Blog 11-21-25 – Waddington

Every once in a great while I find something that so expresses my feeling and hoped for attitude that I marvel and am happy. Us Quaker’s have a saying for it, “Friend, Thee speaks my mind.”

This Friend speaks mine:

“I’m a Quaker because the meeting for worship suits me perfectly. I prefer to be an active part of the worship rather than a passive one. I prefer getting my inspiration and my guidance from the Source, rather than from intermediaries. Those are important points. I’m a Quaker because of the mysticism. I’ve always known how to empty my mind, being a contemplative.

So when my mind is totally empty, for instance, and meeting for worship, that’s when the messages come. I think that’s the whole charm and pull of Quakerism is that we have a direct connection with Source. We’re guided by it, and we’re fed by it, we’re inspired by it. And once you begin to have that working in your meeting for worship, you find that you can have it working in your daily life….

Quakerism is to be lived. It’s not to be talked about or sampled on occasion, but is to be lived daily. That means that we must walk our talk. We must know what we’re aiming for, you must believe in it….”

This article continues noting from the editor: (Mary accumulated a list of concerns and connections familiar to active Friends; prisoner support, a program for women in transition, using her camera to document social and cultural changes in her once almost exclusively rural farm country, under the pressures of modernization and urbanization. But she mixed all these with her attentive listening.)

Mary’s article continues with her fairly long story [but really interesting!]:

I can think of a story that has to do with listening and following that still small voice within. I was making a run down to Cape May [about 70 miles away] and had an appointment. But on the way, as I got down there close to the Bay, I was given this – it was almost a command. It was so strong, the urge to turn off my road and onto a dirt lane.

And I did it. And I thought perhaps it was a bird sanctuary (nearby where) I was meant to see a certain bird. And I got all the way to the end of this long dirt road, abruptly at a sand dune. And I thought, well. I looked in the sky and I looked around and I thought, I haven’t seen anything unusual. Why was I called to this spot?

I got out of my car and climbed the sand dune and what I saw in front of me was, a beached dolphin.

This dolphin had been fighting for I don’t know how long to get himself back in the water, and he had dug himself a hole and the tide was receding.

I rushed down and the first thing I did was to calm him. And I got down on my belly and I looked in his eyes and he looked in mine. And that was the connection. And I said relax, we’re gonna do this together. And its – it’s very emotional to this day. It was such a mystical, beautiful, beautiful happening. And there was still occasionally a large wave or two that would come, and they sometimes came in threes. And these big, big waves actually filled his hole like a tub. And once I had removed the sand in front of him, there was a trench to the ocean.

I said now when the wave, big wave comes, you lift and I’ll push. Now I said, here comes a big one and his body was all tense and the water came in and he somehow was able to lift himself up and I pushed him a little bit forward. And when the next wave came, I didn’t have to tell him it was coming. He knew. He sensed and he was there and he was pushing up and I was pushing out to the ocean and we worked him out into the high tide.

Otherwise he would have been there all day while the tide receded and came up again, and it was hot summer, and it was sunny. He was dry, his skin was dry and his belly was abraded. And then we going out together into the deep water and then it was him being able to swim away. We celebrated it together, and he dove under and I watched for where his tail was and when I saw his backfin flip up the air two or three times, it was as though it were a hand, waving goodbye to me, and saying, “Thank you.”

I came out of the water and I realized that I as weeping. And it was for the success of the story, but it was also for that deep connection with another person. I called it a person, with eyes that were human and a brain that was working and emotions that were feeling. We were one entity working on this project, and I’ve never had quite such a powerful experience as this.

But I’ve had many, many mystical experiences, and this one was maybe my favorite.

editor: “Mary spent her whole life in South Jersey, and it provided most of her mature artistic material.”

Mary Waddington, FQA (Types and Shadows), Issue #105, pp 5-6.

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