Sharing your Gifts – Rachel Robinson Elmer
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
September 29, 2024
Good morning, Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections. This week we continue our series, “Speak Truth to Power: The Legacy of Quakers.” The scripture I have chosen for this morning is from 1 Peter 4:10 from The Voice version.
Use whatever gift you’ve received for the good of one another so that you can show yourselves to be good stewards of God’s grace in all its varieties.
This past week in the Daily Quaker email feed I ran across the following quote from Amber, a Quaker from South Bend, Indiana. It not only spoke to my condition, but I found it the best way to open this message about Quaker artist, Rachel Robinson Elmer. Amber says,
"As a singer and an artist, I often think of the risk and discomfort that musicians and artists have to go through to share their art with the world. The art that inspires me most is a deeply personal window into the person who created it, and to open the deepest version of yourself up to public scrutiny is terrifying. Not to mention the loss of peace, privacy, and simplicity that can go with such endeavors. In my view this is a huge sacrifice, but art and music are my most common source of engagement with the Holy Spirit. Seemingly small pieces of art and music contain ripples of peace, inspiration, empathy, and joy.
What is my duty to Spirit, others, and myself? My duty is to create and use the talents that I've been given to create as many ripples of light as I can in this world, and as much as it might frighten me, perhaps it is also my duty to sacrifice some of my comfort and put my art out there when I have the opportunity. It is also my duty to create access for others to experience and create art and music and remove barriers around art for the people in my community."
I love that image of “creating as many ripples of light as I can in this world,” no matter if it frightens me or causes me to sacrifice some of my comfort. As an artist myself, I understand the challenge that Amber is speaking of. Our art is intimate and often comes from a deep place within us – some would say it comes from the depths of our souls. To share one’s art is to be vulnerable, to expose one’s values, to open one up for critique, and on occasion to receive rejection.
When an artist shares a poem, a painting, a song…you name it….they sacrifice a piece of themselves for the benefit of the community. And when it is not welcomed or recognized, it feels like an assault on one’s very being.
I say this to remind us to tread lightly and learn to appreciate those expressing themselves artistically from the depths of their souls. Pause for a moment and listen carefully, look intently, and allow yourself to experience what all is within and behind their art. Just maybe you will see how the artist is speaking their truth to power.
The Quaker we are looking at today, Rachael Robinson Elmer is someone who created ripples of light in her world and spoke her truth to power through her art. She is maybe the Quaker in this series that I personally relate to the most. Again, I will be sharing her story from Quaker Stories: Now and Then, Here and There.
Rachael Robinson Elmer had many gifts. She was musical, artistic, a good writer, and a talented speaker. When she was a teenager, her father told her to concentrate on one thing. She chose art and filled her life with its beauty and it became a way of communicating her care for others and the world around her.
Rachael was born on a Ferrisburgh, Vermont farm on July 28, 1878. Her father Rowland was a farmer, conservationist, artist, and writer. Her mother Anna was an artist and teacher. Rachael grew up in a Quaker home where there were books, music, interesting people and stories of the Underground Railroad, and folktales of the area, farming, fishing, and hunting. She looked out her window and saw Lake Champlain, the Adirondack Mountains, the fields dotted with sheep and cows, and the colors of the forests. She and her father took many walks in the countryside in place of her “female” chores in the house.
She was the first child of older parents though sister Mary and brother Rowland would come later. From the time she was little she drew the flora and fauna around her, filling the pages of sketchbooks her mother bought her or her father made for her. Like her father had when he was small, she also covered the margins and covers of books, the backs of letters and farm receipts, cereal boxes, and a wall or two with her detailed pictures of what she saw. Her classmates loved her sketches and paintings as well as her cheerful and kind manner. “She brought joy to every occasion,” one of them shared. Every week she and her mother took the train into Burlington for art classes. At 12, she was enrolled in a correspondence course in art from the Chautauqua Society, where the director recognized her as one of the most talented students he’d ever had.
At 14, she was invited to New York City to take classes with live models. Can you imagine a young teenager from the Vermont hills encountering a crowded urban center? In fact, she loved it! Each time she came back for her classes with Max Ernst, she discovered new favorite spots to visit and paint. Armed with more education at Goddard Academy in Barre, Vermont, two years of teaching in Burlington and Ferrisburgh, and tutoring from Anna in color, composition, and perspective, she returned to New York. She studied under Impressionist painter Hassam Childe and got work illustrating for several children’s book publishers.
When a Quaker friend sent her a postcard from London, not a black and white photographic-like one, but a lovely fine art painting, she was almost moved to tears. When her friend encouraged her with the words, “Our city is surely as lovely and thee could serve her well,” Rachael knew she had been called to a new task. She roamed the city, painting her favorite spots and then spent two years and at least three pairs of shoes looking for a publisher to create postcards from her paintings. Finally, P.F. Volland in Chicago agreed, the postcards were published in 1914, and the postcard industry was changed forever. The fine art paintings sold for 25 cents at the best boutiques and were an immediate success.
She continued her illustrating and was praised by her employers for her detail, color, and liveliness of her characters. She was never without work. When she married Robert France Elmer, a widowed banker, she found new love and support. Her husband often took over the cooking and housework to give Rachael time and space for her artistic endeavors. Together, they entertained and shared their home with others. During World War I, they often invited young soldiers to their home, feeding them, caring for the sick, and boosting morale. Rachael understood how scared and homesick these young men from farms and cities were as they waited to ship overseas or came back from the war, injured and weighed down with the memories of the violence. She did not agree with war as the answer but was called to fill their lives with beauty, joy, and hope. She’d never done much cartooning as had her father, but she filled the walls of the soldiers’ canteens with posters and murals to make them laugh and give them memories of home.
On February 13, 1919, Rachael Robinson Elmer died of influenza, probably infected by one of those young soldiers. She was mourned by her family and friends and remembered by villagers in France who had been able to plant trees destroyed in the war with funds Rachael had raised. She was also remembered fondly by former students and classmates for her charm, inner and outer beauty, generous nature, and sense of fun.
Her home, the Rokeby Farm, was turned into a museum in 1961, when the last Robinson family member died and left the property for that purpose. Today, from May to October, the museum and the old farmhouse are open to visitors. Recently, the museum turned over 15,000 family letters to the library at Middlebury College. These letters contain vivid pictures of life on the farm in Ferrisburgh, adventures in the cities where family members worked, studied, and traveled, concerns for the health and behavior of relatives, and social justice activities of generations of Robinsons.
As I begin to unpack the take-aways from today’s story. I want to start by returning to our scripture for this morning. I believe Rachel Robinson Elmer is a model of someone who used the gifts she received from the Spirit for the good of one another. And she showed herself to be a good steward of God’s grace through sharing her art.
I think this is why Quakers often include stewardship of one’s gifts as an important part of the testimony of Integrity. We, Quakers, are to strive to use our gifts in a way that is consistent with our values, because we believe that integrity is a key part of actually living a life of honesty and authenticity. Phil Gulley explained this so well in his message, “Not just Integrity, but Integration,” where he said,
We live with this need always, Friends, to weave our lives into a seamless garment, when what we say and believe and do are one and the same no matter what, to integrate our lives, so what we love is what we do, so what we believe becomes our first impulse and not our eventual one. Not just living near the truth, within viewing distance of it, but living in it and being of it.
Rachel Robinson Elmer was able to integrate her life in a way that what she said, believed, and did were one and the same.
Maybe a more modern way of thinking of this is in the concept of craft. When I was in Oregon, I found myself in many conversations about how we define craft today and especially what that looks like within our meeting.
Some may think craft is just a buzz word or simple label given to represent some type of standard of quality, innovation, or tradition. Yet in my conversations, we talked about how craft is more about integrating our values into what we are creating, and presenting something from ourselves that is unique, authentic, thoughtful, and for the enjoyment or even betterment of our community. In this light, we are moving from simply seeking integrity to integrating integrity into the core of our craft.
I believe Rachel Robinson Elmer is teaching us, still today, the craft of finding beauty, joy, and hope in our world through sharing our gifts. And please understand, that does not mean only gifts we consider artistic such as things like singing, painting, poetry…no, we ALL have gifts that offer the world beauty, joy, and hope, if we choose to recognize, integrate, and ultimately share them.
Every summer and throughout the year we showcase a plethora of musical talents from within our meeting; singers and musicians, all who bring beauty, joy, and hope to our community.
But in the same way, I think of someone like Larry Mills. He shares his gifts with us on a weekly basis, mostly behind the scenes. I bet some people in this room don’t even know who Larry is. Not only does Larry sing in the choir each week, he also shares his gifts and talents to keep this building maintained and safe for us to worship, work, and fellowship within. I believe he authentically, thoughtfully, honestly, with integrity, works to make this building viable so beauty, joy, and hope can thrive – because that is his craft, and he has integrated his values into the gifts he shares with us.
Yet for most of us, his gifts go unseen, like the automatic flusher he installed on the urinal in the men’s bathroom (which many would take for granted), or the care he takes to keep our boiler running throughout the winter. Very few people would recognize these gifts, but we all reap the benefits of him sharing them with us. Thank you, Larry, for sharing your gifts with us.
And I am sure if we took a moment right now to think about it, most of the people who have made an impact in our lives are those who have learned to integrate their values into sharing their gifts and talents for the betterment of this world. They are the people who have created “ripples of light” in our communities. People who have blessed us with their unique gifts, talents, art. People who have showed us beauty, joy, hope in the midst of difficult times or when we needed it the most.
And that leads me to ask, what gifts, talents, art, craft do you have to offer to your community and world?
To ponder this, let’s take some time to turn this conversation on ourselves. To help us do that, I have some queries for us to consider this morning.
· How am I using the gifts and talents that I've been given to create as many ripples of light as I can in this world?
· What frightens me about sharing my gifts and talents? Will I need to sacrifice some of my comfort in sharing?
· How am I embracing the craft and integrating my values into sharing my gifts?