Nurturing the Light in Each Other

Hello dear readers,

Thank you for exploring the theme of Close Relationships with me this month, and for your wonderful query responses. 

As I gathered these messages, I reflected on who I am to my beloveds, the different roles I have in the lives of my family and friends. As the mother of a young child, “parent” is the role that takes up most of my head and heart right now. I’m usually preoccupied with what he needs and what I have to give him: love, attention, macaroni and cheese in the blue bowl with the red spoon (no, the other red spoon!)… But this month’s messages have invited me to see myself as spiritually changed by the intimacy of the parent-child relationship. The clarity with which I can see the light of God in him makes it easier for me to see it reflected in every other person. Pamela Haines wrote that it is a parent’s job to nurture the light in their child, but I think that’s what we should aspire to do in all of our close relationships.

In my selections this month I tried to capture the holiness and messiness that closeness brings. We read about the power of spiritual friendships, and how friendship can become spiritual. That sexuality is a gift from God, which we are tasked with using with integrity. That marriage is a divine leading built on reciprocity. That we are our children’s first spiritual teachers. And that when we experience loss or loneliness, we are presented with the opportunity to enter into “deeper and more continual acquaintance with the unseen and eternal things.”

Tomorrow we will begin a week of the Daily Quaker Message guest edited by Ashley Wilcox on the theme of public ministry. Ashley is a Quaker minister, best-selling author of The Women’s Lectionary, and founder of Public Friends, a new nonprofit created to support Quaker ministers. You can read more about Ashley here.

After Ashley’s week, we will have a month of messages on the theme of Discernment and Leadings, examining individual and corporate practices for listening to our inner guide. We will read about how to recognize and act on leadings, Quaker process, proceeding as way opens, and the fallibility of conscience. Making space for expectant waiting in decision making and patching together an understanding of divine will with the help of Friends are Quaker superpowers.

I’m grateful to be on this journey with you. 

In friendship,

Maeve Sutherland
Editor of the Daily Quaker Message