Holy Moments

After my father died, my family carried his body to the van that drove him away. We gathered around the dining room table and talked, laughed. It had been a long labor, a beautiful death at home, and in some ways we were relieved. At one point, I looked up toward the doorway to his bedroom and saw his ghost standing there, with a huge smile on his face, enjoying us. After his death I had a sense that the energy that was his life was released back into the earth, taking some new form, giving new life. I wasn’t sure what form that would take – he loved giraffes, so maybe part of him would turn up as a spot on a giraffe’s back, perhaps the atoms of his existence would become more indistinct, just part of the air we breathe, part of the dirt on which we walk.

For ten years now my family has lived in a Quaker cemetery. My son, now eight, has known no other home. I can’t imagine a richer and more appropriate place to raise a child. He has come to know that a burial ground is a place from which life abundantly springs. He has eaten raspberries grown in the compost of the Quaker past, jumped in leaf piles underneath the beautiful sugar maple with roots steeped in ancestral ground, and helped to plant trees in the ashes of our friend Barbara. He has witnessed the solemnity and grief of a burial, as well as the blessings of the new shoots that arise from the soft earth covering a grave. He has watched as neighbors have buried their loved ones wrapped only in a quilt, delivered unimpeded back to the earth. Most of all, he has learned that death is an inextricable part of life, that
death and life are a circle. Just as joy and pain often reside side by side, so too can the awareness of death wake one much more fully to life, to the ephemeral and oh-so-sweet understanding that this moment, this day, is a blessing, a gift, to be cherished and savored as holy.

May this message find you each encircled by the love of family, friends, by God’s love and light, and richly blessed by holy moments.

I wanted to mention a few new or notable titles in which you might be interested.

Nancy Bieber is a teacher, psychologist, retreat leader, spiritual director and Quaker, with over 30 years of experience in guiding individuals and groups. She says of her work, "I have had to name and claim my own ministry. It is a ministry of presence, of being with others as they open to God and nurturing them along the way. This, in turn, stretches and strengthens my own opening to God."

She has just published her first book Decision Making and Spiritual Discernment through Skylight Paths.
Here is a description of the book: When we approach decision making as a spiritual practice, we are recognizing that we need the aid of the wise and loving Spirit whose Light exceeds our own. This is the practice of spiritual discernment, the traditional name for listening and attending to God’s guidance. We approach decision-making in this book as active participants, co-creators with God in shaping our lives. Drawing on twenty-five years of experience as a psychologist and fifteen years of experience as a spiritual director, Nancy Bieber presents three essential aspects of Spirit-led decision-making:

* Willingness—being open to God’s wisdom and love
* Attentiveness—noticing what is true, discerning the path right for us
* Responsiveness—taking steps forward as the way becomes clear

Quaker author Kathryn Erskine, author of Quaking (now in paperback), just won the National Book Award for her latest young adult title Mockingbird.

In Caitlin's world, everything is black or white. Anything in between is confusing. That's the stuff Caitlin's older brother, Devon, has always explained. But now Devon's dead and Dad is no help at all. Caitlin wants to get over it, but as an 11-year-old girl with Asperger's, she doesn't know how.
"This novel is not about violence as much as about the ways in which a wounded community heals." - Publishers Weekly, starred review

One book that QuakerPress of FGC published several years ago that is really wonderful, particularly for adult religious education, but for many contexts, is Faithful Voices: Oral Readings Exploring Faith in Action by Edward Schwartz. This title has been less well noticed, but it is an amazing set of beautifully written poetic scripts which illuminate the faithful basis for the action and witness of these amazing Friends and non-Friends, including Margaret Fell, Rufus Jones, John Woolman, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Myles Horton.

"Thanks so much for Faithful Voices, a brilliant idea! You have put the essence of these people’s spirit and ideas into poetic-dramatic form in a lovely way. The result is inspiring."-- Howard Zinn

"Using one of Ed's scripts is like taking a magnifying glass to a tiny moment in history. The cubistic effect of having many people read small bits of the story at a time enhances this sensation of focus. The thought-stream of an individual or the relating of an incident becomes present to the participating group in an original manner that is effective. These scripts are probably useful both by themselves with no preparation whatever (the way we have mostly utilized them in West Falmouth), or in context with educational events where other types of study are being used. They are a gentle positive way to introduce useful themes in Quakerism, so that many age levels can get something good out of them." - Eric Edwards