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?