For the February 15, 2026 message at Durham Friends Meeting, Craig Freshley presented a new version of the prayer he has written and re-written, uses regularly in his life.

He asked, What is your prayer? You can hear the entire message HERE.

Message for Durham Friends Meeting worship service, February 8, 2026

Susan Davies is a member of Vassalboro Friends Meeting, and currently serves as Clerk of the Permanent Board, New England Yearly Meeting.

In 1850, the Boston Vigilance Committee organized citizens to resist
enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. Although Massachusetts had abolished
slavery nearly 70 years before, the new Fugitive Slave Act required ALL
citizens, of all states, (free, as well as slave states) to help law enforcement to
recover fugitive slaves to return them into bondage. The Boston Vigilance
Committee had been organized by Theodore Parker, a Universalist minister, to
rally citizens to help fugitive slaves to hide, and to refuse to assist with their
recovery. Due to their efforts, from 1850 to the onset of the Civil War in 1861,
only two slaves were captured in Boston and transported back to the South.
On both occasions, Bostonians combatted the actions with mass protests.
Today, 175 years later, the citizens of Minneapolis are compelled to show up,
from a similar sense of outrage at injustice.

Theodore Parker, the Unitarian minister who led the formation of the Boston
Vigilance Committee, was a staunch abolitionist, and also at odds with the
orthodoxy of Unitarianism. His followers described him and themselves as
part of a movement of “prophetic Christian social activism”. Parker was
involved with almost all of the reform movements of the time: the condition of
women, prison reform, the moral and mental destitution of the rich, and the
physical destitution of the poor. In his theology Parker stressed the immediacy
of God and suggested that people experience God intuitively and personally,
and that they should center their religious beliefs on individual experience
(Wikipedia).

Theodore Parker was quoted this Winter in the Southern Poverty Law Center
newsletter, by Bryan Fair:
“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a
long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the
curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine
it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards
justice.”

Later the quote was shortened to the familiar phrase: “The arc of the moral
universe is long, but it bends towards justice”, quoted by both Martin
Luther King Jr and Barack Obama, and many others. But this winter Bryan Fair, amended this hopeful and uplifting sentiment by saying:
“I am convinced that the arc of the moral universe will NOT bend
towards justice on its own. We must bend it towards justice.”

I want to explore today the soul of “The Dissident”- -those we intuitively
understand are the ones exerting the greatest leverage to bend the arc of the
moral universe towards justice.

Definition: A dissident is a person who actively challenges an
established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or
institution… In the political sense, in the 20th Century, use of the word
dissident coincides with the rise of authoritarian governments in
countries such as Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the
Soviet Union (and later Russia), North Korea, China.… Wikipedia

For the obvious reasons of the tragedies and oppression we are daily exposed
to in our country, and around the world, I have been preoccupied lately with
the image evoked by George Fox’s words:
The Lord shewed me that the natures of those things which were hurtful
without, were within- in the hearts and minds of wicked men… And I
cried to the Lord, saying, ‘Why should I be thus, seeing I was never
addicted to commit those evils?’ And the Lord answered that it was
needful I should have a sense of all conditions… how else should I
speak to all conditions; and in this I saw the infinite love of God. I saw
also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite
ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness.
And in that I also saw the infinite love of God and I had great
openings.

George Fox was a spiritual and political dissident of extraordinary clarity,
focus and resolve. He was imprisoned eight times in English dungeons and
jails, spending six years of his life in the horrific conditions of the time. And
when he was free and he interrupted church services in his urgency to testify
to the Truth, the people “beat him with hands, Bibles and sticks, and finally
stoned him, after which he was thrown into jail”. He seems never to have
evaded, resisted or avoided the inevitable, furious reactions of the controlling
powers. In 1655, at the age of 31, during one of his long imprisonments, he
wrote on the cell wall,
“I was never in prison that it was not the means of bringing multitudes
out of their prisons.”

His steadfastly and fervently repeated mission was to “lead people to the
Truth”. And lead them he did- his relentless and urgent conviction and
courage led thousands to the movement such that in alarm, Parliament
passed a special law against Quakers that resulted in the imprisonment of
some 4,000 of them.

His message was not based on a concern for justice, poverty, social reform,
per se. It was not based on opinion or causes. It stemmed from a more
profound, reality-shaking, lived experience of the human- divine relationship.
As some of us have heard expressed in vocal ministry he “Lived as if the Truth
were true”. After years of suffering and anguished searching he had finally
exhausted all words and concepts, all pleadings among humans for
trustworthy religious counsel. And then he was lifted up into a completely
transformed understanding of Reality – not through theological argument, or
his own mental reasoning, or evolution of his opinions, but rather through his
living, breathing experience of an Answering God. In his words to his family,
and others:
“I told them that there was an anointing within people, to teach them, and
that the Lord would teach his people himself.” “Your growth in the seed (of Truth) is in the silence”. And “This I knew experimentally”

Praying in his journal, he said “The knowledge of thee in the Spirit is Life, but
the knowledge which is fleshly works death.”

He perceived that “The Life” (the Spirit of the Living Christ, the Inward Teacher)
lay under the burden of corruptions (what Paul Tillich called “the accidental
elements” of our humanness).
“This worship in Spirit and in the Truth touches all men and women; they must
come to the Spirit in themselves, and the Truth in the inward parts…they must
come to the Truth in the heart, to what is hidden in the heart, and to a meek
and quiet spirit.”

Fox was not speaking abstractly, nor exhorting people with theological
“concepts” or Biblical phrases (though he practically knew the Bible by heart).
He was urgently testifying about his own lived experience that he had
discovered access to God’s immediacy and relatedness. Christ did not live in
temples and churches– the Spirit of Truth is within, in the heart. His message
was so compelling and astonishing that people were moved and amazed.
The dissident is convicted by a truth that insists on being made manifest.
Dissidents are the agents of a truth that will not allow them to rest. This year’s
draft chapter of Faith & Practice is on Testimony and their simple message is
that TRUTH’s Testimony is the foundation of all witness; Truth is the
proclamation that the Voice of the Inward Teacher is REAL, practical, and everpresent. For Fox, and for those of us who aspire to his lineage, his unshakable
commitment was to proclaiming the saving power that the Truth could be
inwardly known; and when outwardly obeyed it would never fail to yield, in full
measure, all the Fruits of the Spirit:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Galatians 5:22-23.

I will close with the affirmation from another great and peaceful dissident,
Vaclav Havel, playwright, and former President of the Czech Republic (1936-
2011), who in 1989 was a leader of the Velvet, or “Gentle” Revolution against
40 years of oppressive communist rule in Czechoslovakia:
“The salvation of the world lies in the human heart.”

This “Bless of Angels” was read by Tess Hartford at the opening of worship on February 1, 2026 at Durham Friends Meeting

A BLESSING OF ANGELS

May the Angels in their beauty bless you.
May they turn toward you streams of blessing.

May the Angel of Awakening stir your heart
To come alive to the eternal within you,
To all the invitations that quietly surround you.

May the Angel of Healing turn your wounds
Into sources of refreshment.

May the Angel of the Imagination enable you
To stand on the true thresholds,
At ease with your ambivalence
And drawn in new direction
Through the glow of your contradictions.

May the Angel of Compassion open your eyes
To the unseen suffering around you.

May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places
Where your life is domesticated and safe,
Take you to the territories of true otherness

Where all that is awkward in you
Can fall into its own rhythm.

May the Angel of Eros introduce you
To the beauty of your senses
To celebrate your inheritance
As a temple of the holy spirit.

May the Angel of Justice disturb you
To take the side of the poor and the wronged.

May the Angel of Encouragement confirm you
In worth and self-respect,
That you may live with the dignity
That presides in your soul.

May the Angel of Death arrive only
When your life is complete
And you have brought every given gift
To the threshold where its infinity can shine.

May all the Angels be your sheltering
And joyful guardians.

– John O’Donohue –
To Bless the Space Between Us

This poem was read at the opening of worship at Durham Friends Meeting on January 25, 2026.

From Jan L. Richardson, The Map You Make Yourself; A Blessing for Women’s Christmas, 2013.

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, January 11, 2026

for Martin Luther King, Jr Day, Celebrated January 19, 2026

Morning Y’all!  Today I want to share reflections on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr whose life we celebrate annually in January, on the third Monday, near his birthday, January 15th.  This year we will celebrate on January 19^th.  The title of his last book, published in 1967, offered me a title for my message:  Where Do We Go From Here:  Chaos or Community?  But before I begin, here are some interesting facts about him:

• He is the only non-president honored by a federal holiday
• The first holiday was celebrated in 1986, but all 50 states had made it a holiday by 2020
• The monument to his life was completed in 2011, erected near the national mall in DC
• Chicagoans also built a Living Memorial to MLK, Jr to honor the work he did with citizens to address housing discrimination in Illinois; the 2016 opening marked the 50^th anniversary of the march through Marquette Park.

It is clear that we live in a chaotic world, yet is it more chaotic than earlier times? Do we have any less of a challenge today as people who profess to follow Christ as the people who were in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s?  I will share some stories from my youth in the 60s, as well as a few quotes from Dr. King’s Nobel Prize Lecture (December 11,1964) demonstrating how turbulent times assail us, regardless of the era, implying our work is ongoing and the struggle for peace cannot be abandoned:

“This evening, I would like to use this lofty and historic platform to discuss what appears to me to be the most pressing problem confronting mankind today. Modern man has brought this whole world to an awe-inspiring threshold of the future. He has reached new and astonishing peaks of scientific success. He has produced machines that think and instruments that peer into the unfathomable ranges of interstellar space. He has built gigantic bridges to span the seas and gargantuan buildings to kiss the skies. His airplanes and spaceships have dwarfed distance, placed time in chains, and carved highways through the stratosphere. This is a dazzling picture of modern man’s scientific and technological progress…

Yet, in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.

This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual “lag” must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul.

This problem of spiritual and moral lag, which constitutes modern man’s chief dilemma, expresses itself in three larger problems which grow out of man’s ethical infantilism. Each of these problems, while appearing to be separate and isolated, is inextricably bound to the other. I refer to racial injustice, poverty, and war.”

• A couple of stories from my growing up reflect the challenges faced by African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement.  My family is from the country, y’all, I mean farming country where some towns have just a gas station and a general store! Poverty was the norm, for Blacks and Whites, yet Whites believed they were better because of the color of their skin.  My parents were always addressing issues of civil rights and on top of that, they were very religious and were determined to address unfairness and injustice with anyone!  They were involved with voter rights, integrating schools, and related issues with the NAACP.  MLK’s fight for civil rights ultimately addressed the poverty and unfairness for the many people who still suffer today—immigrants, females, gay people, the disabled who are the most discriminated people in the country, maybe the world.  Here is a story my Dad told us long after it happened because he thought we were too young to understand it all when it occurred.  My father finished dental school with the help of the Army, and practiced dentistry in Vicksburg, MS, where he had a deferment signed each year as he worked off time and payments he owed the service for his education; the Mississippi Medical Director signed his deferment each year. After the Brown vs Board of Education case was declared unconstitutional in 1954, the medical director called for a meeting of all medical personnel—Black & White, to discuss the decision.  My Dad was the only Black doctor to speak us, feeling relieved that we no longer had to go to dilapidated buildings, with outdated books for our education.  The medical director decided that he would no longer honor the deferment, and forced Dad to choose a branch of the service to finish paying for his education.  Ironically it was like throwing “Brer Rabbit” into the briar patch because we experienced more advantages going back into the service since the military gave officers housing, medical care, and other amenities that my parents could not afford in the segregated community where we lived!
• Our whole family helped to desegregate the beaches in Biloxi, MS through planned sit-ins with the local NAACP.  Mississippi beaches were closed off from Blacks except for certain small sections.  We agreed to “wade in” the white sections with several other families, and fortunately things went well.  Some of you know that sit-ins, boycotts and other non-violent means to resistance was not easy though folks were trained to behave in ways consistent with non-violent philosophy: people were hurt, lost employment, set upon by dogs, died for the cause.
• My older sister went to college at Tuskegee Institute and decided to join the marches protesting discrimination, fell ill under the pressures of studying and marching, and had to come home for a while to recover.

King’s Nobel Lecture continues:

“What the main sections of the civil rights movement in the United States are saying is that the demand for dignity, equality, jobs, and citizenship will not be abandoned or diluted or postponed. If that means resistance and conflict we shall not flinch. We shall not be cowed. We are no longer afraid.”  (Mahatma Gandi’s non-violent campaign against the British was quite convincing to King who adopted this strategy for the Civil Rights Movement).

In a real sense nonviolence seeks to redeem the spiritual and moral lag that I spoke of earlier as the chief dilemma of modern man. It seeks to secure moral ends through moral means. Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.

I believe in this method because I think it is the only way to reestablish a broken community. It is the method which seeks to implement the just law by appealing to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride, and irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep.

The nonviolent resisters can summarize their message in the following simple terms: we will take direct action against injustice despite the failure of governmental and other official agencies to act first. We will not obey unjust laws or submit to unjust practices. We will do this peacefully, openly, cheerfully because our aim is to persuade. We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but if our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts. We will always be willing to talk and seek fair compromise, but we are ready to suffer when necessary and even risk our lives to become witnesses to truth as we see it.”

I do not believe we are living in the worst of times, though life is troubling in every sphere we can imagine, environmentally, socially, spiritually. Yet, I do believe we have the power to sustain ourselves and overcome much of the evil we are experiencing.  The organizing power of love can help transform our lives and those we love, by taking right, non-violent actions.  (We have plenty of evidence of that today, even in our Meeting) We must remember that our troubled times did not arrive with our current national government, they just seem more devastating because it is our own elected government is orchestrating so much of the chaos!

King expresses the strength of his convictions about love:  We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world.  In this 1967 book, he offered another quote many use to express the relationship between power of love.

…Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic changes. In this sense power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice.  One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites.  Love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love.

What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic.  Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.  Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.  (Chaos or Community, p.37)

Aligned with MLK, Jr, ideas, Brian McLaren, faculty of the Center of Action & Contemplation, co-founded by Father Richard Rhor, encourages us to heed the call to action in non-violent, creative ways, through Christ-like action.  McLaren, like King, invites us into a life rooted in contemplation, and in contemplation that always expresses itself in action.  And that our actions lead to outcomes that show that the Power of love outlasts and overcomes the love of Power.

I leave you with the hope found in an excerpt from Amanda Gorham’s poem,The Hill We Climb, from Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration:

…We will not march back to what was,
But move to what shall be:
A country that is bruised, but whole,
Benevolent, but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation,
Because we know our inaction and inertia
Will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain,
If we merge mercy with might
And might with right,
Then Love becomes our legacy,
And change our children’s birthright.
So, let us leave behind a country
better than one we were left. “

Gorham, A. (2021).  The Hill We Climb.  Inaugural poem read on January 20, 2021.

King, M.L.K., Jr. (1967). Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?  Harper & Row.

MLK, Jr.’s Nobel Prize Lecture. Oslo, Norway. December 11, 1964.

www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/lecture

McLaren, B.  Good News for a Fractured World, January 8, 2026 video. https://www.cac.org

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, January 18, 2026

Many years ago, living in Delaware, a tornado tore through a neighborhood near where I was living.  The next day I went to look at the wreckage.  I had never seen tornado damage up close.  It was terrible to see: trees torn up by their roots, cars tossed on end, homes destroyed, piles of debris, jumbles of sticks and paper and car parts, and roof tiles and glass.  I saw wreckage that went beyond my imagining. 

One image has particularly stayed with me: a house sawed in half.  One side was obliterated, shredded to pieces the size of matchsticks, nothing recognizable.  The remaining side was completely undisturbed.  You could look at rooms missing a wall or two, but all their contents were still there, still in place, every chair, every picture, every pillow, every delicate vase, every pencil on a desk.  How could there be so much chaos and so much calm side by side? 

That memory has come back to me in recent months as a vivid image of the world in which we – all of us – are living.  Where do you see yourself?  Mostly, myself, I am in the undisturbed side of the house, the untouched side.  My daily life goes on in normal ways.  I see friends and family, I cook, I read, I go to meetings of various organizations, that go about their ordinary affairs.  It’s a very normal life in this part of the house, every delicate vase and every pencil in its place. 

But I can’t help but see that there’s a wall missing, or perhaps two walls.  I can feel a little breeze, a worrying breeze because I’m exposed to the elements.  The bedroom next to the one where I sleep is simply gone, torn to matchsticks.  Looking out where that wall used to be I see utter chaos, cars upended, trees uprooted. 

Out the windows of the calm side of the house I see other people going about their ordinary lives, working, playing, going to school.  And through the missing walls of the chaotic side of the house I see people fired from their jobs for speaking the truth or just for being themselves.  I see torture in jails, and people shot in their own cars.  I see destruction of organizations. I hear lies.  I see lies declared truth.  I see theft and fraud, and not just in secret, but theft and fraud openly practiced and justified.  I see war, and not just war but war justified.

I can turn my head and see the calm side of the house; or I can turn back and see the chaos.  I’m doing that every day.  This is a newish experience, and a disturbing one.  It’s a disorienting one.  Perhaps you’re having this experience, too. 

I know this divided life is unstable.  As Lincoln warned, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  A house missing a wall here or a wall there cannot stand for very long.  It cannot provide shelter for very many, and not even shelter for the few for very long.  This divided house is no longer safe for anyone.  We can no longer trust its integrity – we can’t trust that it won’t completely collapse – and soon.   This unstable, divided house makes me anxious, often angry, constantly dismayed. 

Day by day I find myself putting my mental energy into trying to hold the house together and upright.  But it’s not enough.  It’s exhausting to live in such a divided world.  How did this storm happen?

We often give major storms a name:  Agnes, Katrina, Sandy.  We talk about the damage from Hurricane Sandy or Hurricane Agnes.  I have no doubt we would all suggest the same name for the current storm that is sawing our lives in half, a normal half and a wreckage half. 

But we also know that major storms arise in the midst of certain broader weather conditions.  For a hurricane to form, there needs to be warm ocean water and moist, humid air. Tornadoes develop from severe thunderstorms in warm, moist, unstable air along and ahead of cold fronts. 

How about this tornado?  I find myself thinking about that in this half-wrecked house. 

I know it isn’t simply the doing of one person.  No one person could do this.  Others have to be involved, too.  I think about these things:  complicity, corruption, cowardice and complacency. 

Some people are actively complicit in creating the storm that causes the wreckage.  They share responsibility for tearing things apart.  They, too, do the doing.

Some people see active benefit in allowing the wreckage.  They don’t need to do much except encourage the wreckage.  Perhaps they provide donations or provide a little assistance in other ways.  They know they will profit from the wrecking.  That’s why their part is corruption.  They reap benefits while others suffer. 

Complicity, corruption, and there’s also cowardice.  Some people contribute by doing nothing.  They just stand aside, avert their gaze.  They see they won’t be hurt too much.  Their non-action lets others suffer.  There’s cowardice in that. 

Others are simply complacent:  they don’t look, they don’t see beyond their own lives.

Complicity, corruption, cowardice, complacency:  those are the weather conditions that breed the storm.  Active engagement, profiteering, doing nothing.  They all involve looking out for oneself, a narrow selfishness.  They all involve looking away from what happens to others.  “I’m alright, Jack.”  I’m just looking out for number one.  If we get an air mass, a culture, that’s too much of that narrow selfishness, we can get a tornado that saws our house in half.  These are our times. 

We can add cynicism to the ingredients of the airmass.  Cynicism is the abandonment of hope.  It, too, helps create this tornado through our republic.

You can talk about that weather mass in other ways.  You can call it an excess of liberty.  Every person can do as he pleases: Seek profits.  Help friends and harm enemies.  Let the consequences fall where they may.  What happens to others is not my business. 

What I’m trying to say has been said by others, in ways worth repeating. 

In a Christmas Carol, Scrooge starts by saying “I mind my own business”, and ends by saying “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”  He turns from the narrow view to the wider one.

That’s not just a cheerful Christmas message; it’s a lesson for our times.  And it is  just a more modern way of saying what Jesus said:  “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

It’s not just Christians.  In The Peloponnesian Wars, Thucydides quotes Pericles as saying “Not until the uninjured are as indignant as the injured, will peace, freedom and justice return to Athens.”

Ellen and I regularly read Sherrilyn Ifill, who holds an Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at Howard University Law School.  She is also a former director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.  She understands that ‘humanity is her business,’ and ours, too.

In a recent column she wryly notes that the storm we are all now experiencing is a kind of storm all too familiar to Black communities.  As we approach Martin Luther King day, we need to remember that lynchings happened, race riots happened, disenfranchisement happened, discrimination happened, “separate but equal” happened not just because of Bull Connor, and Strom Thurmond, and George Wallace but because of complicity, corruption and cowardice on the part of many, many others;  they happened because too many took the narrow view and let the storm tear apart others houses.  Too many were complicit or corrupt, cowardly or complacent.

Sherrilyn Ifill recently wrote, “Anti-democracy measures do not simply arrive and takeover healthy democracies. They are workshopped first – most often on the most vulnerable communities. In this country, with its unique history and the deep narratives of white supremacy that is part of our public discourse, this will almost always be Black communities first.”   She is reminding us that we are all now experiencing what once a minority experienced as we looked away.  This current storm is not one-of-a-kind; it’s just wider in scope.  https://sherrilyn.substack.com/p/whether-it-is-ice-or-local-police.  

1600 years ago, St. Augustine wrote a profound treatise about the situation we face.  Today we call the book The City of God.  He wrote it following the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 A.D.  In The City of God, Augustine shows us not two parts of a house, one wrecked and one undisturbed, but two cities: the City of God and the Earthly City, or the City of Man.  A godly city and a sinful one.  For Augustine, the choice of where to live is before each of us every day.  The Earthly City is a place of human strivings, usually selfish strivings for worldly things: money, fame and honor.  The City of God, on the other hand, is a City built in relationship to God, one that looks toward eternal things, ultimately salvation.  The City of Man, he believed, will be destroyed, but the City of God will last forever.  Where do we choose to live? 

Martin Luther King taught something very similar in challenging us to build the Beloved Community.  The Beloved Community is a society built on justice, equality, love, and peace, where poverty, racism, and hate are eliminated, and all people live in harmony, sharing the earth’s resources.

This conception envisions an inclusive world where conflict is resolved nonviolently through understanding, fostering a universal sisterhood and brotherhood through unconditional love (agape). It’s a world where we care as much about our neighbors as we care about ourselves.

It takes constant effort from all of us.  It takes facing down the tornado that’s tearing through our republic.  It takes us all refusing to practice, or even to put up with, complicity, corruption, cowardice, complacency, or cynicism. 

Tomorrow, we celebrate the life and good works of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Let us be joyful in working together to build the Beloved Community – even though it’s tornado weather. 

Also posted on River View Friend

These three prayers, written by Ed Hinshaw, were read at his memorial service on January 10, 2026;

***

***

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, January 4, 2026

The end of the myth – the end of a storyline

I sit in my little comfy chair looking out over the field of snow onto the frozen tidal river. I wonder how we’ve all survived. How we’ve managed to keep our humanity in tact during this past year’s constant assault on our sense of justice, equilibrium, and plain old morality.

I know I have done my fair share of crying from frustration and sadness. My gut is constantly inflamed, roiling with swallowed anger. My sleep regularly interrupted with unsettling dreams tinged with cruelty.

I do contribute to lessen the suffering through money and time but I wonder how much my nervous system can take before my health really takes a dive.

This is the story line in which we are currently living, especially as Quakers, members of the Society of Friends, with a history of pacifism and abolition of slavery. Love thy neighbor, no exceptions, our banner proclaims. I believe this in my core being.

2025 has shown us what I believe to be the pinnacle of hubris and cruelty by our current leadership. But in many respects, it’s the same old story. A repetition of humanity’s pattern of suppression, violence and power grabbing.

These were the conditions under which Mary of Nazareth bore her first son, Jesus.  I don’t pretend to know or understand the complexities of the numerous struggles for power there and in those times, but I do know it was brutal. Crucifixions by the reigning Roman Empire happened frequently and publicly as a warning to the Jews to stay in line.  

And out of this struggle the “Jesus Movement” emerged. A movement professing loving one’s neighbor, no exceptions, rose up, led by a young carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth. I can speak of this to you today only because I just finished a book about the “Jesus Movement” written by a dedicated historian. A professor of religious studies who has written many books about the birth and rise of Christianity in the ancient world. And he participated in a number of archaeological digs in Galilee, produced films and documentaries about those years of strife and the movement proclaiming that peace and love were the way of God.

I’m not suggesting that this will happen here and now but I do suggest that this story gives me hope that humanity can rise above the despair and direness of the oppression and move us into a place of peace and relative tranquility.

But what of this story? The story whose beginning we just celebrated on Christmas Day – the story of a young woman, a virgin we’re told, who with her betrothed must find refuge in a manger for her to give birth to the child that will be humanity’s savior, a gift from God, in fact, the son of God.

The book I just finished is called The Lost Mary by James D. Tabor. He spent ten years researching Jesus’s mother, having felt confounded by her near erasure from the sacred texts after she gives birth. Only to show up again 30 years layer at the foot of the cross at elder son’s crucifixion. Who was this woman, Professor Tabor wondered, really, who was Jesus’s mother?

From his research into the woman who gave birth to Jesus, we find out that Mary was not from Nazareth but from the capitol of Galilee, Sepphoris, some short kilometers south of the town of Nazareth. And that she was born into a family of means, with a royal lineage, traced from the Kingdom of David, as well as a priestly lineage – from Aaron, Israel’s first priest. With this information in mind, it is unlikely that she gave birth to Jesus in a manger or barn. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that Jesus was the oldest of 8 children that Mary bore and raised. James being the second child who took over the “Jesus Movement” after Jesus’s crucifixion.

This makes sense to me. And I can imagine it and relate to it. Mary, the head of a bustling household, busy mothering her brood. Ensuring her children’s nurturing and education. That is what a mother looks like to me, and has throughout millenia.

Professor Tabor writes about Mary’s erasure from the human condition by virtue of the story line we’ve been given of not just the immaculate conception but also that she remained a virgin even after the birth of Jesus. He speculates that the powers that be in the early Christian movement had no use for Mary once she had given birth to the Savior and therefore relegated her to a place unattainable by mortal women.

Despite feeling the truth in this new version of the story of Mary and Jesus, I still believe in the holiness of Jesus, not only his message of peace and love, but his healing abilities. And like many Quakers, I’ve had my own lived experience with Jesus. His presence has come to me in times of great hurt and sorrow bringing light and hope.

But what of this erasure of Mary, the mother of eight? What about the version we’ve been fed that has served to continue the subjugation of both women and men. Because we mustn’t forget the damage done to men by the story of the Virgin Mary. They have also suffered by the binary depiction of women. Good or bad; virgin or whore, don’t mess with any in between possibilities.

The myth of Mary, now dashed, validates the misgivings I had around this story. I just plain didn’t buy it.  And that made me uneasy, I was trying to wear the mantle of Christianity but without saying the word “virgin” associated with Jesus’s mother. I couldn’t logically understand what being a virgin had anything to do with anything. Of course, I know that this storyline is directly linked to subjugation of women.

And this is where I take up the theme of 2026 and new beginnings.

We have been lied to by a multitude of people and entities, over centuries. But this past year has felt, to me, particularly insulting and devastating – mostly because of the immoral and cruel actions by our leadership that are in plain view. I know that I can no longer pretend that our system works towards justice and egalitarianism.

So where is the hope for 2026? The hope lies in the truth and the truth of the corruption in our country and the world at large is undeniable. But once we have shed our naivete we can move towards a more responsible vision of a structure that benefits all of us. A vision that allows us to love our neighbor, no exceptions. 2025 has shown us, in no uncertain terms, the devastation caused by the unequal distribution of power and money.

As we dismantle myths, we dismantle entrenched ideas of how to operate which can bring a fresh and new perspective around potentiality.  We strip away the untruths to uncover the truths about ourselves. We have long obscured our capacity to love, our yearning for peace and inclusivity, with individualism and ego focused goals.

So armed with the truth we can move toward revision.

Because I did not buy into the myth of the Virgin Mary I had to find my way forward as a woman outside of this construct. I had to try out new ways of thinking and new ways of acting. This required a deep dive into my core being as a human and all the complexities involved in my humanness.

I had to take a deep dive into what I believed about myself and my capabilities, my innate talents and what I could learn and cultivate. I had to throw out myths and belief systems that no longer served me. I had to ask the questions: How should I treat myself and how should I treat others, how should I treat where I live and the land on which I live? How would I earn a living and what would I spend my money on? Who would I allow into my life? What would I watch and read and eat? 

As an individual human, I am a microcosm of our country. And I believe truly that as the dust settles around the destruction of the governing systems these are the questions we must ask ourselves and others.

How do we want to revise how we look at our place on this earth.  This is a question for all of us as we move forward.

I, of course have no answers. Yet that does not diminish my hope for our future. If the Jesus movement could rise up out of the death and destruction wreaked by the Roman Empire, a ground swell of love and peace could move us all in the direction of self reflection and transformation on an individual level to then be transposed at the national and international level.

But I come back to the ground level, the level of mothers and families and children.

And I would point to Mother Mary, who kept her children safe during the Roman rampage and supported her son Jesus as he led a movement that proclaimed that love and peace were holy messages, that the kingdom of God could be found in each of our hearts and here on earth.

In this message I do not claim to give you answers but I do claim to give you a sense of solidarity in the struggle to revision and rework. The solidarity born of our shared humanity to make this place, this gift from God, a better place.