Sunday, I found myself on my feet at meeting for worship to praise a “benign, loving, transformative, regenerative force” that I felt so powerfully that spring morning, a force another Quaker in another time described as “a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things.”*
A few more adjectives I might’ve added on Sunday: Non-anthrocentric. Restorative. Grateful. Mysterious.
Yes, mysterious. Because here’s A Thing, as my godson would say: on Monday, after doing several errands, I was walking home and had turned off busy and congested Somerville Avenue to walk along a more quiet side street near my home. A street lined with trees delicately in bloom. And tulips or daffodils or forsythia or flame-colored quince bushes in their full glory.
And, suddenly, I felt that force all-around me and so powerfully it brought tears to my eyes. “Welcome home,” that loving force seemed to say to me. “We’re grateful that you understand how we’re all in this together, aren’t we? We’re all connected. And inter-dependent. Yes.”
Oh, my.
*James Naylor, October 20, 1660; on his deathbed.