Prepared message given as part of Three Rivers worship on Zoom, 25 June 2026.
I spent a number of sessions planning for this trip with Quakers from Britain and the US holding worship together press to prepare.
When I was teaching a class online for Pendle Hill in the fall, I fainted. I was off the screen for about 20 seconds. I saw the recording and I jumped up and said, I'm okay. But as soon as the class ended, I did finish the class. We went to the ER and they put me in a cardiac unit and said my heart was having pauses, which is why I had fainted at first.
They thought they needed to put a cardiac pacemaker in, but they discovered I was on a medication that was causing arrhythmias. Took me off that and I didn't have any more pauses, and they sent me home with a monitor and after a couple weeks they said, we think it's safe for you to go ahead with your trip.
But I was having trouble trusting the doctors and my God, perhaps that this was a good idea. I thought maybe I was being bullheaded, stubborn headed. I do that sometimes and trying to go forward with something that really wasn't rightly ordered, but I took a leap of faith. Uh, I was having a lot of sleep problems and anxiety and couldn't eat very well because of the worry about the trip.
Arrived in Britain in the first day or so. Didn't go very well because I hadn't. I purchased a use of my ability to use my cellular as I traveled. I thought I could use wifi, but that was silly. 'cause when you're walking around a town or the countryside or even riding a train, you don't have wifi.
So I landed in the town near where this picture is, uh, in northern England near a Quaker retreat center called Glenthorne to prepare for the trip. And, uh, Annie helped me to get cellular, so I was at least able to know where I was. And the first night when I had supper at Glenthorne, I was able to eat a really big British meal without upset stomach.
So I thought, well, maybe things are turning around. And that night as I slept in a small room there, single room, I had a dream, a nightmare. Where I was on a high bunk, a bunk bed, kind of like I slept on throughout my childhood with my younger brother of the lower bunk. And I used to worry that I'd fall out, which I probably did once or twice out of the bed.
And, but in the dream, when I fell off the top bunk, I kept falling and falling and it was like I was on a huge cliff and I would be dashed to pieces when I landed. So I was terrified, but I woke up and realized that it was only about 18 inches to the floor. There was a nice, thick carpet. I was at Glenthorne and I was safe.
So I felt enormous relief. But then I remembered a passage from Psalm 91. Some of you may know that Psalm, it's a very comforting Psalm about being held in God's care, protected, and God says. God, the psalmist says, God will command her angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways on their hands. That is the angel's hands. They will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. And I felt deeply held in that kind of protection. And that sense of being held and safe continued throughout the five weeks. I was in Scotland, England, and Wales.
In the spring, I'd been at Pendle Hill as a scholar there and developed a course on primitive Quakerism revived. And I'd always thought of gospel order. The course was allowed in gospel order, which is the old fashioned Quaker word that usually applies to how we live with each other in the faith community, like this meeting here in Three Rivers. But an essay by Lloyd Lee Wilson kind of gave a different viewpoint. It shook up, turned upside down my idea of how big gospel order was. If you can share the screen for this first quote, that would be good.
Lloyd Lee Wilson said that gospel order established is:
"the order established by God that exists in every part of creation, transcending the chaos that seems so often prevalent. It's the right relationship of every part of creation. However small to every other part, and also to the creator Gospel order is the harmony and order, which God established at the very moment of creation in which enables the individual aspects of creation to achieve the quality of being, which God intended from the start, about which God could say, and it was very good."
And I thought about how our universe was born. The scientists say that it suddenly in the millionth, a billionth of a second exploded. This incredibly dense, all the parts, the, the pieces of the universe were compacted in one pinpoint that would become atoms, molecules, stars, galaxy. And I thought, what a miraculous, unimaginable way to begin all that we are.
I felt that was the kind of harmony that Lloyd Lee Wilson was talking about. It's been a rough ride. Of course, as, as Lloyd Lee Wilson says, it seems to transcend the chaos that seems so often present, and we're certainly experiencing that chaos now. Think of how people felt during the plague. How they felt during World War II, how enslaved people felt when they were carried about in chains or separated from their families.
And yet people have often been able somehow to still experience that sense of being carried and held by God, even when so much things around them seem different.
So I often gave messages on that trip when I was traveling with Matt Rosen and others about that sense of being held even in difficult times and safe. When I came back, I was in good health for about a month, but I got extremely sick around Christmas. I had flu, a bad cold, turned to flu, turned to a very, very bad pneumonia.
And even after I got out of the hospital, I was very sick. I, I just had all kinds of problems with my body for about two months and I really had a kind of a crisis of faith. I had a di great difficulty feeling held in love. I was facing other changes in my life that were very frightening to me. And I was very helped by reading a book, which I'd been given.
I had a copy of it called "Dark Night Journey" by Sandra Cronk. And in that book she talks about how often people go into periods of time, whether because of loss or chaos around them, conditions in the world, maybe in their family, how that it can be impossible to feel God's comfort and love. And what she says is that, paradoxically, when we are brought to this kind of sense of nothingness, of losing all the supports we usually have, we can somehow pass beyond our old ways of relating to God, where we felt comfort and loved by God and where we felt we were giving service to God and simply were left with nothing but God alone.
I pray this morning that all of us can feel this sense of being held by God's love. And if we're not, we can perhaps go into the place and others can help us go into the place where we experience at least a different kind of way of meeting God. I don't know if you can share screen, but I'd like to finish with a poem and sometimes it's hard to follow a poem being read.
So again, if you can share the screen. For the poem, this is by a Quaker poet named Winifred Rollins, who used to hang out at Pendle Hill a lot in the seventies.
Space time in Einstein's universe bends like a roof above our head.
Underneath our restless feet curves like runners on a sled,
it seems we cannot wholly fall through Sudden rents in outer space
space time would toss us lightly back to bounce into our destined place.
The heart has inner solitudes as vast as telescopes can scan
The worlds beyond the Milky Way are not more lonely than a man.
Yet through this inner universe move constant stars with names we know,
and many suns and smaller moons within its darkness gently glow.
Is this inner space time curved, like circling arms below, above?
And are we held and cannot fall through holes within the web of love?
(The 23rd Psalm by Bobbi McFerrin sung by MUSE Cincinnati Women’s Chorus https://www.riseupsinging.org/songvideo/version-muse-cincinnati-womens-chorus-2 )
Kristina Keefe-Perry: Now is a time when we go into breakout rooms and Peter has offered a few queries for us.
What is a time you felt particularly held in God's love?
And if there have been times you couldn't feel God's love holding you, what has helped you to face or live into that time or those times?