Shared as a report to New England Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions, 2024.
Testimony for changing times, from our movement’s midwife Margaret Fell, in the first generation of Friends:
The Truth is one and the same always, and though ages and generations pass away, and one generation goes and another comes, yet the word and power and spirit of the living God endures for ever, and is the same and never changes.
I want to tell you a story about Life.
On January 12th of this year, my brother Justin was brutally murdered. My only sibling, my older brother. On that cold morning when I entered his house to find him, I was thrown into an abyss, a howling emptiness that seemed to have no end. Many days and nights, I am still there. And even there, in that wrenching absence, in the tempest of grief, in irreparable loss that can never be undone, I have day by day been given unmistakable assurance that I am held, cradled, and sustained in every breath by the never-ending embrace of the tender, self-giving, unshakeable power of God.
At first, the wounds were so fresh, the shattering grief so heavy, I struggled just to leave the house, even for meeting for worship. Friends came to our home to share in worship with us. Others near and far accompanied me again and again, as I sought to care for my brother’s body, as I testified to the grand jury that indicted the man who took my brother’s life, as I wept and raged and prayed to open my heart to the grace of forgiveness—for him, for myself, for all of us.
Through those winter nights, steady compassionate hands helped cleanse my brother’s blood from the place where he fell, and from the searing wound of sight and memory. In the midst of chaos, in widening circles of care, Friends labored sacrificially to allow me space to attend to what was needed, to mourn, and to be present with those who were mourning. A wall in our home became a mosaic of cards and letters from Friends—and Friends meetings across our region and far beyond—speaking companionship and prayer.
Where we were, spring took a long time to arrive. Under the care of my home meeting in Putney, and the meeting in which my brother and I were born in New York, many who loved my brother and our family—including many of you who are hearing these words—gathered in grief, remembrance, and celebration of his life.
Since January, in ways beyond number, the accompaniment of Grace has come to me both inwardly and outwardly. This experience continues to be a testament for me to the transforming Power that even death cannot overcome; a Power born anew through lives covenanted in relationship on this pilgrimage of faith.
Returning to service in recent months, in meetinghouses, at kitchen tables, in memorial meetings for worship, in the sound of voices on a long-awaited phone call, in walks together through rural and urban landscapes, I’ve once again seen glimpses of this same slow, tender, transforming power at work in our lives, as gathered fellowships journeying with one another, seeking to be met, shaped, and led by the Spirit. As I look out across the Yearly Meeting, I am reminded that this transforming power is not just something we experience individually, but one that reaches out to embrace us corporately—as one Body made up of so many lives, so many griefs and joys and conditions, being woven together by the Inward Teacher as we tend the embers of faith. Through the presence of Friends, I am coming again to re-member—to experience again the reconnection with this Body. In the unity of the Spirit, there is truly only one grief, and it is all grief. There is only one joy, and it is all joy.
This year of harrowing and blessing brings me back again to the call I have sought to answer, to serve as Yearly Meeting Secretary in ministry with Friends in our region. Serving alongside you, Friends, has been a profound honor and blessing in my life. For 12 years, in partnership with you, I have sought to give over my life to the nurture of these simple fellowships, these communities on pilgrimage. Because in all their beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking imperfection, for all the ways we may betray one another, however much we may fall short of others’ hopes or our own yearnings, I know from experience that our local worshiping communities are where lives can be most deeply shared and faith can be most deeply sustained. Our meetings are where all of our words and notions about spirituality can melt away—and, can become most real—in the daily, incarnational work of life together. In my experience, this is rarely flashy or dramatic. It’s often quiet, almost imperceptible, rarely loudly proclaimed. Like the river smoothing and shaping its course over millennia. Like grief opening us once again to an even greater love. Like the slow, relentless work of God in our hearts.
And this year of harrowing and blessing, of death and Life, helps me to remember that we, as imperfect human beings who are learning to call ourselves “Friends,” have not been and are not being gathered only for ourselves, our institutions, or even our meetings, beloved and cherished as they may be. This people, all of us seeking to share in this pilgrimage together, are being gathered to be a blessing in the world, to allow ourselves to become outposts and channels for God’s Love.
Across generations, Friends have testified that this world doesn’t need more strident and clamoring voices. This world doesn’t need more people convinced that they alone are right. This world doesn’t need more rage as it burns, adding fuel to the consuming fire. According to our Quaker spiritual ancestors, what this world needs is the Source of our hope. And this world needs lives—in all their blessed diversity—expressing with humility and boldness the character and qualities of this Source as they take shape in us, as we continue to journey together on the pilgrimage of faith. And this Source, this Spirit, this Living Seed, this One Who Speaks, is profoundly relevant to the condition of the world now—as Love continues to come into the world, even in the midst of our chaos.
For some of us, the challenges of our lives and this time in which we live may be shaking what we have understood to be the foundations on which we had built our identities, our relationships, even our faith. And yet, in the collapse of these illusions, those who came before us promise that—through Grace and our response to it—we can emerge to find ourselves on the true foundation which has been there all along, the paradoxical freedom, resilience, and security that only God can give. Casting off from the shore, we discover that we are carried and sustained by the infinite ocean of God’s Love.
In these turbulent days, I still trust and perceive that the One who gathered those who were first called “Friends” is patiently and powerfully present, active in the midst of the local communities of faith and practice that together make up the New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. And I know I’m not alone in this.
As Friends continue to rediscover ourselves and the world beyond the depths of the pandemic, the programs and ministries we steward together through the Yearly Meeting are growing more integrated, more creative, and more intentional in their engagement with the many challenges of these changing times. The service undertaken through the Yearly Meeting in support of Friends’ ministry, eldership, and spiritual life, grounded in our local meetings is reaching more and more Friends across our region. Living into the vision of a Yearly Meeting focusing and deepening our attention on the life and thriving of local Friends meetings has been a long work, since 2015 when the Yearly Meeting reaffirmed this as the core purpose of our work as an organization, drawing on more than 40 years of listening and discernment. This quiet, steady, and intentional tending continues through the work of many hearts and hands. And the garden is bearing fruit.
From many corners, Friends have shared that they see a change in long-held perceptions that “the Yearly Meeting” is simply a group of insiders, or some sort of social club, or only those who regularly attend Annual Sessions, or only for people who have for many years served as part of the Yearly Meeting’s committees. Now, many among us with long and faithful histories of care and commitment are being joined by those newer to service on behalf of Friends across our region, bringing rich experience from their local and quarterly meetings, and from their service and learning from other aspects of their lives. Friends are partnering across generations: to encourage and deepen our financial stewardship in alignment with the practical needs and the promise of our faith; to clarify, sustain, steward, and renew what is most precious in long-beloved ministries; and to discover fresh forms and fields of service to help carry living water in this changing season.
From the State of Society reflections composed this year by meetings across New England, it’s unmistakably clear that Friends in many of our local communities are hearing and answering a call to rediscover and reclaim their essential purpose as covenant communities, as they turn toward the Spirit and one another in these challenging times. And I am deeply grateful that Friends’ service together through the Yearly Meeting is fostering accompaniment, connection, programming, and presence in support of this thriving.
Because as it always has been, the heartbeat of the Religious Society of Friends is found and felt in the daily enactment of these covenanted constellations of imperfect, forgiven and forgiving people, seeking—with persistence, with stumbling steps, with awe and celebration and wonder—people seeking to grow in relationship with God and one another, to become teachable, and to carry the practice and fruits of this shared faith into the whole of our lives. This is why early Friends called our meetings for worship “nurseries of Truth.”
As we journey together, the profoundly radical Way that Friends have for generations discovered begins to become more clear. And this has implications for the fruits we bear for the world.
In these times of prideful urgency, resentment, and insistence on one’s own way, the Spirit yearns to teach us humility, steadfastness, and patient service.
In a season of brittleness and breaking, the One in whom we live and move and have our being offers us a spiritual discipline to help us grow in resilience and groundedness.
As polarization grows and the space for nuance and dialogue shrink, we are called back to the Center, from which mutuality and discernment arise, and in which it is possible to dwell with messiness, mystery, and paradox.
Where cycles of retribution escalate, tempting us to lash out with hearts of stone, the Spirit within us testifies that the hour is far too late for anything but a courageous, forgiving, and persevering tenderness.
In a world where individualism and self-centeredness run rampant, in an epidemic of loneliness, we are invited to rediscover an ecology of faithfulness, to reclaim a ministry of the whole.
Distraction, distrust, division, and despair may surround us. And yet, amidst all that is changing, the invitation offered by the Quaker tradition is to encourage and accompany one another—in every moment we are given—as we open our hearts to the Life and Power which is eternal, though ages and generations pass away, and to witness to this life-changing Spirit at work in and among all people, and in all Creation. In this, we join with a great cloud of witnesses through time who have sought, are seeking, and will yet seek to live lives formed by the Pattern made visible through walking in the Light. This is our foundation, our refuge, our calling, and our testimony to the world, now and always.
In every generation, in every season of our journey, the invitation to this pilgrimage together is offered. It is up to us—it is our responsibility, if we choose it—to rediscover and reclaim the spiritual treasure we have inherited, to live it, and to steward it as a gift to a generation yet unborn.
When storms rage around us; when confusion and madness hold sway; when we find ourselves thrown into the abyss, may we trust and daily call each other back to the essential Truth the first Friends came to discover. May we remember that this Truth is not a position we hold or a program we plan, but the possibility of a relationship.
Now as ever, Truth speaks us into being, cradles our wounded and wandering hearts, and calls us into covenant with God and one another. Truth walks before and beside us always on our journey together. And Truth sends us into this world to partner in Love’s arrival, yearning to guide us home, rejoicing.
Together, may we answer the call.
Because this is a story about Life.