Putney Friends Meeting

Dear Friends,

Have you ever had the experience of being in meeting for worship, wondering whether a message that’s rising within you in the stillness is for you to speak, and then hearing the same message—maybe in different words—given through the voice of another Friend?

I had an experience like that this week, and I wanted to share that message with you, in the words in which I heard it expressed.

This ministry comes to us through the Puente de Amigos, our yearly meeting’s decades-long “Bridge of Love” between Friends in New England and Cuba.

In the past year, the denial by the U.S. government of visas for religious visitation has barred Cuban Friends from being able to attend New England Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions. In the current political climate of anti-immigrant sentiment, hatred, and fear, this is just one glimpse of the ways that so many members of our human family are disconnected from one another and denied full recognition of their worth and dignity as children of God. I’m mindful that many of you receiving this message have your own very personal stories to share, either of your own experience with this disconnection and denial, or in accompanying those most vulnerable in these times. May the “single star of Hope” this message carries shine for all of us.

Cuban Friend and pastoral minister Kirenia Criado of Havana Friends Meeting—whom many Friends may remember from her visit and message to Annual Sessions—offers a prayer for this season in our world (English translation follows the original Spanish).

As Friends in both our yearly meetings seek ways to re-open the doors of visitation between us, and as our presiding clerk Fritz Weiss (Hanover [NH] Meeting) and several other New England Friends prepare to travel to Cuba Yearly Meeting in February, I am grateful that the ministry of this Cuban Friend reaches out to us in spirit, though we cannot be together in person.

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Y pensar que en Tus brazos soy así como vuelves: criatura frágil y expuesta, abrazada por el misterio de un Amor inexplicable.

Y pensar que en Tu mundo también me le asemejo: vivir de cara al vacío inmenso prendiendo la esperanza de una solita estrella es, sin dudas, mi signo.

Y pensar que a pesar de toda esta precariedad que somos, de tanto mundo roto e incompleto, no nos faltas…

regresas cada vez al vulnerable espacio de esta Vida, renaces para hacernos creer que sí es posible que el Amor aparezca, se haga carne y presencia, por ese Amor que das y eres Tú mismo.

Que el Misterio de la Vida que renace en los lugares más inesperados nos inunde de bien…
Abrazo a cada quien, en la Esperanza…

– Kirenia

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And to think that in Your arms I am as you are when you return to us: a fragile and vulnerable child, embraced by the mystery of an inexplicable Love.

And to think that in Your world I also resemble You: facing the immense emptiness by lighting a single star of Hope, which is, without doubt, my sign.

And to think that in spite of all the precariousness of our broken and incomplete world, you never fail us …

You return each time to this Life, you are reborn to make us believe that, yes, it is possible for Love to appear, to become flesh and presence, because of your great Love for us, you who are Love itself.

May the Mystery of Life that is reborn in the most unexpected places fill us with good.

I embrace you all, in Hope…

—Kirenia

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In that same Hope,

Noah Merrill
Secretary
New England Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers)