parts of a message given by Leslie Manning, July 19, 2026

Multiply Our Prayers by Helen Weaver 

Almighty God, who are mother and father to us all,
Look upon your planet Earth divided.
Help us to know that we are all your children;
That all nations belong to one great family,
And all our religions lead to you.
Multiply our prayers in every land
Until the whole Earth becomes your congregation,
United in your love.
Sustain our vision of a peaceful future
And give us strength to work unceasingly
To make that vision real. Amen.

All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. . . . For there is a Force of love moving through the universe that holds us fast and will never let us go.  Julian of Norwich

He did not say: You will not be assailed, You will not be belabored, You will not be disquieted, but He said ”You will not be overcome.”  Julian of Norwich

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, July 12, 2026

Morning Y’all,

Some of you know that I check in with a message about things that are on my mind, and today is one of those days.  Our Ministry & Council group has just finished our discussion group on Parker Palmer’s book first published in 2011, Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create A Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit (revisions 2014 & 2024).  Each of the four sessions brought an average of 8 folks to the table bringing their questions, impressions of the chapters, and ideas of how we can strengthen our sense of democracy that is more inclusive with a greater sense of ‘We the People’.  ‘What more can We the People’ do to resist the breaking down of how some of us interpret our Constitution and how it protects us as a people?  Some of the actions of our government are indeed frightening and destructive of what some of us hold dear about seeking and sustaining our personal freedoms, as well as those who continue to come from afar, to seek theirs.  “America’s freedom” represents the fundamental liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, defined primarily in the Bill of Rights.  These core rights include freedom of speech, religion, and the press, alongside the right to assemble peacefully and bear arms.

Parker uses quotes from others that reflect questions for us to ponder about his five habits to heal the heart of democracy, and this one from Terry Tempest Williams (author, conservationist, currently writer-in residence at the Harvard Divinity School) was riveting and memorable for me:

“The human heart is the first home of democracy.  It is where we embrace our questions.  Can we be equitable? Can we be generous?  Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than just our opinions?  And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up—ever—trusting our fellow citizens to join us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?” Healing the Heart of Democracy, 2011, chapter 3, p. 49)

**************

 I want to jump from there to comment on how we usually function as humans!  We tend to address issues or concerns as they arise, as a problem occurs.  Preventive measures?  Not so much!  Planning ahead for your health?  Or in my case, trying to figure out retirement while my body is just trying to survive its deteriorating conditions?  What is your heart, your spirit focused on now? Are you thinking primarily about your own concerns or interests, and cannot be thinking about democracy or citizenry?  Many young women of today think that sexism is over in our country, and that we have equality in most work spaces!  Some African-Americans I know lament that we are still fighting for equal rights?  Folks, sustaining equity and equal rights is an ongoing struggle.

If you are not a citizen yet, your legal status is top of mind!  Even if you are an immigrant with legal status, you are feeling anxious, maybe less for yourself, but for your family or community. If you just lost that promotion to a younger, less experienced person, you are thinking about equality.  In my new part-time job, I am reminded weekly about the distressingly high unemployment rate of many disabled people, like my clients with autism.

“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth” Muhammad Ali

“Work is the rent you pay for the room you occupy on earth”. Queen Elizabeth

Do you understand your responsibility in life?  Your purpose?  Your relationship with Spirit?  With God? With this Quaker community?

I find myself in the process of re-defining what I am supposed to be doing with my life in retirement.  Years ago, I learned that I am best suited for a life of service, of hospitality, especially given how fortunate I am with supporting parents who provided a formal education for me.  I no longer have the structure of a workday and week, or the pressure of earning so much to meet the needs of children and family. This doesn’t mean I haven’t had challenges in the past and even now! We are still major supporters of a child with a life-long mental illness, and a grandson who is currently in jail. (And by the way, he seems to be learning something about not repeating the same crime!) But, what is my neighborly responsibility, and how do I now define my neighbors? Our banner outside tells of to Love our Neighbors—No Exceptions! 

In Matthew 22:36-40, (New International Version) we are told that Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment?

Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second it like unto it:  Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

THOSE WORDS ARE ALWAYS SO BROAD!  HOW DO WE LOVE GOD AS DEFINED HERE?  AND WHO IS OUR NEIGHBOR? 

In 1 John 2: 3-6, we are told, If you love me, keep my commandments.

Y’all remember them:

1. No other gods
2. No graven images
3. Not taking the Lord’s name in vain
4. Keeping the sabbath holy
5. Honoring Mother & Father
6. Not killing
7. Not committing adultery
8. Not stealing
9. Not bearing false witness
10. Not coveting what others have

I would add:  Don’t hold grudges—forgiving people is hard work.  Repairing relationships is also hard!

How you discern where you are with your heart/spirit at this time, is for you to contemplate.  Citizen responsibilities?  Raising kids right? Going to church on Sunday?  Abiding by the golden rule? There are so many Quaker resources at your disposal for figuring out what is happening with your heart now. Many folks in our community have a lot of experience to help with your discernment, and also are willing to share how they figured out what’s happening in various times their lives.  Our New England Yearly Meeting website, quarterly meetings, annual meetings, our library, our elders, etc.  (neym.org) TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEART!

Here are some words form our Faith & Practice which reflects our Quaker beliefs.  “An aspect of Grace is that Spirit—which we believe is in each of us—activated or not, y’all) communicates with us in words, images, and feelings that engage us.  It is our task as individuals and as meetings to discover how to live faithfully a path we have been given.  (Discerning that path!)  Everyone has responsibility for ministry!

The Spirit may break into our lives in powerful moments of altered consciousness or clarity.  The Spirit may also work in a gradual unfolding of understanding and confidence.  Often our lives contain a combination of both.  What matters is living with integrity, faithful to our own experience.  (Section 1, Faith & Practice 2014)

At our best, Friends live according to inner, rather than outward, promptings. The Inward Teacher is experienced as full of grace, eternal, not belonging to the self but entirely at the self’s center. This inner voice is the basis of our spiritual being and how we discern our values. No outside authority, be it church, government, employer, or family, speaks to us with the same authority or power. 

Interim F&P, Section III, p. 182, “A Peculiar People”

But my last quote is from a newly found author of mine, Fredrick Buechner, minister and award-winning writer of over 30 books.  I highly recommend his works to you; he is easy to read, reinterprets biblical stories with even more memorable characters, and paints life as with God as adventurous.

As you learn to listen to your life and what God is doing in it, you will uncover the plot of your life’s story and the sacred opportunity to connect with the divine in each moment…

Pay attention, says Buechner.  Listen to the call of a bird or the rush of the wind, to the people who flow in and out of your life.  The ordinary points you to the extraordinary God who created and loves all creation, including you.  Pay attention to these things as if your life depends upon it.  Because, of course, it does.   How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life:  The Remarkable Ordinary (2017)

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, June 14, 2026
Rob Levin, rob@roblevin.net, Portland Friends Meeting

Good morning, Friends. I’m here with you today because of a hula hoop
performance at a holiday burlesque show in early December. Since that night, I
feel as though I’ve been fording a river, leaping from one rock to the next. But
there’s no path laid out, it’s one leap and one rock at a time. Thing is, I don’t
know how wide the river is, I can’t see the other side. Maybe it’s even an ocean.
It’s the morning of Saturday, December 6. I’m walking home from a coffee
shop. I check my phone, and see some messages from a group of local clergy
and faith leaders who get together to coordinate social justice actions. I had
been mostly on the periphery of this group for the past year or so, feeling like
an imposter. I’m “just” a Quaker, not clergy. Not a “leader.” Not even sure on
certain days where my “faith” is. I had joined the group because I was hoping
their faith would rub off on me, inspire me, give me courage. So far, it hadn’t
quite happened.

To that point, I had spent most of last year turning away, covering my ears,
despairing. So many dreadful things were happening, and so rapidly, that I
couldn’t bring myself to take action. Yes, I went to the occasional No Kings
Day, or de-escalation training. But I kept feeling that I wasn’t meeting the
moment, that my halfhearted responses did not rise to the level of the harm
that was occurring. Somebody should be doing something! I thought. Pushing
away the obvious subtext, of course, that I was a somebody, that I could be
doing something. But mostly, I didn’t. I turned away. I occasionally wondered,
what was my red line, the horrible last straw that would get me out of my chair
to finally do something? Did I even have a red line anymore?

This particular morning in December, the clergy group messages were all about
immigrants detained in the Cumberland County Jail in Portland. The group
had organized a weekly vigil over the past month or so, but I hadn’t found the
time to show up. There were about 50 detainees at any given time, many
languishing for months on end. Among them was Vivian, an 18-year-old girl
who had been there for almost a year, snatched away from her Massachusetts
home the previous March, just before she was to graduate high school. She
had written a letter, a response to one that the Multifaith Group had sent to
her. I started to read Vivian’s letter, and then I quickly closed the message and
played a game on my phone instead. I just wanted to relax and enjoy my
Saturday. Once again, I looked away, and covered my ears.

That night, I attended a holiday burlesque show called ‘Twas the Night Before
Fascism. I had received free tickets, and went on a lark with my wife and our
friends. It was all part of the plan, to relax and enjoy the weekend. Don’t think
too hard about anything, don’t feel too much.

Like any good burlesque, it was a mashup of music and dancing. The creators
adopted the premise of an old fashioned radio variety show, airing one last time
on the night before the government shut down the airwaves once and for all.
There was lots of hilarity, mocking of certain individuals in the federal
government, it was a rollicking good time – if a little close to our present day
reality. And then towards the end, the lights dimmed, and a young woman
walked onto the stage, barefoot with a set of hula hoops. Ladies and
gentlemen… we present to you, Nettie Loops! Music started, a female singer,
and Nettie Loops began twirling. As the pace picked up, I realized that I was
watching a talented hula hooper. Very talented. And this song, what was this
song? I’d never heard it before. All kinds of dizzying lyrics about our current
political moment, my brain couldn’t quite process it all. But by the third time
around the chorus was becoming quite clear to me. I will read the words to
you, but they won’t quite do justice to the song:

You gave the man your eyes
So you could sleep at night
But you still hear their cries
You can’t outrun this shame
This land was yours and mine
Until they bled it dry
History won’t be kind
To those who turn the other way
Can you hear them crying?
Will you still be silent?

These words filled the dark room, all while Nettie Loops bedazzled us with her
impressive hooping, spinning a half dozen hulas around her arms, now her
legs, now her neck, now every part of her body. Her was this talented
performer, putting on a beautiful spectacle for her audience. And then turning
the lens back on us with those haunting lyrics. The act ended and I felt a lump
in my throat, a tugging at my heart. I went home after the show and listened to
that song five times on repeat. It’s called Have Your Heard the News Today, by
Earth to Eve.

The next morning, at Meeting for Worship, I Quaked about my experience the
night before. I Quaked hard, friends. Something was moving in me. I didn’t
quite know what it was yet.

And now for the first leap to a rock in the river: The week after the hula hoop
moment, I made it to the jail vigil for the first time. I continued to go through
the rest of December. January came, and with it the ICE enforcement surge.
Next rock in the river: I organized a pray-in at Senator Collins’ office. Nine faith
leaders, myself included, were arrested. We had 30 hours from conception to
the launch of the action, with a one-foot snowstorm in between. Way opened
over and over during that process. Starting with Leslie Manning, who
immediately agreed to be our police liaison and jail support. Side note: They
separated those of us who’d been arrested along binary gender lines and placed
us in two police vans. And as the four of us males were sitting in the dark of
the windowless van on the way to jail, we sang out a rich rendition of Lean on
Me.

Next rock: Around that same time, at Quarterly Meeting, I heard this wild story
about someone who became a sponsor to help free an ICE detainee. She wound
up spontaneously flying to Texas, picking him up at a random bus station, and
driving with him back to Maine over four days. Hi Wendy! Next rock in the
river, here it is: Wendy told us that one of the greatest needs to support
immigrants in detention was more sponsors. People like her who could use
their privilege as (primarily) white citizens of stable income to vouch for those
in detention. With the help of the Multifaith Group, I put together a list of 15
volunteers, and my wife and I each sponsored a detainee.

Next rock: I read a story in the Press Herald, about the inhumane conditions at
an ICE facility in Burlington, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. Lack of
basic hygiene supplies, detainees sleeping on floors for a week or two at a time,
in an office park building never meant to hold people overnight. Somebody
should be doing something about this, I thought once again, quickly followed by
phone calls to Massachusetts faith leaders, who passed me along lovingly from
one person to the next, until I eventually found a group that had conducted
two civil disobedience actions outside the Burlington facility. They were looking
to do a third action, but had run out of steam. I helped to bring together about
50 Mainers and Massachusettsans, many of them Quakers, for the third round
of civil disobedience action outside the ICE facility, on a Tuesday in April.

I found my red line, friends. For better or for worse, it wasn’t dismantling
federal agencies. Maybe it should have been, but it wasn’t pardoning violent
criminals. Or trashing the planet. It wasn’t even messing with me and my
rights. No, my red line, like so many others in Los Angeles, Chicago,
Minneapolis, and then Maine, was when they came for my neighbors.
And yes, I found my courage, I finally met the moment, and I’m proud of what
I’ve done over the past few months, along with so many other Quakers and
people of faith. But here’s the hard part I have to share with you this morning:
Much of the time I still want to turn away. Suffering and injustice continues.
It’s not quite as obvious as it was in January, during the surge. But arrests of
our neighbors continue, in Maine and elsewhere. And I’m still tempted to turn
away, every single day. Some days, I do, and that’s ok. We can’t show up at
every moment, we all deserve moments of rest and checking out.

But I worry that I’ll go back to my life of relative comfort, back to turning away,
back to covering up my ears. And I ask for your help, friends. Because that
rock in the river that I’m standing on? We’re actually standing on it together,
all of us. And it’s rough out here. We’re going to lose our balance from time to
time, and we’re going to need to lean on each other if we’re going to find and
leap to the next rock. I ask you to listen with me, to not turn away, to not cover
your ears. I ask you to hold me to account. I ask you to keep inspiring me with
your actions.

Let me paint one last scene for you: Exactly one week after our civil
disobedience action in April at the Burlington, Mass ICE facility, I was
unexpectedly right back at the same spot. This time to pick up Pastor Rufino
as he was being released by ICE after two weeks in jail. I had met the Pastor in
January, because the Angolan man assigned to me as a sponsor was a
congregant in the pastor’s church. Now Pastor Rufino was being freed on bond,
and I was waiting in the parking lot as ICE released people one-by-one through
the front door. While waiting, I met Katie Holicky, an Episcopal Priest at St.
Paul’s up the road in Brunswick. Katie was waiting for another Maine abductee
to be released, to take her home. As we waited, a woman in a hijab hesitantly
emerged from the building. Katie walked up to greet her. As Katie enfolded the
newly freed woman in her arms, the woman in the hijab let out the deepest sob
I have ever heard from an adult human being. Her body heaved and her head
rested on Katie’s shoulder, as she continued a primal wail. It was a cry of
deepest lamentation, a raw expression of personal suffering, tinged with relief
at being freed, and also echoing sorrow writ large in the world.

With this scene in mind, I close with the closing lyrics from the song I heard at
that burlesque show that night in early December:

Can you hear them crying?
Will you still be silent?
Can we hear them crying? Will we still be silent?….

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, June 7, 2026

Alicia McBride is Senior Director for Quaker Leadership at the Friends Committee for National Legislation, and a member of Sandy Springs Friends Meeting

Last weekend I was in Richmond, Indiana at the memorial service for Mary Garman. Mary was my “bonus mom” (a phrase I use to avoid the negative associations of “mother-in-law”). She was also a mentor, teacher, and cheerleader in my journey to recognize my work as a form of ministry.

Among the stories told at her memorial, one kept returning to me as I prepared this message about integrity. For a period of time, before the Supreme Court upheld marriage equality, Mary stopped officiating weddings.

This was a matter of personal integrity. Some people had access to the legal and social protections of marriage, while others didn’t. So, for a time, she stopped participating in that system.

—-

Integrity is one of those concepts that comes up a lot among Quakers. Often we refer to it as one of our testimonies.

This morning I want to consider this testimony more deeply –what it means to have integrity as a Friend, and what integrity means for our Quaker meetings, organizations, and institutions.

—-

I want to begin by offering a metaphor, to clarify what I mean by integrity.

This metaphor draws on a model developed by Dr. Darya Funches, which I first encountered in a workshop led by Niyonu Spann.

Imagine a water lily. There’s a flower floating on the surface of the pond, the thing you can see most easily. Depending on how clear the pond is, you might be able to see the stem that holds up the flower. And down at the bottom of the pond, there are roots – growing in the sediment, and supporting both the stem and the flower.

Here comes the metaphor.

The flower is what others can see. It’s what we do, the actions we take, how we show up in the world.

The stem is what we say about who we are: our mission statements and “about us” pages.

Roots: Core assumptions, core beliefs, what we are grounded in.

All three of these parts of the water lily need to be aligned for the flower to bloom. The roots support the stem, which holds up and nourishes the flower.  Out of our secure grounding, our words and actions align to testify to our beliefs.

When all these pieces fit together, we have integrity.

—-

Let’s talk about the roots.

In the original model, the roots are described as values, core beliefs, or our worldview. Those are indeed things that people can root themselves in.

But, as Friends, our roots are deeper and wilder. We are rooted in what we experience when we center down and listen to God.

In the Pendle Hill pamphlet, The Testimony of Integrity in the Religious Society of Friends, Wilmer Cooper draws a clear distinction between values and testimony. He writes, “Values are projected ideals or goals which are rationally determined, whereas Quaker testimonies are derived from religious faith and experience fashioned out of a life of prayer, devotion, and worship, joined with spiritual discernment and commitment.”

More succinctly, in his consideration of Quaker testimonies, Paul Buckley writes, “Values are things we decide on. Testimonies are products of the Inward Light.”

We have integrity when our words and actions are rooted in that experience of the Inward Light and when we are faithful to it. We testify, in all sorts of ways, when we have integrity.

To come back to Mary Garman – what we can see is her action, not to perform marriages. In declining requests, she shared her discomfort with a system that discriminated against same-gender couples. What was going on in the roots – I never had the chance to talk to her about it. Knowing Mary, God (or “Gahd” as she would say in her Chicago accent) was involved somehow.

In the book of Matthew, chapter 7, Jesus uses architectural rather than botanical language, but he’s getting at a similar idea of the importance of action stemming from God’s teachings.  He compares a listener who acts on his words to a wise man who builds his house on a rock. Despite rain and wind, the house stays up because its foundation is strong. Those who hear Jesus’s teaching and do not act, on the other hand, are like a foolish man who builds on sand. When those same storms come, the house falls down – losing its structural integrity. (7:24-27)

—-

Integrity is what happens when we hear God’s word and put it into practice – thought, word, deed. The house holds up. The flower blooms.

—-

Simple, right?

Reminds me of one of my favorite descriptions of Quaker worship –Michael Birkel, in his book Silence and Witness: “[Quaker worship] is like flying a jet; you take off, you go somewhere, you land; you quiet yourself, you encounter God, you refresh and perhaps redirect your life.”

This is what we aspire to as Friends- to be directed by that inward teacher, to live a life consistent with the promptings of that still small voice.

—-

This is not a solo project.

We need all the help we can get from those around us to discern, to seek clearness, and to test what right action, with integrity to the prompting of the Inner Light, means. As Paul Buckley notes, “the voice of the inward light may be infallible, but our ears are not.”

There is also an important role to recognize that infallibility with humility and grace, for ourselves and others. We are human, we are impatient, we make mistakes. We might think we know where we’re going, where God is directing us to go, but sometimes – often – we might get off track.

When my son Howard was small, his solution to every challenge was to run head first at it. Sometimes that was a literal solution (he once knocked Mary, his beloved Granna, over while trying to give her a hug); sometimes he just needed to have an answer immediately and would not let something go until he did. This was often not the best way to solve problems.

Quakers call this tendency “outrunning our guide” – when our words and actions get ahead of God’s direction. Maybe this looks like our water lily flower starting to drift away from its roots. We need to be able to notice that drift, accept that it’s happening, and come back to the center. As St. Benedict wrote in his rule, “Always, we begin again.”

—

When I talked about Mary’s actions around marriage, I had to speculate about the roots. It might be obvious, but we don’t know what’s happening under the ground, literally or spiritually.

In our own lives we may feel the alignment that signifies right action– that sense of spiritual snapping into place. We don’t always have that same insight for other people.

There’s a challenge in that but also a beauty. Each of us shares our encounter with the divine refracted through the lens of our own identity, experience, and unique perspective. Our roots grow in the same soil, but our blossoms are different. It’s like the bush in Hawaii a coworker told me about, which produces many colors of flowers, all from the same plant.

When we come together and share how we experience the divine, seek clearness together on how we are led, our perspective widens. We encounter God in new ways. Our hearing sharpens.

Yet because we can’t see what’s happening underground, there can be a tendency to focus on what we can see – the flower, the fruits of our actions. We can mistake what we do with what it means to be a Friend, and to focus on the purity of our actions at the expense of a focus on the faithfulness of our leadings.

This is not just a modern issue. I know that my Quaker meeting wrote people out of the community for fighting in the Civil War, or for marrying outside of the Quaker faith. (For a fictional take, the novel Flowers from the Storm, by Laura Kinsale, is, among other things, a fascinating story about God and human love at one of these high-judgement times in Quaker history.)

Today, someone might talk about how they’re a “bad Quaker” because they don’t compost, or because they order from Amazon, or because they avoid talking to the annoying person next door, or because they pay taxes even knowing that money supports U.S. war and imperialism.

And maybe that is true – maybe this person has a leading against these things and is not acting faithfully. Maybe they are not seeking to practice integrity and bring their words and actions into alignment with what they hear from God.

Or, maybe, they are trying. They are doing their best with what they have, in the situation they find themself in. They are listening with their fallible ears, and discerning how they are led to live a life that testifies to their particular divine calling. And maybe that call is more than a set of rules that we expect people to follow to be a “good Quaker.”

One more quote from Paul Buckley’s reflection on the testimonies:  “Ultimately there is only one testimony, to faithfully follow the word of Spirit breathed within our hearts. What may be named as separate testimonies are merely different flowerings from the same root.”  We testify to our integrity, ultimately, in the ways our lives testify to the world.

—

So far I’ve been talking about personal integrity and how each of us might demonstrate our experience of the Divine. And I’ve noted that those personal leadings happen in community. Now I want to come back to the idea of integrity – not just in community, but as community.

Another example, from FCNL:

Aftermath of 9/11, foundations were concerned that they would be accused of financing terrorism. They began requiring grant recipients to certify that their board members were not part of a terrorist organization. FCNL’s Executive Committee discerned that FCNL would not comply, even if it meant losing foundation support. Instead, they decided they would send a letter along with their grant requests, explaining why they were not complying as a matter of conscience.

As with Mary’s decision not to perform weddings, here we can notice the layers of action, explanation, and leading. We can also imagine the judgement from someone who, on the one hand, wonders why FCNL is engaging with this compromised system in the first place; or on the other, is jeopardizing money that could do good work.

As with personal integrity, corporate integrity requires cultivating our spiritual roots. We need to consider: Where – in our meetings, organizations, schools – are the spaces where foundational, deep listening and worship happen? How are we building relationships, trust, and common understandings? How do we help people distinguish personal opinions from the pull of the divine in discerning that next right step?

Once we know how we are led, collectively, we also need to have the courage to say it, and to act from that knowledge – in an environment that may be less than ideal.

            —

Matthew 10:16 Jesus sends out his disciples into the world “like sheep among wolves.” “Therefore,” he tells them, “be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”

This is our work as Friends too. To understand the world, to interact with it, but not to be co-opted by it. It’s part of why I became a Friends – to expand my faith beyond what happened in one hour, in one building, one day of the week.

In some ways, Jesus is describing an impossibility. Snakes are predators. Doves are prey. How are we meant to be both?

That is the challenge of being a Quaker in the world – and, even more so, the challenge of being a Quaker organization trying to function in a complex web of laws, norms, expectations, and conventional wisdom. Our meetings own property, pay taxes, hire employees. Our schools face financial pressures and receive endless advice on how to “compete.” Our organizations, like FCNL, interact with and work within political systems that are often unjust. The world is a messy place to be. 

It can be easy to be swayed by the assumptions and norms around us, to feel we have to just go along. To be shrewd, but not innocent. How do we navigate without becoming unmoored from our roots, having them migrate from rock to sand? How do we keep alignment and witness to God’s message with integrity?

Our organizations and institutions need the touchstones of worship, discernment, and spiritual grounding to be able to recognize when conventional wisdom or cultural norms might diverge from the roots of God’s message to that community.

Sometimes, the organization might go along with the norms. Having influence on the world means we can’t opt out entirely, or die on every hill. But it’s important that those choices too are discerned, that we don’t just fall into a direction. All our choices speak  about who we are and how we are aligned with the promptings of the Spirit. Every time we do this challenging work, of acting from a grounded place, of grappling together to discern the next faithful step we can take with integrity, we build our spiritual capacity to do it again.

In her book Against Purity, Living Ethically in Compromised Times, the anthropologist and philosopher Alexis Shotwell asks us to consider how, “under conditions of oppression and exploitation, [we might] enact practices of freedom that can shape worlds we currently cannot imagine.”

When we faithfully listen to and follow the promptings of Spirit with integrity, we can be part of shaping that world.

My wish for you is that your roots grow deep and your actions shine brightly.

Read at DMM business meeting, May 17, 2026

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, May 17, 2026

Ellen and I were in Florence, Italy on Easter Sunday, and we saw an unusual celebration.  A wooden tower on a cart was pulled by white oxen into the square in front of the cathedral.  Thousands of people crowded the adjacent streets the allowed a view of the square.  In the middle of their Easter mass, inside the cathedral, the archbishop lit a fuse on a metal dove mounted on a wire.  The metal dove flew down the cathedral nave, out the front door, and lit another fuse on the tower.  The dove then flew on, back into the cathedral to where it started.  What followed were fireworks on the wooden tower, and they erupted in sequence over the next twenty minutes: rockets and explosions and catherine wheels and fountains and more.  It was an unusual feast for the eyes and the ears and the nose.  The Florentines have been doing this every Easter for over 500 years.  Once a year on Easter, the Scoppio del Carro, the exploding cart. 

Is this extravaganza of sight and sound and smell a spiritual event?  Perhaps for some.  A tourist experience?  Probably for many others.  It has stayed on my mind because it led me to wondering what it takes to help people have a spiritual life. 

Many people I know don’t have spiritual lives.  They don’t consider themselves as ‘being religious’ or ‘being spiritual.’  They don’t belong to a church; they don’t go to church.  If they think about those of us who do, I imagine they think of us as decent enough folk but perhaps a little silly or foolish.  Foolish to believe such things, whatever it is that we believe.  I’m not disparaging such folks who don’t have spiritual lives.  I’m simply observing that they don’t see a way into the spiritual realm.

And what is it that we believe, those who us who do have spiritual lives – or lives with a spiritual dimension.  I’m not sure I can say, quite varied things, I’m sure, but I can’t really say even about myself. 

Still, I think we believe this, in common.  We believe there is something deeper, something beyond, something very important.  What we can see, touch, taste, feel, smell:  let’s call that the ‘ordinary‘ world.  Or the ‘sensible’ world.  Is it the ‘real’ world?  A lot of those who don’t have spiritual lives think so, I think.  But those who do have spiritual lives think there is something quite real, maybe more real, beyond what we can see, touch, taste, feel, or smell.  There’s something even more real that is deeper, that is beyond or beneath or above this ordinary world. 

Is this making sense to you? 

So I ask myself, is there a door to that deeper reality?  A portal?  Let’s call it that:  a portal that we may not see until one day we do.  And the more we make use of it, the more confidant we become that the portal is there – and there for everyone. 

Many people live in a world where there is no such door, or where there appears to be no door.  Perhaps we have to provide it – not just for ourselves but also or especially for them.  What might that portal to the spiritual realm look like?

Earlier in our spring trip to Europe — and I hope you’ll forgive me if I talk a little more about how we spent our spring vacation — we spent a day in Reims, in the north of France, to visit the cathedral there. It was once the site of coronation for all French kings.  The current cathedral was largely built in the 13^th century, so it is over 800 years old.  It is one of the pinnacle accomplishments of high gothic architectural style. 

That cathedral has arched and vaulted ceilings; it has towers, and flying buttresses on the sides.  All these features allow considerable height.  The cathedral interior is over 125 feet high floor to ceiling, and the towers and spire are more than twice that height.  The cathedral soars above every other building in the city.  It can be seen for miles from every direction across the surrounding fields.  The exterior view is awe inspiring.  The interior height draws you into a different reality.  It was intended to be a portal to a spiritual realm, completely different from everything else in everyday life.  It does this by providing an experience of heightened sensory experiences of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. On this basis you can see the Scoppio del Carro as a dynamic add-on on sight, sound and smell in motion that adds to the heightened sensory experience.

There are other features of this cathedral, and all the other high gothic cathedrals built in the late middle ages that give you sensory experiences that transport you.  At one time, the floor was a labyrinth to walk in prayer.  The towers contain bells that weigh over 10 tons.  There are gorgeous stained glass windows.  There are hundreds of carved statues on the façade and on the sides.  Inside there are relics of saints and candles.  At religious services, likely incense will be burned.  The spiritual realm may be beyond our five senses, a different reality, but this portal is constructed to draw you towards a different reality.  In sight and sound and smell, even in feel, the cathedral seeks to carry you to a different reality, a spiritual reality, one that lifts your eyes and your hands and your heart and your mind to God. 

On our travels in March and April, we saw other versions of this same high gothic setting:  in Paris, at Notre Dame (now completely restored after a terrible fire); in churches in smaller cities and towns in France and Germany and Switzerland; and in soaring cathedrals and basilicas in Italy in Milan, and of course in Florence where we saw the Scoppio del Carro, the explosion of the cart in front of the door to the cathedral. 

The cathedral is not the whole of the portal.  All the delight for the senses that comes with high gothic cathedrals provides a setting for a religious ceremony, the Mass.  The Mass is a recreation of Jesus’s Last Supper with his disciples.  That celebration of the Mass – the Eucharist – is intended to be the essential part of the portal to the life spiritual.  Those who consider themselves Roman Catholics have been celebrating the Mass, providing that portal together, for two thousand years – since the decades after the crucifixion. 

As Friends, as Quakers, we don’t use that kind of portal.  Quite explicitly, even defiantly not.  What you see and hear and smell and touch here in this Meetinghouse, in any Quaker Meetinghouse, is something quite different.  There are no vaulted ceilings, no soaring heights, no spires, no stained glass, no sculptures, no pictures, no relics, no incense.  And of course there is no ritual – no communion, no saying the same words week after week.  Our portal depends on minimizing sensory experience of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. 

We do have a portal, I think, but it’s a quite different one.  Our portal is, in appearance to the five senses, the complete antithesis of the portal of a high gothic cathedral and the Mass.   Simple surroundings, no sensory distractions, a gathering in silence.  Here at Durham Friends, we do allow for some hymn singing and a prepared message.  But on the whole, we don’t provide an experience that is larger or richer or more ornate than everyday life; we provide an experience that is quieter, emptier.  It is meant to be a very different kind of portal to the life spiritual.  Instead of going higher, we provide a portal that goes within. 

The creation of this different portal, this turn away from the high gothic cathedral, started with Martin Luther and the Reformation.  Quickly, all over Europe, people sought something more authentic, more personal – more intense because more simple.  They created alternative spiritual bodies  — today we call them denominations.  No group carried that simplification farther than Quakers. 

Does our portal work better?  For some?  If so, for whom?  That’s what I’ve found myself thinking about.  I know it works better for me.  What about those others who do not see the door?

We should remember that the Reformation was proceeded and, I think, propelled forward by the invention of the printing press.  On our trip, we visited the site of that invention in Mainz in Germany.  In a space of a few years, the Bible became available to own and to read to thousands and then tens of thousands and then millions more people.  Having the Bible to read was itself a different kind of portal. 

The high gothic cathedral provided a setting for telling the gospel story visually, in paintings and sculptures that told the story.  With the printing press, ordinary people began to read the Bible for themselves.  They didn’t need those paintings and sculptures – and maybe those paintings and sculptures undermined the Bible.  For some Reformation protestants, the Bible became the one true portal, the one and only. 

But remember, not for Quakers.  From the beginning, Quakers revered the Bible but viewed the Bible as only a “secondary” rule, one subordinate to the inward, immediate revelation of the Holy Spirit — the “Inner Light”.  As Robert Barclay put it:  we esteem Scripture as a “true and faithful testimony” of the Spirit, but insist that the Spirit—not the Bible—is the “primary ground of all Truth”.  Listening to the Inward Teacher became our portal. 

This is our portal to the life spiritual:  seeking the Holy Spirit (by whatever name) in simplicity and stillness and silence. 

It seems to work for us, few though we may be in number.  But does it work for the many?  Does it work for the many, and does it work for those without a spiritual life? Does it work in an era of graphic novels?  Of logos and brands? In an era of reality TV?  In an age of cell phones? In a time of social media and Artificial Intelligence?  Those are the questions I found myself thinking about. 

How do we provide – how do we find – a portal to the deeper spiritual reality.  I hope you’ll ask, regularly, is this a door to a deeper spiritual reality?  And I hope you find one.

Also posted on Riverview Friend

Message given on Mother’s Day, May 10, 2026, at Durham Friends Meeting. On June 16, 2025, Shelley Randall also brought a Father’s Day message to Durham Friends.

Welcome and Happy Mother’s Day!

And its complicated! Mothers and daughters are complicated, mothers and sons are complicated, mothers and children are complicated period. And then as luck would have it sometimes the children become the mothers as their mothers age or get sick or become unavailable. How complicated is that?

Sometimes the children parent the mothers throughout their childhood, sometimes the mothers never let go of trying to parent their children as if they never mature – and maybe they don’t.

And sometimes men mother their children.

I am not a mother in the traditional sense, I have not carried a child to term or given birth nor raised children under my roof. And I have the utmost respect for those that do take on this endeavor. Especially in these times of discord and uncertainty.

I can only imagine the worry, the frustration and resentment, the knee jerk call to defend that mothers experience each and every day, alongside the heartfelt pride, love and joy that comes with raising a child.

But I am a mother nevertheless, in the broadest of terms. I have nurtured others in a variety of situations professionally and personally, as a friend, as a substance abuse counselor. As a Guardian Ad Litem for children, a lawyer for parents and children involved in the child protection system. I have witnessed countless women being told they are unfit to raise the children they birthed. And I have seen children that were removed from their mothers return once they are 18 despite the circumstances being unchanged: substance abuse, violence and mental illness. The bond is strong and most often unresolved.  

We are, afterall, flawed human beings. That is all we are and ever will be. Some of us strive towards perfection; some of us don’t give a damn. And some of us toggle back and forth between the two on any given day.

My mother decided to manage her four children from the collective view of her generation with regard to mothering. Making sure we had the right attire, that we went to the right school, played the right sports and knew the right people. She wanted us to succeed in her world. So that is what she gave us and asked of us.

But what I really craved was her attention to who I was and not what she wanted me to be, I craved her acceptance. I wanted her to be a mother that could plumb the depths of emotions, dig deep into the meaning of life. She wanted to skate on the surface and have fun, why couldn’t I, I’m sure she wondered.

My mother was not perfect in my eyes and I was not a perfect daughter to her but we grew to respect one other once we let go of our expectations that we carried – You know – She should be more like me!

And I certainly was a thorn in her side. You see I didn’t buy into her world view. And in fact I disdained it, not only in my teens but into my twenties until I could make my own decisions about what path I needed to walk. Once I was able to do that my disdain slowly fell away but the damage was done. Our relationship had become grounded in mistrust of each other and each other’s world view. 

We were at an impasse. And this impasse was unacceptable to me, I needed my mother.

So I did what I could to spend time with her and my stepfather on their terms without compromising my values. I’d visit them in the winter time on Martha’s Vineyard when there were no parties to attend, no one to impress. And I curbed my curiosity about her inner workings; how she felt about things. For her part, she did not judge my quiet and notably unsocial life, my lack of husband and children.

We took walks together peaking through windows of empty summer homes and entering newly constructed houses commenting on design and interior decorating. She fed me serving lovely meals in front of the fire.

Then my mother started to call me in the mornings when the furnace in their 18^th century salt box failed and the temperature was 50 degrees. I listened and watched giving her the space to come to her own conclusions.

She made some decisions privately, without complaint, without discussion.

And I waited.

She decided she and my stepfather would move to an assisted living facility outside of Boston, near where she grew up.

My stepfather did not do well there – essentially he went to bed and got up only to accompany her to dinner so that she could dress and wave and nod at the other dressed and nodding residents.

He died about a year after they landed there. And my mother took up with another resident who could accompany her to dinner.

I waited and figured out how to visit just her and not go to dinner with the new beau.

The most precious memories I have of my mother and me are of sitting together on her loveseat in front of the t.v. watching British mysteries, shoulder to shoulder, holding hands in her apartment when she was in her nineties.

Decades of effort to bridge a seemingly unbridgeable divide yielded simple expressions of love that I had craved. And I am at peace because of it. As she was, her last words to me the evening she died at the age of 95 were “I love you Shelley”. And off she went – after I had left, privately as she always did everything.

And now Motherhood is ever more complicated as we watch unfold sons and daughters that make choices that did not seem possible a generation ago. It seems like more and more of our children are experiencing a fundamental conflict between their soul and their bodies that causes them despair. Girls are telling their parents that they are in the wrong body, they need to be in a boy’s body and vice versa. How did this come about – we want answers around the origin of this “trend” we want data and statistics, potential influences that has caused this. We want someone or something to blame for this “anomaly”.  We shake our heads in incomprehension and misunderstanding. Yet how could we possibly understand what it would be like to have such a fundamental disconnect? This is all too much for us.

It was difficult for me to feel and then know from an early age that I did not fit in to my mother’s social construct and therefore I did not fit into my family – it was an impossibility – I was not that person. That understanding, that sense of disconnect from my biological family caused me a great deal of distress over decades – trying to fit in, trying not to fit in, trying to keep my mouth shut, not keeping my mouth shut and finally just staying away from my family altogether. And all the terms were cast about – it’s just a phase, she’ll come around -why can’t she just fit in!

So I can only imagine what it must be like to feel like you do not belong in your own body. The shock and horror and despair one must feel. And the panic. Who is going to love me? What will my mother think, say, do?

The mothering attributes raised up entail nurturing and taking care of and loving and we all hold those capabilities no matter our genders. And as such it is our job to nurture, take care of and love our children, all of them.  And keep them out of harm’s way. But what does that look like with a child that says to us, I’m in the wrong body? And putting that child in the appropriate body entails cutting things off that the child was born with, that they came out of the womb with? How do we manage that? With a blind eye? With dismissal? Its just a phase?  Or do we listen with our hearts and move along the unfamiliar path together with our children, listening to their heartfelt expressions of who they are and holding their hands.

I do not have any data or statistics – in fact I have only personal experience with a friend, and friends who are parents of trans kids. And I’ve watched from a distance at the courage and strength of love it takes to commit to a path that is integrous to the child’s soul but maybe far out of the norm of experience. I’ve watched with awe and the utmost respect at the expansiveness of heart this path requires, the nurturing of one’s child’s Spirit and the belief it takes in one’s child’s own heart and soul to walk this path.

And I’ve also seen the outcomes – my friend becoming softer as he settles into his true nature, no longer having to wear armor or move about burdened with a secret. No longer self-destructive or using drugs. I’ve watched the anguish of parents of trans kids turn to relief that they no longer have to worry about suicidality as they watch their children fully enter who they were meant to be, their children now feeling safe enough to express themselves truly, become productive members of the family and society. Knowing and feeling that they are loved and can love others honestly. This is what a mother yearns for her child.

And we are all mothers, we all have the ability to fall into our hearts to find the love and nurturing that was cast upon the one gender, women, throughout the ages. It is incumbent upon us all, now, women, men, mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts, to recognize the energy spent in our minds, the rational arguments, the “it didn’t used to be like this”, the science and economic rationales. We must enter into our hearts to find the love for ourselves and all of our flaws and thusly find the love for all others despite perhaps not understanding but learning to allow and accept. As we do that for others, we do that for ourselves. And we are richer for having found this expansiveness in our hearts and the possibility to reach out and put ourselves in another’s shoes, to learn about our own hearts and its capacities for encompassing others.

This is the path of love.

MAY WE ALL BE MOTHERS

May we all embody those attributes we find in the Sacred Mother

May we nourish and nurture ourselves and our human brothers and sisters in all their forms and bodies

May we care for our children and all children throughout the world

May we find interdependence and connection with all Beings

May we find our inner mothers to shower this world with love and the abundance of joy and satisfaction today and always.

May it be so. Blessed Be. Amen

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, May 3, 2026

It’s wonderful to be here with Durham Friends again. I wish we could be there in person. Thank you Leslie for the invite and for serving as elder for the whole body. Thank you Ken Jacobsen, my partner, for serving as my elder.

Wunee keesuq-Good Day.  Nutus8ees- I am called Gail Melix also known as Greenwater. I am a member of Sandwich Monthly Meeting on Cape Cod, and a member of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe in Patuxet, Ma, the land’s first name, also known as Plymouth. I have two faith communities, Indigenous and Quaker which share many of the same values. I find that they fit together well in beauty and in truth. 

I was flooded with ideas of messages to bring today. After worship with discernment I found myself deeply led to speak of Joy, and to do this by sharing some of my stories that express HOW I experience Joy. I’m finding that the presence of joy, peace, and kindness is needed everywhere I go.  Joy, peace and kindness is the presence that is needed now, paired with love. The despair that many of us are experiencing cries out for this Joy… to balance us into well- being.  Can we go about cheerfully sharing our joy with one another?

I climb trees, I decided I couldn’t surrender this childhood joy. One day, I was in the arms of a white pine: silent, holding completely still. A blue heron lit on a branch, two trees down, about a yard from me. I waited and watched wondering when she would notice me. She did. We locked eyes for a good two minutes, before she hopped up and off the branch with a six-foot wingspan and flew, maneuvered—I don’t know how—through that dense thicket of pine branches, and with such Grace. I wanted to shout: Yes. Yes. Teach me that. Teach me that form of grace! Sometimes our hearts are made to be full to bursting with longing.  I’m often suddenly surprised into joy when I’m in the natural world and I find that my faith accompanies me.

I have my favorite trees and anticipate the sighting of them. When I place my hands on a tree I feel an exchange of energy: a back and forth greeting and a response of shared delight. There is a sense that we are comforting one another. Even as a child, I had trouble keeping my hands off my favorite trees, and why should I? Is it a surprise that we should have favorite trees, the same way that we are drawn to a closeness and fondness for certain aunts, uncles, and grandparents?

When I hold completely still and quiet, hidden in a tree, all life around me loses the tension that exists when I am visibly present. The birds and the two- and four-leggeds come back out into the sun and air, once again. I sometimes wonder if we become invisible when we are so still. I’ve had songbirds light on me as if I’m a limb on the tree. I do know that if I sit long enough in stillness day after day, there will come a time when I transform into a feeling of oneness with all life; my separateness disappears. I am a part of the pulse of life, just one being in the web, no more or less important than other life. No hierarchy. I am fortunate to have this traditional knowledge, received from my F/father, my ancestors, and from Nature’s teachings. It is reaffirmed by Creator every day. One day while looking up into the tops of several very tall white pines that the sun was streaming through, I became aware of how very small I am. I am not the center of the world. Giving up ego for the reward of greater potential becomes a gift. I was given to understand that the face of Creator can be seen everywhere in the beauty of creation, and the Joy this brings is given freely to us.

I acknowledge and honor the relationship that I have with water during my walk by squatting on the bank of the Santuit River and submerging both hands in the water long enough to leave my scent in the river. I anoint my forehead with river water from one hand and the nape of my neck with the other hand, so as to carry her scent. I am in the river, and the river is in me. We are one. After all, we are 50-75 % water, the average being  60 percent water. Of course we are related: kinfolk. Some days I am given to singing or humming to the river. A soft singsong that has words or not, maybe hummed, is pleasing to do and appreciated by the river. If the songs have words, they always express gratitude and may be the same words repeated over and over. Wampanoags have appointed water keepers, always women, whose service it is to sing to the water. If we bear witness to the beauty of Nature And witness to the ways she suffers, we might be led to discern what is ours to do.; perhaps to be the voice for those who have no voice. What we love we protect, but for the desire and commitment to do so.

Creator and Christ are in the Joy I feel when communing with Nature. Because of this deepening relationship I have a greater ability for peace, deep listening, reverence and joy. These are sacred experiences, where joy and healing are being co-created by God and humans. There’s a reawakening to wonder that has created a wider path to my heart, and thus, to love.

I love to tell the story of the buttercups and me. Worshipping outdoors in the grass one day my attention was drawn to a patch of buttercups I was sitting next to. I love that deep yellow shade and their cheerful faces. I decided to hold them in the Light from a place of gratitude…. Suddenly, during worship, I realized that the buttercups were holding me.

I come to the path with this question, where will I find delight and joy today?

And now I’m asking you, where will you find joy today and how ill you share it?

I’m reminded Jesus came to teach us how to find joy. He said, “Never stop walking this road of love…as you walk in my ways my love will remain in you. I am saying this so your hearts will be filled with the same joy I have.” John 15: 9-11. First Nations Version of the New Testament, an Indigenous Translation

This joy that permeates the natural world that we discover in Quaker worship also permeates our shared inner universe of love.

Thank you friends. I love worshipping with you.  Let’s move into this worship now.

Today’s message included excerpts from the article, The Delight of Being Alive, by Gail Melix, Friends Journal, February of 2025: https://www.friendsjournal.org/the-delight-of-being-alive/