Overview
Life is always about restarting and rebuilding through transitions. These can include partnering/unpartnering, leaving home, aging, starting a family, leaving school, the loss of a loved one, career changes, health issues, empty nesting, retirement, moving, changing Quaker meetings, infertility, or financial set-backs.
Transitions prompt us to ask ourselves, “Who am I when I’m not __________?” (working, in school, “young,” parenting….) What is my purpose in this next phase of life?” Quaker practices can support us in seeking answers to these questions. Our faith can give us comfort, inviting us to trust that the struggle will not be forever and planting seeds of hope.
Read Quaker Spiritual Disciplines for Hard Times by Patricia McBee
My sense is that the disciplines of early Friends are accessible to contemporary Friends. Not only can we understand them, I think we will find that they do not cramp Friends into narrow, sectarian beliefs; instead, they can strengthen each of us on our personal spiritual path.
This brief article lifts up five early Quaker spiritual disciplines for our times: retirement, prayer, living in the Cross, keeping low, and discernment. This is not an exhaustive list of the practices of earlier Friends, but a suggestive group that can be a starting place for building strong spiritual lives in supportive spiritual communities.
Published in Friends Journal, August 2003.
Or read The Meanings of Endings by Jim Ross
We do ourselves and the communities of which we are part a disservice if we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to say farewell. We all take leave many times throughout life. When we leave the workplace and retire; when a parent, life partner, or child dies; when we move away from the community in which we have spent a good portion of our lives, we may experience these things as a death in life, but they are also transitions. We need to allow ourselves to feel that and also recognize how every ending somehow transforms us.
Published in Friends Journal, February 2015
Read this message from Lorraine Watson of North Seattle Friends Church: Quaker Sacraments
A sacramental moment is when you are most aware of the presence of the Living God
This morning we sang songs about how God is present in nature
That’s the most often response—we see God in the beauty of our world
But the truth is that God is everywhere all the time
Any moment that God chooses is a sacramental moment
Any time our eyes are opened is a sacramental moment
Message offered during Meeting for Worship, November 8, 2015. Shared with permission of Lorraine Watson.
Listen to this episode of The Growing Edge podcast, with Carrie Newcomer and Parker Palmer: Mud & Miracles (48 minutes)
Carrie and Parker discuss the first day of spring, the season of mud and miracles-which makes spring a lot like life itself! How do you hold the eternal mix of mud and miracles in your life? How do you understand the mud, and what do you learn from it? What do you regard as miraculous, and how do you give thanks for it?
Queries for Reflection and Connection
- What transitions are you facing now?
- What has helped you deal with change in your past? How can those resources, connections, and strengths carry you forward now?