The Seed
The Seed of a Nation pages will be updating in the days ahead.
Note from Lorrie: As many know by now, Darrell passed away in 2019 shortly after we held a gala where we spoke of needing to do a Seed of a Nation debriefing after 20 years of being on this journey and plenty of cultural shifts to talk about. But instead of being able to have that conversation, I took time to reimagine my future and our work with the Seed of a Nation. We had been working on getting the story of Penn told in media before his death. I put that all on hold. I turned my focus into writing my memoir, in which I do speak about our work because being left with so much of it left to do played so heavily into my grief.
One of the surprise convergences coming out of my writing was suddenly discovering that my life’s message and the message of the Seed of a Nation story were same—that we embrace all that we are and have been in our past to become more authentically our own. You will see how this transition in my life occurred when you read Twice Widowed but here are a few excerpts from the final chapter that speaks to this experience that continues to fill me with anticipation and joy. There will be more!
My losses were my life yet, whether preventable or not, they did not create or void my identity, nor did they give me excuses or exceptions. Suffering came to me through life’s harsh realities beyond my control… and also from the requirements of my own inner journey to wholeness no matter what cards I had been dealt. …
When it occurred to me that the very ask being made of me to wrestle with all my uncertainties, all the even-ifs, and find hope, humility, and ultimately joy was and is exactly the same ask my work and my life’s message had been making all along. All my questions disappeared about how this story and my work could co-exist. The convergence happening in me was and continues to be profound. Just like Darrell’s struggle was what I loved most about him, mine is what I loved most about me. I win because of it. …
It’s a beautiful thing to have found myself more authentically mine by embracing all my life and finding no shame in pain or weakness, no identity in success or failure, and no circumstance able to (forever) impoverish my soul. It is what America and the world needs too: to claim all the events from our many stories, give ourselves no excuses…. If we did the hard work of owning our past and our present, the good bits and bobs as well as the unsightly ones, it would give us the humility to see that our personal healing and the world’s healing is bound up in and for each other (pgs 199, 200, 201).
“We Must Give the Liberties We ask”
Penn grasped the story of humanity in ancient and modern times where governmental authorities justified abuse and bloodshed in the name of religion order to establish themselves. It was also a time in history where society hadn’t found reason to accommodate difference, much like our times. Penn hoped his experiment in government would reverse this trajectory. Laws and constitutions were mere expedients--charity and the common good were to be driving operating principles. The beauty of his story is how he authenticated his hopes through his relationship with Pennsylvania’s indigenous population, though slavery was threatening to hack his example to bits, Quakers were key in leading abolition in America’s earliest days. Penn would have too. Though his family had own slaves, it was a heartfelt problem that occupied his and the Quakers attention and needs to be listened to in their voices and in the context of his day to grasp and to grieve over the human tragedy that took root in America.
