Category: Noah Baker Merrill
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Pastoral Letter from the Poor People’s Campaign: Please Consider Sharing
Dear Friends,In response to the recent shootings in El Paso and Dayton, and seeking to speak prophetically to the condition of American politics and society, the Poor People’s Campaign has shared a “pastoral letter”. They are asking for supporters to share this message within their networks and to consider signing on to the letter as individuals, through…
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The Living Faith of the Dead
Dear Friends,Three weeks ago, I was blessed to be with Quakers in Ireland. The day before the yearly meeting sessions began in Dublin, Irish Friends gave me a special gift—the opportunity to visit the burial place of Job Scott. Job was a New England Quaker and traveling minister from Rhode Island whose preaching and writing were…
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The Purpose of Wings
Dear Friends, Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to gather with Friends from across New England and New York Yearly Meetings to explore the ways we “hold the whole” of our spiritual communities. Hearing from people about their experiences, I was moved by this reflection from Kathleen Wooten of Fresh Pond (MA) Friends Meeting, and…
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The Kindling Power
Most persons are awakened and set on their new track of life through the quickening and kindling power of some person who becomes for them the instrument of inspiration and of the creation of faith and the vision of a nobler way of life. Persons are set on fire by someone who is already aflame.…
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A Deeper Hope
SEPTEMBER 2018 A Deeper Hope Dear Friends, In my morning devotional time since Annual Sessions, I’ve been reading Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited, a foundational reflection by Thurman, the Black theologian, preacher, professor, activist and mystic whose work helped inspire the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and who was a student and friend…
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In the Space Between
JUNE 2018 In the Space Between God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like flame and make big…
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Still There and Always There
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water to solace the dryness at our hearts. I have seen the fountain springing out of the rock wall and you drinking there. And I too before your eyes found footholds and climbed to drink the cool water. The woman of that place, shading her eyes, frowned…
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Our Hearts are Broken
March 1, 2018 Dear Friends, Again, our hearts are broken by news of a school shooting. Galen Hamann of Providence (RI) Meeting, Director of Friends Education at Moses Brown School, writes to us asking: “What do we say to our children who ask why schools aren’t safe places?” She shares the first query raised…
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Embraced by the Mystery
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…
Putney Friends Meeting 