few skids – though no icy supermarket parking lots. 

I’m not downplaying the role of teachers when I say what we learn we have to learn ourselves.  Teachers can play a big role, but the learning is something you have to do yourself.  The learning can’t be injected with a needle or poured down your throat.  Whatever it is: learning to drive, learning geometry, learning to bake a cake – learning what’s important in life. 

Teachers can encourage, they can coach, they can challenge, they can pose tasks or problems, but they can’t do the learning for you.

As I’ve been sitting next to Robbie in the passenger seat, he’s in control and I’m not.  It’s his hands on the steering wheel; his feet on the pedals.  I make suggestions and comments. I call attention to hazards and situations.  I talk to him about other drivers; how you can’t be responsible for what they’ll do and you’d better be prepared for the worst.  I talk to him about speed limits, about conditions when even going the speed limit isn’t safe. 

I quickly realized – I already knew this, but the realization really hit me – that I can’t tell him things fast enough, even when I’m sitting right next to him.  His learning to drive has to be a matter of his having fully taken in what he needs to know to drive well.  I can’t be some voice in his head he’ll hear every time he turns on the ignition.  (“What would my Dad say about that?”) 

I can still hear my dad talking to me about driving if I really put my mind to it, but that’s not how I drive. 

Nevertheless, there are lots of occasions when I wish I could hear from my Dad.  There are lots of matters I’d love to talk over with him.  There are so many questions I never asked him, and so many others I where didn’t listen carefully the one time or two I did ask him.  Wherever I’ve gone, he’s been there before me: being a teen, falling in love, having children, working, retiring from work

All this about learning to drive and wishing I still had my Dad sitting next to me helping me learn to drive has gotten me thinking about how we learn from God – how we might learn things from God: about living the good life, about fixing the things that aren’t right in this world, about what’s worth celebrating and what’s worth mourning.  Those sorts of things.  Here I am in the driver’s seat.  Is God there next to me?  I think God is.  I think that’s something we Quakers know and maybe can teach others.

Learning life is tougher than learning to drive.  None of us ever quite learns everything we need to know.  It’s like we do need our dad, or better, our mom sitting next to us, giving us the occasional suggestion, pointing out a difficult situation ahead.  And here’s the deal, the wonderful deal.  There she is sitting beside us.  She doesn’t say much most of the time, and we don’t expect her to say much most of the time.  But she’s there sitting next to us.  She’s ready to offer advice, or simply tell us it’s all OK.  When we ask.  When we’re prepared to listen. 

Of course that’s not exactly what George Fox meant we he said “Jesus has come to teach his people himself.”  He didn’t mean Jesus would be literally sitting next to us when we’re driving.  He meant something stranger and yet more wonderful. 

He meant Jesus, or the Inward Teacher, or the Seed, or the Light was always with us, always inside us — as well as all around us.  When we need guidance, we have to be sure to ask.  We have to be ready to still ourselves and listen.  That takes some learning: how to seek, how to ask, how to still myself, how to listen.

“And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,” Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew 28.  What an amazing, reassuring promise. 

Today I don’t have my Dad with me in the way that I’d like.  So it’s a great comfort to me to know that I have the Inward Teacher wherever I go. 

crossposted on River View Friend

Message at Durham Friends Meeting          May 5, 2019

I’ve been reading a remarkable recent book.  It’s by Brian Drayton and William Taber, and published in 2015.  Its title is a little forbidding: A Language for the Inward Landscape: Spiritual Wisdom for the Quaker Movement.  Let me explain a little how this book came to be and what it’s about.

Bill Taber was a remarkable Quaker, an Ohio Conservative Friend who had deep spiritual gifts.  (If you don’t know what it means to be a Conservative Friend, let’s talk about that during social hour.)  I came to know Bill Taber when he was a member of ESR’s Board of Advisors.  He taught at Pendle Hill for many years.  He did many, many workshops and wrote a number of books and pamphlets. 

He had a concern that we modern Quakers had lost touch with the meaning of many Quaker phrases that we have inherited from the first generation of Quakers.  He meant phrases like “hold in the Light” or “the measure of Truth given to each of us.”  He wanted Friends to understand those terms as they were first used because he thought they were important, essential even, to understanding Quaker spirituality.  He did a number of workshops on these old Quaker phrases, which he called “A Language for the Inward Landscape.”  He imagined writing a book, but he died before he could write it.

Brian Drayton is a member of New England Yearly Meeting, a member of Weare Friends in New Hampshire, and another person of deep spiritual gifts.  After Bill Taber’s death, he drew on Taber’s notes and his own understanding to write the book Bill Taber might have written. 

Our Meeting library has a copy and that’s how I came to read it.  There’s an inscription on the cover page, signed by Brian Drayton, which reads “for dear Clarabel, friend and fellow worker in the gospel.” So this is a special book for us here at Durham Friends. 

Why do Drayton and Taber speak of the inward landscape?  Because for many, especially Quakers, our spiritual life unfolds within us, not ‘out there.’  Look around this Meetinghouse: no pictures, no statues, no stained glass, no soaring arches, no incense.  No one dressed up in robes, no kneeling, very little performance.  There may be people for whom a spiritual life requires that external sensory pageant.  But for Quakers (and not only Quakers) the life spiritual unfolds within us as we seek a still small voice: the teacher within, or “the Light.”

Today, let me just say a little about what Taber and Drayton tell us about what early Quakers meant by “the Light”  — what we’re looking for in this inward landscape. 

For starters, of course there is the remarkable opening of the Gospel of John. 

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome^[a] it.

⁶ There was a man sent from God whose name was John. ⁷ He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. ⁸ He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

⁹ The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 

About this, Drayton and Taber say  “It must be emphasized that the first Friends did not start with this and other “Light” passages in the Bible, and then set out to make them part of living experience.  Nor was it that these seekers read the scriptures, and found the answers to their questions, ending their search.  The “light and life” passages had power for Friends because they expressed the way in which these spiritual pilgrims encountered Christ among them.” 

In short: the experience of “the Light” came first:  the felt experience.  That helped them make sense of what it says in the Gospel of John. 

Drayton and Taber quote something written by Isaac Penington, an important early Quaker.  Penington imagines having a conversation with a person first learning about God and Jesus. 

Hearing of the Savior, the learner asks “But hath not this Saviour a name? What is his name? “

And Penington answers “It were better for thee to learn his name by feeling his virtue and power in thy heart than by rote.  Yet if thou canst receive it, this is his name: the Light, the Light of the World.”

So Penington is sating we should strive to know The Light (whatever we call it) by our own experience, not from doctrines or creeds nor even, first, from the Bible.

Drayton and Taber quote Rufus Jones, a much more modern Quaker saying much the same thing.  Here is Jones:

“The Light Within, which is the central Quaker idea, is no abstract phrase.  It is an experience.  It is a type of religion that turns away from arid theological notions and that insists instead upon a real and vital experience of God revealed to persons in their own souls, in their own personal lives….

“We no more need to go somewhere to find God than the fish needs to soar to find the ocean or the eagle needs to plunge to find the air…

“The Pioneer Quakers believed with all their minds and strength that something like that was true, that they had discovered it, tested it, and were themselves a demonstration of it.”

For these early Friends, “The Light” was a powerful metaphor, a way of referring to something so powerful that it was difficult, maybe impossible, to capture in words.  They didn’t want us to know it through words; they wanted us to know it through direct experience. 

For these early Friends, The Light was a illumination, it was the source of Truth, it was an antidote to sin, and it was a basis of unity. 

That’s a lot, but they didn’t want us to take their word for it.  They wanted us to seek to experience it inwardly, for ourselves.

+++

Drayton and Taber want us to be careful, even self-conscious, when we use the term “Light.”  So I want to read an important paragraph that ends with a few queries. 

“In areas of Quakerdom in which the language about ‘the Light within’ has come to be used in the context of a great deal of theological diversity or uncertainty, it is important to ask, ‘What do we mean when we say “I will hold you in the light?”’  When the Light is identified, as traditionally, with the inward presence and work of Christ, this identification implies some expectation of spiritual experience. The Light is interpreted by what we learn of Christ in the Gospels and New Testament Letters; at the same time, the scriptural record is also interpreted by our encounter with the living Christ in ourselves and others.

“If the Light is not linked with the Spirit of Christ, then we must seek other ways to understand what in our experience is in harmony with the Light that we know, and what is not. So it is good to take some time in our meetings to ask each other with real interest such concrete questions as:

“(1) What do you mean by the Light, and is that an important way you experience God’s presence and action?

“(2) Have you experienced the Light visually? Do you know someone who has or unusually does?

“(3) What are the ways you distinguish between some prompting or teaching of the Light, and a prompting or urging from some other source? 

“(4) What is the relation between the Light you experience and that which I experience?”

Many have found we experience the Light in waiting worship.  So let us settle into worshipful seeking together. 

_____________________________

• Brian Drayton and William P. Taber, A Language for the Inward Landscape: Spiritual Wisdom from the Quaker Movement (Tract Association of Friends, 2015), chapter 2, pp. 15-38. 
• Isaac Penington, “Short Catechism for the Sake of the Simple-Hearted,” in The Works of Isac Penington, a Minister of the Gospel in the Society of Friends, volume 1, pp 123-4.
• Rufus Jones, An Interpretation of Quakerism,” https://www.pym.org/publications/pamphlets/an-interpretation-of-quakerism/.

cross-posted on River View Friend

From a message given at Durham Friends Meeting, April 7, 2019

For some, Jesus’s message is what you take to heart.  What he preached, what he taught, was so very different from what anyone else was teaching.  Not just turn the other cheek.  The last shall be first. Be not proud but be humble.  Ask for forgiveness.  Help the poor in possession, body or spirit.  He taught a new way of life that turned upside down the common sense of the world, and you find it oddly compelling even if very, very challenging to follow.  

For others, it’s the miracles.  There were miracles he performed while he was alive.  Water to wine, lepers cleansed of their affliction, the sick healed, a multitude fed on a few loaves and fishes, even one raised from the dead.  Like a master magician, he saved his most stunning miracle for the end by coming back from his own death. 

Message or miracle? Miracle or message?  Speaking for myself, I’ve been more drawn to the message, the challenging message, than to the miracle.  I’ve not been sure what to make of the miracle story.  This spring season presses us to think about the miracle. 

I grew up in a church that recited the Apostles Creed nearly every Sunday.  It wasn’t really written by the Apostles, but it is old, probably from the 4^th century.  Quakers are suspicious of creeds.  George Fox, our founder, said, “You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this: but what canst thou say?”  But just today I want to read the Apostles Creed:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
      creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
      who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.
      He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
      was crucified, died, and was buried;
      he descended to hell.
      The third day he rose again from the dead.
      He ascended to heaven
      and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
      From there he will come to judge the living and the dead

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
      the holy catholic church,
      the communion of saints,
      the forgiveness of sins,
      the resurrection of the body,
      and the life everlasting. Amen.

I am struck by how much that 115-word summary stresses the miracle.  It hardly says a word about the message – maybe nothing at all.  Where is the Sermon on the Mount in that Creed?  The Good Samaritan? Where is the tenderness to the poor or broken-hearted? Where is the call to peace and justice?

That Creed with its focus on the miracle side gives us guidance about how we are to understand the miracle.  “Resurrection of the body”: that would be a miracle. “Ditto “Life everlasting” – the door to heaven swung open to believers.  “Forgiveness of sins”: some theologians speak of “substitutionary atonement:” Christ died for our sins so we can be forgiven, a dramatic ‘paying it forward.’ 

But let’s note.  People don’t write creeds to sum up what everyone believes.  They write creeds to forge agreement, maybe even force agreement.  Among early Christians there was disagreement about what the miracle of Jesus’s last days was about.  Serious disagreement.  The Apostles Creed was put together to insist on orthodoxy.  If you didn’t subscribe to that you were a heretic.  Hence the Quaker reluctance about creeds.  “What canst thou say?”

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