One With God And Each Other

Posted on February 16, 2022 by friendmarcelle

In preparation for an online conversation and exploration of how we can be more receptive to the gathered meeting, I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on that’s been written about the amazing experience of entering what can be described as Heaven on Earth. This past week, during the several online meetings for worship in which I’ve participated (one of them lasting three hours), I’ve been paying close attention to how the experience develops, in me and the group—trying to notice the gentle movement as a meeting becomes settled or centered, and how that moves into a gathered meeting. I have long been convinced that being gathered by the Spirit in meeting for worship is one of the greatest gifts of the Quaker way. Now, after deeper consideration of my own experience and what I’ve heard from others, I realize more clearly that this experience is a doorway into another state, a state of profound unity and an openness to the movement of the Spirit. It provides a blessed opportunity for the Spirit to give us the wisdom and strength needed to do God’s work in the world.

During the gathered meeting, most (or all) of the participants in a meeting for worship are drawn into a subtle or strong awareness of the underlying reality at the deepest levels of our being, where we are part of a loving oneness with one another and with (or in) God. This awareness quiets minds and opens hearts. In Listening Spirituality, Vol. II, Patricia Loring writes that during these special times Friends feel that they know, “both God and their fellows more fully and dearly in some indefinable, immediate, non-cognitive way. The sense of oneness, knowledge and tenderness that is planted and tended in the times of gathering has been the ground of Quaker community, organization, and conduct of life together.” Although participants may experience revelations of divine truth during a gathered meeting, and are collectively taught by the Spirit both in the silence and through the vocal ministry, Loring believes that the “true fruit and sacrament of the gathered meeting is love…” By this she means the kind of love that motivates people to action: “The people who have experienced themselves united with God’s will are drawn to manifest it as love in the world.”

Around 1940, Thomas Kelly wrote a beautiful essay, “The Gathered Meeting,” in which he describes the experience as follows: “In the Quaker practice of group worship on the basis of silence come special times when an electric hush and solemnity and depth of power steals over the worshipers. A blanket of divine covering comes over the room, and a quickening Presence pervades us, breaking down some part of the special privacy and isolation of our individual lives and bonding our spirits within a super-individual Life and Power—an objective, dynamic Presence which enfolds us all, nourishes our souls, speaks glad, unutterable comfort within us, and quickens in us depths that had before been slumbering. The Burning Bush has been kindled in our midst, and we stand together on holy ground.” Gathered meetings come in all degrees of intensity or depth, from subtle to very palpable. Here Kelly is describing the more intense form of the gathered meeting, sometimes called a “covered meeting.”

The term “gathered meeting” probably only came into common use as a consequence of Kelly’s essay. But the experience of being gathered by the Spirit in worship was described by the first Quakers in the middle of the seventeenth century. Francis Howgill, for example, spoke of powerful meetings in which, “The Kingdom of Heaven did gather us and catch us all, as in a net….”

Edward Burrough was Howgill’s partner in traveling to share with crowds of people the Quaker message of the Light of Christ within. Some of the curious people who came to listen were scornful of radical new ideas; others were hungry for a deeper intimacy with God. Those who were sincere seekers were invited to attend meetings for worship that lasted for hours. Again and again, participants in some of those meetings were gathered by the Spirit. Burrough describes this as a return to the experience of the first Christians at Pentecost: “And while waiting upon the Lord in silence, as often we did for many hours together, with our minds and hearts toward him, being staid in the light of Christ within us, from all thoughts, fleshly motions, and desires, in our diligent waiting and fear of his name, and hearkening to his word, we received often the pouring down of the spirit upon us, and the gift of God’s holy eternal spirit as in the days of old, and our hearts were made glad….”

The effect of being gathered by the Spirit is transforming. Francis Howgill described how their hearts were bonded with one another and God in a powerful way, and they were set aflame with the desire to give everything to do God’s work in the world: “And from that day forward, our hearts were knit unto the Lord and one unto another in true and fervent love, in the covenant of Life with God…. And holy resolutions were kindled in our hearts as a fire which the Life kindled in us to serve the Lord while we had a being.”

Being gathered in the Spirit during meeting for worship is entirely different from reading remarkable accounts of such experiences, whether those of the first Quakers or contemporary Friends. It’s a bit like the difference between reading about the taste of a ripe peach and actually eating one, or hearing about the view from the top of a mountain and actually standing on a summit facing a clear panorama. Reading or hearing accounts of the experience of others cannot convey the experience itself, but it can help us glimpse the potential of surrendering to the Spirit together in a silent meeting for worship, and give us clues about how to open to the experience ourselves.

Whether or not you have experienced the gathered meeting, I invite you to explore further. I have creating an online page of resources with videos, readings and quotes. HERE is the link: https://awholeheart.com/gathered-meeting/.

One With God and Each Other: Have you ever experienced being gathered by the Spirit into a oneness with God and with others? If so, what was that like?

© 2022 Marcelle Martin

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A Guide to Faithfulness Groups explains what faithfulness is and how it can be cultivated by small groups that practice ways to listen inwardly together for divine guidance, a practice that holds great potential for supporting individuals of any faith in allowing the work of the Spirit to become manifest through them and their communities.

Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey describes the transformational spiritual journey of the first Quakers, who were inwardly guided by God to work and witness for radical changes in their society. Focusing on ten elements of the spiritual journey, this book is a guide to a Spirit-filled life, designed to be a resource for both individuals and groups to explore their spiritual experiences. It describes the journey of faithfulness that leads people to actively engage in God’s work of making this world a better place for all. Our Life is Love has been reviewed by Marty Grundy in Friends Journal, by Carole Spencer in Quaker Religious Thought, and by Stuart Masters on A Quaker Stew. The first few chapters of this book are available for download as a pdf HERE.

Find a Quaker Meeting near you: Quaker Finder

Posted in Contemplative spirituality, Learning from Early Friends, Mysticism, Quaker Faith Today, Radical Christianity, spiritual practices | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Radical Quaker Spiritual Journey

Posted on January 26, 2022 by friendmarcelle

Earlier this month I was fortunate to be able to spend nine days in a hermitage on the edge of some woods. I went for many reasons: rest; renewal; reconnecting (with God, nature, and my soul); deep inward listening; discernment; and preparation for upcoming teaching and ministry. My retreat was not very structured, but nonetheless was blessed with all of these kinds of gifts.

Day by day, as I let go of plans, expectations, and demands on myself, I felt tension and stress falling away. I began to be more present in each moment, savoring sights, sounds, feelings, textures, tastes, and awareness itself. In spite of cold weather, I surprised myself by how much time I spent walking in the woods, exploring unfamiliar terrain, becoming acquainted with particular trees, boulders, ridges, and the sparkling creek. I carried on my usual spiritual practices and added spontaneous times of prayer.

For decades I have felt called to the ongoing work, in myself, of understanding and living on the radical edge of the Quaker call to spiritual transformation. In the first days at the hermitage, I had been puzzled about why I had brought copies of an 18th century Quaker document by Job Scott, “Essays on Salvation by Christ.” Only in the deeply quiet middle days of my retreat did I remember that I have long felt drawn to wrestle with and understand Scott’s statement about the full transformation to which we all are called.

Job Scott was a highly respected Quaker traveling minister from New England. On a trip to Europe in 1793, during his long passage by ship, he wrote a draft of an essay that he had been attempting to write for many years. Then, in Ireland, he contracted smallpox and died. In a letter written on his deathbed, he asked Friends to edit the essay and asserted his belief that there has never “been any other possible way of salvation but that of a real conception and birth of the divinity in man.” In the Preface to the essay, he clarifies, “[I]n all ages, it has been a real birth of God in the soul, a substantial union of the human and divine nature; the son of God, and the son of man, which is the true Immanuel state, God and man in an ever blessed oneness and harmonious agreement….”

Official Quaker committees examined the manuscript and concluded that while it was true to Scriptures and to Quaker doctrine, publication at that time would be controversial, because of theological divisions among Friends at that time that would be heightened by it. Other Friends, however, copied Scott’s essay by hand because they found it such a valuable guide to the spiritual life. It was finally published thirty-five years after Scott’s death, without official committee sanction. I have hesitated to write a similarly clear statement. My book Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey, speaks of these same truths, connected to Scripture and to early Quaker testimony, but the language, though contemporary, is not as bold as Scott’s.

Our desperate times call for the clearest statement of truth possible. I hope to do this as simply and clearly as I can in writing, joining others who have done the same. I also attempted to put this into words in an online webinar on The Radical Quaker Spiritual Journey. (January 30, 2022). A link to the recording is below.

I’m so grateful to those who have prayed for me and held me in the Light for faithfulness, simplicity, and clarity of expression.

The Radical Quaker Spiritual Journey © 2022 Marcelle Martin


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The link to the recording of the The Radical Quaker Spiritual Journey webinar held January 30th, 2022 is available below.

The first Quakers discovered that a radical spiritual transformation resulted from learning to pay attention to the inward guidance of God. Their collective experience of surrendering together to this direct relationship enabled great spiritual power to work through them, which set in motion many liberating changes in society.

To watch the recording from The Radical Quaker Spiritual Journey, go HERE. https://youtu.be/Wqrma7NBE_w


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For Information About Other Upcoming Online Webinars with Marcelle Martin, click HERE. https://awholeheart.com/teaching/

A Guide to Faithfulness Groups explains what faithfulness is and how it can be cultivated by small groups that practice ways to listen inwardly together for divine guidance, a practice that holds great potential for supporting individuals of any faith in allowing the work of the Spirit to become manifest through them and their communities.

Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey describes the transformational spiritual journey of the first Quakers, who were inwardly guided by God to work and witness for radical changes in their society. Focusing on ten elements of the spiritual journey, this book is a guide to a Spirit-filled life, designed to be a resource for both individuals and groups to explore their spiritual experiences. It describes the journey of faithfulness that leads people to actively engage in God’s work of making this world a better place for all. Our Life is Love has been reviewed by Marty Grundy in Friends Journal, by Carole Spencer in Quaker Religious Thought, and by Stuart Masters on A Quaker Stew. The first few chapters of this book are available for download as a pdf HERE.

To order multiple copies of either book, postage free, contact us.

Find a Quaker Meeting near you: Quaker Finder

Posted in Contemplative spirituality, Learning from Early Friends, Mysticism, Quaker Faith Today, Radical Christianity | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Deep and Going Deeper

Posted on January 1, 2022 by friendmarcelle

In the final lines of his book Deep, journalist James Nestor ponders the mystery of the human being and asks, “What are we?” It is a question, he says, that he asks with every breath, the question that drove his intensive research. His book explores not only the secrets about marine life and evolution that can be glimpsed in the depths of the ocean, but some extraordinary and little-known abilities of the human body in deep water.

The year it was published, Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Scientific American Recommended Read. I devoured the book with great fascination because, I too, am seeking answers to the question “What are we?” or perhaps, “Who are we?” My experience has taught me that human beings today–even those with advanced academic degrees–have a dangerously inadequate understanding of the answer to those questions. Like the freedivers and “renegade scientists” that Nestor gets to know in his research, I, too, have experienced human capabilities that have been, for centuries at a time, forgotten secrets known only to a few. I, too, have a sense of urgency about our need, in this moment in history, to learn some of those crucial secrets—truths about human nature and the nature of reality.

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Nestor’s journey into the depths began when he was sent to Greece to report on the annual world freediving competition. What he saw both fascinated and horrified him. Until then, he’d had no idea that human beings were capable of diving as many as three hundred feet deep and staying underwater for three minutes, wearing only wetsuits and filling their lungs with a single deep breath. He was repelled, however, by how many competitors threatened their own lives in the effort to achieve new records. After two competitions, he refused to attend any more. However, along the way he met some freedivers who use their skills not for competition but to explore the depths of the ocean. At the same time, they are discovering more about some extraordinary abilities of the human body.

The human embryo goes through stages similar to the evolution of the species, from a marine creature to a human being. For example, at about four weeks, the human embryo, like all vertebrates, forms pharyngeal gill slits in their throat region. In fish, similar slits develop into gills, but human embryos develop lungs instead. What Nestor learns, and then explains in Deep, is that the human body exhibits unexpected capacities deep underwater, capacities that may remain from earlier stages in evolution.

Underwater, it is possible to hold one’s breath longer than above water. Under strong water pressure, human lungs contract in size. The body withdraws blood from the extremities and then later releases a fresh boost of oxygen to the vital organs after minutes underwater, an event that freedivers refer to as “Flipping the Master Switch.” Until thirty feet, natural buoyancy lifts the human body to the surface of a body of water. There is, however, a point at which the body is no longer able to simply float to the surface. At around thirty feet deep, there is a “no-gravity” zone, where a human body neither rises nor falls. And then, around 35 to 40 feet deep, gravity begins to pull the human body into the depths of the ocean. This is what freedivers call “the doorway to the deep.” At this point, they no longer need to work to go deeper; they simply allow themselves to be drawn into the depths. They count on flipping the “Master Switch” to give them the oxygen they need to fight gravity for their return to the surface.

To become a freediver, James Nestor had to learn many skills. For instance, how to fill his lungs to maximum capacity; how to hold his breath at least four minutes submerged in water; how to equalize the air pressure in his head and ears without taking in more air; and how to reach the doorway to the deep and allow himself to be effortlessly pulled deeper. Overcoming his fear of deep water was a crucial skill, as well. He learned these skills in order to accompany the freedivers and “renegade scientists” who have made it their work to learn more about large marine animals, including dolphins, whales, and sharks. They meet these creatures in the depths of the ocean, where they are at home, recording and videotaping their interactions and communications to discover how they communicate, gain information, and find direction across long distances.

Scientists who are supported by research institutions and large grants generally restrict their study of whale interactions to recording and photographing them from the decks of boats. The freediving scientists, however, meet them in the water. Their research requires great patience and a certain amount of vulnerability. They travel by boat to places where they are likely to encounter the marine animals they want to study, but once in the water, freedivers don’t chase whales, dolphins, or sharks. Instead, they go deep and wait until the marine animals choose to approach them. Some of them are motivated by a love of these creatures, some of which have been hated and decimated by human populations over time. They study these animals, in part, because they want to explain them well enough to prevent their extinction.

Photo by Emma Li on Pexels.com

Nestor describes what they have learned about how whales identify other creatures through echolocation in the water, using loud clicks like a form of underwater radar and x-ray, and then receiving from the echoes an image of the bones and organs of those they are encountering. Sperm whales, he learns, do not chew their prey. They use their teeth as “antenna” in the process of echolocation. Instead, they stun their prey, which are often faster than they are, and then swallow them whole.

For me, the most wonderful description in the book is the moment when James Nestor’s efforts to become a deep diver finally succeed, and, for the first time, he glides through the doorway to the deep without fear or unnecessary struggle. The most exciting moments are when he encounters whales at close range. The first time, a mother whale as big as a bus and her large cub swim by and then turn around. It’s rare for a sperm whale to choose to approach a human; mothers, however, sometimes indulge the curiosity of their cubs. This mother and cub come as close at thirty feet, blasting Nestor and his companion with echolocation “clicks” that feel like “jackhammers on pavement.” Once their curiosity about the human divers is satisfied, the whales depart with a few “coda clicks,” clicks that are thought to be the way that whales identify themselves and communicate with each other.

Photo by Elianne Dipp on Pexels.com

The second time Nestor encounters a whale, while freediving with a researcher, a young bull bombards him with fierce echolocation clicks. The bull then flips over to better receive the echoes, and then decides to swim away. The scientists he is with explain to Nestor that it’s likely the bull initially targeted him as prey, but, after learning that Nestor has a big brain and lungs, chose to leave him alone. Did the whale decide that he didn’t want to eat a creature with capacities similar to his own? Was the whale more “humane” than human whale hunters?

During his research, Nestor found accounts from earlier centuries when human beings used their freediving skills to plunge deeper than 100 feet to collect sponges or red coral from the sea floor. For centuries, in numerous locations around the planet, pearl divers made use of the human ability to dive deep and stay underwater for extended periods of time. In the 14th century, for example, Marco Polo wrote about witnessing divers plunging more than a hundred and twenty feet and staying underwater three or four minutes on a single breath, to harvest pearls. Nestor writes that by the twentieth century, when new technologies had made freediving economically unnecessary, the “human body’s amazing diving abilities and human knowledge of freediving had begun to disappear.” Today modern competitive freedivers are rediscovering these abilities.

Possibly the largest group of human freedivers in human history was the ama of Japan, generations of women who for centuries—possibly as far back as 500 BC—daily dived hundreds of feet to collect sea creatures for food. For his book, Nestor flew to Japan to see if he could find any remaining ama in Japan. After a great deal of persistence and a lot of luck, Nestor found four women in Sawada. Their daughters had decided not to carry on the tradition of their mothers, choosing instead more ordinary and easier professions. These older women, however, the last to carry on a tradition twenty-five hundred years old, are different from the other women of their culture, “bawdy, brazen, and gruff.” They made fun of Nestor’s expensive newfangled wetsuit and fins. Diving since their teens, the women are now over 60; the oldest is 82. Nestor watched them dive for hours and then sell their catch to a sushi restaurant. Then he tried to get them to tell him their secrets.

“You just dive,” one of them told him. “You just get in the water.” This is more or less what most of the freedivers he has interviewed have told him. “The secret to going deep, they all seemed to be saying, was within each of us. We’re born with it,” he writes. Then adds, “But unlocking that secret was trickier than I ever imagined.”

Photo by 7inchs on Pexels.com

In the course of the book, Nestor describes how the warming of the oceans, caused by rises in greenhouse gases and global warming, is killing the phytoplankton that provides 50% or more of the oxygen in the air. At the end, he again writes of the forces that are changing the ocean, “oil spills, trash, sound pollution, nuclear waste” and more. Large marine animals, he warns, “may be gone before we even have a chance to fully understand them.” What we learn about them has much to teach us about ourselves. The exploration described in Deep leads Nestor to the conviction that human beings don’t yet know what we are. It’s a truth, he says, that “is constantly ringing in my ears.”

This book drew me in not only because Nestor is an excellent writer telling a fascinating story, but because his question is my own. The story of the amas speaks to me of wisdom that has been known through the ages by small groups of people, passed from generation to generation, breaking into the wider culture in flashes of wisdom and then being repressed by the dominant culture. There is essential wisdom that needs to emerge in our time, truths about who we are and the good we are capable of, that can still, at this late date, turn around the destruction that we have been unleashing on the planet in so many ways. The depths we need to explore are not just the mysteries of the ocean and the unexpected capacities of the human body, but inner terrain, and the deeper realms of consciousness.

Deep and Deeper: What deep truths have you learned about hidden human capacities from your own experience?

© 2021 Marcelle Martin

Upcoming Online Webinar with Marcelle Martin: The Radical Quaker Spiritual JourneyJanuary 30th, 7 to 9 pm EST on Zoom

The first Quakers discovered that a radical spiritual transformation resulted from learning to pay attention to the inward guidance of God. Their collective experience of surrendering together to this direct relationship enabled great spiritual power to work through them, which set in motion many liberating changes in society.

In this free 2-hr webinar, Quaker author Marcelle Martin will tell what she learned from studying the experiences of both the first Quakers and contemporary Friends, describing ten elements of the Quaker spiritual journey that were important both then and now. The transformative process she describes enables people to face the challenges of our time with radical faithfulness and God-given strength. Jennifer Hogue and Benjamin Warnke will co-facilitate. Participants will have a brief opportunity for sharing with others what you are seeking in your spiritual life.

To register for The Radical Quaker Spiritual Journey, go HERE. https://neym.org/events-calendar/2022/01/radical-quaker-spiritual-journey

A Guide to Faithfulness Groups explains what faithfulness is and how it can be cultivated by small groups that practice ways to listen inwardly together for divine guidance, a practice that holds great potential for supporting individuals of any faith in allowing the work of the Spirit to become manifest through them and their communities.

Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey describes the transformational spiritual journey of the first Quakers, who were inwardly guided by God to work and witness for radical changes in their society. Focusing on ten elements of the spiritual journey, this book is a guide to a Spirit-filled life, designed to be a resource for both individuals and groups to explore their spiritual experiences. It describes the journey of faithfulness that leads people to actively engage in God’s work of making this world a better place for all. Our Life is Love has been reviewed by Marty Grundy in Friends Journal, by Carole Spencer in Quaker Religious Thought, and by Stuart Masters on A Quaker Stew.

Both books are available from Inner Light Books in hardback, paperback, and ebook. (An excerpt and a study guide are also available on that website for Our Life is Love: the Quaker Spiritual Journey.)

For information about other upcoming courses and workshops with Marcelle, go to Teaching and Upcoming Workshops.

Find a Quaker Meeting near you: Quaker Finder

Posted in All of Life is Sacred, environmental activism, Stories that Heal | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Prayer of the World: A Rainbow Psalm

Posted on November 13, 2021 by friendmarcelle

Friends Maia and Ken Tapp have created an awesome, prophetic work of art called The Prayer of the World.   Maia is a gifted poet and writer, the author of several books.  Many years ago, as she awakened more fully to her connection with God, she experienced inner leadings to visit particular places on Earth, places of wonder, places where wild creatures live.  She felt called to listen to the divine Spirit that created the world and which is always communicating with humanity through nature. In these places, she has heard a loving voice urging human beings to join in the ongoing prayer of the world.  It spoke to her in poetry, inviting us to recognize the sacred web of life and find our real place within this web.  

I am not hidden
I am splashing my color
all over the earth
       and I call to you     see me     open your eyes
       I ask you to call back the rainbow–
       the colors     the sounds     the presences
                 all form a web of life…

Maia’s words have been combined with amazing nature photographs by her husband, Ken Tapp, (and others), images that reveal the incredible beauty and variety of nature, its rhythms, its sacred dance of life, both in large landscapes and in minute details.

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Photo by Ken Tapp

The Prayer of the World has been presented live in several different settings.  I experienced it in the Barn at Pendle Hill and at the 2016 summer Friends General Conference Gathering, where a showing was sponsored by the Earthcare Working Group.  Maia read out loud the words of the Prayer of the World and Ken Tapp’s images of the awesome splendor and the beautiful intricacy of the natural world were projected on a large screen.  Ken Jacobsen, with his guitar and voice, provided music.  More recently, it has been offered online.

Each time I’ve experienced the Prayer of the World, I’ve felt shaken out of a certain dull, habituated way of seeing this world to recognize God’s awesome handiwork.  Each time it has been breathtaking to appreciate more clearly the wisdom and healing power present in Creation.  The world is alive and calling to us in so many ways to wake up to the sacredness of our own nature and to our interconnection with Spirit and with all created things.  In the words of the Rainbow Psalm,

All is connected
in a living breathing web
      and I am the web
      the living pulse of energy
      that flows through all creation;

              each pulse a prayer…

The message of the Prayer of the World for humanity is an urgent one, calling us to consciously find our rightful and healing place in the sacred web of life.  

Prayer of the World: A Rainbow Psalm has now been published in book form.  A December 2, 2021 online celebration of the publication of Prayer of the World: A Rainbow Psalm was recorded. (See below)  It included a multi-media presentation and we heard Maia tell her story of how she heard the voice of the divine speaking through the world and how she and Ken traveled to the places where she experienced these sacred revelations.  

The online website for Prayer of the World is here: https://www.prayeroftheworld.org/ 

Friends’ Journal review of Prayer of the World (April 2022):  https://www.friendsjournal.org/book/prayer-of-the-world-a-rainbow-psalm

To order a copy of the book, go here: https://smile.amazon.com/Prayer-World-Kathleen-Maia-Tapp/dp/1662905645/ 

For more information about Maia and Ken Tapp, go here: https://www.prayeroftheworld.org/about-us   

Prayer of the World: Have you experienced moments when God communicated with you through your encounter with the natural world?  Have you glimpsed the sacred nature of all things?  How are you called to join the prayer of the world?

© 2016 and 2021 by Marcelle Martin    (This blog post is an update of an earlier one posted in 2016.)

Posted in All of Life is Sacred, Contemplative spirituality, environmental activism, prayer, Stories that Heal | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

The Brightening of Terry Patten

Posted on November 2, 2021 by friendmarcelle

Author and spiritual teacher Terry Patten died early Saturday morning, Oct 30th. His passing is mourned by many who benefited from his comprehensive, integral vision of life and by those who were touched by the heart with which he gave himself to help humanity become more aware of the reality of our situation and the choices we can make to create a hopeful future. I became aware of him over a decade ago, when I signed up for one of my first online classes. It was a course he taught on Integral Spiritual Practice, in which he invited many perspectives on spirituality and offered practices to integrate body, mind, emotions, energy, and spirit. At that time the online part of the course was a website on which to share written reflections. We were emailed links to some videos in which he demonstrated his morning spiritual practice. The rest of the course was held via telephone conference calls, which were recorded. I found the integral framework he offered helpful. Since then I have read his blog posts and listened to recordings of some of his interviews with leaders in various fields and spiritual teachers from numerous traditions. I particularly valued his 2014 conversation with Cynthia Bourgeault. I appreciated his bright intelligence and his capacity to understand a wide range of theology and spiritual practice and ask insightful questions.

In the intervening years, Terry has put out many short videos, some to accompany other online offerings. I was touched by what, to me, was his evident effort to put his heart into whatever he shared, and not just his intellect. He seemed to be a person earnestly working to overcome the conditioning that prioritized intellect over other, more “feminine” or intuitive ways of knowing and relating. I recognized that struggle and earnest effort in myself.

Seven months ago Terry received a diagnosis of a rare, inoperable cancer. In those seven months he has shared openly with family, friends, students, and community members about his process of facing his dying and death. As a distant witness, I have been deeply moved by the process of inward transformation I have seen in him and the increase of a loving radiance and spiritual surrender.

From his various websites, as well as from talks he has given, I have gleaned the following information about his biography. Terry Patten grew up in an intentional community founded by members of The Church of the Brethren, a community that invited people “of all races and religions to live together with us as a witness for peace and brotherhood.” After college, he became a student of a radical and controversial American spiritual teacher, Adi Da, living in community with this teacher and other devotees, and playing a significant role in their publishing ventures. After fifteen years, he left that community, and in 1988 founded Tools for Exploration, a company which gathered cutting-edge technologies for expanding awareness. He helped create and produce biofeedback tools, “subtle energy” tools, and wrote books and articles on stress reduction, peak performance, and neurodevelopment. He helped to develop a heart-rate variability monitor for HeartMath Institute. He sold his company for a large profit in 1998. Then, drawing on his activist upbringing, he co-directed two grassroots environmental organizations. One of them, Old Growth Again, worked with investors to purchase degraded Redwood forests, restore them, and develop sustainable harvesting methods.

In 2004 he became a teacher and senior associate of Integral Institute, working with Ken Wilber and others to distill ancient and modern body, spirit, and mind practices into a contemporary transformational lifestyle called Integral Life Practice. He later co-wrote a book on the subject and served as a senior ILP trainer and coach. He earned a Masters degree in Consciousness Studies from John F. Kennedy University. In his thesis, he analyzed how higher levels of awareness can be fostered by Integral coaching.

In 2007 he took his integral framework into international diplomacy, traveling to Iran as part of a U.S.-based civilian diplomacy delegation. He wrote about the experience, hoping to catalyze a more Integral dialogue oriented toward mutual understanding.

That same year, Terry began interviewing many of the world’s leading thinkers and teachers, to engage “our critical evolutionary moment, exploring the perspectives and practices that can cultivate a life of greater awareness, growth, freedom, vitality, service, and ultimately, love.” He made available his recordings of these conversations and wrote about the insights he gained. From 2009-2011, he was part of the faculty of the Integral Executive Leadership program at Notre Dame, and also taught at Columbia University, San Francisco State, and John F. Kennedy University. He traveled widely, speaking at conferences and connecting leaders and institutions. He defined his work as, “helping conscious individuals and organizations navigate the transitions, transformations, and revolutions of this accelerating time on Planet Earth.”

His interest in multiple fields—from the economy and business to sustainability and the climate crisis, from spirituality and interpersonal relationships to national politics and international relations—and his deeply penetrating conversations with experts in all of these fields led him to a growing awareness of the multiple and interconnected dilemmas of our times and the catastrophic consequences to which they can lead. This led him into some “dark nights” of despair and deep self-examination. Out of this came his 2018 book A New Republic of the Heart: An Ethos for Revolutionaries—A Guide to Inner Work for Holistic Change. His book was an attempt, first of all, to wake readers up—and society at large—from the “consensus trance” of our culture and from our denial of the fact that we are facing an immense existential threat to all life on earth. Outlining our dilemma was only the opening of the book. Then he wrote of how the pressures of our time are creating an evolutionary opportunity—and necessity—for humanity and of the need for “whole systems change.” This requires both inner and outer transformation, which are interdependent and equally essential to address the causes, complexity, and consequences of the problems we face.

After publishing the book, he created an online community also called A New Republic of the Heart. Creating a community was a response to his understanding that individual spiritual practices are not sufficient to help us face the demands of our times; communal practices are essential. It began as a year-long teaching experiment. Partnering with Integral coach Siobhan McClory in creating the program and community, Terry Patten served as the core teacher, encouraging and drawing out the co-leadership of participants. In a recent description of Terry, Siobhan said that he modeled “Turning to face what’s hardest to face in this world.” On his website for the course/community was their invitation:

“It’s Game Time on planet Earth. Our evolutionary crisis is forging a new kind of 21st-century hero—one who looks just like you. Who will you be in this time of great transition? Let’s answer evolution’s call. … We invite you to join us in building a global movement for whole-systems change through a revolution of love.”

Over many years, I have felt an affinity with Terry Patten’s work, in part because it reflected my own leadings to understand our global predicament while going deeply into exploring and teaching individual and communal spiritual practices, drawing upon and integrating the wisdom from many spiritual traditions. I was also drawn by the fact that he seemed to be speaking frankly and with nuanced understanding about our global predicament in a way that few public figures, including few spiritual teachers, have been doing. He was asking the questions that have been on my heart for decades, except he was engaging a wide scope and consulting with many thinkers, teachers, authors, and leaders to connect diverse perspectives and insights. He was comfortable both with integral spiritual practice and with prayer. He spoke not only of non-dual awareness, but also of God and the soul.

In January 2020, just a few months before the shutdown caused by the pandemic, I joined the online New Republic of the Heart community. I engaged in the practices and conversations, including weekly Zoom meetings with a partner and, for a couple months, bi-weekly practices with a small group (pod). When the pandemic was declared and countries around the world entered lock down and social isolation, I was glad to be part of a global online community in which we could engage in deep conversation about what was happening around the world and how it related to the other growing crises of our time. Later that year, horrific wildfires burned in the Pacific Northwest, including Northern California, where Terry lived. He was honest with the New Republic of the Heart community about how shaken he was by these wildfires, a clear sign of the progressing catastrophe of climate change. For days—or was it weeks?–he, like others in the Pacific Northwest—had to stay indoors because the smoke from the wildfires made the air outside dangerous to breathe. In a 2020 podcast conversation with Cynthia Bourgeault, they spoke with each other about facing their mortality. (His State of Emergence podcast recordings, in-depth conversations with leading thinkers, can be found at https://newrepublicoftheheart.org/podcast/)

At the end of 2020, I left the community with appreciation for the practices in which I had engaged and for the integration of heart and mind, passion and intellect that I saw Terry bringing to his teaching and public presence. The dyad (pair) practices in which I had engaged were so fruitful that my partner and I have continued to work with each other weekly—on Zoom, from opposite sides of the continent–for a year and a half now.

In spring of 2021, the usually athletic Terry Patten noticed struggles with his breathing when he went on a hike. In March, on his 70th birthday, he received the diagnosis of lung cancer. It was a rare form, about which little was known, but he was told it was inoperable and incurable. Although it probably started somewhere else in his body, its origin was untraceable. Deeply shaken, he hoped that he would have several more years to do the work he felt was still his to do. Yet he also chose not to deny his predicament, but to meet each moment as fully as he could, with as much grace as possible. He drew on more than fifty years of spiritual practice to be as awake as possible to all the dimensions of his situation and to the feelings, challenges, pain, and fear that he experienced. Facing his personal terminal diagnosis seemed to have parallels to the ways that he had been seeking to fully face the immense and catastrophic changes in motion on earth now. As he reminded us, we all must face our personal mortality, at the same time that we must also face the possible extinction of our species.

You wouldn’t think that doing so could ever be joyful, but Terry found that surrendering to the possibility of his life ending soon freed him to be more fully present and more loving. At the same time, he also pursued all the options that medical science offered him. When the first options failed, he tried experimental medical therapies, and when all of those failed, he found alternative treatments that were, at least, healing on a soul level.

Via a blog and recorded interviews, with the help of his ex-wife, Deborah Boyer, who was his companion in his medical journey, he shared his experience as fully as possible, not only with his loved ones and many friends, but with the larger community with which he was engaged. He even created a four-session online course, entitled “Brightening Every Darkness,” in which three fellow spiritual teachers, from different traditions, interviewed him to draw out the learning from his unfolding experience. At the end of the third session, Craig Hamilton led the gathered group into prayer for Terry. The fourth part, on October 23, was a Q&A session. The night before, an infection had sent Terry to the hospital, and so, with an oxygen tube helping him to breathe, he spoke from his hospital bed. Lucidly and lovingly, he responded for more than an hour to the questions posed by participants.

Terry was soon released from the hospital. However, his health condition took a sudden turn for the worse, and it became clear that he was in the final days of his life. Deborah wrote in a blog post that on Wednesday, with help, Terry got out of his bed and led his companions in a brief and joyful dance. He died on Saturday at 1:30 am, less than a week after the concluding Q&A session from his final online course.

He gave an inspiring example of the grace that can pour forth when we confront the reality of our situation and put ourselves entirely in the hands of God. In sharing his experience so fully, he helped others face the larger challenge of our time and encouraged us to surrender to the grace that can come through if we whole-heartedly face this together. He demonstrated a path of surrender to both reality and grace that can help all of us become more loving and luminous.

© 2021 Marcelle Martin

Books by Marcelle Martin:

A Guide to Faithfulness Groups explains what faithfulness is and how it can be cultivated by small groups that practice ways to listen inwardly together for divine guidance, a practice that holds great potential for supporting individuals of any faith in allowing the work of the Spirit to become manifest through them and their communities.

Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey describes the transformational spiritual journey of the first Quakers, who were inwardly guided by God to work and witness for radical changes in their society. Focusing on ten elements of the spiritual journey, this book is a guide to a Spirit-filled life, designed to be a resource for both individuals and groups to explore their spiritual experiences. It describes the journey of faithfulness that leads people to actively engage in God’s work of making this world a better place for all. Our Life is Love has been reviewed by Marty Grundy in Friends Journal, by Carole Spencer in Quaker Religious Thought, and by Stuart Masters on A Quaker Stew. The first few chapters of this book are available for download as a pdf HERE.

To order multiple copies of either book, postage free, contact us.




Posted in All of Life is Sacred, Facing Life with Faith, Living in a Time of Pandemic, spiritual practices, Stories that Heal | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Opening to Our Direct Connection with the Divine

Posted on August 20, 2021 by friendmarcelle

When I was in my mid-twenties, my graduate school program was not meeting my great longing to understand the nature of reality. I began to seek inwardly. Yearning to know what life was about, I paid attention to my inner experience in a new way. I would not have said I was seeking God with all my heart, but increasingly the most important thing to me was the inward search. I spent hours alone, writing in my journal and walking the hilly streets of Amherst, MA, heading toward the edges of town where I had a good view of open fields during the day, and a wide, starry sky at night.

I was at that time feeling ripped apart by unsatisfactory romantic relationships, one that had ended because I could not share the fullness of myself with the man who cared for me, and another which I had thought held the hope of greater connection, but ended in my being rejected repeatedly. Opening my heart, I let myself feel the pain of these two relationships, and the love and longing that was real in both, but thwarted. Attending to my feelings uncovered earlier experiences of pain. It also revealed that I had learned some very hurtful patterns of self-rejection in the face of what I interpreted to be rejection from another. This and other insights about my inner psychology shook up my self-image and increased my longing to understand the purpose and meaning of life.

As I allowed myself to feel my pain and sadness more intensely, I simultaneously opened myself to unexpected joy. During one of my daily walks, delighted by sunshine and fresh grass, I rolled down a hillside. In personal letters, I began to express myself more authentically, in the process discovering that I had a deeper and wiser voice than I had known.

Living with ultimate questions, opening my heart, letting go of previous certainties, and giving up the hope of finding spiritual answers from other people—all these things help open the way for direct spiritual experience. My daily walks were important, as well. They helped free my mind from circular patterns of thinking and allowed it to become more quiet. I sensed myself as part of the natural world, a small part of a much larger reality. I found peace in that.

After reading all the books I could find in the local library about spiritual and mystical experience, and still needing more understanding, I began to pay attention to my dreams. Slowly I learned the language of image, metaphor, symbols, stories, and emotion, the medium in which dreams communicate truths about ourselves, our lives, and the world we live in. Some dreams conveyed luminous messages.

I glimpsed a greater context to life and consciousness than I had known. My housemate and I began to practice various forms of meditation together, and we found a meditation teacher. During that time I would not have said that I was praying, but my heart was becoming focused by my longing to understand the nature of reality. I wanted to know if my consciousness would continue after death; I needed to know if God was real. One night when I was walking home under the stars, my perception opened in an unexpected way, and suddenly I glimpsed the underlying, sacred wholeness of reality, and my place in it. I felt a divine light flowing through my body and knew more clearly than I had ever known anything that this power was great enough to heal any problem on Earth.

crop of Photo by EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA on Pexels.com

Over the decades since that time, I have gradually been learning how to open to the Light, how to let it flow through me in the things I do, and how to help others do the same. I discovered that regular spiritual practices are essential for this growth—individual daily practices, including prayer, meditation, and walking in nature; weekly practices such as meeting for worship with my community; and less frequent practices such as meetings for prayer and healing, faithfulness groups, and silent retreats.

Many of my close friends and acquaintances are activists, living their faith through public service, witness, and various sorts of community organizing. Some of them subtly suggest that spiritual practices are an indulgence in a time of crisis. While I believe that outward action is crucial, I am also certain that spiritual practices, both individual and collective, are essential. Our outward conflicts and crises are expressions of our conflicted, fearful, and fractured inner state. Only if we are also addressing the inward root causes of our problems can our outward actions and witness be effective in bringing about the healing transformation so sorely needed in our time.

I want to connect as fully as I can to the divine wholeness of which I and everyone are an inseparable part, and I feel called to help others do the same. In many different ways I’ve been trying to do this, including through writing this blog.

Opening to Our Direct Connection with the Divine: What helps you open to deeper spiritual experience? What have you learned from such experiences?

© 2021 Marcelle Martin

A Guide to Faithfulness Groups explains what faithfulness is and how it can be cultivated by small groups that practice ways to listen inwardly together for divine guidance, a practice that holds great potential for supporting individuals of any faith in allowing the work of the Spirit to become manifest through them and their communities.

Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey describes the transformational spiritual journey of the first Quakers, who were inwardly guided by God to work and witness for radical changes in their society. Focusing on ten elements of the spiritual journey, this book is a guide to a Spirit-filled life, designed to be a resource for both individuals and groups to explore their spiritual experiences. It describes the journey of faithfulness that leads people to actively engage in God’s work of making this world a better place for all. Our Life is Love has been reviewed by Marty Grundy in Friends Journal, by Carole Spencer in Quaker Religious Thought, and by Stuart Masters on A Quaker Stew. The first few chapters of this book are available for download as a pdf HERE.

Posted in All of Life is Sacred, Contemplative spirituality, Mysticism, prayer, Quaker Faith Today, spiritual practices | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Eating for the Planet

Posted on July 21, 2021 by friendmarcelle

When I was a teenager, I was inspired by Frances Moore Lappe’s book Diet for a Small Planet. I read it as part of my research for the high school debate team; that year the nation-wide topic was how to globally manage scarce world resources. My debate partner and I chose food as the scarce resource on which we wanted to focus. During my research, I learned that people were dying of famine in other parts of the world not because there was insufficient food to feed everybody, but because it was not distributed equitably. I learned that some people consume vastly more of the world’s resources than others do. Lappe showed that eating certain foods high on the food chain–including beef–uses many times more resources than eating foods lower on the food chain, such as poultry, fish, grains, vegetables, seeds, or fruits. Her book argued that a vegetarian can get all the protein they need. She advocated a meat-free diet in order to make more food available to hungry people around the world. It would also be better for our health, she maintained. When I became aware of how our food choices are also moral and spiritual issues, I decided to become a vegetarian as soon as I left home for college. As a student, I often had to defend my choice in the Swarthmore College dining hall; not eating meat was considered strange and extreme behavior by most of my fellow students.

Photo by Daria Shevtsova on Pexels.com

Many decades later, my diet is still mostly vegetarian—in fact, mostly vegan–but not entirely., and I continue to be concerned about the inequitable use of resources around the planet. Today, like most of us who take science seriously, I am also deeply concerned that our unwise use of the world’s resources has led our small planet into an extreme climate crisis. Unless we change our ways, climate change will continue to accelerate catastrophically. For decades I’ve been hearing how the burning of fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change. I’ve thought of this mostly in terms of fuel for cars, homes, and businesses. Only recently, however, have a number of books and films clarified for me that the ways we eat and do agriculture are also significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.

I’d like to tell you about a charming and informative book by one of my favorite contemporary authors, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins, 2007). In her novels, Kingsolver integrates strong characters and good storytelling with a lot of scientific knowledge. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, subtitled A Year of Food Life, is not a novel, however, but a true account of her family’s efforts to live off only locally-grown food for a full calendar year. This didn’t seem possible in Tucson, Arizona, where they were living, so she, her husband, and two daughters moved to a family farm in Virginia. There they grew a huge garden and raised chickens and turkeys. To supplement their home-grown food sources, they bought locally-grown meats, flour, produce, and more.

For years before making the decision, Kingsolver was increasingly aware of how unsustainable the American way of eating has become. In the first chapter, in a section labeled “Oily Food,” she writes that 17% of our nation’s energy is used for agriculture, including the fuel needed to operate farm machinery plus the petroleum products used to make the fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Once the food is grown and processed, enormous amounts of fuel are then used to transport it long distances. She explains: “Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles. The amount of energy used to grow and then transport the food we eat is significantly greater than the energy we get from eating the food.” The book advocates strongly for small farmers and shows how they are disadvantaged by global industrial agriculture systems, which undercut prices, use insane amounts of fuel, and provide inferior and unsustainable food products.

Hard facts and ideas such as these are sprinkled throughout the book. These facts would make for difficult reading, except that the larger part of the book is full of family stories and rapturous descriptions of the food they prepared and the meals they created and ate together, as well as recipes for every month of the year, based on what foods are in season each month. I kept turning the pages because of the often-humorous accounts of the challenges, failures, and successes of growing and eating locally-grown food and raising poultry. Her third grade daughter, Lily, starts her own (eventually successful) business raising chickens for eggs and meat. Kingsolver takes on the more difficult task of raising turkeys. In our industrial food system, domestic turkeys don’t breed or brood–these tasks are done for them, mechanically–so their natural instincts have been diminished, and they imprint on humans rather than on a mother turkey. Accounts of Kingsolver trying to help her turkeys breed with each other are laugh-out-loud funny (especially when the first hen tries to seduce her husband). Once she gets the male and female turkeys to mate with each other, then she has to get the hens to brood on their fertilized eggs.

Kingsolver doesn’t insist that every family try the same experiment her family chooses; instead, she proposes that if “every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That’s not gallons, but barrels.”

Perhaps the most sobering lines in the book, for me, are these, about the true cost of our current food system, including perishable food delicacies shipped from around the globe: [W]e get it at a price. Most of that is not measured in money, but in untallied debts that will be paid by our children in the currency of extinctions, economic unraveling, and global climate change. … Human manners are wildly inconsistent…but this one takes the cake: the manner in which we’re allowed to steal from future generations, while commanding them not to do that to us…. The conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners.” (66-67)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle made me think harder about my own food consumption and purchasing practices. For years my husband and I have been doing a little gardening in our backyard and next to our driveway, slowly becoming better acquainted with the earth and its bountiful gifts. (See my blog post about the summer we let the butternut squash take over the yard.) But we only grow a few vegetables, and I depend upon store-bought purchases, including weekly containers of organic greens. Feeling uneasy about the plastic boxes they come in and wanting to move toward a more sustainable lifestyle, this summer we’ve been growing more greens in our yard.

We also joined a local CSA (community-supported agriculture). Each week we’ve been picking up our designated selection of locally-grown organic fruits and vegetables, then eating what’s in season. Usually the cost is a bit higher than buying the same items at the grocery store, and sometimes we get items we wouldn’t choose, such as fennel and nectarines. (Both turned out to be tasty.) But we know that most of our money goes to the farmers, whereas when we buy the same items at the store, most of the money goes to the middlemen and to transportation costs, and only a small percent to the people who actually grow the food. Buying at a weekly farmer’s market is an alternative way to get locally grown produce and support farmers directly.

Like most people, I find it hard to face the facts of climate change and to take in the magnitude of the problem. Part of this paralysis is due to a feeling of overwhelm. The problems seem so large and systematic; how can we possibly learn–collectively–how to live in a very different way? We are like the turkeys bred in such a way that they barely remember essential survival skills. But our bodies evolved to live in harmony with nature. Kingsolver’s book helps me see that returning to older, healthier, and more equitable ways of living can be joyful and connect us with gifts we had forgotten are available in life. Although individual action is not enough to change the ways of the world, nothing will change if individuals and families don’t find the courage to begin doing things differently.

Photo by PhotoMIX Company on Pexels.com

Eating for the Planet: has concern about the health of your body or the planet caused you to change your diet or habits to a way of eating that’s better for the planet?

© 2021 Marcelle Martin

A Guide to Faithfulness Groups explains what faithfulness is and how it can be cultivated by small groups that practice ways to listen inwardly together for divine guidance, a practice that holds great potential for supporting individuals of any faith in allowing the work of the Spirit to become manifest through them and their communities.

Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey describes the transformational spiritual journey of the first Quakers, who were inwardly guided by God to work and witness for radical changes in their society. Focusing on ten elements of the spiritual journey, this book is a guide to a Spirit-filled life, designed to be a resource for both individuals and groups to explore their spiritual experiences. It describes the journey of faithfulness that leads people to actively engage in God’s work of making this world a better place for all. Our Life is Love has been reviewed by Marty Grundy in Friends Journal, by Carole Spencer in Quaker Religious Thought, and by Stuart Masters on A Quaker Stew. The first few chapters of this book are available for download as a pdf HERE.

Posted in Quaker Faith Today | 10 Comments

Healing the Disconnect and Going Deeper Together

Posted on May 20, 2021 by friendmarcelle

When I’ve been invited to give a talk, teach a class, or facilitate a workshop or retreat, a powerful inner, creative, spiritual process is often set in motion. In many cases, the process surely begins long before the invitation arrives or the leading is discerned. I know from reading accounts by Friends in other times as well as from conversations with contemporaries that the spiritual process that brings forward a message or teaching from the Spirit has similar elements for many of us. It comes from beyond, takes form within, and finds expression through words, yes, but also much more.

A leading or invitation often compels my attention in a way that causes other things to drop to the background, at least when I’m not busy procrastinating out of fear of public speaking. During the months or weeks leading up to the event, I notice images and dreams that come, as well as outward events and information that seem to resonate with special meaning. Certain scripture passages or quotes, from early Friends or others, come with a kind of intensity. I listen for themes, for important ideas and questions, and for the stories I need to tell.

My tendency is to be shy and introverted. Afraid of being boring, I hate telling the same story to the same person twice. My preference is to receive the elements of a message, teaching, or class, and let them silently become organized within me, often with notes I write in my journal. I’ve learned not to write down a message, but only to make notes (often in the form of a slide or handout) and to trust that a fresh sharing of whatever I say will have more life for the listeners than something drafted in advance and read aloud. (Wanting to be a perfect speaker, I’ve tried reading my talks in the past, and discovered, to my disappointment, that they aren’t as engaging that way.) Without a script in my hand, I’m vulnerable to the possibility of forgetting what I have to say or not finding the right words. However, I’m also a lot more open to the fresh inspiration of the Spirit and able to spontaneously share more of the Life that often flows into and through me on such occasions.

In advance, elders or spiritual companions can be a big help in the process of drawing forth the teaching, ministry, or plan for the event. Before my recent Pendle Hill lecture entitled “Healing the Disconnect” I felt it was essential that I practice telling my stories to others in advance, even at the risk of boring them and embarrassing myself. Four people generously gave of their time for weeks in advance to hear the stories, ideas, concerns, questions, doubts, hesitations, and inspirations that I shared. Their interest drew forth more than I know and helped me find clarity about what Spirit was actually wanting to focus on. Some of their feedback shaped parts of the eventual talk.

A major integration of many elements of my life took place, including spiritual experiences and theology, all of it brought into focus by the pressing issue of how to respond to the realities of the climate crisis, and how to heal the inner and outer disconnects that leave humanity currently so feeble in curbing our destructive behavior. More came to me than could possibly fit into an evening talk, especially a talk that included a guided meditation and sharing in small groups. At the end of the evening, the questions asked by those present drew forth more.

The ways we engage with each other in bringing forward God’s teaching and ministry are essential: the questions we ask, the attention we give, the feedback that mirrors, encourages and helps us go deeper. As we enter this mutual process, we enter into divine love. It’s part of healing the disconnect that exists in all of us. I’m deeply grateful to those who helped me prepare for that talk.

Into the wee hours of the night after I gave the talk, I thought of many, many things I could have said that would have made my points and my answers to questions more complete. But, nonetheless, I had a peaceful sense that I had been faithful. I knew that what had been integrated inside me, in advance, was part of a larger integration and healing that is happening on a collective level and that it’s far larger than one evening’s consideration. It’s a work for all of us to do, and we all need help doing it.

The morning after the talk, my heart immediately went to those who had signed up, or would sign up, for the upcoming Pendle Hill online workshop/retreat I will be facilitating soon, in which I will have the opportunity to help others with the same work of deep inward listening, receptivity, integration, discernment, and expression.

That workshop starts in two days and there’s still room to join! Below is a link to the recording of the May 3rd talk, and also a link to register for the weekend, “Going Deeper Together.”

Healing the Disconnect: A Pendle Hill online evening with Marcelle Martin, May 3, 2021

(The link to the recording is below the description of the talk.)

The root of all of our social and planetary problems lies in our disconnection from our true nature, from the Earth, and from our divine source. We must learn to operate more from the heart and to become more sensitive to the divine Presence that wants to guide us toward re-connection and healing on every level. Each one of us has amazing capacities to help others become more whole and help move society toward a hopeful future. We all have a contribution to make to the healing that is so needed now. In this talk, using stories and short experiential practices, Marcelle Martin will share from her experiences about how we can help each other heal the disconnect that lies at the root of all our challenges. Link to view recording: https://youtu.be/tIa60epzxgo?t=197

© 2021 Marcelle Martin

A Guide to Faithfulness Groups explains what faithfulness is and how it can be cultivated by small groups that practice ways to listen inwardly together for divine guidance, a practice that holds great potential for supporting individuals of any faith in allowing the work of the Spirit to become manifest through them and their communities.

Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey describes the transformational spiritual journey of the first Quakers, who were inwardly guided by God to work and witness for radical changes in their society. Focusing on ten elements of the spiritual journey, this book is a guide to a Spirit-filled life, designed to be a resource for both individuals and groups to explore their spiritual experiences. It describes the journey of faithfulness that leads people to actively engage in God’s work of making this world a better place for all. Our Life is Love has been reviewed by Marty Grundy in Friends Journal, by Carole Spencer in Quaker Religious Thought, and by Stuart Masters on A Quaker Stew. The first few chapters of this book are available for download as a pdf HERE.

Posted in Quaker Faith Today | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

A Healing Meditation

Posted on December 31, 2020 by friendmarcelle

During my morning time of prayer and meditation, while listening for guidance, it came to me to make a recording of the guided meditation/prayer that I offered during some online workshops in 2020.  It begins with attention to the body,  breathing, and one’s connection to the Earth, followed by an invitation to relax each part of the body, toes to head.  Then there is an invitation to visualize divine healing light flowing into the top of your head, like a gentle waterfall, lovingly releasing and removing anything you no longer need to carry inside you, and letting that flow into the earth, change form, and be transformed into something useful (like compost).  Then you are invited to experience the divine light that shines within you, and allow it to radiate out from you as strongly as it wants to, shining brightly.  The meditation concludes with a few minutes to pray for or hold in the light others for whom you care, and then the whole earth.

I recorded this meditation more than once.  It’s still not visually or verbally perfect. One of the slides includes images of three people, all of them white (including the image of Jesus).  If I were to redo this video, I would include more diverse images. Nonetheless, even with its limitations, I hope this guided meditation communicates in some measure the divine love and healing power that wants to reach through all of us into the world. I offer it as a gift.

I pray that it may it be a blessing to you, and that it may help you be a blessing to others.  With love and gratitude for you,

Marcelle

© 2020 Marcelle Martin

About the images in the video: I took the photo of trees, ground, and sky at Woolman Hill Quaker retreat center in Deerfield, MA. Other photos used in the video were uploaded from Unsplash.com, and feature the work of Simon Rae, Denny Muller, Jon Tyson, and Rosie Fraser. The image of Jesus is a detail from the painting “Jesus and the Rich Young Ruler” by Carl Heinrich Bloch (19th century). I made the quilted wall hanging which hangs on the wall, the image of which is at the end of the video and on the About page of this blog.

Below is information about two books I’ve written about the spiritual life.

A Guide to Faithfulness Groups explains what faithfulness is and how it can be cultivated by small groups that practice ways to listen inwardly together for divine guidance, a practice that holds great potential for supporting individuals of any faith in allowing the work of the Spirit to become manifest through them and their communities.

Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey describes the transformational spiritual journey of the first Quakers, who were inwardly guided by God to work and witness for radical changes in their society. Focusing on ten elements of the spiritual journey, this book is a guide to a Spirit-filled life, designed to be a resource for both individuals and groups to explore their spiritual experiences. It describes the journey of faithfulness that leads people to actively engage in God’s work of making this world a better place for all. Our Life is Love has been reviewed by Marty Grundy in Friends Journal, by Carole Spencer in Quaker Religious Thought, and by Stuart Masters on A Quaker Stew. The first few chapters of this book are available for download as a pdf HERE.

Find a Quaker Meeting near you: Quaker Finder

Exploring Spiritual Practices

Fall 2021 online course with Marcelle Martin (now finished)
Exploring Spiritual Practices, a Fall 2021 online course co-sponsored by NEYM and Beacon Hill Friends House, Tuesdays starting Sept 7th
In this ten week online course led by Marcelle Martin, we’ll experiment with numerous approaches to meditation, prayer, and presence.  Through these experiments, we’ll seek to know more fully the nature of consciousness, our true self, and our connection to God.   We’ll explore how mindfulness, awareness, and communion with the Divine affects not only our inner and outer lives, but radiates beyond us into the world. We will learn which spiritual practices are most suited to each of us at this time.  We will also explore how to make spiritual practices a more integrated part of our daily lives.
Our online class time will include brief presentations by Marcelle, experiencing different spiritual practices, sharing in pairs and groups, and class discussion.  Most of all, it will involve experimenting with various forms of meditation, prayer, and presence. No particular beliefs in God or prayer are required, only a willingness to earnestly try different kinds of practices, notice what we experience, and listen respectfully to the experiences and beliefs shared by others.
 
Our basic text is Patricia Loring, Listening Spirituality, Volume I: Personal Spiritual Practices Among Friends (available in many meeting libraries and from QuakerBooks). We will also discuss the Pendle Hill pamphlet Holding One Another in the Light, by Marcelle Martin.
 
The Exploring Spiritual Practices course fulfills a requirement to apply for the 2022-2023 Nurturing Faithfulness course, which will be offered at Woolman Hill Retreat Center and online starting in September 2022. There are other ways to fulfill that same requirement, including a weekend retreat or other classes, programs of study, or equivalent experience of a variety of spiritual practices. For more information about the Nurturing Faithfulness program, go to: http://woolmanhill.org/upcomingprograms/nurturingfaithfulness/
 
Spiritual Practice Those who take the course are encouraged to make time for regular daily spiritual practice of twenty minutes or more. During this time, you might explore different practices each week.  In addition, each person is encouraged to attend a meeting for worship each week (online or in person) and, as time allows, to visit other online or in-person opportunities for various kinds of spiritual practice.
 
Prayer Partners Course participants are encouraged to meet once a week outside of class with a small group or prayer partner (via telephone, Zoom, or in-person meetings arranged by you).  This is a time to share with each other your experiences of trying out the forms of prayer taught in class, and a time to hold each other in the Light.
 
Reading     Most weeks a chapter of the basic text will be given as homework to read in advance.  For those with the time, ability, and desire to read more, supplemental texts will be suggested. 
 
Basic Texts: 
Loring, Patricia, Listening Spirituality, Vol I: Personal Spiritual Practices Among Friends.
Martin, Marcelle, Holding One Another in the Light, Pendle Hill pamphlet #385.
 
Journal     Course participants are strongly encouraged to keep a journal.  Queries are offered for reflection and journal writing during class and outside of class.  The journal can be a good resource for your reflections at the end of the term.
 
Presentation     During the final session, you will be invited to share a reflection about your experience and insights during the course.  Some may choose an alternate way to share their reflections, such as artwork or short video.
 
Being Community to One Another     The class will become a community in which we enter more deeply into relationship with the Divine through exploring meditation, prayer, and presence.  Our ways of understanding and expressing what we experience will vary.  We will support each other with deep, respectful listening, engaging in spiritual practices together, and holding one another in the Light.  
 
 
Below is information about two books I’ve written about the spiritual life.
Posted in All of Life is Sacred, Contemplative spirituality, healing, meditation, spiritual practices | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Revolutionary Love

Posted on November 27, 2020 by friendmarcelle

I recently read a moving, powerful book that combines the personal, spiritual, and political, to show how, in the life of author Valarie Kaur, they are one.

Kaur was raised in a faith that taught her to “see no stranger,” that is, to recognize and treat each person as part of oneself. She grew up in rural California, part of the third generation in her family to be a U.S. citizen. Yet from early childhood onward, she experienced painful discrimination against her dark skin, female body, and Sikh religion.

As a student at Stanford University she received a grant to record stories of survivors of the massacres that took place during the 1947 Great Partition that separated India and Pakistan. Before she could fly to India for her research, however, the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center towers took place in New York City on September 11, 2001. Almost immediately, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Arab, and South Asian Americans became victims of hate crimes by white Americans in the United States. On September 15, domestic terrorism affected Kaur in a deeply personal way when a dear family friend she called Uncle Balbir was shot outside the gas station he owned in Mesa, Arizona, while he was planting flowers.

Kaur changed her research project. She and a cousin with a video camera got in a car and traveled all over the country for months to visit communities where hate crimes had taken place. She interviewed the families, and with the video camera documented what had happened. She also grieved with each community.

She was back at Stanford while the United States prepared for war against Iraq, a war that the government justified using false claims. After months of futile anti-war activism, she participated with other Stanford students in a non-violent direct action on the streets of San Francisco on the morning the United States began raining down bombs on Baghdad. The action was designed to stop morning traffic, “to shut down business as usual” and protest the war. The night before the action, Kaur shifted her name from the group not willing to be arrested to the group willing to risk arrest, if necessary. She wrote, “I wanted to give everything I had to this moment, to give my all to the fight.” She was not prepared, however, when the police came to arrest the line of students blocking traffic and she ended up being the one with the microphone, the person who needed to explain both to the police and to the frustrated commuters the reason for the protest. In that moment Valerie Kaur found her public voice, and something amazing happened. Later she became a Yale-educated civil rights lawyer who worked with her filmmaker husband to let the world know about ongoing attacks against religious and ethnic groups in the United States and to tell the stories of those affected by hate crimes.  In her 2018 TED talk she says, “stories can create the wonder that turns strangers into sisters and brothers.” Indeed, her moving stories taught me to respect and appreciate fellow citizens whose lives I had not understood before.

See No Stranger moves back and forward in Kaur’s life, weaving very personal strands with the stories of her religious faith, of communities affected by hate crimes, and of recent social and political events. She tells about confronting sexual and sexist abuse in her own life and family, and shares intimate accounts of finding the love of her life, addressing health problems, and giving birth to her children. She shows how the personal, spiritual, social, and political are all part of a single tapestry, and reveals how addressing the problems in our world requires attention in all areas of life, as well as respect for all persons. Drawing from her religion, her personal experience, and recent events, she suggests that the only way forward is revolutionary love; love for ourselves, others, and our opponents. 

What does revolutionary love look when dealing with people who have perpetrated abuse and violence against oneself, one’s family, or one’s community?  Kaur shows us what love requires and the steps in the process of reconciliation.  She learned that battling bad systems is more effective in creating change than battling bad people, and that bad people have wounds that need, in one way or another, to be tended. Her story is a compelling illustration of what revolutionary love looks like and how to live it.

Valarie Kaur’s See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love (One World: 2020, Hardcover, 416 pages) is available at half price from QuakerBooks at https://quakerbooks.org/products/see-no-stranger. ISBN: 9780525509097, 

Valerie Kaur’s TED talk: 3 lessons of revolutionary love in a time of rage

© 2020 Marcelle Martin

A Guide to Faithfulness Groups explains what faithfulness is and how it can be cultivated by small groups that practice ways to listen inwardly together for divine guidance, a practice that holds great potential for supporting individuals of any faith in allowing the work of the Spirit to become manifest through them and their communities.

Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey describes the transformational spiritual journey of the first Quakers, who were inwardly guided by God to work and witness for radical changes in their society. Focusing on ten elements of the spiritual journey, this book is a guide to a Spirit-filled life, designed to be a resource for both individuals and groups to explore their spiritual experiences. It describes the journey of faithfulness that leads people to actively engage in God’s work of making this world a better place for all. Our Life is Love has been reviewed by Marty Grundy in Friends Journal, by Carole Spencer in Quaker Religious Thought, and by Stuart Masters on A Quaker Stew.

Both books are available from Inner Light Books in hardback, paperback, and ebook. (An excerpt and a study guide are also available on that website for Our Life is Love: the Quaker Spiritual Journey.)

Posted in All of Life is Sacred, Facing Life with Faith, Stories that Heal, Working for Peace and Justice | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments