On Sunday, June 25, 2023, worship at Durham Friends Meeting was unprogrammed, and following our regular worship there was a memorial service for Margret Wentworth. Both featured readings of Psalm 118, one of Margaret’s favorites.

Psalm 118 (KJV)

¹ Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
    his love endures forever.

² Let Israel say:
    “His love endures forever.”
³ Let the house of Aaron say:
    “His love endures forever.”
⁴ Let those who fear the Lord say:
    “His love endures forever.”

⁵ When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord;
    he brought me into a spacious place.
⁶ The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid.
    What can mere mortals do to me?
⁷ The Lord is with me; he is my helper.
    I look in triumph on my enemies.

⁸ It is better to take refuge in the Lord
    than to trust in humans.
⁹ It is better to take refuge in the Lord
    than to trust in princes.
¹⁰ All the nations surrounded me,
    but in the name of the Lord I cut them down.
¹¹ They surrounded me on every side,
    but in the name of the Lord I cut them down.
¹² They swarmed around me like bees,
    but they were consumed as quickly as burning thorns;
    in the name of the Lord I cut them down.
¹³ I was pushed back and about to fall,
    but the Lord helped me.
¹⁴ The Lord is my strength and my defense^[a];
    he has become my salvation.

¹⁵ Shouts of joy and victory
    resound in the tents of the righteous:
“The Lord’s right hand has done mighty things!
¹⁶     The Lord’s right hand is lifted high;
    the Lord’s right hand has done mighty things!”
¹⁷ I will not die but live,
    and will proclaim what the Lord has done.
¹⁸ The Lord has chastened me severely,
    but he has not given me over to death.
¹⁹ Open for me the gates of the righteous;
    I will enter and give thanks to the Lord.
²⁰ This is the gate of the Lord
    through which the righteous may enter.
²¹ I will give you thanks, for you answered me;
    you have become my salvation.

²² The stone the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
²³ the Lord has done this,
    and it is marvelous in our eyes.
²⁴ The Lord has done it this very day;
    let us rejoice today and be glad.

²⁵ Lord, save us!
    Lord, grant us success!

²⁶ Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
    From the house of the Lord we bless you.^[b]
27 The Lord is God,
    and he has made his light shine on us.
With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession
    up^[c] to the horns of the altar.

²⁸ You are my God, and I will praise you;
    you are my God, and I will exalt you.

²⁹ Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
    his love endures forever.

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, June 18, 2023

Today is Ellen and my 26^th wedding anniversary.  It’s a pretty important day in my life.  Most of you know Ellen; perhaps you can understand how very fortunate I feel to have her as my life partner.  Our very best project together has been being the parents of two wonderful boys – men now – who bring us great pride and joy. 

So another thing about today is that it’s Father’s Day.  Today I want to say a few things about fatherhood, which is pretty important to me — being a father myself twice over. 

The Bible might seem to be a place to start; it’s often a place we start when we think about important things.  But the Bible – at least in my reading – turns out to be an odd place to look for understanding fathers.  Think about the New Testament.  Joseph is a most unusual father because he had to adjust to the fact that his wife-to-be was pregnant even before he married her, and not by his doing.  He seems to have been a good father, but he pretty much disappears in the gospels after the nativity story.  Jesus isn’t a father in any human sense.  Nothing is said about the disciples being fathers.  The same with Paul.  And so forth: there’s just not much there about fathers.

There are more fathers mentioned in the Hebrew Testament, but not many positive exemplars.  Moses had a father named Amram.  But his wife, after hiding the baby for a few months, put him in a basket to float him downstream.  Amram didn’t play much of a role in Moses’s life growing up.  Abraham had a son – Isaac – quite late in life.  Then God commanded Abraham to sacrifice the boy, and Abraham was ready to do it until God stopped him at the last minute.

Samuel was the son of Elknah, born after Elknah’s wife, Hannah, had prayed for a child.  When that prayer was answered, she sent the young boy off to serve the priest at Shiloh.  So Elknah didn’t play much of a role as father.  David was the youngest of Jesse’s eight sons.  He became a shepherd until Samuel came for him and sent him on the road to serving in King Saul’s court. Eventually David became Saul’s successor as king.  I guess Jesse was a good father, but we don’t know much about that.

Get the picture?  There’s not much about what fathers do in raising their children in the Bible.  It isn’t a story about fathers who help mold their children and set them on the right path.  I don’t know quite what to make of that.  But I will say it’s one of the reasons I’m uncomfortable with people saying the Bible has a lot to teach us about marriage or the family.  Its focus is elsewhere. 

And there’s this: the Bible, or at least most translations, keep referring to God as “our Father,” confusing “fathers” with “God.”  The nature of “God” is a beyond-me topic for me, but I’m pretty clear that being a father isn’t being God-like.  I don’t think that’s a good way to think about it.  There are too many mistakes and too much impatience and worry in being a Dad to have it resemble God. 

So let me speak more personally – about my experience.  About being a father.

I’m a father of two wonderful sons, Tommy and Robbie.  I also had a wonderful father, and he had a father.  (The fathers going further back I only know about from family stories and obituaries and census records.) 

My father’s name was Frank, and his father’s name was Frank.  Frank (Senior) always called my dad, “Son.”  Invariably.  I don’t think I ever heard him call him anything else.  Neither Frank was ever given to expressing much emotion (they were men from New England, after all), so it took some years to realize that part of my grandfather calling my dad “Son” was an expression of how important it was that he had a son.  Being a father meant a lot to him, even if he didn’t seem to show that much in an outward way.  I now think it may have been the most important thing in his life. 

Well, “Son” (Frank Jr.) had a son – that’s me – and now I have two sons.  And the older one has two daughters.  So it goes on, and on, and on.  Today, on Father’s Day, I miss my own Dad more than I could ever tell you, and I miss my grandfather, too.  And today, especially, I get why it was a big deal for my grandfather to have a son — two sons, actually — how proud he was, and how many big expectations he had for his sons.  (I also miss Ellen’s dad, a very special man, and I know she does, too.)

Big expectations: I’ll come back to those. 

Time has passed; I’ve grown up and, well, grown old.  I called my mother’s father, at his request, simply Bob or Bobby. That was just who he was. He was delightful.  I called my father’s father (Frank, Sr.) “Dad’s Dad.”  It seemed perfectly straightforward, until I began to realize that my friends had various other names for their grandfathers, but none of them had a “Dad’s Dad.”  When I became a grandfather, my son Tommy asked me what I wanted to be called, and it was immediately clear as day: I wanted to be “Dad’s Dad.”  And so I am.  Once I had a Dad’s Dad; now I am Dad’s Dad.  If my granddaughters were here today, they might tell you I do a lot of “goofin’ around.”

It’s more than just the name or the title.  I’ve begun to look like my Dad’s Dad.  My walk looks like his, and so on.  I’ve stepped into the role, and there’s nothing more important to me than being a Dad and a Dad’s Dad. 

So what do Dads do? 

I once heard a child psychologist talk about being a father.  I love this pithy sentence from him:  “My job is to love my children unconditionally and to design consequences.”  The loving your children unconditionally is big and mysterious in some ways, but I think you get that part of his instruction.  “Designing consequences?”  I think he meant children need to learn that what we do has consequences, some good, some terrible, and in growing up we need to be aware of those consequences.  We don’t want our children to experience what happens if they get hit by a car so we tell them they shouldn’t play in the street and that there will be a consequence if they disregard that guidance. They might have to go to their room, or sit on the front steps for a while.  We design consequences, mild, instructive consequences that show them the way.

Being a father is about providing, about supporting, about teaching.  Sometimes it is about comforting your children when they are sick or sad, and sometimes it is about setting limits when you think children may cause harm to themselves or others. 

Being a father is also about tickling and about singing silly songs.  It’s about “goofin’ around.”  It’s about walking your child back to sleep in the middle of the night.  It’s about building Lego castles and cars, about special birthdays and birthday cakes, about helping your child ride a tricycle and then a bicycle and then (if you’re lucky) a unicycle and then watching him ride a very tall unicycle (that’s a giraffe) in big parades.  Or so it was for me.  It’s about helping with math homework and showing how to drive a stick shift car.  And then it’s about having him show me things. 

A very hard part of being a father is having expectations for your children.  Expectations.  In a word or two: it’s important to have expectations and it’s just as important to let them go. How do you know when it’s right to do each, having expectations and letting them go? That’s a toughie.  I realize how important it was to me that my dad had expectations for me: high expectations.  He wanted me to do well in school, and perhaps become a chemist like him.  I know that it was hard for my dad when I veered off in directions different from his expectations. 

We had some tough conflicts over his expectations and my choices.  I’ll spare you the drama;  we got through them, eventually.  And again, I want to say that I’m glad he had those expectations, and even gladder that he could let them go.  He let me make my own choices.  I still live within the framework of some of his expectations – those expectations I chose to accept.  I try to be someone he’d be proud of. 

Fatherhood: having expectations, presenting those expectations day-by-day, and then letting them go, or at least some of them.  That’s the deal, along with unconditional love. 

Maybe that’s what I find so strange about the dads in the Bible.  There’s nothing said about their expectations for their children.  Not Joseph for Jesus.  Not Amram for Moses.  Not Abraham for Isaac. Not Elknah for Samuel.  Not Jesse for David.  For Jesus, for Moses, for Isaac, for Samuel, for David what’s in the Bible is all about God’s expectations for them, and the importance of embracing those expectations. 

I listen for God’s expectations, too. That’s supremely important.  Most weeks that’s what we’re here talking about, God’s expectations for each of us and for all of us.   Still, I would have wanted Jesus and Moses and Isaac and Samuel and David to have earthly dads, too, who had expectations for their sons, high expectations —and then let them find their own way. 

Happy Father’s Day one and all. 

Also posted on River View Friend

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, May 21, 2023

I was first introduced to Quakerism as a student at Haverford College.  One way I received that first introduction was a quotation in ornate script (unusually ornate for Quakerism) that hung in the Common Room.  It was from a Commencement Address in 1883 by Isaac Sharpless, then the college president, in 1883.  It reads:

“I suggest that you preach truth and do righteousness as you have been taught, whereinsoever that teaching may commend itself to your consciences and your judgements. For your consciences and your judgments we have not sought to bind; and see you to it that no other institution, no political party, no social circle, no religious organizations, no pet ambitions put such chains on you as would tempt you to sacrifice one iota of the moral freedom of your consciences or the intellectual freedom of your judgements.”

I’m not the only Haverfordian who was struck by those words.  I know several who carry it around in their wallets, or have copies of that inscription in their homes. 

I’m no longer sure that this Isaac Sharpless quotation is a good introduction to Quakerism.  For me, it speaks too much of individualism, of conscience and freedom, and not enough of worship or God’s will, or of community for that matter. 

Nevertheless, that injunction to “preach truth and do righteousness” laid a heavy stamp on me and it still speaks to me.  It’s an active exhortation.  These are positive things to do, things to do actively, not things to avoid, not things to stay silent upon.  “Preach truth and do righteousness.” It’s an urging to be wholly and fully yourself, to stand for what you believe, and to enact those beliefs in the world in every way that you can.  “Preach truth and do righteousness,” or, as another Quaker once put it, “Let your life speak.”

That Sharpless quotation mostly warns against the constraints that others may place on our inclination to say or do the right thing – political parties, say, or religious organizations.  But over the years I’ve been more struck by the constraints we place on ourselves.  The ways we hold ourselves back – hold ourselves back from doing the right thing.  We do nothing.  We stay silent and seated rather than “preach truth and do righteousness.”  We pay attention to what’s ‘in our interest’ or what’s ‘comfortable’ for us.  Mostly what holds us back is loving ourselves more than loving our neighbors. 

Today, I see a lot of people standing around doing nothing.  Bad things happen, and lots of people step backwards or they sit down.  In current parlance, they ‘ghost.’  “It’s not mine to do anything about,” they seem to be saying.  “Maybe this will soon blow over.”  “I’m not getting involved.”  “I don’t think I want to get drawn into this.”  Maybe we roll our eyes or look away when lies are told.  Down that road, what’s the truth of things becomes murky, and we all grow cynical in the belief that everyone cuts corners, and no one does anything about it. 

The currently popular list of Quaker testimonies follows a SPICES mnemonic: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, stewardship.  It’s “Integrity” I want to lift up today, and there it is in the middle of the SPICES list. 

That list makes it one of six, but Wilmer Cooper wrote a Pendle Hill pamphlet in which he said “’integrity’ is the essential Quaker testimony and undergirds all other testimonies of Friends.”  (PH 296, p 6).  (Wilmer was the founding Dean of the Earlham School of Religion and someone who, along with his wife Emily, Ellen and I had the privilege to know.)  I think he’s right; integrity is the essential Quaker testimony.

He opens the Pendle Hill pamphlet by telling a story about Elfrida Vipont Foulds, a distinguished British Quaker and historian, going to the village of Fenney Drayton, where George Fox had grown up, to see if she could better understand what shaped him.  She sat in the church where he worshipped as a child – an Anglican Church of course.  And she forms a picture of men and women coming week after week on Sunday, religiously.  And then she says “But the self-same people would go from the church the following week cheating their neighbors, cheating in the marketplace, they would get drunk in the ale houses; husbands would beat their wives and parents would cuff their children.  Next Sunday they would go back to the village church….”.  (p 4).  The taproot for Fox, she concluded, is that “Fox felt the need for integrity in daily life.” 

This makes sense.  For me, integrity is the essential Quaker testimony. 

The word integrity evolved from the Latin adjective integer, meaning whole or complete. The word has come to mean “an undivided or unbroken completeness.”  And with regard to our behavior, it has come to mean “soundness of moral principle and character; entire uprightness or fidelity, especially in regard to truth and fair dealing”.

Here are a few things it asks of us. 

Integrity means speaking the truth of course. It asks for honesty through and through.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us:

³⁷ But let ^[a]your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37). 

Early Friends –and Friends today – refuse to swear oaths, because to swear an oath before making a statement implies that this time I’m telling the truth, but at other times, maybe not. 

It is not just being truthful in what you do say, but also in having the courage to speak up, and to tell the whole truth that you know, even when that’s painful.  Just knowing the truth isn’t good enough; you have to tell others.  You have to make that an unwavering practice and habit.  Speak the truth at all times, but also:  step forward to be of assistance.  Don’t ‘leave it to others.’ If you won’t speak up, who will? 

Integrity means standing up as well as speaking up – standing up for others.  It means being actively engaged when others are wronged.  I’m sure you can all think of instances of wrongdoing that we later learn others knew about and yet stayed silent.  That’s not integrity.  Speaking up about wrongdoing has become rare enough that we’ve coined a word to describe those who do: “whistleblower.”  But often we realize many people knew about the wrongdoing, and only one or two spoke up – and maybe not immediately.  That’s not integrity.  When someone ‘blows the whistle,’ ask yourself who hasn’t said a word.  We rarely need whistleblowers if the rest of us will speak up in the first place.

Integrity means treating everyone the same, not treating some more favorably because they have power or can provide benefits to you.  Early Friends were known for having just one price for all customers.  Integrity today means caring for everyone, not just ourselves or our allies or our friends. 

Integrity means caring for others as well as yourself.  It means treating others with ‘unreserved respect’ – as if they, too, were hosts for a Divine presence within.  It means loving your neighbors as much as yourself.  Loving our neighbors means not just comforting them in private but stepping forward in public for them on their behalf.  It means standing up for others – all others.

In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is a man who is all about his business – in every way, every hour of every day.  He thinks Christmas is a humbug; he thinks charity is absurd.  But by the end he is a man transformed.  He is a joyful man celebrating Christmas, and also now a man of integrity.  Dickens has Scrooge say about “his business” now that he is a reformed man:”

“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!”  Scrooge goes from being a man who stays put in his counting house to someone who steps forward to help others.  

Integrity asks that we be trustworthy:  good to our word, consistent, reliable, always, in private and in public, indoors and out.  When I was a Boy Scout, we would regularly recite the Scout Law:  “A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.”  It’s a list of twelve, but it begins with “trustworthy,” reminding us to live by the other eleven always and consistently.  It gives the others strength. 

Speaking up, standing up, treating everyone with respect, with fairness, with caring;  being trustworthy; that’s what integrity asks of us. It’s a lot.  Sometimes, maybe often, it means taking steps away from comfort. 

We speak of “faithfulness” as central to our relationship to God.  In a parallel way, “integrity” is central in our relationships with other people.  Both mean doing what we should be doing, doing it actively, doing it wholeheartedly, with no holding back. 

What does integrity ask of us?  Everything.  To have integrity means ‘being whole,’ and that means embracing the whole of things, not just your corner of things.  It means to live a life in which we are fully present – whole, wholly yourself, wholly present.  It means living as if you lived in the new kingdom.  When Fox says (and this is a cornerstone of the peace testimony) “I told them I lived in the virtue of that life and power that taketh away the occasion for war,” he means he went the whole way in his obedience to God, not part way.  He inhabited the new kingdom with his whole self as if he were a tent pole. 

To have integrity means being part of the backbone of how all things should be.  Integrity is the essential Quaker testimony because it gives voice and strength to all the others. It means standing up for and supporting the way all things should be.  The other testimonies – simplicity, peace, community, equality, stewardship – mean very little without integrity to give them backbone.

Or, as Isaac Sharpless instructed: “preach truth and do righteousness.”

+++

Also posted on River View Friend

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, May 14, 2023

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.  (Matthew 6:34)

This appears at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, and is something I try to remember and practice.  What stops me?  Often, it is fear.

Don’t worry.

Be not afraid.

Fear not, for I am always with you.  We hear this again and again from G!D and the angels.

So do not fear, for I am with you;

    do not be dismayed, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you and help you;

    I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.   (Isaiah 41:10)

The celebration of Pentecost (50 days after Passover) in the Jewish tradition is the bringing of the first fruits from the winter harvest to G!d in the temple. They are offered in commemoration of the most significant gift G!d made to G!d’s people, the Torah, the laws and commandments that stated how people are to live in relationship with G!d and each other.  We know them as the Ten Commandments.  Love G!d, love your neighbor, love yourself.

After Jesus’ death and return, he left his followers for the final time promising that he would send the Comforter to them, the Spirit of Truth who comes from the Father.  Com meaning with, forte, meaning strength.  Consolation, yes, but also strength. 

When that Spirit arrived, the followers were filled with power, divine power, and went out into the packed streets of Jerusalem, full of celebrants of the festival, and spoke, preached, prophesied and testified to all they had learned and knew to be true in the tongues of every person present, spoke to each of them in their own language, their mother tongue.  And we are told that people were amazed and many believed.

For us as Friends, it could be said that our mother tongue is in our sacred silence, our expectant waiting, our seeking oneness with that same divine power that descended upon the original followers and continues to be available to each one of us, as it was to Fox and Fell, Woolman and Mott, Jones and Kelly, and is available and present whenever we gather, seeking unity with each other and divine will.

The deeper unity we seek and work for is described by Julian of Norwich when she writes, “The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is  truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person.”

Or, we believe, from all of Creation.  So, let us put aside the fear that separates us from each other and the Creator, and join together in waiting upon that Spirit.  Taking each day as it comes as the gift it is meant to be.