Letters and Journal to Friends : Laura MacNorlin, Friend Laura Grace MacNorlin

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.

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”