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?