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