Come Join the Symphony!
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Eric Baker
June 7, 2026
Good morning, friends and welcome to Light Reflections. Today’s scripture is from Romans 12:4-9 from The Voice.
”For in the same way that one body has so many different parts, each with different functions; we, too—the many—are different parts that form one body in the Anointed One. Each one of us is joined with one another, and we become together what we could not be alone. Since our gifts vary depending on the grace poured out on each of us, it is important that we exercise the gifts we have been given. If prophecy is your gift, then speak as a prophet according to your proportion of faith. If service is your gift, then serve well. If teaching is your gift, then teach well. If you have been given a voice of encouragement, then use it often. If giving is your gift, then be generous. If leading, then be eager to get started. If sharing God’s mercy, then be cheerful in sharing it. Love others well, and don’t hide behind a mask; love authentically. Despise evil; pursue what is good as if your life depends on it.”
I want to thank Beth Henricks for the invitation to speak to you today. I also want to acknowledge and give a bit of a high-five to the different speakers who have been in this position over the past month or so – Mary Blackburn, Jim Shearer, special guest Emily Provance, and then last week’s message from Patrick Jendraszak on connections felt in many ways like a part one to what I’d like to talk about today. Funny how that works.
As a lifelong musician and lover of music, I’ve worn many music-related hats, if you will. I’ve been a performing musician; I’ve been a studio keyboard player and vocalist, recording music for various projects; I’ve been a songwriter and arranger, a band director; and, as you know, I’m the music director here at First Friends, a role I’ve been honored to have for the past 10 years. But the hat I’ve worn that has probably given me the most unique sense of purpose is that of a music teacher.
There’s an idea, a framework that has started becoming more clear in my mind as I’ve thought through the many students I’ve taught over the years. I refer to this specific framework as “approaching music vertically, and then horizontally”. I’ll explain what I mean.
If I’m learning a specific piece of music that is proving to be challenging for me, there are going to be specific passages of that piece, musical concepts, that I’ll need to really focus on. I might spend several days learning how to play this run, or that syncopation, or accenting the right notes, learning the best way to express the dynamics in a particular melodic line. I call this type of focus a vertical approach. And indeed, if I’m going to learn a piece, or generally get more proficient at my instrument, this type of approach is necessary. Head down, focused on specific parts of the whole.
But if I stay in that vertical approach, keeping my head down in that near-sited, concentrated focus, then I might very well fail to see how the different parts go together to create a beautiful piece of music. I might miss how the opening lines lead into the middle section. I might miss the connections between how the rhythms of the bridge section are echoed and elaborated on in the closing of the piece.
This idea gains even more significance when I start playing music with other people. Then, the things happening around me, the music being made next to me, it’s all happening in concert with my own contributions. But with that simple, near-sited approach, I might miss how my part serves what the violins are playing. Or how this chord really supports that cool saxophone line. In other words, to see the beauty in the whole piece, I’ll need to lift my head up, to zoom out occasionally, and really listen to the ensemble, the community of players, and not just pay attention to my own contributions, whatever they may be. This is what I call “approaching the music horizontally”.
Ok, why am I talking about music? Because for me, this is a good metaphor for other areas of life, as well.
When I wandered into this Meeting some 14 years ago, I knew nothing about the Quakers. Over the next several years, I became drawn to the idea of “centering”, something I’m still frequently not good at. I was also introduced to and began investigating our Quaker testimonies – the SPICES. These for me continue to be an ever-green source of both challenge and inspiration. Ben Wertz and I were chatting last week about how we reference the SPICES whenever someone gives us that confused look, asking what it means to be part of a Quaker community.
If you don’t know, SPICES is an acronym, denoting the values of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship. I’ll be honest – I love talking about this. I love looking for evidence of these in my own life. But I don’t want to just talk about me today – I want to talk about us.
The idea of being curious is something I’ve talked about before. I think there’s a real value in curiosity – whether about history, ideas, or people, and how we are all “wired” differently. For me, my curiosity has been piqued at something very specific – something that has literally held my interest for more than a decade now. And that is, the many ways that our Quaker testimonies, these SPICES, get expressed through this community. But here’s the thing: If there was someone dictating how this had to look for everyone, how there was a “right” and “wrong” way to live these out, I would have lost interest a long time ago.
I remember a pastor saying to me once, “People have questions, and we’re here to give them answers.” When I inquired further about what he meant, asking specifically, “Answers to what?”, he responded, “How a Christian should act, how they should live, how they should vote…”. I told him I was quite sure I couldn’t get on board with that type of message.
Ok, back to our testimonies. The obvious, and first question to consider is this: What do these testimonies look like for you? How do one or two of the SPICES show up in your life? How are they “lived out”? But beyond that, if I were to ask you for examples of how these SPICES get expressed in this community, I’m guessing for some, there are a few things that might come to mind. For good reason, there has been some support behind and spotlight attention given to some really great things that many of you have helped to move forward – things like efforts to organize and bring attention to the inhumane treatment of many of our immigrant friends and neighbors here in our state; or organizing folks to volunteer at the Mid-North Food Pantry; or fun community-building events like Men’s Threshing or the sing-alongs that Jim Kartholl organizes. But I’m guessing for every highlighted event or effort that could be considered an expression of one of our Quaker testimonies, there are 10 or 20 or even 30 more that happen in the background.
Being curious about this, I conducted an informal interview with a few people in this community, asking them how they’re challenged and strive to express any of the SPICES in their everyday lives. And I want to highlight some of what I heard – not as a way to glorify or imply importance to one person or another, or even one way of doing things. In fact, quite the opposite. But more on that in a minute.
Carrie Sample is an English professor at Ivy Tech Community College here in Indianapolis. I asked her how she expresses some of the Quaker testimonies through her teaching. This is what she said:
I express Integrity by intentionally saying what I mean and meaning what I say. I have made a promise to my students that I will have their assignments graded within 7 days of submitting, so they never have to wait too long to know where they stand. If I don’t know something, I acknowledge that and we find answers together. If I make a mistake, I apologize and try to make it right. These might seem like "basic" expectations, but I have learned from student feedback that not all instructors do these things.
She continues, I express Community by getting to know my students and having the goal to call them by their preferred first names by the end of the 3rd class. I make it a point to welcome each student by their name as they come into each class session. I encourage them to help each other whenever someone struggles to master a concept. And I regularly have the students work in groups of 2 or 4 so they can also get to know each other.
One of the reasons I dearly love teaching in the community college setting is the closeness that we all develop with each other.
Adam Roth is very involved in the community garden here at First Friends, as well as efforts to maintain the grounds around the Meetinghouse. I asked him how the value of Stewardship is expressed in some of these passions. Here’s what Adam said:
Stewardship, put most simply, is the work of responsibly caring for the part of the world to which you feel a duty. It is the difficult work of maintaining and sustaining a family, Quaker meeting, a neighborhood, a city, a state, a nation or a planet. It’s often repetitive, tedious, messy…sometimes even filthy.
I was reminded of this as I assisted in the cleaning and repair of the fountain for the Meditational Woods last week. As I helped scoop out the foul-smelling handfuls of wet, decaying leaves that had accumulated there, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself about how often Stewardship literally stinks. Yet, look how well the fountain runs now after those efforts and will continue to run until it’s time to do that filthy work all over again. Where would we be without our trash collectors and sewage maintenance people?
Fresh mulch too has a potent smell, as the Girl Scouts of Troop 2015 discovered to their collective disgust a few weeks ago. Christine Borntrager coordinated their assistance in the weeding and mulching of our courtyard. They rose to the challenge and were of great help. I was gratified to hear the scout leader specifically teach the concept that dirty, smelly work is required for the care of our world.
The fact that Quakers place this as a central pillar in their values says a lot about who we are. The messy work of keeping the world running will not be disregarded as “someone else’s problem”. It’s ours and we take our collective responsibility to it seriously.
Hearing from Carrie, and Adam, these are only two examples of the many ways that our testimonies get expressed, how they get presented to the world. I know there are so, so many other examples that no one, or very few others ever know about or see. Visiting shut-ins or those in the hospital, neighborhood clean-up efforts, leading poetry discussion groups, choosing to live below our means in order to give back, teaching yoga or other meditational practices, organizing efforts to fight against the death penalty in our state, organizing efforts to register voters in our community and educating about aligning public policy with our values, baking bread for our neighbors, creating non-profits to give back to the community… These are just some of the actual expressions of our Quaker testimonies happening in this Meeting.
I want to contribute. And I also want to pay attention; to notice, to listen. I want to be creative in my own approach to expressing these testimonies, but also to be inspired and challenged by what others are doing. I want to lift my head up and hear this symphony of music happening all around me – music that makes our world more beautiful, peaceful, sustainable, and welcoming.
As we now enter our time of waiting worship, I offer the following queries to consider.
Of the SPICES – Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship, which one(s) am I drawn to most naturally?
How am I expressing these testimonies? Or, what are some creative ways I could begin to do just that?
How could I learn of, and be inspired by how others are expressing the SPICES? Are there existing efforts and experiences that I’m feeling drawn to?