Annamary Herther was the planned speaker in worship September 13th.

The Holy Spirit
(thoughts prompted by a Meeting For Worship, 1971, Auckland Friends Meeting)
From Quaker Faith and Practice in Aotearoa New Zealand

The messages of truth and love
Don’t come to us in packets
Clearly labeled
From the Holy Spirit.
They come in strange unlikely ways.
They come when we are quiet and listen,
When we let go and let the spirit
Work through us,
When we get our busy, noisy selves
Out of the way
Of its mysterious working.
~ Ruth Fawell

As Ruth Fawell wrote, there are so many ways that the answers to the questions that we struggle with find us. For me messages are often discovered while reading. And I need to read a lot! Poetry, theology, fiction, memoir. . . Occasionally, as my children will tell you, I even find a new way to consider my place in the world in the funnies!

This morning, I’m going to speak about one of those messages I found – or it found me – in fiction, in very in early spring, just before the pandemic.

Julian Barnes’ short novel, A SENSE OF THE ENDING, arrived when I was struggling to sort out the extreme busyness that seemed to have commandeered my life. One Sunday I had read a good book review of it in the paper, then later a friend happened recommended it. When it suddenly appeared as a book club selection in an episode of an Australian crime drama that Jim and I were watching, I decided to request it from the library. It arrived at the threshold of a time that allowed, for many of us, a time for some much-needed discernment.

One of Barnes’ characters considers the experience of life in mathematical terms. He says that as we age, we continually add things to our life. Our lives get fuller, but not, unless we are paying attention, necessarily richer. He goes on to point out that some things however, are greater than just one thing. They have the power to exponentially increase our experience of life. And these are the things to hold on to. These are the things that deserve our precious time. I’m always delighted to say that, for me, finding Quakerism and meeting for worship is one of those things. And the people in this community are a big part of that.

During the initial, seriously secluded, months of the pandemic, I had the time, (and I am aware that it was very privileged time,) to be still and notice which things I never missed. And if I find life brings me back to where I was before, I hope I have the courage to permanently let them go.

I read a lot of Emily Dickinson. In her poems and in her letters, she often refers, interchangeably, to whatever is Holy or whatever is Divine – and Love (with a capital L). She writes, in her very succinct way:
[that this] “Love is anterior to life
[and] Posterior to death –
[that this Love is] The initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath.”
The exponent of breath. The multiplier of the experience of life. A lot like what Barnes wrote about and exactly what I need to have present when discerning what to pick up and what to lay down.