A Short Update
Hi all,
I wanted to send a short note to thank you all for your notes, thoughts, and prayers for my dad and our family. I mentioned last week that he had a massive heart attack last Thursday. He is still in ICU and not out of the woods yet, but he has been stable this past week and has been making small improvements. The doctor he has at the Cleveland Clinic sounds like a miracle worker, so we know he is in good hands medically, and we know he is in good hands spiritually and communally.
He’s had another surgery this morning, so we are waiting to hear how that went. If everything goes according to their plan, he will have hit a critical first milestone, in his long road to recovery.
I was glad to be up in Cleveland last weekend with family and to be able to see him and talk to him, even though he was heavily sedated. Coming back home to Greensboro and trying to do work this week has been pretty rough. I have found it much harder to focus and deal with this from afar than I first thought. I know many of you have had sick parents and lost parents as well. It’s hit me, and all of us, really hard. I expect to be traveling up to Cleveland again in the next few days.
I felt it was important to update you all because many of you have been asking. Thank you.
I am sharing a story from Anthony De Mello below. It’s a favorite of mine and one I’ve been thinking about this week.
The Golden Egg by Anthony De Mello
A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.
Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked.
“That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth – we’re chickens.”
So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.
Anthony De Mello – The Song of the Bird
Announcements
Lunch and Learn – Quaker Connect Wednesday, May 10, 2023
I will be a part of an upcoming Lunch and Learn this Wednesday, outlining a really cool pilot project around congregational renewal. If you’d like to know more read the description below and register.
The upcoming event on May 10 will focus on Quaker Connect – a pilot project to equip congregations to thrive in the 21st century. This will be led by C. Wess Daniels, Ph.D.
Please register for the sessions of interest to you so that you may hear directly from those who are developing tools that are important to Quakers. Each session is offered once in English and once in Spanish.
In the 21st century, Quakers need the gifts of the Friends World Committee for Consultation: theological, language and cultural interpretation skills, experimentation, inclusivity, and reconciliation.
The work being described in this Zoom informational series is the focus of a special global fundraising campaign. This campaign will enable us to create the precious, sacred spaces to connect and create community among Friends – both virtually and in meetings and churches.
To help you learn more about the campaign components, we set up a special website with more information. Our next step is to build the tools that Friends need in the 21st century.
Register here: Lunch and Learn: Becoming the Quakers the World Needs
There are so many ways to engage. Consider becoming a member, like this post, leave a comment, share this newsletter with a friend, join the chat via the Substack app, or drop me an email (cwess@icloud.com).
Thank you for your friendship and for continuing to read!
Wess Daniels
Haw River Watershed – Greensboro, NC