This weekend I had the gift of attending “They Gathered Around” – a retreat and explorations of those called to the work of pastoral ministry in our Meetings and wider Quaker communities.

In part of this time together, we were asked to select, from a large pile, an animal that represented our gifts that we bring to our communities.  A thoughtful and fun sharing of those reasons ensued.

Some folks spent much time considering each animal.  They looked at them, walked around the table, picked one up and placed it back down.  I, on the other hand, walked up to the table, saw a tiny penguin off to one corner, and knew it was mine.  My reasons for this continued to emerge throughout the weekend…

Penguins have wings.  Like birds do.  And yet – they do not fly.  What a grand confusing mixup of expectations this is! I know a few other facts about penguins.  On land, they waddle so they do not slip on the ice.  They break into joyful fervor when they see someone/something they like.  They embody playful exuberance.

I found myself wondering during this weekend with Friends – how do our meeting communities recognize, support and honor the “penguins” in our midst?  How do we create the space and flexibility for those gifts to fully emerge and be used in our communities?

If it is assumed that my wings are meant for flying – and I am told that is the only option – I will always keep trying to fly.  In order to please others, because it’s the way God made me, because it’s my community’s expectation.

Why would it even occur to me that wings and feathers could be made for swimming?

When penguins swim, they are one of the fastest animals and most effective hunters on the planet.  They dive deeply, speed around catching fish, and are generally obviously made for what they are doing in that moment.  With wings.  In water.  Hmmmmm.

Penguins have another interesting aspect to their lives.  Unlike other birds, which lose feathers throughout their lives and replace them as needed – penguins experience catastrophic molt.  For a brief period of a few weeks, the penguins lose ALL of their feathers – turning from sleek majestic effective hunters of the sea, to comical and vulnerable awkward helpless creatures.  They eat lots of fish beforehand so they don’t starve.  They hang out in communities so they don’t get eaten as often.

How does this relate to me (and maybe some others) in my Quaker community?

The times when I am able to come most fully alive, to live into the piece of God’s kin-dom I am meant to shepherd and serve, is when I am simply able to feel direct nudges of the Spirit, and experiment with what works best for the tools I possess.  I need to be able to take risks, to fall down safely, and to be encouraged to keep going.

It also helps to have mentors and supporters that can give me feedback, but also leave the space open.  Someone who might say “hey, those wings aren’t getting much lift – do they ever feel like they might be of use in a different way?” or “ice ahead!  Remember to waddle when you are not in the sea.”

My most tender time is during the catastrophic molt.  None of this gently growing back feathers after travel for me.  After joyful and exhausting ministry, I’m often still riding a high of sorts from the gratitude of faithful service.  I’m also totally vulnerable and featherless, and if I end up indulging in bad habits or excess of decisions, I will make bad choices and do some serious physical, mental, and spiritual damage to myself.  Others might have a more gradual reentry.  I need to shut down when I find myself featherless.  I need Friends who can remind me about that returning and renewal as well.

Those are my needs, and it’s taken me a good long while to be able to name them.  I’m sure there are others I haven’t discovered yet.  I can only find them in the reflections of the covenant community I walk with.

What might be some of the ways we assume Friends in our communities must always use their wings to fly, as we expect and have seen before?

• Young Adults having lots of energy
• Older folks always being wary of new technology
• Young folk always being adept with technology
• Visitors and “unchurched” folks longing for fancy new worship shapes, rather than deep traditions and liturgy
• Sundays at 10 am being the best time for worship in community
• Needing a building for worship
• Not needing a building for worship
• Silence rather than music
• Singing and dancing in gatherings always being folk/protest music and contradance
• God finds us best in quiet sitting and lack of movement
• Children don’t share “real” ministry
• Adults always do share “real” ministry

In order to be effective, penguins need to “flip” the bird narrative on its head.  Wings are meant for swimming.  Birds are in water like fish.  When you see it, it all makes sense somehow.

I’m holding these questions as I return from this time among Friends….

What expectations did Jesus flip? What does wholeness and resurrection and “winning”look like when defined by Love, and not by the empire?  How do we encourage each other to see that kin-dom and its gifts, and fully embrace those paradoxes as the Work itself of the covenant of beloved community?

At one time (and still, among Ohio Conservative Friends) New England Yearly Meeting answered the queries in our book of discipline directly, in order to demonstrate our current condition.  I find these reports fascinating, and of great encouragement to me when I see some of the same Joys and challenges we have today.

Full 1921 minutes can be found here:

This month I have been many places!  It has been a gift to be able to travel among Friends.  These summaries were my brief reports to the intervistation group of NEYM.  It feels right to also note them here.

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RI-Smithfield Quarterly Meeting, Smithfield, RI

A few weeks ago I visited Smithfield Meeting, and RI-Smithfield QM.

The morning programmed meeting for worship was well attended, boosted by visitors from the QM.  Ron shared a message, as he has been doing about 1-2 times a month now for that meeting.  The end of meeting was opened up to additional prayers and reflections from all gathered (in addition to the silence in the middle of the meeting), and a few powerful messages rose among us – encouragement, hope, and openings.  It reminded me that in any meeting, even the ones we more formally “program” – the Spirit shows up as she will!  The meeting was followed by a hearty potluck and catching up on news.  Smithfield is in a time of challenge and renewal, discerning where they are called in the light of recent losses and decline, and yet they coninue to show up faithfully and love each other as best they can.

The Quarterly Meeting began with a time of sharing prompted by a few queries – how we came to Quakers, why we were still drawn here, etc.  It was a rich time of sharing both inner thoughts and learning from each other.  Meeting representatives than shared news from their meetings – I was surprised and pleased to hear about much “on the ground” various work both in the world, and supporting each other.  Highlights included Worcester Meeting’s “adoption” of a pregnant woman whose incarcerated spouse is to be deported, witness in Ecumenical efforts in worcester, Providence Meeting’s upcoming visit and discussion with Paula Palmer about Indian borarding schools, Westerly’s new website and outreach efforts and weekly “meetings for healing”, and Smithfield’s involvement in the Thanksgiving community service at the Uxbridge Meetinghouse.  All meetings also long for more connection, more helpful communication, and more participation in leadership. They were grateful to hear news (from me) about the next steps of the newly formed Faith in Action Committee.  We also heard an extensive summary of the carbon calculator process and YM’s decision to reduce its carbon footprint.  That news, shared by Mary Bennett (Worcester MM and YM Earthcare committee), was framed in a larger question of who “owns’ the earth, what about the native Americans and slaves who were exploited, and what unity and our witness looks like for all in light of racial concerns as well as enviromental ones.

The QM is now without a clerk and recording clerk – predicted and planned, but no one has yet stepped forward to fill those roles.  The QM gathered was clear to meet next, ask the host meeting to provide a “clerk for the day” – and consider what work is supported by the QM that might be lost without consistent leadership.  Upcoming discernment involves a coninued discussion about chaning the name of the QM, to more helpfully reflect Worcester Meeting’s membership (as it is not a RI Meeting).

I was grateful to attend, hopeful that embers of faith and connection will continue to be blown into a stronger flame as we consider the questions of how a QM is most helpful to our journeys of faith.

Salem Quarterly Meeting, South Shore Preparative Meeting, MA

Vassalboro Quarterly Meeting, Farmington, ME

After a hearty and lively potluck lunch (FOUR big soups! They are the meeting for soups) the group gathered to watch a short film, and share ideas about how political action can be effective and Spirit-led in local efforts in Maine.  It was a very full Saturday.

West Epping Preparative Meeting, NH

This Sunday I attended worship with West Epping Friends, as they held their 247th Annual Meeting.  This meeting is advertised each year and a “homecoming” of sorts for the meeting – there is yearly business discerned as needed.  In addition to the 3 current members of the meeting (they meet on first and third Sundays), there were visitors from Gonic (their parent meeting), the community, and Lawrence Meeting.  I note with joy that Lawrence MA Meeting members attend their annual meeting and Christmas eve gatheirng very often.  It’s a way in which I am reminded that sometimes we as Friends have individuals who are called to visit/support  a particular meeting, rather than “general” visiting.  Lawrence is also a small meeting, but they visit each other each year as close “cousins”.  There were two messages offered in worship – a bit unusal for the more quiet meeting of Epping.  One remarked about the Light in that space, and how it seems a refuge of peace always in troubled times.

Afterwards, we all formed a Quaker caravan and headed to Will’s house (clerk) for snacks and fellowship.  We all had much to share about the wider Quaker world, immigration witness in New Hampshire, upcoming election concerns.  Epping Friends asked much about Friends in Dover, Gonic, and other places.  West Epping is a small meeting, content to just be where they are called – although they have had two new regular attenders join of late.  They have few needs in their historic building, and spend much time in the world in their own ways, supported clearly by their quaker faith and the silence they gather in every few weeks.  It seems like a simple house meeting, that has been given the care of a building and its history and link to the town.  As someone who is always very concerned about outreach and presence, it’s a good reminder for me that clarity of what you are called to be and to do is in itself a faithful endeavor, regardless of is it seems “small”.  I was glad to witness on this day the deep relationships among these Friends.

Seth Godin offered a great podcast this week called “You’re it” – all about getting picked for things, random happenings, how luck and chance play into what we see as opportunities (and fame and fortune).

I listened to this podcast while in the shower (where I do my best thinking) after getting my kiddo off to school.  This morning’s conversation with her involved me explaining her recently arrived MCAS scores.  Why they were important, why they were NOT important – and what “really matters”.  My kid is a hard worker, a good student, does well on tests.  I found myself sharing the disclaimer however that standardized tests value and assess certain things, but not others.  The comparisons among “average” students, and what school is doing “well” is also problematic.  I didn’t want to discount her high scores, but I found myself wondering what exactly those numbers meant in our “real world experience.”  Those questions are often on my heart as I walk through the world.

I’m in a strange place in my life right now.  I have very few specific, timed commitments.  The obligations I do have (mostly raising our child, being home and available) are clear and regular.  I left a career in teaching that didn’t fit rightly after becoming a mom.  I did paid work for my faith community that was appreciated and good, but restricted me in ways that were eventually too challenging.  I now do part time contract odd jobs, and am looking for employment that is not “career” focused.

I’m still feeling somehow I am in “searching” mode.  I’m called to travel among Friends, primarily in NE and NY Yearly Meetings.  Those visits are often on Sundays, during regularly scheduled meeting for worship (not called meetings or other special events).  I’ve recently been given more messages in worship as I travel – and also as often they words given are to be shared around the edges of worship – with a specific new visitor, a struggling Friend who needs a bit of support, many situations I could not predict.  I am often overwhelmed with the “right place at the right time” feeling.

So what’s my role in this?  Am I the one working to find the “right place” and “right time” – or is that just luck too?  How much agency shall I claim as my own in this direction?  Last year, after a year of waiting per my support committee, I intended to apply to a formal traveling ministry program.  I was crushed to learn it was (for the upcoming year) intended for Young Adult Friends only.  I was told “apply in 2019” – and that was just not even remotely a possibility for me.  Later on, when the deadline was extended, and it was opened to folks “my age” – I’d already met with my support committee about other situations, made alternate arrangements, and I just couldn’t put it back on my plate again (no matter how rightly it had felt for the past two years).  I didn’t get “picked”.  I still wonder sometimes what would have happened if I had been involved in that particular traveling ministry program.  During that year, I was also named by a nominating committee to be asked to serve in a specific way that I had hoped for.  The committee never called to ask me to serve.  My support committee assumed I was simply not their choice.  It turns out they just never got around to calling me.  I’d already discerned that I should approach them and say “yes”, but Way seemed to close.   I didn’t get “picked” then either.  

I’m still in many ways that kid on the sidelines, hoping to get picked” for the team of “ministers who know what they are doing”.  I’m not sure what team that actually is most of the time.  I’m not even sure what we are all playing at…..

Seth Godin brings up a very good point in his podcast – opportunities present themselves in very different ways now in our secular, connected world.  You often don’t need a high level degree, specific training, or complicated qualifications to participate in the work.  Early Friends seem to have gotten this message sooner than most perhaps – rather than years of study and a seminary degree, it was quiet faithfulness and listening to being guided and well used in one’s gifts that was THE important factor.  They went viral before the internet.

And yet… we test those gifts, and our service, in community.  The community is responsible for the listening to our call.  I am asked to trust that I am hearing clearly, and that my support committee, my meeting, and my faith community are as well.

As I look today to so many others I know in faithful ministry – traveling, pastoring, doing Work in “big ways” that seem to fit their gifts so well, I’m not sure where that sweet spot of service and longing and call is for me.

I’ve done a lot of work in the field of creativity.  I know that much of the time, we follow a very twisted path and end up where we are well used.  Maybe it doesn’t really matter what we do, but how we do it.  Maybe we are exactly where we are “supposed” to be – and it doesn’t make logical sense in our limited brain space.  I’m hoping every day to give myself the joy and space and understanding that I hope for my daughter, as she walks through he world not defined by her test scores, or the notion that she needs to be “picked”.

“Most of us are not raised to actively encounter our destiny. We may not know that we have one. As children, we are seldom told we have a place in life that is uniquely ours alone. Instead, we are encouraged to believe that our life should somehow fulfill the expectations of others, that we will (or should) find our satisfactions as they have found theirs. Rather than being taught to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others. We are, in effect, trained to listen to others’ versions of ourselves. We are brought up in our life as told to us by someone else! When we survey our lives, seeking to fulfill our creativity, we often see we had a dream that went glimmering because we believed, and those around us believed, that the dream was beyond our reach. Many of us would have been, or at least might have been, done, tried something, if…

If we had known who we really were.” – Julia Cameron

This is part two of my explanations regarding the things that have led me here to ministry.

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”  ― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

To this day, there are people in my life who compare me to my dad.  As I’ve gotten older – a lot of the things i knew about him make more sense in my own context.

My dad passed away after a long battle with congestive heart failure on July 17, 2007.  I attended my first Quaker meeting on July 18, 2008 – more on that later but it’s an important “coincidence”.

Kenneth Joseph Walsh Jr. was a traveler.  He didn’t have a lot of means or money – but as a traveling electronics/radio salesman in New England, he visited many and held their stories close.

When dad was young, his first introduction to communication was as a HAM radio operator – W1FBT (I still remember it).  He attempted to drill a hole in his childhood bedroom ceiling to stick out an antenna.  It would be the first of many “outside the box” attempts at changing the shape of his world. He got a part time job at radio shack, and rose to the level of manager very soon.  

Dad attended college for a few years – Wentworth Institute of Technology.  He dropped out to work and never went back.  I’m not surprised – he was really smart but hated classroom learning. Dad met my mom during this time – she was a student at Boston State, and he saw her at a local gas station.  After asking a friend on the police force to run her plates, he got her number and gave her a call.  That relationship – between an Irish Catholic and an Italian Catholic (belonging to the parishes around the corner from each other) , and a graduate of Quincy High and North Quincy High, flourished despite the obvious concerns.  They moved to Scituate Ma – “the Irish Riviera” to start a family in the suburbs.  Yes, that’s me and dad – the early years!

What stands out for me now, in terms of my own life path, is dad’s insatiable curiosity.  Yes, he had a quite mundane job, and average friends and family experiences.  However, he was also always living to learn new things, and well beyond the level of mere interest or “hobbies”.

In his life dad did the following:

He was an accomplished scuba diver, and was on the dive team that searched for bodies with the Quincy PD in the quarries (this was a lovely fact he shared with my middle school friends!).  He trained others in dive safety and dove off the coast often.

He was a sailor – he often owned a boat, and worked on it in our yard in the winters, and sailed it out of Scituate Harbor in the summer.  For a few years he owned the KANNBE – a tuna fishing charter boat, with a crew, that he sent out on fishing day trips with paying customers.

He repaired radios – often ones others would not touch. We were especially glad when he repaired those boat radios of a lobsterman friend, who would pay dad in bags of fresh caught lobsters.

He was a classical music expert. While dad never played an instrument himself, he was an avid listener of classical radio.  He even did a college radio show in his early years with Robert J Lurtzimer (of Boston Classical Music radio fame).  He had specific musicians he really liked, and orchestral versions of pieces, and would always recommend to me certain composers and recordings.  Dad was also a huge collector of music – we would take trips to Tower records in Boston for recordings of my classical pieces for college.  Dad was especially fond of Sousa marches, and had a whole collection of different versions.  He loved it when my performances ended with a good Sousa march!

He was a devotee of Chinese traditional medicine.  As someone who had multiple health issues, Dad had an acupuncturist he met with regularly, as well as a herbalist in Boston.  For someone so rooted in Western ways of communication, he had a strong belief in the powers of Eastern medicine.  It was a gift to me when he helped me find my own acupuncturist who helped with my health issues.  Dad was thrilled when I minored in Mandarin Chinese in college – he was always asking me to read the labels on his medicine bottles (I couldn’t – too complicated!)

Dad loved trying new foods.  He was raised on my grandmother’s homemade pasta and meatballs, but would meet me at college and we would go to a chinese restaurant where he would try all the “weirdest” things on the menu.  He appreciated the stories and culture around the food.

He flew planes.  Dad was a lisenced private pilot – and a proud member of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA).  He was a member of the local fly club at the Cranland airport, and volunteered to train kids in flying.  He built a plane with friends.  The plane started in pieces in our garage, hidden from my mom.  Dad helped found a “fly in breakfast” at the airport, where folks would fly in from all over for pancakes and conversation.

Dad traveled.  As a traveling sales rep in New England, he went all over.  Every place had a story.  He would eagerly connect with all these folks every year when he visited.  He knew the best diner in every town,and quirky places to stop and learn about new things special in the area.

I share those specific stories and traits, because of how much they remind me now of how I see the world.  Dad never knew me as a Quaker – but he knew me as an eager student with many interests, a hard worker with many jobs and roles, and a person who loved to learn about other cultures and people and their lives.  The fact that I do this now, when I visit Quaker meetings, is no surprise to me.

That curiosity dad carried is what takes the lead when I travel among Friends.  Every meeting has a story, a way in which Friends are being faithful, and being in community, and holding struggles of life tenderly and with concern.  As my dad would share stories of the people he met, I share those stories myself as I travel.  I have a clear feeling that dad wold be proud of his daughter, a “traveling minister” among Friends.  He had his peculiar people,  I now have found mine.