9-27-26 - Getting Into Synch with the Community (Mindfulness Part 2)

Getting Into Synch with the Community (Mindfulness Part 2)

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

September 27, 2026

Good morning Friends and welcome to Light Reflections. This morning we will be taking a second pass at the topic of Mindfulness.  The scripture I have chosen in from Psalm 46:8-11 from the New Revised Standard Version.

Come, behold the works of the Lord;
    see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
    he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
    he burns the shields with fire.
“Be still, and know that I am God!
    I am exalted among the nations;
    I am exalted in the earth.”
The Lord of hosts is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our refuge.

A few weeks ago, I was surfing through the channels and came across one of my favorite movies, “Hook” starring the late Robin Williams. In the movie there is a powerful scene where Captain Hook brings Peter's young son, Jack, to a room full of ticking clocks and his father's old pocket watch. Hook hands Jack a hammer to let out his anger about Peter neglecting him, breaking promises, and never being there. Jack smashes the timepieces while shouting about broken promises, leading Hook to manipulate the boy by whispering, "Make time stand still, laddie," and convincing him that his father never truly cared. 

Boy, there is a lot we could unpack in this one scene, but this morning I want to only talk about the ticking clocks. Did you know, if you leave a bunch of mechanical pendulum clocks on the same wall long enough, as is seen in the movie, something incredible happens.

Gradually, the individual gears and weights begin to feel the tiny vibrations traveling through the wood of the wall. And within a few days, they all sync up. They begin to tick and tock in perfect, beautiful unison.

Physicists call this unison- entrainment.

This is an excellent metaphor for what we are trying to do here in worship each week.

We walk through the meetinghouse doors carrying our own chaotic rhythms. Our internal clocks are all ticking and tocking at different speeds

·      one of us is racing through a high-stress work week,

·      another is spinning with anxiety about a child,

·      and someone else is heavy with grief.

And we sit down on these pews completely out of sync.

But as we sit together in the quiet, a subtle shift begins to happen.

We start to feel the spiritual vibrations of the people around us.

·      Our breathing deepens.

·      Our hearts settle.

·      The individual noise begins to give way to what we Quakers call a gathered meeting - a collective, holy rhythm where we sync up with the Inward Light and with one another.

“Be Still and Know that I am God!”

These words from our text this morning are a direct invitation to let our internal, frantic clocks sync up with the timeless rhythm of the Divine.

Now, remaining in this shared rhythm is easier said than done.

The moment we step outside this room, our individual clocks start racing again. We get caught up in the rush of life, constantly looking ahead to the next thing on our to-do list.

The late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh understood this deep human struggle wonderfully. He spent his entire life teaching the art of mindfulness, which he described as the energy of being warm, awake, and deeply attentive to the exact place your feet are standing.

He famously wrote about the simple act of washing the dishes. He said that if we are only washing the dishes to get them clean so we can go have a cup of tea, then we are completely missing the reality of our own lives.

We aren't actually washing the dishes—we are washing our future worries. We miss the miracle of the warm water, the soap bubbles, and the gift of being alive in that exact second.

Jesus offered the crowds on the hillside the exact same grounded wisdom. He looked at their anxious faces and said, 

“Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34).

Jesus isn't telling us to ignore the future; he is begging us to stop abandoning the present.

He is anchoring us in the grace of right now.

As Quakers, this is the very definition of sacramental living. We don’t limit holiness to a specific altar or a single ritual. We believe that a shared lunch or cup of coffee, a challenging committee meeting, a quiet walk, or a chore at the kitchen sink are all potential sacraments.

Every square inch of our lives is holy ground if we simply wake up to it.

Mindfulness is how we keep our eyes open, so we don’t walk right past the living presence of the Divine in our ordinary weeks.

When our minds inevitably start to drift on these pews, Thich Nhat Hanh offered a gentle tool to bring us back. He suggested syncing our thoughts to our natural breath using a very simple phrase:

“Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile.”

Think about how beautiful that is in a communal space. When you choose to breathe and settle your heart, you aren't just doing it for yourself. You are sending a tiny vibration through the pew. You are helping the restless person sitting next to you to settle theirs. You are actively helping the whole room fulfill Lamentations 3:26: 

“It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” 

Our shared breath becomes a shared prayer, clearing away the internal static so the Light can shine through us unfiltered.

This inner stillness changes how we treat one another. Thich Nhat Hanh lived through the absolute horrors of the Vietnam War, and he insisted that true meditation could never be used as an escape from the world's pain.

He coined the term Engaged Buddhism because he knew that if our silence doesn't make us more compassionate neighbors, it isn't real spiritual work.

This is the exact heartbeat of our Quaker Testimonies. Our faith has never been defined by a checklist of dogmas; it is defined by how we love.

As James 2:17 reminds us, 

“Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

To describe just how deeply connected we all are, Thich Nhat Hanh coined another word: “interbeing.” 

He reminded us that we are not separate, isolated islands. We "inter-are" with the air, the soil, our friends, and even our enemies.

The Apostle Paul used a different metaphor for the exact same truth when he wrote to the early church at Corinth, he said,

“The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts... If one part suffers, every part suffers with it” (1 Corinthians 12:12, 26)

When we practice mindfulness, our eyes are opened to this reality. We look across the aisle—maybe at someone who voted differently than us, or someone who rubs us the wrong way—and we recognize that their joy is our joy, and their suffering is our suffering.

We realize that peace isn't a distant finish line we are marching toward. Peace is the very way we look at, listen to, and hold one another in this exact room.

So, Friends, let us be gentle with our busy minds this week. When you find yourself spinning, when the weight of the world feels heavy, or when you feel completely out of sync, just pause. Take a single, mindful breath.

Remember that the living God is not waiting for you in some perfect, distant future. God is waiting for you right here, in the messy, beautiful reality of this exact moment.

Friends, let us hold this wall of silence together, let us sync our hearts to the rhythm of love, and let us walk forward as one body in the Light, together.

Now, as we enter a time of waiting worship, let us center down, get in touch with our breathing, and ask ourselves the following queries,

·      What chaotic rhythms (ticks and tocks) did I carry with me when I entered this space for worship this morning?

• What does it mean for me to stop abandoning the present moment in favor of future worries?

• When I look at people in my community who have different viewpoints or challenges, how does the idea of "interbeing" change the way I respond to them?

9-20-26 - Mindfulness: The Doorway, Not the Destination

Mindfulness: The Doorway, Not the Destination

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

September 20, 2026

Good morning, Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections. The scripture I have chosen to support my message is from 1 Kings 19:11-12 from the New Revised Standard Version.

 He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.

Over my sabbatical, I intentionally spent time focusing on my own personal mindfulness. I needed this because we live in a world that, louder than ever, demands our attention, yet rarely feeds our souls.

From the moment we wake, our minds are bombarded by a relentless stream of notifications, anxieties, and a never-ending to-do list.

Obviously, a sabbatical affords one time to address this demanding stream, but as I have shared with you, it was not an easy thing to address. The stream of the outside world is very demanding. Sadly, I am again wrestling with the rising stream in my daily life, but in returning to our Quaker ways I have found some things that are helpful for us all.  

When you and I step into the Meetingroom and sit down for worship, we often discover that the loudest noise isn’t outside of us—it is the roaring engine of our own thoughts. And this is where we must begin.

There is an old story told of an early Friend who was a blacksmith by trade. He spent his days in a world of clanging iron, roaring furnaces, and shouting customers. When he first began attending meeting, he found the silence utterly deafening. For the first half-hour of every meeting, his mind would simply keep striking the anvil. He would mentally map out how many horseshoes he needed to forge the next day, calculate his expenses, and re-argue disagreements he had with neighbors.

One Sunday, exhausted by his own internal racket, he looked out the window and noticed a stray dog outside. The dog wasn't trying to build anything or fix anything. It simply sat in the sun, feeling the warmth on its fur, completely present.

The blacksmith took a deep breath, dropped his mental hammer, and decided to simply notice his own breathing. For the first time, he realized that before he could hear the voice of the Divine, he had to stop trying to forge the universe with his own mind. He had to learn what early Quakers called "centering down."

Ask yourself this morning, have you heard that “striking of the anvil” or found yourself “counting horseshoes,” or “re-arguing disagreements” with your neighbors?  I know I have.

This is the intersection where modern mindfulness meets our ancient practice of waiting worship.

Mindfulness, at its core, is simply the practice of holy attention. It is the gentle discipline of bringing our wandering minds back, over and over again, to the immediate reality of the present moment.

In a worship setting like this, mindfulness is not the destination; it is the doorway. It is the practical tool that helps us clear away the debris of the week so that we can become an empty vessel, ready to be filled.

We see this beautifully illustrated in the story of the prophet Elijah that we heard read, today. He was running for his life, overwhelmed by fear and despair, standing on the edge of a mountain. He expected God to speak through the grand, the dramatic, and the loud.

·      A terrifying wind shattered the rocks, but God wasn't there.

·      An earthquake shook the very ground beneath his feet, but God wasn't there.

·      A raging fire consumed the landscape, but God wasn't there.

God was only found in the sound of sheer silence, or as it is often translated, the still, small voice.

To hear that sheer silence, Elijah had to let the wind, the earthquake, and the fire pass by without letting them sweep him away.

When we sit in expectant waiting, our internal winds and fires will inevitably rise. A thought about what we are having for Sunday dinner might drift in. A flash of irritation about an email from yesterday might send up a spark. Or an old grief with someone might rumble like an earthquake.

A mindful approach to worship teaches us not to fight these thoughts or judge ourselves for having them.

Fighting a thought only gives it more power.

Instead, like Elijah standing on the mountain, we simply acknowledge them.

We name them—"there is my anxiety, there is my planning”—and we let them pass by.

It took me several weeks over my sabbatical to acknowledge and name mine, but finally I learned to let those things pass by, and when I did, things really began to change.

In this room, we have the opportunity every week to gently tether our attention back to our breath, to the physical sensation of the pew or chair beneath us, and to the shared quiet of the room.

By quieting the mental chatter, we transition from self-centered thinking into Spirit-centered waiting. We move from a state of doing to a state of being.

It is in that deeply settled silence that the Inner Light becomes visible.

It is there that we become sensitive enough to feel the subtle nudges of the Spirit, guiding us either to hold a concern in love or to step forward into vocal ministry and action.

Let us remember that centering down is a community project.

As Quakers we do not sit in isolation. When one person in the meetingroom finds that place of deep, mindful quiet, it ripples outward. We anchor one another.

I want to close this message with a poem titled, “Worship as a Poem” by Friend Peter Crysdale of Allen’s Neck Monthly Meeting in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.  It seems to illustrate well what I have been talking about this morning.

The Inward Motion

Sometimes silent worship is communion.
Other times the washing-machine mind thumps and spins—
There are sabbath times when silence pours like heavy cream.
Waiting Worship does not depend on this belief or that—
Extended experience changes our beliefs. 
Folks who aren’t easy with each other find union sitting
On these benches—just what this divided world needs.

Let Go   

Ride the hunger and longing down the waterfall of light—
Drink deeply from the cup of Divine Love.
Slowly—sustained attention emerges,
The ancient contemplative path to the deep.
Stuff happens when we worship—mostly beneath our 
Awareness—but there are hints—
Gratitude becomes more than giving thanks.
Reverence more than a sweet hush.
Wisdom sparks our existence with a series of small surprises. 

Now, I invite you to join me in attempting to drop your tools, lay down your heavy burdens of planning and fixing, and step out onto the mountain into silence this morning.

Let the winds, the earthquakes, and the fires of life pass and listen closely for the sheer silence that binds us together and speaks directly to our hearts. Just maybe the doorway will open for new awareness, gratitude, reverence, and wisdom to appear in our midst.   

If you need some queries to focus, here are a couple to consider.

·      How am I preparing my mind and body to enter a state of holy attention today? What heavy tools or mental chatter do I need to gently lay down so that I might fully inhabit this present moment?

·      When the winds of anxiety or the fires of distraction rise up within me during our worship, how can I use my breath and the quiet presence of this community to center down and listen for the still, small voice?

9-13-26 - The Foundations of Authentic Community

The Foundations of Authentic Community

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

September 13, 2026

John 13:34-35 (New Revised Standard Version)

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

On this Kick-Off Sunday, I would like to take a moment to return to some basics about spiritual or beloved community as we head into a new year, together. If anything, this is a good reminder for our life together at First Friends.

When you and I gather here at the Meeting, it’s easy to settle into the comfort of the silence. We look around at the familiar faces, feel the collective sigh of relief from a heavy week, and think, This is our community.

But authentic community—the kind of radical, transformative fellowship that can actually hold us through a messy, changing world—isn't just a warm aesthetic or a passive Sunday worship vibe.

It’s an active, ongoing spiritual ecosystem.

It is a living testament to grace.

It is a profound gift, but it also requires a deep, intentional commitment to showing up for one another.

As our scripture reading for today reminds us, loving one another isn't an abstract feeling; it is the visible, tangible proof of our spiritual life.

Community is something we co-create every single day.

To understand what this looks like, I am reminded of a brief story told by Parker Palmer about an experience on a grounded airplane. He said,

The flight was delayed on the tarmac for hours. The air grew stale, the cabin became hot, and passengers quickly turned frustrated and cold to one another. The collective energy was full of gridlock, scarcity, and resentment.

Then, unexpected grace broke through. Rather than pulling further into their isolation, a few passengers decided to change the environment. One person rooted around their bag and pulled out a box of candy to share. Another reached into their overhead luggage and retrieved a bottle of wine. Someone else offered up a salami. Within minutes, the griping stopped. A claustrophobic delay was transformed into a potluck. People who had been strangers moments before were suddenly laughing, talking, and looking out for one another.

They didn't change the weather, and they didn't fix the airplane. What they changed was how they related to one another in the space available to them.

To build a modern Beloved Community in the Light of Divine Grace, we are invited to practice that same spirit of radical presence and holy listening, collective vulnerability, and the courage to stay at the table.

Let me first talk about how coming together requires radical presence and holy listening.

As Friends, we recognize that silence isn't just an absence of noise; it's a spaciousness where the Divine can move.

In a culture that encourages us to listen only to find a flaw, formulate an argument, or sort people into boxes, choosing to listen with grace is a radical act.

It means listening to a Friend with a patient, generous curiosity. Like the passengers sharing what little they had, we offer our absolute presence to one another, acknowledging that the Light moves fluidly through the entire collective.

If you have ever interacted with Friend and fellow pastor, Chris Edwards (whether when he attended First Friends or preached at our meeting, or led one of our retreats), you have experienced radical presence and holy listening.

Too often today when you meet with people, they are distracted, focused on their phone, or while you are talking, you can see their gears are turning ready to share their own thoughts immediately when you take a breath. This is not the case when you meet with Chris.

Even though Chris is a Spiritual Director, by nature he is patient and knows what it means to generously share his presence. I always feel heard when I am with Chris and his presence makes room for anyone he is speaking with. For someone so good at listening, I think it is ironic he is studying listening for his PhD studies.

Radical presence and holy listening are rare qualities in our world that I believe we must bring back so that we can come together and build better community.    

Second, community thrives when we embrace collective vulnerability.

We cannot build an equitable, deeply connected community if we are all wearing armor.

Early Quaker Isaac Penington beautifully wrote about "helping one another up with a tender hand."  But to be lifted, we have to admit when we are struggling, exhausted, or unsure.

A progressive, life-giving meeting is a sanctuary where we can bring our grief, our doubts, our anxieties, and our unfinished thoughts, knowing they will be held with care. This reminds me of the story about Chloe.

At twenty-four, Chloe was a vibrant, self-described mess. Her apartment was a disaster, her relationships were complicated, and she usually used loud, fast talking to keep people at a distance. But when she started attending Quaker Meeting, she fell in love with the stillness.

She also quickly convinced herself that her natural exuberance was too disruptive for these serious, holy people.

So, Chloe built a Quaker persona. She wore long, flowing skirts she secretly hated. She spoke in a forced, quiet cadence at the rise of meeting. She became a chameleon, terrified that her loud, doubting, messy self would shatter the fragile peace of the room.

On this particular Sunday, however, the silence felt aggressive. It poked at the edges of her pretense. A wave of profound loneliness washed over her. By hiding her true self, she realized she was ensuring that no one in this community could ever actually love her—only the quiet ghost she was pretending to be.

The weight of the act was becoming suffocating.

Then, an older Friend named Martha stood up to give ministry. Her voice trembled. "Friends, the Light does not shine only on our polished surfaces," Martha said. "If we do not bring our real, messy, broken selves into this silence, we are just a room full of polite strangers."

As Martha sat down, the texture of the room shifted. It was no longer a space demanding conformity; it was an opening.

Chloe let out a breath and allowed her posture to slouch. She stopped trying to project a holy calm and let a tear slip down her cheek. For the first time, she brought her unvarnished, uncertain self into the quiet.

When meeting ended, a man named Arthur turned to shake her hand.

"How are you?" Chloe asked, her voice automatically dropping into her forced, quiet whisper. She caught herself, took a deep breath, and spoke in her natural, slightly too-loud voice. "Actually, let me try that again. How are you really?"

Arthur looked at her, his own rigid posture relaxing. "I'm having a really hard time," he admitted.

Chloe smiled—a real, unpolished smile. "Me too," she said, finally present.

Folks, there is immense grace in letting ourselves be seen in our imperfections.

Finally, coming together means having the courage to stay at the table when things get uncomfortable.

When Early Friends sought the "sense of the Meeting," they weren't playing politics or rushing to a majority vote. They were practicing deep, collective discernment.

Today, when disagreements or systemic tensions arise, the dominant culture tells us to cancel, pull away, or silo ourselves off.

But the way of Light and Grace calls us to a ministry of reconciliation.

It asks us to hold our own egos loosely, to stay in the room through the awkward or painful moments, and to trust that the love that connects us is vast enough to hold our complexities.

As the contemporary activist Valarie Kaur reminds us, we live into what we imagine, and we must practice the world we want within the space available to us. Community is how we materialize that Divine imagination in the world.

So, as we Kick-off this new season at First Friends this morning, will you commit to join me in helping lay a good foundation by practicing a spirit of radical presence, by opening ourselves up to collective vulnerability, and having the courage to stay at the table?

If so, we will continue to grow in grace together at First Friends.     

Amen.

Now, as we settle into the silence of waiting worship, let us hold the following queries in our hearts:

·      How am I practicing radical presence and holy listening in this meeting? Am I actively creating an affirming, tender space where others feel safe enough to share their full, authentic selves?

·      When friction or difficult differences arise among us, do I tend to withdraw or get defensive, or do I lean into the Living Light to help me stay engaged and seek systemic, collective healing?

9-6-26 - Sacred Work and Holy Rest

Sacred Work and Holy Rest

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

September 6, 2026

Good morning, Friends and welcome to Light Reflections.  The scripture I have chosen to support my message for this week is Genesis 2:3-4 from The Message.  

By the seventh day
    God had finished his work.
On the seventh day
    he rested from all his work.
God blessed the seventh day.
    He made it a Holy Day
Because on that day he rested from his work,
    all the creating God had done.

This is the story of how it all started,
    of Heaven and Earth when they were created.

On this Labor Day weekend, as we gather to rest, bbq, and enjoy the company of family and friends, we are invited to look at something we do almost every day, yet rarely pause to reflect on spiritually: that being our work (and if you are retired, most of you still do work every day – so you don’t get a pass this morning.)

If you and I look at the hands that do the work, the minds that design it, and the economic systems that govern it, what we see is that too often, our culture treats work as a cold transaction.

You and I trade our hours for dollars, and we are told that our worth is entirely tied to our productivity. In our world today, if you produce much, you are valued. If you cannot, you are often forgotten.

But the Gospel offers us a radically different story.

If we flip back to the very first pages of Genesis 2:15, we find that before there were corporations, factories, or timecards, there was a garden.

Scripture says God placed humanity there "to work it and take care of it."

Our first glimpse of God is not as a distant royal king, but as a creator, or better a gardener/artist, with dirt under their fingernails—shaping the cosmos, breathing life into clay, and calling it good.

Folks, work, in its original design, is a sacred partnership with the Divine to cultivate and sustain life.

Several years ago, now, I had the opportunity to go hear Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson speak at Indiana University.  They were talking about farming and the importance of being connected to the earth. 

During the Q&A section, a student, who I believe was trying to get some answers for a paper asked a not-so-well thought out question about “work.” It came almost immediately after Wes Jackson said the following about growing up. He said,

“People who impressed me were those who worked.”

To answer the student’s question, Wendell and Wes both rose to their feet and passionately began addressing the way our culture looks at work.  Things like:

·      People today think work is boring.

·      Work is trivial.

·      Work is what we have to do so we can have fun.

·      Wendell summed it all up with the American phrase: Less work = more life, which is exactly what the student had assumed. 

Wes then said, “Work doesn’t have to be fun – but rather satisfying.” 

And Wendell went on to add that satisfaction means you have done something, it is part of your being or life.

Even though they were lecturing on farming, they transitioned to the idea that work is a spiritual act of stewardship.

Wendell said it so well,

"The name of our proper connection to the earth is 'good work,' for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that it makes and the user of the made thing."

Whether you spend your days writing code, teaching children, stocking grocery shelves, caring for an aging parent, or sweeping floors, your labor has inherent value.

Meaning - It matters to God.

Every honest effort that sustains human life is an echo of that initial creation, meant to be done with care, intention, and respect.

But as progressive Quakers, we cannot talk about the dignity of labor without looking honestly at the reality of the worker.

The systems of our world have broken that original design.

We see it when corporate profits soar while the people executing the labor can barely afford rent.

We see it when workers are stripped of healthcare, safe conditions, or a living wage.

Sadly, we have designed an economy that treats labor as a burden to be exploited rather than a gift to be honored.

It is as that quote from Wendell Berry earlier exclaimed:

"To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for."

Our faith reminds us that Jesus did not stand aloof from these struggles. The gospel writers made sure we knew,

·      Jesus was a carpenter and builder. He knew what it felt like to have calloused hands and an aching back.

·      Jesus lived among a working class oppressed by imperial taxes and economic greed.

·      And it is no accident that when Jesus announced his public ministry in Luke 4:18, he didn't give a lecture on abstract theology. Instead, he quoted Isaiah, declaring that he came to "proclaim good news to the poor" and "to set the oppressed free."

As I have said before, the Gospel is not only political, but inherently social, and deeply economic, as well.

The New Testament writer James put it even more bluntly when he wrote in James 5:4: 

"Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty."

Folks, I believe God hears the cries of the modern worker. When a system devalues the human being to maximize the profit margin, it is not just bad economics—it is a spiritual crisis.

This is why God also gave us the commandment of the Sabbath. In Exodus 20, the command to rest was revolutionary – even radical.  

In the ancient world, slaves didn't get days off. But God mandated that everyone—servants, immigrants, and even the farm animals—must stop and rest.

Sabbath is our holy reminder that your value comes from being a child of God, not from your output. Rest is a human right, not a reward you have to earn. I can say after taking a sabbatical (which literally means a lengthened sabbath) that it helped remind me of my value and my place in God’s family.

So, how do we leave this place today and live out these words?

Labor Day is more than the unofficial end of summer. For us, it should be a call to solidarity.

Let us commit to honoring the worker, not just with words, but with our choices and our advocacy.

Let us stand with those demanding fair wages and safe conditions.

And let us practice the holy resistance of rest in our own lives, trusting that we are loved for who we are, not just what we produce. Maybe you could declare Monday a day of rest!

May our work honor the Creator, may our communities reflect the justice of Jesus, and may we all find our way into God’s holy rest.

Amen.

Now, as we enter a time of waiting worship, let us take some time to ponder the following queries:

·      Do I approach my work with a spirit of affection and honor, or merely as a cold transaction?

·      Am I actively supporting systems that grant workers a living wage and safe conditions, or am I complicit in their exploitation?

·      How am I practicing the radical, holy resistance of rest?

8-30-26 - Lessons For Today From Our Whaling Past

Lessons For Today From Our Whaling Past

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

August 30, 2026

Good morning, Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections.  The scripture I have chosen for my message, today, is from Isaiah 2:4 from the New Revised Standard Version.

“He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

As I have mentioned a couple of times since returning, I have been reading Moby Dick since visiting the New Bedford Whaling Museum during my sabbatical (by the time this premieres on YouTube I should have finished the book).  Since the book is so dense, I have found it full of lessons for life and for our spiritual walk.  I would like to share some with you this morning.

Too often, Quakers like to think of our spiritual ancestors as gentle folks in oatmeal-colored clothes who wouldn't hurt a fly, sitting quietly in wooden chairs and speaking only of love and light. 

But part of our history tells a much different, and ultimately more challenging, story. The most ruthless, high-stakes whaling empire on Earth was built by Quakers, and many don’t realize that Moby Dick documents some of this history in detail.

It turns out that those peaceful people who refused to lift a finger in human warfare were absolute terrors to the animal kingdom. They took over an island called Nantucket and turned it into the oil capital of the world. Folks, our Quaker ancestors were the first oil barons, let that sink in.

They memorized Isaiah’s beautiful prophecy that we heard read, today, about beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, but they forgot to apply it to the ocean.

They kept their harpoons sharp, chasing wealth into the deep while holding onto an illusion of perfect piety.

In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville had a field day poking fun at this wild, spiritual double-life. He described these islanders as "Quakers with a vengeance". They were a people who combined deep religious piety with a terrifyingly business model.

In Moby Dick the reader is introduced to Captain Bildad, a wealthy, retired Quaker shipowner. Bildad is deeply religious, a man who devoutly reads his Scripture and abhors human conflict. Yet, when it comes to the whales, all that gentleness disappears.

Melville notes with sharp irony that "the world is as hard an unyielding commodity to him as a form of ivory".

Bildad could sit in the quiet of a meetinghouse on Sunday, meditating on Isaiah's vision of peace, and calculate how many barrels of oil he could squeeze out of God's creatures on Monday.

It is incredibly easy to chuckle at old Captain Bildad, sitting on the docks, quoting the Bible while planning a high-seas massacre. 

But if we look closely into the mirror of history, we might see the exact same thing staring back at us.

Much like Bildad, we have learned to compartmentalize our lives. We treat the living world around us as a hard, unyielding commodity to be mined for our personal comfort and convenience, mistaking a feeling of personal calmness for the active work of peace.

Fortunately, Quaker history also gives us glimpses of what happens when a person actually lets Isaiah's prophecy disrupt their business. For example,  the true story of William Rotch, one of the most powerful Quaker whaling merchants of Nantucket.

During the American Revolutionary War, the local provisional government discovered that Rotch had a massive stockpile of weapons in his whaling warehouse. Desperate for arms, officials showed up at his door and demanded them.

Rotch flatly refused. He explained that while he sometimes took weapons as payment for debts, he always detached the bayonets because they were as he said, “purposefully made and used for the destruction of mankind”.

He looked the officials in the eye and referenced the very scripture text we read today: he told them he wished he could beat them into pruning hooks—but since he couldn't, he took the entire crate of bayonets and dumped them into the sea.

Rotch was hauled before the Committee of Safety for treason, but he stood his ground, insisting he acted purely out of religious principle. He was willing to sink his own expensive inventory rather than let it be used to cause harm. He chose to destroy his own wealth rather than compromise the peace testimony.

The query that arises for me in hearing this is,  

What are the modern weapons hidden in our own warehouses? What are the things we profit from, or comfortably use, that we know are causing harm?

We might excuse ourselves because we don't personally chuck iron harpoons into the ocean. You and I live fairly clean, polite lives. But Quakers throughout history have always been quick to pop that bubble of self-righteousness.

John Woolman, the famous 18th-century Quaker humanitarian, warned that we love to ignore cruelty when it gets dressed up in respectable clothes. He wrote: 

"Oppression in more refined appearances remains oppression".

Our modern weapons are incredibly refined. They are wrapped in sleek design, fast shipping, and clever marketing. 

·      We don’t burn whale fat to light our rooms anymore; instead, we scroll on smartphones built with cobalt mined by children. 

·      We charge our electric vehicles using grids still powered by coal that chokes the lungs of nearby low-income communities.

·      When we want a cheap wardrobe refresh, we order fast-fashion items stitched together by underpaid factory workers half a world away.

·      We buy cheap, mass-produced food grown on cleared rainforest land, sprayed with chemicals that poison the soil.

We have effectively outsourced the messy, bloody, exploitative parts of our modern lifestyle. And because the damage happens thousands of miles away, we get to sit in our clean, sunlit meetinghouses and homes and feel entirely peaceful.

We think we have beaten our swords into plowshares, but we have really just hidden them across the globe.

In Moby-Dick, Melville warns us never to trust the peaceful, inviting appearance of the ocean. He says: 

Consider the subtleness of the sea... how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure.

Our cozy, modern lifestyles are just like that beautiful blue water. On the surface, everything looks lovely, polite, and moving forward. We use the right vocabulary, we recycle, and we mean well. But underneath that lovely tint of azure glides a massive shadow of structural harm.

As concerned Friends often remind us, true peace isn't just about feeling calm or keeping our hands clean. It is about waking up to our own participation in the world's messes. 

Isaiah didn't say the weapons would magically vanish; he said the people would have to actively beat them into tools of cultivation and growth. True peace means refusing to buy into a system that trades another person's dignity or the health of the planet for our own convenience.

Now, please understand, we don’t need to wallow in paralyzing guilt—guilt never changed a system or saved a whale. But we do need to follow William Rotch's lead and start sinking our own bayonets.

We have to look at our habits, our subscription services, our investment portfolios, and our trash cans. We have to ask the hard query:

Who or what is paying the price for my comfort?

When we buy fewer things, choose ethically sourced goods, or demand systemic changes in how our energy is produced, we are slowly dismantling that old whaling mentality.

We are refusing to treat the world as a hard piece of ivory. We are participating in the prophetic work of transforming tools of destruction into tools of life.

And here is the beautiful, hopeful truth of our history - when we change, the world changes with us. 

The Quakers eventually walked away from the whaling industry. They realized they couldn't preach peace while sailing on fleets of violence. They pivoted their incredible creativity, their organizing skills, and their wealth toward abolition, women's suffrage, and human rights.

They proved that a community can wake up, turn the ship around, and heal what they once harmed.

We can do the exact same thing today, folks. Every mindful choice you and I make—every time we choose compassion over convenience—we are plotting a new course. We are beating our own modern spears into pruning hooks. We are proving that humanity is capable of outgrowing its cruelty.

Let’s have the courage to laugh at our own contradictions, step out of our comfortable bubbles, and actually live the values we preach.

Folks, the ocean is vast, but our capacity for love and transformation is deeper still. Let us pull back our harpoons, heal the waters, and sail forward together into the true, uncompromised Light.

Amen.

As we transition into waiting worship, let us ponder the following queries:

1.      Where do my values and my lifestyle conflict? In what areas of my daily life have I settled into a comfortable compromise, ignoring the hidden costs of my convenience?

2.      What are the "bayonets" in my own warehouse? What am I holding onto, profiting from, or consuming that I need the courage to set aside or discard for the sake of a better world?

3.      Where is the Light calling me to pivot? What is one small, practical change I can make this week to begin beating my own "spears into pruning hooks"?

8-23-26 - From Me to We

From Me to We

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

August 23, 2026

Good morning, Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections.  This morning the text I have chosen to support my message is from Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 from the New Revised Standard Version.

Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other, but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help.  Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?  And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.

This morning I would like us to spend some time reflecting on the invisible, yet unbreakable threads that bind us to one another (as we heard read in our scripture for this morning).  And please note, like I said last week, this connection is not by technology, but rather by the spirit of our shared existence.

Friends, if we look around our world today, we notice something deeply paradoxical. By every modern metric, we are the most connected generation to ever walk the face of this earth.

·      A message can cross an ocean in a fraction of a second.

·      We can see the faces of people thousands of miles away with the tap of a screen.

·      We are inundated with data, flooded with updates, and constantly plugged into a global network.

YET, something I began to notice this summer on my sabbatical, is that if you look closely into the eyes of people around you, or perhaps look closely into the mirror during a quiet moment, you will find a quiet, persistent truth:

We are profoundly lonely.

Even though we are wired together, we are drifting further and further apart.

The noise of our world has grown deafening, but the depth of our communication has grown very thin.

Another query I began to ask myself over sabbatical and I want to present to you this morning is,

What is it that we truly need right now?  [Just pause and ponder that for a moment.]

I don’t think it is faster networks.

It’s not more data.

I think what the world needs right now—at its very core—is a revival of human empathy, a restoration of genuine connection, and a commitment to constructive cooperation.

I know, a while back, I did an entire sermon series on empathy. But it is worth a review in this context.

True empathy is more than simple pity; it is the courageous act of stepping outside of our own assumptions and sitting in the space of another person’s reality.

It is looking at someone with whom you disagree, someone whose life experiences are entirely foreign to your own, and saying,

"I see you. Your pain matters to me. Your story is valid."

In a world that encourages us to view one another as metrics, or political opponents, or mere faces on a screen, empathy is a revolutionary and often radical act.

It first demands that we slow down, and then it requires us to listen not to reply, but to understand.

When we cultivate empathy, we begin to heal the fractures in our social, familial, and personal fabric. We realize that beneath the layers of inflation, economic anxiety, and cultural differences, we all share the same baseline desires:

·      to be safe,

·      to be valued,

·      and to be understood.

But empathy cannot live in a vacuum; it requires proximity. It requires genuine connection.

We live in a culture of distraction, where our attention is bought and sold by algorithms designed to keep us looking down at our screens. 

But real relationships require us to look up. It requires us to step away from the digital static and invest in the sacred space of community.

·      True connection is found in the unhurried conversation over a cup of coffee or tea.

 While in Hannibal, Missouri we had coffee each morning at the Java Jive as did many of the locals. One thing we noticed almost immediately was the absence of phones and the volume of the conversation. Even after coming back after a day of walking the city, people were still gathered until almost 10pm sharing their lives at this café.

·      It is found in sitting in silence with someone who is grieving.  And grieving doesn’t just mean death, it could be the loss of a job, the loss of health, the loss of understanding, the loss of control…

·      It is found in holding the hand of your partner or close friend as you watch the sunset together or while taking a walk.  Connection does not have to happen just through words, for some it must be through touch. 

While in Boston, I saw a group of people at the marketplace from another country who were walking together, each person in the group held the hand or arm of someone else in their group.  I loved watching their interaction, the smiles on their faces, and how they interacted and held each other – it was so intimate, caring, and clearly different from the others in the crowd around us.

·      Most importantly, it is found in the messy, beautiful, face-to-face interactions that cannot be captured in a text message or a social media comment.

When we prioritize genuine connection, we build a shelter against the storms of isolation. We remind each other that we do not have to carry the weights of this life alone.

We move from an ideology of "me" to a theology of "we."

Finally, when empathy leads to connection, connection must inevitably flower into cooperation.

The challenges facing our global community today are too massive for any single individual, group, or nation to solve in isolation. Whether we are discussing environmental stewardship, economic fairness, or the pursuit of peace, we must realize these are SHARED human burdens.

Folks, you and I cannot afford the luxury of division.

Constructive global cooperation is not a naive utopian dream; it is a practical necessity for our survival and flourishing. It means finding common ground even when our differences are vast. It means realizing that when one part of the human family suffers, the whole body suffers. When we cooperate, we acknowledge that our fates are intertwined. We build bridges instead of walls, and we find that our diversity is not a barrier to unity, but the very strength that makes our collective fabric resilient.

On our cruise, we were seated with another couple for our evening dinners.  They were about our same age and ironically, also had three grown children.  As we began to engage, we found them both to be from military backgrounds, Roman Catholic in faith, and living in the deep South. In many ways, VERY opposite of Sue and me. The more we engaged them, the more we found so many similarities in our lives. We both shared our faith stories, our struggles with family, and we somehow avoided talking about politics.  By the third day, we looked forward to getting to dinner to catch up with them. Soon we were taking excursions, having a drink before dinner, and going to the shows together.  We laughed so much we shed tears together, we told story after story, and before we left, we gave hugs and shared our contact information allowing us to stay connected.  We still text and share our lives, today.

Think about it, when was the last time you made a new friend? And what are you letting get in the way for new friendships to be built? 

Well, to wrap up my thoughts this morning, some of you may be asking, where do I begin?

Well, we begin right where we are.

The world changes not through massive, sweeping shifts alone, but through the accumulation of small, intentional choices.

·      Tomorrow (or even this afternoon), when you walk out into this crazy world, choose empathy over judgment.

·      Choose to look someone in the eye and truly listen.

·      Choose to invest in your local community, to connect deeply with those around you, and to cooperate with others to make your corner of the world a little brighter, a little kinder, and a little more just.

Let us step away from the noise, let us look up, and let us weave those strands of connection so tightly together that they can never be broken.

Amen.

Now as we “center down” into our time of waiting worship, let us ponder the following queries:

1.      When is the last time, I made a new friend? 

2.      Who is someone I disagree with that I have not taken the time to see and hear their story? 

3.      Who do I need to have a cup of coffee or tea with this week? 

8-16-26 - The Cheerful Revolt of Returning to Joy

The Cheerful Revolt of Returning to Joy

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

August 16, 2026

Good morning, Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections. The scripture I have chosen to support my message for this morning is John 4:10 from the  Message version.

Jesus answered, “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water.”

Friends, last week, after I shared about going to the sea to be renewed and revived, I had some great conversations about our travels, but one conversation had me thinking more about this “Living Water” that we hear about often in the scriptures.

Whether it was specifically the invitation to the Samaritan woman at the well or Christ’s invitation to each of us to partake in the “living waters” that flow from his heart, he was offering something that we seem to struggle to engage with still, today.

I will be the first to say, there are seasons when the Living Water feels far away.

It is like we are landlocked spiritually.

We may even look inside ourselves and find only a dry well.

The weight of the world, the static of our daily anxieties, and the sheer exhaustion of trying to manage life in our own strength can slowly extinguish our inner joy.

We do not lose our faith, but we lose our voice or maybe even the song of our heart – that spark of joy that gives us hope and purpose.  

In our Quaker tradition, we know it is a mistake to fake this condition. We do not manufacture artificial joy (or at least we shouldn’t).

We should not force a smile to mask a heavy heart. To do so would be a violation of our commitment to integrity.

When joy is absent, we must first have the courage to acknowledge the silence and the emptiness.  

As I started my sabbatical, I was in need of seeking the Living Water and I will be honest, my inner well was dry.  

But I had to face and acknowledge what was causing my dryness.  For me, social media, politics, family challenges, life changes, the struggles of my neighbors and friends, and just daily ministry were all weighing heavy on me as I entered my sabbatical time, and I knew I could not just flip a switch to return my joy.    

Quaker Bruce Henry (I do not believe any relation to me), presiding clerk of the Religious Society of Friends in Australia echoes this truth; that we cannot flip a switch and be brought back into the light. In a reflection in The Daily Quaker Message, he says.

“It is very hard to find anything joyful if you are suffering grief, loss, pain or sadness... [He continues] For me those feelings don't stay with me, so I find myself returning to silent prayer over and over.”

Turning off social media and the news, alone, allowed me to enter the silence and hear again the still small voice of the Divine. I found as my three months progressed entering the silence became easier, and the Living Water returned - first as a trickle and by the end I sensed a fuller flow, again. 

But let me not get ahead of myself.  

A query that I needed to ask myself, and I know many of you struggle with, is

“Why does our joy leave us in the first place?”

Often, it is because we have allowed our outer busyness and the weight of the world around us to sever our connection to our inward Teacher.

We become captured by the "notions" of the world—the constant pressure to produce, to fix, and to control.

When we are overwhelmed, our instinct is often to hide. We retreat into the shadows of our own minds and seek to protect our exhaustion.

But folks, joy cannot grow in isolation.

If we wrap ourselves tightly in our worries, we block the Living Waters that are trying to refresh us. As the 20th-century Quaker sociologist and peace activist Elise Boulding wrote in her classic pamphlet:

“The real difference between happiness and joy is that one is grounded in this world, the other in eternity. Happiness cannot encompass suffering and evil. Joy can... Joy leaps into the future and triumphantly creates a new present out of it.”

Returning to joy requires a “holy” surrender. Did you know that we are offered a moment each week to do this right here? When we enter a quiet meeting for worship, we sit down with our weariness, and then have the opportunity to actively lay it down.  

What I realized is that this does not just have to happened in worship, but it can happen anywhere.  It could happen in your backyard, on a walk, in the car, sitting by the river or the sea (I think it might be easier there as I said last week). 

Another thing I realized was that we must stop trying to solve ourselves. In his seminal book, A Testament of Devotion, 20th-century Quaker mystic Thomas Kelly described this process as "centering down" to a place of eternal peace. He says,

“The mark of this simplified life is radiant joy... It binds all obedient souls together in the fellowship of humility and simple adoration... This amazing simplification comes when we 'center down,' when life is lived with singleness of eye, from a holy Center where the breath and stillness of Eternity are heavy upon us and we are wholly yielded to Him.”

Joy returns when we realize that the Seed—the Christ within, the Divine Spark or Light (whatever we want to call it) - has never actually left us. It was merely buried under the rubble of our crowded and complicated lives.

When we quiet our own frantic spirits, we allow the soft, persistent warmth of God’s presence to melt the ice around our souls.

Richard Foster builds on this, reminding us that true joy frees us from taking our own egos too seriously:

“Joy, not grit, is the hallmark of holy obedience. We need to be light-hearted in what we do to avoid taking ourselves too seriously. It is a cheerful revolt against self and pride.”

Even though Foster calls it a “cheerful revolt,” joy is not loud or boisterous. Rather, it’s a quiet, resilient peace. It’s the steady assurance that we are held in a love that does not depend on our circumstances.

When joy returns to you and me, it inevitably breaks outward into our actions. It alters how we walk in the world. It makes us tender, prompting us to notice the simple gifts we were previously too busy to see. I cannot agree with this more.

Friend Judith Goedecke beautifully observed:

“Faith and hope are not about believing everything will be alright. They call us to our purpose: to love one another. They call us to constantly cultivate love in quiet ways through it all… In turn, faith and hope promise us that... joy and love will comfort...”

Folks, true Quaker joy is experimental - meaning it is lived, tested, and experienced. That means it must be tried and honed in a community we can trust and feel safe in.

Thus, you and I can build the strength to face a broken world not with despair, but with a radical, quiet hope, together.

Let us sink down to that holy center today, so that we may leave this place ready to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.

Amen.

Now, as we center down and enter our time of waiting worship, think about what you need to surrender this morning and ask yourselves the following queries:

·      Am I running, willing, or striving in my own strength right now, and has it crowded out my access to the Inward Teacher?

• Am I expecting happiness (which depends on outward happenings) or am I actively centering down to cultivate joy?

• What distractions or worldly pressures must I actively lay down on the floor of the meeting house today so that my mind can become still and receptive?

• How can we, as a community, support one another when a Friend's light has grown faint, holding space for them until their joy returns?

8-9-26 - I Go to the Sea…

I Go to the Sea…

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

August 9, 2026

Good morning, Friends and welcome to Light Reflections. The scripture I have chosen to support my message for today is Revelation 22:1 from the New Revised Standard Version.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

It is hard to believe it has been three months since I shared a message with you, but it is good to be back and catching up with all that has been happening in your lives. I am extremely grateful for my time away and for your dedication to fill the gap while I have been gone.  Specifically, thank you to our great ministry team, Beth, Eric, Chrissy, and Rebecca, Ministry & Council, Fellowship and Connections Committees, and all of you who stepped up to provide messages, write articles, and give pastoral care to one another. I am grateful for your dedication to our Meeting and proud to call you Friends. 

This morning, I would like to briefly share a little of my journey and something I have gleaned from my time away. Since Sue and I covered over 6300 miles by boat, car, and on foot, I have not only learned a great deal, but experienced much more, which to be honest will take months or even years to fully process. 

Without any interaction on Social Media for three months, I found time to read ten books during my sabbatical. And I bought or was given almost 30 books during the three months to further my studies on a variety of subjects (thanks to library sales, Goodwills, used bookstores, and museum shops on our travels).  

For a week between travelling, I fully engaged my creative side at IU Heron School of Art where I stepped out of my go-to medias and tried my hand at jewelry and print making, as well as interpretive painting and linocuts. 

Over the hottest July 4th weekend, I think in Indiana history, Sue and I became Traveling Fast Pitch Softball Parents for our 15-year-old niece, as her mom (Sue’s sister) is battling cancer. Talk about a new experience coming from a family of all boys.  

Since the first book I ever really enjoyed reading was Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn in 7th grade, I dedicated some time on this sabbatical to follow the life of Mark Twain. After reading Ron Chernow’s wonderful biography of Twain, Sue and I spent a week in Hannibal, Missouri on the Great Mississippi for our wedding anniversary. We traveled to Florida, Missouri where Twain was born, saw all the sights in Hannibal from his boyhood home to the cave that inspired Tom Sawyer.  We even took the Mark Twain paddle boat for a trip down the Mississippi during a picturesque sunset on our anniversary. 

Later in the summer, we visited Twain’s eccentric home in Hartford, Connecticut and finished our travels in Elmira, New York to see the actual study where he wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on his summer retreats.  We also paused to pay homage at his grave before heading back to Indiana. 

Since one of my goals for sabbatical was to seek my own family and Quaker history, we began our east coast trip in New Castle, Delaware. There, Sue, Sam, and I stood on the pier where both my ancestors and William Penn stepped foot in the New World.  After a full day of immersing ourselves in the New Castle, Delaware history, we ventured outside of town to the land in which William Penn gave my relatives called Barker’s Bridge.  I took a moment to walk down to the creek that ran through their property and see the beautiful land which today is both a new subdivision and a nature preserve. 

The following day, we traveled to Old Swede’s Church in Wilmington, Delaware to begin the search for the graves of my ancestors.  After a tour of the church where several of my ancestors were married, we began the search for any of the surviving tomb stones of my relatives.  Searching through the 1000 or so mostly washed-out stones left us with no success, that is until we received some help from our guide, who found the burial sight of Margaret Barker and then Samuel who originally came with William Penn on the ship, Welcome in 1682. There are few words to describe the moment we realized we were standing at their graves and putting our history together. This memory will remain with me the rest of my life.

After the success of validating my family history at Old Swedes, we began what I will call a Quaker history tour.  We stopped at Wilmington Monthly Meeting and Graveyard, where we received a tour of the Meetinghouse from the caretaker. Wilmington Meeting was the last major stop on the East Coast overland route of the Underground Railroad. Buried outside the meetinghouse was Thomas Garrett (Stationmaster of the Underground Railroad), who led the anti-slavery effort on the Delaware peninsula. Garrett is credited with helping more than 2700 slaves escape to freedom.

Leaving Delaware, we stopped briefly in Hartford, Connecticut for Mark Twain’s home before continuing our Quaker history tour at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. We spent an entire day in this dense museum, learning not only about whaling history but our Quaker history as well.  If you get a chance do not miss experiencing New Bedford and this museum.  

From there we settled in Bourne, Massachusetts, in the heart of Cape Cod.  Two miles from our hotel was Sandwich, Massachusetts, where stands the Sandwich Meeting of Friends and Quaker graveyard, established in 1657, it is the oldest continuous Quaker Meeting in North America.  

We spent most of one day in Woods Hole learning about the Oceanographic Institution and ocean research and science and enjoying a sea village on the Great Bay.

After some good advice from a bookseller in New Bedford, we changed our plans and backtracked to Westport, Massachusetts out off Buzzard’s Bay.  There we were told to visit Allen’s Pond Wildlife Sanctuary part of the Massachusetts’s Audubon. On the way we were encouraged to stop at Davoll’s General Store – a market, bookstore, and pub. (I almost decided to stay here.) After a nice lunch in the pub, I purchased a book on Quaker and Captain Paul Cuffee (who I have preached on a couple times at First Friends). If you remember, Paul was the son of a freed slave and an Indian mother and created the first integrated school in America. He achieved great success as a mariner, merchant, even returned ex-slaves back to Africa.

While reading through the book that night, I found out that the land we had taken an 8-mile hike on that afternoon in Allen’s Pond was once Paul Cuffee’s land.  And even Davoll’s General Store (the oldest general store in the United States) was originally named Slocum’s - which is Paul Cuffee’s dad, Cuff Slocum’s last name and that property once was theirs as well. We had to make a stop at Westport Monthly Meeting and Gravesite to visit the monument and grave of Paul Cuffee.  The Meetinghouse there was established in 1787. 

From there we travelled to Boston and walked the Freedom Trail from Boston Common to Bunker Hill.  It seemed a perfect time to visit as our country is celebrating it’s 250th birthday.  So much history in a 2.5 mile stretch of Boston and so much to ponder about our founding and the many atrocities that helped form our “not-so-perfect” union.

From Boston we made one last stop in Salem, Massachusetts. Each year on the Sunday nearest Halloween, we here at First Friends celebrate “Advocate for Witches Sunday” in honor of Quaker Thomas Maule who wrote the first condemnation of the witch trials.  Fellow Friend and Pastor Rachel Doll O’Mahoney had encouraged me to visit the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem.  They have an entire section dedicated to the true history of the Witch Trials.  At the end it acknowledges Thomas Maule’s work.  But even more the museum houses the actual 1679 meeting house that Thomas Maule helped construct. Interestingly, this meetinghouse would fit probably four or five times in our meeting room, it is more like a large red shed. I plan to share more about what all I learned in October. 

Well, that is a very brief overview of our travels and I am sure I will be sharing a lot more in the weeks and months to come.  But this morning, I want to share one interesting revelation I received on my time away. 

If you notice, many of the places we visited involved water.  To help us start off our rest and relaxation part of this sabbatical we took a 7-day cruise in the Atlantic and Caribbean Sea. In Hannibal, I mentioned that we stayed on the Mississippi River.  In New Castle we stayed on the Delaware River.  In Cape Cod we stayed on the Cape Cod Canal and visited both Cape Cod Bay and Buzzard’s Bay, and Woods Hole’s Great Bay.  We ended the Freedom Trail in Boston at Boston Harbor.  In Salem we could not miss Salem Harbor. And at Marblehead we had a view of the Atlantic Ocean from a top “Old Burial Hill” – one of the Oldest Graveyards in our country dating back to 1630.

There is something about water, about a river, about the sea that speaks to me.   

I found you can’t go to New Bedford Whaling Museum without yearning to read Moby Dick (which I am half-way through right now). In it, Ishmael goes to the sea to cure his depression and escape the gloomy land.

Mark Twain wrote in Life on the Mississippi (which I read during sabbatical),

“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice”

In my first weeks of sabbatical, I was given the book Theo of Golden (maybe one of the best books I have read in my entire life).  I read it once in two days and then read it out loud to Sue through a variety of emotions.  In that book the river is seen as a place of reflection, continuity, and the quiet transformative power of human connection. It represents a space for introspection, allowing Theo (the main character) to process his past, consider the lives of others, and plan his acts of kindness, which ultimately ripple through the community. Sue and I took a detour on our way to Florida for our cruise to stop in Columbus, Georgia the town that the story Theo of Golden is based upon. It lies on the Chattahoochee River. 

Now, I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana – a town where three rivers converge.  My grandparents lived on Canal Street in New Haven, Indiana which once followed the Wabash Canal.  I have lived close to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  I have worked on the Chain-o-Lakes, Lake Texoma, and just down the street from Silver Falls State Park (which was known for the most water falls on the entire west coast).  

Bodies of water and rivers have been important to my development and spiritual growth.

It was while I was in my master’s program that the book, “Streams of Living Water” by Quaker Richard Foster introduced me to the river and stream metaphors that center on the life-giving flow of the Spirit and the convergence of historic faith traditions. This imagery helped me embrace the unification of diverse spiritual paths, and ultimately the refreshing nature of God's grace.

Maybe this is all because rivers, streams, oceans and bodies of water are powerful symbols of life and change.

They can be seen as mirrors reflecting our own struggles and triumphs. They teach us about the cycle of life, the importance of balance, and the resilience of nature. They remind us that even in the face of destruction, they can heal and renew. Just maybe instead of watching the news – we should go sit by a river or pond. I know it has renewed me these past three months.

At the beginning of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem is a section titled, “Water, Land, and Sky” from a Native perspective.  There it reads,

“Water is Life…Water sustains us all, providing sustenance and shelter for all living beings, including humans, plants, and animals. In its many forms, water shapes the land and provides oceans, rivers, and lakes.  Water figures prominently in origin stories, ceremonies, and political relations for many Native peoples. Water ways connect Native kinship ties across Turtle Island, a collective term for Indigenous North America.”

And all this brings me to the scripture I chose, today. In the book of Revelation of all places. It describes a River of Life. It too is a metaphor or symbol of life and spiritual nourishment. It is said to flow from the throne of God and of the Lamb, representing the sustaining presence of God Himself.

The river's clarity and purity symbolize the holiness and righteousness of God, from which all blessings flow. It serves as a reminder of the healing and restoration that God offers to His people, offering hope and comfort in the face of trials and tribulations.

So, on this sabbatical…

·      Like Ishmael, I went to the sea (and will continue to go).

·      Like Twain the “face of water” has shared its secrets with me.

·      Like Theo I have reflected, processed my past, and considered the lives of others.

·      Like Foster the streams have led me to new insights and refreshment in God’s grace.

·      And like Native people, I have learned that water has been prominent in my origin story and continues to bring and sustain life.

I must continue to go to the sea, the river, to the bay, to the stream, to the pond, to the water.

Amen.  

Now, let’s take a moment to quiet our hearts and ask ourselves some queries:  

·      What body of water has inspired or spoken to my soul? And why?

·      Am I being called to go?

8-2-26 - The Splendor of God Revealed through Creation - Beth Henricks

The Splendor of God Revealed through Creation
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Beth Henricks
August 2, 2026

Psalm 42:1-3

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.  My soul thirsts  for God, for the living God.  When shall I come and behold the face of God?  My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, Where is your God?

Good morning, friends.  It is wonderful to be with you today for our Sunday Funday.  I’d like to welcome Bob and Sue back from their 3-month sabbatical.  We look forward to hearing about their experiences  over the next few weeks and months and how this sabbatical has impacted them.

 I love this day for so many reasons.  What a joy to watch our young people have such fun on the water slide and  play other games on our lovely property.   I always look forward to enjoying our annual picnic, tasting the special treats many of you prepare to share.  And our worship on this Sunday outside takes on an added element of reverence and awe as we experience the splendor of God revealed through nature. 

God does reveal God’s self in many ways to us.  This is the way we know God is real and not just some consciousness of the mind.  God is certainly revealed through the life and teachings of Jesus and through the truths shared in the Bible.  God is also revealed through our children and our relationships one with another.  But for me, the dazzling purity and sense of brilliance is most revealed through nature and all creation around us. 

The pastor and writer David Owen wrote, “One way to love God whom we have not seen is to love God’s creation which we have seen.  In part, to love creation is simply to enjoy it, but for me , loving creation as God’s creation includes wonder and awe and reverence in the face of that creation.” 

I appreciate the story in Exodus 33:18-22 where Moses wants to make sure that he is following God’s will and asks God to show himself.  Moses said, ‘Show me your glory, I pray.’ 19And God said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, “The LORD”; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20But’, he said, ‘you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.’ 21And the LORD continued, ‘See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; 22and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; 23then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.’

God wants to respond to Moses request but knows that no one can visibly see God that is beyond being.  What an intimate gesture that God puts Moses in a cleft of the rock where he will be safe and can experience the presence of God through his surroundings (because I don’t think God has a back but it makes a great story).

God is continuously revealed to us if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear. 

I like what the writer and pastor Eugene Peterson writes in Lights A Lovely Mile,

“Speaking to our sense of and our speculation about the absence of God is the single word manifested.  From the same Greek root, we get our word phenomenon.  When a manifestation takes place, when a phenomenon occurs, it means that there has been a showing, a revealing, a display.  In other words, God has shown us something of himself.  He is not absent; he is here, and we can see the evidence, the phenomenon.” 

“”God, you see, was no hidden manager of the universe, no enigmatic universal force, no mysterious secret occult.  He was a God known among his people.  God’s splendor was that he showed himself.” 

The revelation of God is constant.  Every dawn, every dusk, every rainfall, every tree, flower and brush, every animal, every baby that becomes human from a cell and a sperm etc.  It is all amazing, incredible and a miracle if we take the time to observe. 

Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets and she often finds and describes God in creation.  In her book, Upstream, Selected Essays   she writes  “Do you think there is anything not attached by its unbreakable cord to everything else?  Plant your peas and your corn in the field when the moon is full, or risk failure.  This has been understood since planting began.  The attention of the seed to the draw of the moon is, I suppose, measurable, like the tilt of the planet.  Or, maybe not – maybe you have to add some immeasurable ingredient made of the hour, the singular field, the hand of the sower.”

We have been talking this summer about community, connection and interdependence here at First Friends.  These values extend beyond our own community and into nature, creation,  our country and the world.  We go to the center to find the source of our connection.  Everything is interconnected and cannot survive without all the webs of connection within and without.  While God is revealed in creation, we humans have an important role to play to continue the evolution of life from birth, death and rebirth.  This cycle plays out into eternity and we have a responsibility to be good stewards, good sowers, good hands and feet in the revelation of God.  May we practice this awareness with each breath we take, each bird we see, each child we watch play, each piece of food that enters our mouths today and with the fellowship we experience on this glorious Sunday Funday.

As we enter our time of waiting worship, I offer a few queries for your consideration:

In what ways does God reveal God to you?
            What is my part of creation?
            What can I do today to reveal God to others?

7-26-26 - Change, Conflict, and Trust - Tom Rockwell

Change, Conflict, and Trust

Tom Rockwell

July 26, 2026

I’m Tom Rockwell, Associate Superintendent of Western Yearly Meeting

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately talking to Meetings about change, transitions, and the fears and anxieties that surface in these unpredictable periods of new beginnings.

And if there was ever a season when congregations needed a new beginning, it is now.

Pretty much every church in America—of every size, tradition, and theology—is trying to reinvent itself for the current moment.

And if we’re honest, most are not doing very well. The world has changed faster than most churches' habits and structures, and faster than our imaginations and cultures can even grasp.

The lack of adaptation shows: Quakers closed 24% of their meetings and churches between 2010-2020.

Pretty much every other church sees similar or worse decline. The world has changed very rapidly and churches have struggled to keep themselves relevant to the lives of younger generations.          

So in pretty much every church you see a much greater share of grey heads than you would have seen 30 years ago.        Churches being mostly older is not problematic in every way but it obviously bodes ill for the future of churches.

There is a vast array of sociological changes that underlie these trends: the digital revolution, change in american family structures, huge economic changes, women entering the workforce, the rise of spiritual but not religious people. The list goes on.

But for now I just want one statistic that emphasizes the amount of change younger generations experience to show what we have to respond to.

So I have focused on moving: Baby boomers moved on average 1.28 times per decade after reaching 18 years of age. Millennials have moved 2.97 times per decade.

So on average, millennials have moved every four years or so. Not easy to settle down, to join a community, to lay deep roots, when you’re constantly on the move.

And Friends Meetings are all about deep roots and deep communities. What we have to offer - the deep community that young people really want - is very difficult for younger people to really access.

First Friends Indy has been talking this summer about how they can be closer as a meeting and develop deeper relationships. I think this is exactly what meetings should be focusing on. How do we deepen our relationships and then how do we invite new people into those relationships?

I want to focus in on the ways the anxiety we all experience from how much our world has changed gets in the way of deep relationship

            There are tangible ways like young people moving, but there are also more nebulous ways this anxiety impacts that I think are really important.

The instability and anxiety that comes from our constantly changing world often causes us to avoid conflict in our inner circles because we just can’t deal with more change and anxiety

Those avoided conflicts tend to pile up and erode our trust with each other because we’re never talking about what’s really going on and very small conflicts can become difficult to navigate, let alone bigger conflicts.

Conflict is actually necessary for us to build trust with each other and trust is the bedrock of deeper relationship.

So, Today I want to talk about ways change, anxiety, and conflict, appear in the Bible and how the people of God have responded to those changes.

I especially want to focus on anxiety.

When we are forced to deal with new things and unknown people, we become anxious.

We don’t know what will be expected of us, it becomes difficult to even define who “us” is. Who are the people we are trying to serve? How do we try to meet the needs of new people, we don’t even know what they want?

If we want to be a people who can speak to the brokenness of the world and the people caught in that brokenness. It is important for us to speak the truth and to be able to navigate the conflicts that inevitably come from the truth.

It is important for us to say aloud: when we start to talk about change, when we start to be more direct with each other and willing to enter conflict in order to build trust, we start to experience anxiety. Trying to change touches nerves. It awakens grief. Conflict puts us on edge. It surfaces fears we have carried silently.

And that is not a problem—that is actually evidence that God is working. Our job in thinking about the future and change is to remind each other that God is calling us to be a community that can speak to what folks in the world need today.

To do that work we need to be able to remind each other that anxiety and discomfort are normal in change and conflict and build skills to encourage each other through the process.

Now,I want to look at three images of this kind of change work in the Bible so that we have some stories to fall back on in encouraging each other and thinking about change.

Scripture gives lots of powerful images of communities in transition, mostly filled with anxiety. I want to focus on three examples.

The first image is Israel in the wilderness

Discomfort with change comes up repeatedly throughout the stories of Israel’s exodus from Egypt. These stories are the standard image for talking about change and anxiety in the Bible.

In the stories the people of Israel have escaped Egypt and crossed the Red Sea. God has parted waters, fed them with manna, guided them with cloud and fire.

And yet—they are anxious. And anxious communities revert to old norms.

They say, “Let us go back to Egypt. At least there we knew what to expect.” They grumble, they get nostalgic, they idealize the past, they turn on their leaders, they lose courage. And they express a desire to go back to a situation where they were literally enslaved to avoid having to deal with new situations that make them anxious.

My favorite Specific Example is the story of the Israelites when they have first surveyed the promised land of Canaan.

Numbers 14:14:1-4: That night all the members of the community raised their voices and wept aloud. 2 All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this wilderness! 3 Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” 4 And they said to each other, “We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.

God has brought the people to a new home, they are on the cusp of the reward God has given them for faithfulness and rather than act in faith and go into this new land, they revert to anxiety.

Rather than look at the actual issue they’re dealing with: the fear they have of the people who live in the promised land, they say instead we need new leaders who will take us back to comfort.

They say let's just go back to the way it was! This is too different and too hard!

They avoid what they’re actually afraid of and find a scapegoat - moses - for their fears.

RECAP: This image of God bringing the people of Israel into a new way of life of plenty and freedom that they continually reject out of fear, is the perfect image for our congregations today. It is a continual reminder that we are going to have anxious reactions to new situations and new people and we have an obligation to encourage one another to resist this anxiety.

The second biblical image around Change is Jesus himself.

The pattern of the gospel is death and resurrection—letting go and receiving something new. Change is not the enemy of faith in Christ; it is woven into its very center. You cannot follow a resurrected Lord and expect nothing to die. Christian faith is not about trying to keep dying things alive just the way they are, but instead to live into a cycle of renewal through the new life God continually brings us.

This Christian focus on death and renewal runs against our natural instincts. We tend to fear letting of what we have more than the reward of what will come from change.

Sociological research - Loss aversion

Obviously the wider Religious community of Jesus day was threatened and made anxious by Jesus ministry of change, they decided that they had to kill him to put an end to it - at least so they thought.

But it’s important for us to remember that Jesus’s message of change was threatening for those who believed in him as well.

Matthew 16:21-23: Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”

23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

Jesus’s ministry was uncomfortable for those who believed in the ministry. It was not what they were expecting. They thought God was leading them in the direction of a new king who would rule over a new Israelite empire. But instead God was leading them to a kingdom of service to all peoples, not just the people of Israel.

In his fear of the unknown, Peter rejects the center of Jesus ministry, against the words of Jesus himself, and instead focuses on the way he currently experiences the world rather than the new world that God is inviting Peter into.

Jesus refuses to let Peter avoid this essential truth, he pushes back against Peter and says “No you’re seeing things all wrong, this is what has to happen and what is going to happen”.

The story of the Israelites in the desert and the story of Jesus are examples of poorly navigated conflict and well navigated conflict, they’re also big stories where God intervenes very directly in the world. God is leading the people in the desert, Jesus is physically present with the disciples.

But the changes we are experiencing ourselves are a bit different, sociological changes in a rapidly changing work. The change we are looking at is how do we make the message of God as interpreted by Friends relevant to a world that has drastically changed through modernity.

The Bible has another example for us that fits the situation we are in better. That model is the apostle Paul:

The ministry of Paul is all about interweaving people from very different life experiences and cultures into one people. Very similar to the work we are trying to do today. And not shockingly a huge number of Paul’s writing are about conflicts in the early church.

Paul was trying to bring together Jews who were becoming Christians and saw Christianity as the fullest expression of Judaism and Greeks who had no background with Judaism but saw a new way of living in Jesus.

Many of the Jews wanted to retain Jewish practices, many of the Greeks did not see the point in continuing with that old tradition. Throughout his letter Paul is trying to get people to be honest with each other, to talk about what is going on, so they can move on to the larger work of building up their communities.

Paul talks about a ministry where “I have become all things to all people, so that by all means I might save some.”  Paul is willing to set aside cultural differences and adapt to the different situations of the people he is working with to try to meet them where they are at.

I believe this is the heart of our work going forward: The work of God is not static; The good news is always the same in that God is inviting us into the same ministry of Jesus: to love one another more fully. But the good news is always different for the different challenges that people of different eras and cultures are facing.

But “being all things to all people” doesn’t mean avoiding our differences and pretending they’re not their, it means leaning into our differences, working to have tough conversations, so we can build trust with each other and deepen our relationships.

The gospel is an invitation to living in a way that declares that God is among us in a way that allows us to live very differently from the ways of the world.

Where the world encourages us to be selfish the Gospel encourages us to seek connection with others. Where the world tells us there is danger in the unknown, the Gospel encourages us to leaps of faith that guide us to new faithfulness. Where the world tells us we don’t have enough and we need to simply protect ourselves and our family, God gives us an offer of a deeper abundance that has enough for all people.

Our job is to take our sense of God’s work and see where our current culture and the religious seekers in it are most in need of God’s presence.

This very much mirrors the ministry of Paul trying to be all things to all people so that we could have a love that goes beyond the cultures of the world and helps us connect with new people.

Howard Thurman said: Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers and sisters.

We need to constantly reach out to new people to deepen our lives. When we bring in new voices there are inevitably going to be differences and conflicts. The essential work of new r and deeper relationship is tough, honest conversations together. When we speak the truth to one another, God begins to work through all of us. When we avoid the truth because it’s easier to just let it go by, we lose out on the opportunity for God to do something new among us.

We have to remember that like the Israelites in the desert God is leading us in new directions that will make us uncomfortable and we have to be honest with one another about those discomforts.

We have to remember that the ministry of Jesus is a reminder that we have to be willing to let go of some ways of doing things that have ceased to be life-giving and that the pain of those changes is something we need to be able to acknowledge and talk through.

We have to remember the work of Paul, bringing people from very different cultures together into the body of Christ and navigating their differences with the people of God.

As we enter the silence, I encourage you to think about the ways that you can lean into tough conversations with other Friends and find deeper faithfulness.

Query:

How can you lean into tough conversations with other Friends and find deeper faithfulness?