Parting word from our first clerk

Prepared message given as part of Three Rivers meeting for worship with concern for business on Zoom, 26 February 2026.

As a prelude to a brief parting word prepared in love and deep gratitude for navigating a full calendar year. Lots of life change at my end, and I know many of yours. There's been a lot of weather. There has been grief processes of loss of loved ones. There's been some joys at new openings of service and relationship. I'm living in a new geography, in a new home with a new partner,

So there's been a lot wrapped up in one calendar year. So I am previewing two images that came to me, which I'm not going to getting into great detail about, but they are important mementos and have been guides of sorts and will continue to be drawn on for the debriefing process.

So I'm going to ask Heather to show the first slide.

So these gifts in two cards traveled a continental expanse, one from the east and the other from the west. They reached me in the dawn land, what's now called Maine, and reside with me currently on Pocumtuck lands in Western Mass. The cards arrived from the start of service to right after the first business meeting in March of 2025.

I've held with wonder and care, tumult and peace, the both-and of these traveled gifts. I also esteem them as embodiments of our beloved community as a river journey together of nurturing resilience and crafting boundaries.

So Heather, you can move to the second image. Thanks.

The focus of today's parting word or message is resilience, inspired here by an image of a painting by Susi Remold, a member of our sister Meeting Fresh Pond. Bright yellow petals and deep green leaves grow upward and outward from between concrete slabs or a crack. And here inspired as well with lines from a poem by Sarah Allen, member of Friends Meeting of Cambridge and serving as our co-clerk of meeting for business.

"Seeking through the cracks in hard places to find the light to grow and flourish."

We've traveled the year alongside one another in beloved community, seeking and finding and growing and even flourishing. We've traversed hard places as well, locating light through the cracks.

It's been a loving journey and a lauding one that I want to lift up, lauding the corporate body, this river journey of navigating both beauty and pain. This is where the excerpt from Mark Deasy [00:04:00] has come to be really ministering to me and I believe has a space for our reflection together. Mark is a Quaker humanitarian, and I'll read that out. It's in the report as well.

"If there is an identifiable Quaker approach to service, we could hope that it is embodied in this, that as in worship, we follow the leadings of the spirit and the light faithfully. We are prepared to be led where it takes us, to let go of comfortable certainties and be taken into new knowledge and also into painful and difficult experiences.

"The journey is not a comfortable one for the most part. It can be terrifying at times and often leads close to despair. If we accept that [00:05:00] there is that of God in everyone. Others cannot be the objects of charity. We go prepared to encounter their full reality and to be taught and changed by it."

I wish to lift up the amazing gifts throughout the gathered body. Many brought to light through business meeting the past year as elders, tech hosts, recorders, and roles appointed and offerings of self.

I lift up the advice and insight surfacing from the body December, 2024 and Midsummer 2025.

One is a understanding that our community [00:06:00] experiences and dynamics are shaped by what we have and have not named and tended.

The other is an encouragement to lighten up, not to take ourselves too seriously.

A closing prayer, I lift up in the spirit of Julian of Norwich, an anchorite who survived the black plague, who experienced Jesus as the divine mother, and who is remembered for the words: "all shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." I gift a prayer to St. Bridget, also align with the Celtic goddess, bridget and I believe resonates with Jesus as divine mother.

This is a card from a place called Corrymeela in Northern Ireland* — and I have a blurry background, that's why it was hard to see. It's a card. I've traveled in travel ministry for many years, like these other cards I've been carrying that traveled and found their way to me.

"Bridget or Divine Mother, Jesus, you were a woman of peace. You brought harmony where there was conflict. You brought light into the darkness. You brought hope to the downcast. May the mantle of your peace cover those who are troubled and anxious, and may peace be firmly rooted in our hearts and in our world. Amen."

*Correction: The card is from Kildare in Ireland (not Corrymeela in Northern Ireland).