Letters and Journal to Friends : Laura MacNorlin, Friend

This episode explains a little bit more about what Friends have historically done to share their spiritual journey and messages outside of Friends Meetings and worship. This is followed by my first message I offer, a poem I wrote for a friend and for Friends, for my children and beloved spiritual companions. The poem is called Moth and Light. At times a message comes, at least for me, I t be form first of a reoccurring thought that comes back like a moth to a light. I find that the message bubbles and brews, percolates and becomes a little taste of a message. Lately, I have been gifted with the chance to have many poems, Letters and ministry messages pour out of me. Hold me in the Light y’all, as I keep getting these. Often it is in the middle of the night and come out of a dream that then I can get up and find “writes itself in me”. When in that process and then when done I feel momentarily complete. But then, I don’t feel quite balanced until I message the words to the listeners, my close listening Friend(s) or my best chosen family or my wife Hannah. Hannah is my constant clearness committee, helping me discern my path. When she tells me I need to follow a leading, or offers an idea that could be a way to be true and faithful to a Calling, it is a powerful confirmation. And I find that then when I follow the leading and her insights, it’s clear way forward, as we like to say when we are on a long journey and hit blocks (literally traffic) or challenging hard times. We like to say “we’re never bored” and always have a project or community bond to connect, or little leadings that we nurture in each other- best of a true chosen partnership. So when Hannah suggested I might try making podcasts, and get advises from some of our friends who’ve been on that path, Quakers have been making new podcasts and reminded me of those who have done this recording thing and are professionals at it (shout out to Peterson Toscano and Evelyn Perry), I figured out that yes it felt like just the most wonderful and right way to offend modern Quaker message. And even more so realizing that there are already Quakers who have been making this their longterm practice. I am finding the courage to try, inspired by y’all who I know will hear this, and by the words sung by my Friend Susan Stark and offered in a wonderful QuakerSpeak video of Friend Niyonu Spann speaking, “you are never alone, no never, so live up to the light that thou haste and more will be granted thee. So live up to the Light thou haste...!

This episode offers a description and some background on where I’ve come from and where I find myself now- a Friend called to Quaker ministry, who has said Yes the Calling these 10 plus years and actually for a lifetime of who I have always been. I hope to use this podcast venue as a new art from, that to be a way of sharing emerging ministry and messages, so that I can have a way to tell You, my beloved community, what messages I hold that I feel are for more than just myself. It may be that the messages are kin to a modern version of writings that Friends historically offered in their letters to one another and their published Journals. For me it thus far is a compilation of photography, journaling, poems, letters to f/Friends, connections to other Quaker artist work and their images impact on my journey, and messages that have come to me share either in a meeting for worship at a Friends Meeting, or prepared in me when compelled to write a message - and that I’m looking for a way and chance to offer to F/friends. If this mode is one method of being faithful and in the following the leadings, I hope it will be a chance to walk with you and with my Guide- Christ Jesus, God/goddess, Spirit and my Fellow Friend Travelers within the perhaps too thick “hedge” of the society of Friends and the much in need of healing and Witness wider world. Let me know what you think, but most of all; hold me in the Light as I follow this Bliss? Peace and Love and Best- LGM

On a trip to the gulf, I brought along a favorite book of poems, to the place where I had once come to prepare myself and pray for the opening to have children when trying to get pregnant. I came back here to this Cape San Blas shore for my 33rd birthday once I had had children. On that trip my children, our triplets (yes! Triplets!) were 6 months old. I love this collection of poems, Pablo Neruda On the Blue Edge of Silence, for many reasons. I love blue, indigo and periwinkle and water colors of sea and art especially, and this collection has abstract watercolor paintings by the artist Mary Heebner, to accompany the poems translated by Alastair Reid. Like the practice of lectio divina, I appreciate reading a txt three times to feel the total impact and integrate the meaning, to unpack and process the words, like the waves that come over and over- same elemental phenomenon but different uniquely felt impact. Thus, here is Pablo’s Spanish, my personal imperfect English translation, and the professional authoritative translation by Alastair Reid. In our bilingual family and household, we often comment on how one can’t completely communicate a message clearly the in one language as one can in another. At times the words don’t even exists or they hold different tones and fullness depending on the tongue. This is why it feels fulfilling and beautiful to me to get to offer these words in my own voice and in three voices. Trinity? The holy three that is in many faith traditions? That is the most lovely of the Venn diagram, at least to me. You could call it triangulation? Putting and pitting one thing against another. Yet to me it is acutely and actually what I love to offer and notice in my life, that finding one thing and then another and then connecting those now more is found than if it had been just one by one. The tried and true Third Way. But I perhaps digress from the point of this first ever of my first podcasts - and what I hope will be a new art from to explore and put out to you in the ether, my best beloved, my beloved community, the ocean of People of the Light coming into being. Enjoy!