Letters and Journal to Friends : Laura MacNorlin, Friend

Clay: Pottery in the making

If we in our lives are being formed like clay, what cycle of the process are you in? This poem and meditation is on looking at our lives through the metaphor of clay being formed into pottery. In this time of the Covid epidemic, we are all likely in new ways looking for meaning in the longterm and immediate importance of our lives. Holding what is dear, like one holds a cup filled to the brim, what of your life can you honor? Can you look at your life like pottery, by knowing you are a beloved creation?

Clay: Pottery in the making

We are being formed like clay

What cycle of the process are you in?

The wet ball?

The baking underway?

Being formed into perfect imperfection?

Glazed?

Etched and marked?

Wandering where on the wheel?

Centered? Off center?

Wisely used? Greatly in well-washed daily interaction with human Kind?

Broken and thrown back into the pile

Shards infiltrating dirt?

Lost in billion pieces?

Buried in rubbish piles or

mosaic walls to be created yet?

A treasure under the ground,

that Will once found by hands not expecting

cause awe in the heart of unknown persons?

Wonder to flow over?

What is this?

A cup?

Did it once hold?

A cup that overflowed?

This episode is an open letter of thanks to a congregation I chanced to visit, and how I experienced welcome there. It is a prayer that Cultivating a Sense of Welcome become what we offer, what we do and who we live to be. What would it look like to intentionally place our lives at the center of this question, “How do I cultivate a sense of welcome here? Where have I found a true sense of welcome?” Where do I feel led to ask this question?

I offer this episode in the time of the Covid-19 crisis, when we are practicing social distancing as well as creative ways to uplift one another. This message came to me at the winter solstice, as a kind of Christmas message, though I publish it now as a spring meditation in the time when many communities would be gathering with their communities, friends and families to observe Palm Sunday, Passover and Easter. Here is a virtual way to gather in “gathered / waiting” worship together. This is a message for all of us, whether far or near, F/friends dear to my heart. It was recorded it by the ocean. Below is my poem letter, We have to Lose our Way at Times. Also offered on the episode are a few of my favorite hymns and a tune that came to me in prayer: We have to lose our way at times

We have to lose our way at times

In order to find out way back

We have to know this lostness

To be people

And to understand the way that it is for

Others to walk the lonely way

At times we are touched by,

Humbly graced by,

a type of loneliness

Of quiet solitude

That carries us beyond ourselves

And into the care of that which is beyond us

And brings us to an understanding of compassion and lived experiences of

Eternal bottomless profound love

That lets us live in and on into what it is we

Can be

There,

We breath into the way through

We breath into our own peace

We breath into belonging and

Knowing we are not lost

We find there

Forgiveness perhaps

A humble grace in our littleness, and yet connection to the grandness

of this place we get to live our lives

When at times we are lost

And frustrated

Empty

And finding only despair

Questions to hold and let go of,

Longing to ponder, we’re tumbling, uncentered

Full of Hopes that cast us out to the wide ocean of possibilities, but leave us wondering at the why,

Here is a time to pace and pause

It is the worst time to pace and pause

It is the most wondrous time to ponder

In the quiet of our beings, out in the place

Perhaps where the water meets the daybreak

Or where the hilltop meets the dawn

Or where the sidewalk cracks meet the morning

There,

Find yourself

And touch God there

Find the Light that is guiding you in

Into the brightest and best corners of your life

Into the capacity to hold yourself as loved

Come there,

And be held for a time

Then you will know more

How to hold others

How to love others

How to walk with others

Into those places of despair or wholeness

Into those moments of lostness or found-ness

Into those chances to be broken open or filled full

Hold that place for as long as you can

And come back to it often

Practice that coming home to yourself

That you can then come home to us all too

And then invite us back there with you in

The way that is yours to

By the one unique light of who you are

In this one unique lifetime

“Listen and attend with the ear of your Heart- Saint Benedict

Over the last months, I’ve gotten to have many conversations and times to listen to the open-ended questions (queries) of my family and friends. In their listening to this podcast, they’ve been opened to initiating conversations with me about their own life paths, urgent wonderings and worries of the heart. In feeling this podcast concluded this summer, still the writings, contemplation and poetry that began as a practice here in this project have continued, though I haven’t posted any episodes till now. Here are a few of the messages and prayers of my life that I am led to offer, and in opening up the prayer of what will come next in my life path? People have asked me, is it a book? A Blog? A workshop? Traveling as a public Friend in visiting F/friends with the messages and leadings that center my life? Yes. Perhaps in the long view in “god time”. For now, it is the living it in the moments of laundry, dishes, jobs. It is the grace and gratitude daily patience pilgrimage, and chance to celebrate the blessing of the present, of my existence. It is the inward and the home place journey with my children, partner/wife. And this beloved community. A wide and expanding Ocean of our People, of which, god willing, you are feeling part.

In this afterward I offer the message of that the podcast has been for me. A chance To journey in my own life into bigger brighter intention to live fully. Perhaps it is the beginning but I conclude with a paragraph that describes what this podcast is on; “Letters, Poems and Journal of Laura Grace MacNorlin to the Ocean of Our People, who’ve Come Before and Coming into Being; How to live as Friends in the chaos and catastrophe, out of complacency and comfort into challenging our brightest light in one another, and compelled thus into Courageous Compassionate Brave Beloved community and Companionship!”

It’s still wordy like old Friends writing maybe. Thats why I have an Instagram to document what the walk looks like without too many words @ Laura,QuakerByNature

This is a thank you impromptu message created over the course of making this podcast- thanks for the Friends who have journeyed with me. Especially thanks to those who inspire me to be my best self, and those who labor in love with me as I work on living out my light- practicing and fumbling. Thanks to those who are bearing with me- be the experience of me at times a bit intense, overbearing and oversharing the experience of being with me may be at times. Like anyone who is with a person focused on creating, my loved ones can at times feel undervalued and underserved. So thanks to my family and friends for this time, and for even when it costs for their time connecting with me, I’m ever grateful for the time offer to help me find moments to focus on me- for the personal quiet time, prayer time, and lately for the continue meeting for worship that offers itself to me through god’s presence in my life. And praises be for the chance to gift it back into the Light, as I let it go out into this podcast.

Here is the full circle, the beginning of this podcast leads to the ending of a phase of life for me, and a leaning into the closeness of new paths and doors opening. Life the cylindrical experience pulled us in an eddy. Fighting it not, Here we come round into our best potential and Truth as a people who are open to how we are called to live bravely and honestly, courageously and inspired, in imagination and creating new forms of practical praxis. Let there be Light in us and let us let it out to one another to burn brightly, until we can understand how the capacity for the light to grow in us is infinite, Let us know there is no limitation for the light that holds us. “ to hold you in love is to let you go”

Enter into the Season (of new life, born into change to come from within all of us):

A meditation praise song in the key of C

Do you fell the despair as they did?

Enter into the season

The pain of the loss and isolation?

Enter into the season

Looking for life anew?

Enter into the season

Breathe of the prayer on our lips, crying into the panic, where have we lost our way?

God’s path for us has gone,

what comes this day?

Enter into the season

Light of Christ Born Anew

Eternal Lives in you

The spring tide is bright and fresh now

Enter into the season

Glowing in purest life, green in the brightness of blossoming life, held by the blossom of what coming, the seed and the fruit holding tight to the Promise!

Enter into the season

Telling of where we had lost our way,

The empty shell, cavern and hull of the seed

as life is coming back through

Enter into the season

Christ’s Truth Living in you

Christ is Living in you

No turning back the stone now

Press your hands into the Light

Our Friend is now here on the Path before us

Leading us to the Life

Enter into the season

Bearing for us our Burdens

And leading us into the Life

Enter into the season

Enter into the season

Leading us to the Life

This concludes the episode on Accompaniment in honor of my Friends, especially my friend Sadie, My spiritual elder at who’s birth home I got clear to publish the episode for my dear one Judi, Friend. Here are a few links to songs on the episode, that help me feel connected to lately to her light. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RKfxALkopOU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ea0mD2QSq1w

Accompaniment and behold are terms that Quakers have used to uncover the process of spiritual friendship called “eldering”