Quaker Meeting For Worship
QUAKER MEETINGS for WORSHIP
About the Author—William Taber is in his 11th year at Pendle Hill; he teaches about history, practice and spiritual of Quakerism. He wrote The Prophetic Stream (PH pamphlet #256). He and his wife, Frances have spoken about or led retreats on various aspects of Quakerism, prayer, and the spiritual journey. The concept of the Stream is not original with Bill; it 1st appeared during a 1968 Pendle Hill conference. The “4 doors” metaphor grew out of a need for a contemporary explanation of what happens in a Quaker meeting.
INTRODUCTION—When some people attend their 1st Friends meeting for worship, they feel themselves gathered into a living Presence & they know they have come home at last; others find it difficult, but something draws them back. A modern synonym for worship is adoration, an intense & loving focus on That which is most dear & important to us. Writings of George Fox & many other Friends all point to communion as central to Quaker worship; early preaching was meant “to take the hearers to Christ and to leave them there.” [They did and we can] enter at any time a reality which has always been there from the beginning of time. One way to enter the stream is to imagine passing through 4 stages or doors which lead into and through the meeting for worship.
THE 1ST DOOR: THE DOOR BEFORE—[This door opens] when we find ourselves in a worshipful state of mind at any time during the week; once a week is not enough. [In our stressful time] it becomes all the more important that we enter the Door Before many times a week so that we may enter the meeting room already prepared in mind & heart & spirit. [In this prepared state a person] will require less time to let go of the rhythms & preoccupations of life & can therefore enter more quickly & easily into full attention. People who have gone through the Door Before often find it easier to stay in touch with the living Source & have a gathered meeting.
Entering into worship often feels to me somewhat like entering into a stream. Entering into the stream of worship needs no justification to one who has experienced the healing, the peace, the renewal, the expansion which accompanies this altered state of consciousness; [worship is something I enter rather than do. In some mysterious way this stream unites me with the communion of the saints across the ages, [and with Christ].
Each day is filled with countless opportunities for going through the Door Before, for having brief moments of communion with that eternal yet ever present stream. [Making the most of such opportunities] seems to be one of the most important steps toward real spiritual growth & a more meaningful meeting for worship. For some the time of going to sleep at night or awakening in the morning can be a brief precious time of remembering who & whose we are. Travel can be a wonderful opportunity for going through the Door Before. [Seeking out & being aware of all the beauty around us can provide] a momentary entrance through the Door Before, to be touched for a moment, by the Stream “which makes glad the city of God.” Moments of pain or frustration can be converted into brief times of secret prayer for ourselves and blessing for the problem. Eventually this practice of dipping in and out of the Stream, or going through the Door Before, or practicing the Presence becomes an important part of each day, and makes us ready for the rich communion of a regular meeting for worship.
It takes time & patience for some to feel results of these spiritual disciplines of the Door Before, [because we are culturally conditioned] to pay attention to only a narrow band of physical & intellectual reality. I would give 4 suggestions for re-awakening our [connection] to the spiritual dimension: [simple regular spiritual practice; focus word or phrase; feel & experience beauty & wonder; worship with a few spiritual friends. The improvement from the 1st suggestion may be slow & a long time in coming. The 2nd may be a word, scripture pas-sage or inspirational writing. The 3rd is often achieved by cultivating those moments that are already there. The 4th can sometimes be more powerful than individual worship & make being in the Stream easier to recognize.
THE 2ND DOOR: THE DOOR INWARD—Passing through the 2nd door is when the meeting begins. When does the meeting actually begin? It often begins before its official start. Each time we focus on & visualize the meeting-to-come we are already “beginning” the meeting. The night before the meeting seems to be an especially good time to focus attention for a few moments on the meeting to come. [The Living Stream we touch that night] is the same stream which we shall enter when tomorrow’s meeting gathers. Awakening on Sunday morning can be full of the joyous wonder & sense of holy expectancy so characteristic of Jewish literature about Sabbath. [Imagine] that on this day the Stream will be there waiting for us to enter with our dear friends.
There have always been a few Friends called to spend a special time of personal “retirement” before meeting on Sunday morning; many found it helped their experience of group worship later that morning. Entering the meeting room door can be a “body prayer” as we continue to let body, mind, and spiritual senses seek attunement with the Stream in this holy place of converging willing souls, as we move toward a seat.
Virtually all religious traditions have developed aids to help participants make the transition from the ordinary state of mind into worship’s expanded consciousness. A Quaker meeting requires worshipers—not just minister [& worship planners]—to give the same kind of loving focused attention to this transition from 1 level of consciousness to another. [Different Friends have different approaches]; they include 3 qualities: desire to be in the Presence; focus, alertness in God’s Presence; trust in [floating safely] in deep & Living Water of the Stream.
List of possible approaches and images to use: You are in the Presence; you are only seeking awareness of it. Use a restful, easy-to-hold position; relax. Repeat Lord’s Prayer or other inspirational phrase. Use mantra to lead towards the group experience of being open to the work of God. Try spontaneous, free prayer. Pray for each person around the room. Imagine: being in the Stream of Divine Presence; God’s transforming love [shining upon you, bathing you deeply]; love flowing to members; Jesus or some other Divine aspect being present in the room; participate in a Bible story; imagine a Quiet Presence, a Space opening within & around you.
The combination of relaxed focus seems especially helpful. As we learn to relax our anxiety to do the right thing, then technique becomes far less important than our desire to be fully present. After some difficult meetings we may wonder if we ever got there, [because of all the distractions we experienced]. The reality of God’s continuing, transforming work within us becomes more and more evident as we realize that there is a new steadiness, calm and centeredness underlying our daily lives.
THE 3RD DOOR: THE DOOR WITHIN—An experienced Friend can usually feel when the meeting is “settled” or “gathered”; there is no signal or sudden burst of light that accompanies this deepening quality of silence. For many people, it feels like being lifted or expanded into another state of consciousness which enjoys an inward, effortless quietness. Others may experience effortless flow of logical thought about some problem. It is as if we have stepped into a living stream full of renewing, healing energy, a stream which reaches back & forward across time. Most of us aren't yet like the apostles & prophets; the Stream still has plenty of work to do in cleansing & transforming us. [The Stream shares many attributes with an earthly river: we can recognize when we are in it; it seems to have no beginning & no end; it is always alive & flowing & changing; it flows between recognizable boundaries. Traditions & scriptures help us to know where the Stream may be found.
In this living Presence it becomes safe for the ego to relax, [the self’s sharp boundaries can relax and blur, and we can enter into a] sense of corporate reality, [“the body”. We can also] become aware of being in the “mind of Christ.” “Amazing grace and new perceptions in the Light” can also be very painful. George Fox insisted that an important work of the Light is to reveal to us how off-track and muddled our lives really are. The same Light that shows us [this] shows the way to get beyond it. In our more expansive, less judgmental state of consciousness we may become aware of new dimensions, or causes, outcomes of the problem as we continue to hold it in the Light. It is probably best not to “worry” such a problem too long in any one meeting, but to allow the rhythms of the corporate silence to carry us farther out into the living stream.
For some the Inward Work of Christ may bring a strong sense of inward healing, joy peace, praise for the wonders of creation. For others the only words are “unity, unity, unity…” We may see a familiar member in a new way, [what lies beneath the outer mask]. We may become conscious of a face or a bent head across the room, that we are called to pray for that person, [or otherwise contact them]. A person may be led to explore old memories in a dramatically new way, [seeing where God & guiding had “been there all along.”] The cumulative effect of new perceptions brought about by Inward Work of Christ is to bring a profound but subtle change in the way we relate to ourselves, other people, animals, & all created things. We may find ourselves “under concern” to devote time & energy to a need in meeting, the community, or beyond. If we allow the “magic” of the meeting to do its work, our listening becomes absorbing the words rather than merely hearing and reacting to them.
For over 200 years, monthly meetings “recognized” or “recorded” those whom they discerned as having a calling and gift in [vocal] ministry. These recorded ministers were accountable to each other, to the elders, & ultimately, their own monthly meeting. How can the small number of modern ministering Friends, or anyone who speaks, be sure that we are not speaking too often, too long, or from our own ideas? The most sure way is to make certain we are feeling united both with fellow worshipers & with the Divine. [Eventually there will be] a skilled, practiced awareness of the inward motion & of the inward peace which follows such speaking.
It is also important to recognize that the inward motion can lead to many God-called activities other than speaking in meeting. Sometimes those who speak frequently in our meetings need to take a vacation from speaking for a while. Even if I knew what the meeting needed to hear, experience taught me that, if I spoke without a clear inward motion to speak, my words would have little effect, and might even hurt.
There is a more important silent ministry open to everyone in the meeting. This “invisible ministry” helps the meeting reach that state consciousness in which minds and hearts and will are opened and united so that the work of God may go on among us. Some are drawn into secret prayer for others during meeting. If we have a message for the meeting but lack the inward motion to speak it aloud, we can spend time silently “praying the message” on behalf of the meeting. As we do this, we sometimes forget who is holding whom, and we just rest wordlessly in the amazing Presence. The effectiveness of my ministry depends on the invisible, hidden faithfulness of people who seldom if ever spoke in meeting more than I realized.
4TH DOOR: DOOR BEYOND—This privileged experience of nourishing oneness must end sometime, & we must proceed through Door Beyond, shifting back to the more “normal” state of everyday consciousness. For some, their experience in meeting has helped them internalize spiritual laws of cause & effect about which Jesus spoke so powerfully. We may leave the meeting with a heightened sensitivity to injustice, violence, & pain all around. Fortunately, the same power that makes us more sensitive also makes us more open to increasing awareness of beauty & spiritual resources which can enable us to be faithful followers of the way Jesus spoke of.
No matter how exalted our experience may have been, it was never intended to be “just a trip” without reference to the quality of our daily life and witness in the week to come. We need to be very intentional about this [brief but important] shift. At the end of each silence, it is helpful to take a “token” out of the silence into our life in the world. What new insight, what new understanding has this meeting time with God given me to take into my daily life? [What change have we promised to bring into our daily life]? Perhaps the promise is simply to call to remember God more often in our daily life. Each handshake [at the close of meeting] is a token, a promise of our new or renewed openness to God and of our commitment to go forth into the world with new eyes and a greater faithfulness in all that we do.
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444. The Gathered Meeting (by Steven Davison; 2017)
About the Author—Steve Dale Davison is a member of Central Philadelphia Meeting since 1986. [His education in religion and spirituality includes Rutgers University, School of the Spirit's course on Prophetic Tradition, & Pendle Hill. Steven has experienced the gathered meeting a number of times. Those experiences transformed his understanding of Quaker faith and awakened a calling to nurture such communion among Friends.
[Introduction]—[There are special times in worship] when an electric hush, solemnity, & depth of power steals over the worshipers. A blanket of divine covering comes over the room, & a quickening Presence pervades us, [breaking down our individuality], blending our spirits within a super-individual Life & Power & awakens us. The Burning Bush has been kindled in our midst, and we stand together on holy ground. Thomas Kelly
... a [gathered] meeting is one in which most members feel themselves united as one body in the Divine Presence. Such a meeting has a sense of timelessness and peace... William Taber (PHP #306)
The gather meeting is a profound interior experience of the mystical reality of the communion of worshipers with one another and with God in Love. Patricia Loring
The gather meeting is a profound interior experience of the mystical reality of the communion of worshipers with one another and with God in Love. Patricia Loring
The gathered meeting is the essence of the Quaker way, the fulfillment of an essential promise of Quaker faith, a distinctive gift we have to offer. In it we experience what we seek as a religious community. The sense of Presence can be awareness: of psychic presence of other worshipers, of a Gatherer, the consciousness of Christ, Mystery Reality, and joy. I focus on the concrete things we can do to experience this communion in our meetings more often. While some factors work against our gathering in the Spirit, we can do many things to help bring us into the Presence. It helps to prepare and practice. Direct experience of God as a community is one of our great gifts to the world, and provides the prospect of a vibrant, relevant, and growing Quakerism of the future..
The Gathered Meeting in Our Past ...—Gathered meetings began with the gathering experiences of Jesus' early followers & re-emerged with the Quaker movement's birth. At the original Pentecost, several 1,000's were converted to the Way Jesus taught with a manifestation of the Spirit. Jesus' baptism & the transfiguration are other examples of early gathered meetings. The 1st recorded gathered meeting in Quaker tradition was at Firbank Fell in 1652, when several 1,000's of Seekers were "convinced." Most likely, "gathered" comes from Matt. 18:20, "where 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." This passage is a scriptural foundations of Quaker worship. Early Friends seem not to have used the phrase "gathered meeting." The phrase came into popular use later, certainly by the late 1930's, early '40's when Thomas Kelly wrote The Gathered Meeting.
The Current State of the Gathered Meeting/ My Experience of the Gathered Meeting—Why have our meetings for worship become increasingly bereft of "gathered meetings?" The decline in regular personal & family devotional life contributes. How many Friends spend Sunday morning preparing [their self] for worship? The gathered meeting lies at the end of a spiral of increasingly Spirit-led vocal ministry, which Friends no longer consider a sacred calling; our meeting rarely foster this sense actively. Some Friends feel our theological diversity and our attitudes toward this diversity hinder gathering in the Spirit. Not sharing a sense of where our center lies would tend to hinder our gathering. [We still have gathered meetings]. It is in the gathered meeting that we will receive the inspiration and direction to create the future of our movement. What happens in being gathered? How do we recognize the gathered meeting? At the consultation entitled "Quaker Treasure: What do we hold in trust together?
Quakerism's promise was fulfilled for me in the consultation's final 2 meetings for worship. 6 small groups had to reach agreement on queries within each group. On Saturday evening each group presented its collective "conviction" statement. With Jan Wood as our Spirit-led clerk, the whole group sought unity on our common Quaker treasure. [Our cultural and theological diversity, combined with different words and fears led to a long discussion before we could] listen to each other and the Holy Spirit. One Friend noted 4 things in common in all the statements: a individual and corporate call to a direct, unmediated relationship with God; continuing revelation and re-illuminating of God's self and scripture; a call to live outward lives in harmony with our inward truth.
At the consultation entitled “Quaker Treasure: What do we hold in trust together? Quakerism’s promise was fulfilled for me in the consultation’s final 2 meeting for worship. 6 small groups had to reach agreement on queries with each group. On Saturday each group. On Saturday each group presented its collective “conviction” statement. With Jan Wood as our Spirit-led clerk the whole group sought unity on our common Quaker treasure. [Our cultural and theological diversity, combined with different words and fears led to a long discussion before we could listen to other and the Holy Spirit. One Friend noted 4 things in common in all the statement: an individual and corporate call to a direct, unmediated relationship with God; continuing revelation and re-illuminating of God's self and scripture; a call to live outward lives in harmony with our inward truth.
We moved past the words and fears into unity and love. [Beginning with agreement in principle on the] 4 things common to each group, we were swept along until we ended up agreeing on all the answers that the small groups had brought forward. I felt gratitude for the unity, the joy, and the clarity about the essentials of my faith. In meeting the next morning, Jan Wood pointed out [the love present in our work]. She read Bible passages about love, connecting them to our work, pulling us deeper into God's love with each passage. The morning meeting felt more gathered than the one the night before. Some Friends felt Satan had seized the gathering [powerfully], that we had been led into untruth by the Adversary Deceiver. Thus I learned that a meeting can be gathered when not everyone shares or experiences the meeting the same way. From that gathering I received a calling to seek and to foster the gathered meeting in my local meeting and as a writer to a larger audience.
Qualities of the Gathered Meeting—In the gathered meeting, a community experiences direct communion with God. How do we know that it is Holy Spirit gathering us & not another spirit, perhaps even an unholy, deceiving one? Not everyone must share the experience, [only] "2 or 3." "By their fruits ye shall ye know" a gathered meeting," "Has it deepened your faith or brought you together? Has it raised up love in your hearts for each other? Gathered meetings fall on a spectrum. Whether it comes as peace or as soul-quaking transformation, we recognize it by its fruits. Gathered meetings are transcendental & concrete; mystical & practical. It is psychic bonding of worshipers; it is unity & knowledge [of presence], and incomparable joy.
Energy/ Presence/ Knowledge—In the gathered meeting I have felt truly awake, inwardly alive, fully charged & opened to the Life around me & within me. My head, especially, has felt like it was somehow pressurized, as though it wanted to burst, though not in a painful way; I have quaked.
Sense of presence has been strong, but most often is "generalized." I felt other worshipers' presence, only rarely individuals. There is extra power & depth that comes with the presence of [perhaps] synergy of the worshipers' & the meeting's consciousness. Sometimes a deeper Presence is in those depths. Thomas Kelly said of "group mysticism," "We know we stand erect in holy presence, & others with us are experiencing the same exaltation ... We are in contact with one another because we are communicated to & through by Divine presence." We are suffused with a fullness of mind, fulfillment of spirit and transcendental joy, united in co(m)-union.
We know Truth, a miniature of a more transcendent Truth that is deeper than what we are experiencing & yet one with it. This knowledge, [or knowing] feels like a lasting sensation of discovery & clarity of a life-changing "something" perhaps a dynamic, living, working Life, a touch of persuading Power & a need to share it.
Unity/ Joy/ Holy Communion—There isn't necessarily any content unless it is a gathered meeting for worship with attention to business. Through this content seemingly insurmountable obstacles to unity suddenly melt away, & knowledge of what to do comes. The Truth is drawn up from the Well, gathering all the threads of seeking together into a greater truth, & the meeting suddenly finds the way opened into unity of purpose. There is a sense of extra certainty & enthusiasm in the "sense of the meeting" that is arrived at. We each know the truth of that moment & its joy, & somehow we also know that others know & they know we do; we have found ourselves in unity and in joy. The knowledge transcends consciousness and individuality. It is a collective experience.
The energy, presence, unity & knowledge of gathered meeting inspires joy. Presence gladdens the heart. It awakens a unique kind of love for each other & God. God breaks down the middle wall of partition between separate personalities & has flooded us with fellowship. Patricia Loring writes: "Many glances search each other in awareness & affirmation of the intimacy & ineffability of the shared experience." Joy is the unmistakable mark of the gathered meeting & the corporate religious experience, a delightful knowledge & truth flooding the consciousness. A gathered meeting is a holy communion, a direct & inward experience of God's grace.
The Faith of the Gathered Meeting—I see 4 essential promises of Quakerism that came to light from that consultation's gathering: direct individual spiritual experience; direct collective spiritual experience (the gathered meeting); Continuing (constant) revelation; testimonial life (testimony give through our lives and actions). The gathered meeting affects our individual experience by: cementing our individual faith; renews our commitment; confirms our capacity to experiencing God's gifts. Continuing revelation is the gathered meeting bearing the fruits of the Spirit. The basic Quaker testimony and any new testimonies are the fruits of a gathered meeting or a series of gathered meetings. A gathered meeting confirms our faith that you can commune directly with the Divine, both as individuals and as worshiping communities; we have seen the promise fulfilled.
Seeking the Gathered Meeting—Seeking the presence of God in the gathered meeting should be a very high priority for our meeting communities. How do we bring our meetings to a level of spiritual fullness in which a gathered meeting isn't an uncommon experience? I believe having a critical mass of individuals who possess in themselves a certain spiritual depth makes a difference. These Friends are seasoned by regular immersion in the Spirit & personal communion with the Divine in their own devotions. A meeting should have a robust religious education program & a meaningful approach to spiritual formation. Members & attenders should have enough exposure to a range of spiritual disciplines to help them find a personal spiritual practice that works. [When enough Friends come to meeting prepared by home devotions earlier that morning], a critical mass can ignite a chain reaction toward deep collective communion.
Gathered meeting need to be familiar to & longed for by a significant number of the worshipers. In any meeting for worship, the gathering can come through a cascade of increasingly powerful vocal ministries; each offering carries us deeper into Peace. How will what I say draw us down & inward, deeper into the Well & closer to the Source? I deeply question myself if I want to refer to superficial affairs, outward events, or make a personal observation. Kelly writes: "When [vocal ministry] is truly spoken 'in the Life,' then when such words cease, the uninterrupted silence & worship continues, for silence & words have been of 1 texture, 1 piece." Elders, anyone who takes special responsibility for the spiritual health of the meeting & its worship, come early & come prepared. They help ready the meeting room spiritually for worship before other Friends gather. With the elders' own deepening as the meeting progresses, the way opens into the depths. Elders hold other worshipers in the Light, so that they may find the way that lies open. We can all take individual actions to deepen the meeting.
Individual Actions—The center-path is clearer when you've already traveled it recently. Come early; ["Pass your peace into the meeting space]. Pray for: those giving vocal ministry; those bearing a burden; the gathered meeting; God's presence. Pray to God. Develop attunement to Love's motions in you & to your fellow worshipers' spiritual needs. I like to focus on a person, or a section of the room, long enough to allow an impression of others' needs to emerge. Listen for that "still small voice" that might mature into a spoken message.
Try to commune with the meeting's angel. Attune to the meeting as a community, as a collective with character & personality. Seeking to apprehend this collective of which we are a part may strengthen our bond with the worshiping body & thus our bonds with each other. Express gratitude for the community's gifts. Gathered meetings are more likely when fewer worshipers disrupt the "settling in" by being late. It takes about 20 minutes for a human being to shed the world, & it takes several minutes between messages to fully absorb vocal ministry.
Actions the Whole Meeting Can Take—Sit close enough together so that you can feel each other's presence & no one feels left out. What aspects of your meeting foster or hinder a gathered meeting? Getting Friends out of isolated corners might make them pretty unhappy at first. Sitting close enough for our fields, our pheromones, or whatever to do their jobs is necessary to meld limited little auras into a continuous cloud of spirit. The problem is getting worse as those meeting in spaces already too large are shrinking. My meeting has roped off some of the back benches, & that helps.
Architectural factors seem to make a difference: size, shape, bench configuration & comfort, "feeling." I urge meetings to discern how important "quantitative" factors might be for the spiritual quality of worship. Meetings in which worshipers regularly enter the meeting room late are common. Tardiness pushes back in time the centering & therefore gathering of the whole meeting. We are virtually incapable of solving tardiness; 1 possibility is holding latecomers until 10 minutes have passed. A certain level of knowledge in the meeting's workings creates a faith context for the gathered meeting. Those who have experienced gathered meetings should share their experiences, so that everyone in meeting can feel their joy, acquire their faith, & share their hunger.
Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business/ "The Greatest of These"—At the heart of the meeting for business is the gathered meeting experience. It underlies our listening, and [includes, a way of life that applies our thoughts, beliefs, and intentions to actions consistent with them]. Patricia Loring
[A business meeting is most likely to be gathered when it is remembered that it is worship, even in mundane moments]. Real & worshipful pauses need to be taken between agenda items. Have faith that faithful waiting bears fruit. A spirit-led clerk maintains the sense of worship by protecting silence between contributions, to give Friends time to recognize truth (or folly) in what was said. They choose who is to speak next by intuition, not just convention. All should be in some ways like a clerk, paying close attention to the Spirit's movement, & help lead the community into Truth & unity of Spirit; help & protect the clerk, even from the body of the meeting.
Perhaps the most important factor fostering a gathered meeting is love, because it connects people powerfully & we all understand it & possess it. If enough Friends focus on love, if enough Friends channel that love, silently or vocally, the meeting can't help but fall into the Heart. When a worshiper achieves a measure of love for someone they otherwise don't love, the meeting has been gathered in the Spirit. Then there is grace so that the meeting can be gathered spontaneously just like that, without regard to any prerequisites or effort on our part.
Final Thoughts: Gathered Meeting; Quakerism's Future—The gathered meeting is the distinctive form of spiritual nurture that we Friends can offer to those who seek real communion with God. The Holy Spirit's presence in gathered meeting will ensure that Quakerism remains a living, evolving religion; it is in this gathering. It is in the Christ-Spirit's gathering that we move forward. The gathered meeting's Spirit will most surely bring new souls to us, visitors who see that God [and God's vision] is working among us, and will want to join their hearts and souls and strengths to that vision. The Source's Well requires us to come with a cup, which is our attention and intention, preparedness and discipline, silence and attentive waiting.
I use the image of siphon. If I drop my mind-soul, already primed with a little Spirit into the Living Spirit's Well, when I draw upon that exhaustible Well, the Spirit will gush into me & pour out of me, until it has manifested in the world outside the meetinghouse walls in the awakened lives of our members. The gathered meeting is one of the great gifts we have to offer the world. If we lovingly enfold into our fellowship, into a gathered meeting, those who come to us, they will know who we really are. They will know what Quakerism is and what it has to offer them. We will have brought them to God, to the Mystery Reality within true & holy communion.
Queries—What happened at an especially valuable meeting and how was it important to you? What does "gathered meeting" mean to you? What was a gathered meeting like for you? How does an individual or a meeting prepare for a gathered meeting? How do you nurture your spiritual life or prepare for meeting for silent worship and worship with attention to business?
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26. Quaker Meeting: Personal Experience & Method Described & Analysed (by Howard E. Collier; 1945)
About the Author—Howard E. Collier was a physician and surgeon in Worcester, England, who delivered Woodbrooke’s Swarthmore Lecture in 1936. He was an authority on health in industry and taught Industrial Hygiene and Medicine at the University of Birmingham. Howard sojourned at Pendle Hill in 1938, on a journey undertaken mainly to observe industrial conditions in the United States. Howard approached the subject of Quaker meeting as an experimental scientist guided by scientific procedure.
Preface—I was a medical student when, early in 1914, I attended my 1st Quaker meeting. I was led back into "the silent assemblies of God's people" when I began to lose interest in my work and my emotional springs were running dry. No one will suppose that the higher experiences of worship can be learned from a book. Some degree of peace, some element of true worship will be experienced in every rightly held Quaker meeting. I will describe the discipline and method that has helped me to learn to meditate and worship. [The point is] to know God in worship experimentally. [Take what speaks to your condition and leave the rest]. "Speaking from the pure to the pure in others is what commends one to God" [Isaac Penington]
I. THE NATURE OF RELIGIOUS OR MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE—One of my greatest difficulties has been to select words that are personally accurate and also generally accepted and understood. The distinction between [mental activities and spiritual activities] is precise enough to give us a starting point. Bertrand Russell sees "an element of wisdom to be learnt from the mystical way living which does not seem to be attainable in any other manner. [Even the scientist's truth] must be fostered and nourished by mystical spirit and wisdom. Here we will be considering the practice and development of intuitive feeling in religious worship. I expect that the development of spiritual healing through worship will make a great contribution to Medicine.
[I assume 2 things: intuitive experience is normal and universal; worship experiences are developments of intuitive experience. [I hope to make clear] that worship is the flower of a plant whose roots lie deep in ordinary daily life. Artist, scientists, technicians, and writers experience moments of [sudden], clear insight. Unity with Nature [can provide insight]. I was tranquilized and steadied by the beauty, the stability of Nature. I had the illusion that I was enveloped in light; such experiences are initiations into worship. There are also intuitive experiences that arise from intercourse with our fellows. At this level a purely human religion must forever be content to live. Most people don't need to learn a special technique in order to produce a condition of social participation.
For intuition to become active, awareness of self must be lost, and our bodies must be relatively idle. Our minds must be emptied of passionate and immediate concern for the self. There must be an object other than the self, towards which desire can be directed. [A relationship must be felt between worshipper and object]. The intuitive experience is an interaction between subject and object (worshipper and God).
II. MEDITATION ("WAITING"): Inward Stillness—Quaker meditation is only a preliminary to the contemplation and adoration of God in Christ. The member of a Quaker meeting meditates with others and is pursuing a social purpose. An important objective of the Quaker meeting is to create a Christian "fellowship." The Meeting for Worship is the heart of the Religious Society of Friends and the source and support of all its practical activities. The childlike often enter the inner Temple whilst the learned and the "tough minded" are still knocking at the outer gates. None is too skilled to profit from others or too ignorant to help another.
We must prepare the mind and heart for meeting. [At meeting], our first task is to collect our wandering thoughts and to silence the most insistent clamors of the everyday world. In an appendix I have discussed how to relax and position the body as a preliminary to meditation. There needs to be an equal degree of mental relaxation or the cessation of discursive thought. Jacob Boehme writes: "Be silent before the Lord, sitting alone with God in thine inmost and hidden cell, thy mind being centrally united in itself and attending God's will in the patience of hope." I have a 2nd appendix with a few practical hints that have been useful to me.
[If we can] reach bodily & mental quietude, the entire meeting will sink into a profound stillness. [It can now] climb the hill towards contemplation or seeking, or descend into a valley of deadness. I believe the commonest cause of [this deadness or] lethargy is the failure of the worshippers to transition from "passive waiting" to active contemplation. [Some member needs to call the meeting's attention to this state and call the meeting to a fresh start or a deeper silence]. In my experience, the time a meeting spends in meditation before total stillness is reached varies from a few minutes to ½ an hour. John Bellers (18th century) writes: "But except all excesses of the body and passions of the mind be avoided by watchfulness, the soul does not attain true silence."
III. CONTEMPLATION OR "SEEKING—The image of God within us is only a pale reflection of Transcendent Reality, but it constitutes the point of contact between ourselves and God in Christ. The subject for our contemplation in worship should not be chosen by us but waited for from Christ. Receiving light from Christ awakens the worshipper's spirit to an active, searching state which opens the world of values, longings and desires, the world of the artist, poet, and prophet; it is a world unexplored by most modern people and feared by many. If I assume that Christ's spirit is in fact active in human experience, then the Christ experience is every experience that might be due to that spirit's activities. [The Eternal Christ is the object of my contemplation].
[If a different "object" is necessary], choose whatever or whoever you have known as the Best & place that within the empty circle as you move into contemplation. Universal experience shows that the idea of the Best is converted into a living Image of the Christ by a disciplined study of the New Testament, by living according to its standards, & by being in a Christian fellowship. When an impulse from the Divine enters the meeting, it is invested with a moving power & authority. If it comes as a fully formed concept, picture, symbol, or saying, [I am to share it]. If it comes as an indefinite emotion & empty of form, someone else is about to do vocal ministry.
One hot summer day, there formed in my mind the words: "I know my judgment is true, because I seek not my own will, but the will of God who sent me." The enlightened conscience, disciplined by subjection to God's will, is the final authority & guide, [subject to] the correcting influence of a deeper insight into God's will. I knew [this concept] in a moment, & [felt its authority with a strong conviction]; they are flashes of truth. Since creative contemplation is the product of intuition rather than of reason, we find that pictures, images & symbols arise from worship, rather than chains of ideas or thoughts. There may be a long succession of fleeting images. As we center down more deeply, a particular word or image may recur & become fixed, with perhaps a subdued emotion attached. That word or image is probably important to the receiver or to the meeting as a whole. One must rest in the image [and Power] received.
I once received a vivid picture of a stranded, abandoned rowboat; the image came with Power. It seemed to possess neither significance nor meaning until another member spoke of Jesus asleep in the storm-tossed boat, awakened & arising to calm the storm. The boat in my vision was a symbol of my condition & the state of most people during the war's early days. We were in danger of being swamped—of losing our Faith and our Guide.
Another time, a sentence from the Gospels came to me and was forgotten more than once. [I realized that I "forgot and lost" the sentence because I didn't want to admit its meaning to me. The words were "Put up thy sword in its place." In a personal conduct problem, I had been inclined to strive for certain supposed personal rights. Christ's message to me, and the deeper hidden wisdom of my better self was "Cease striving for selfish ends." It is more usual for personal guidance to come to us through the spoken words of some other member of the group. It almost always happens that some phrase or picture will "light up" for me and will sink into my un-conscious, where it may lie like a seed in the soil and in due time produce altered character and conduct. We must never fear brevity or go on speaking after we have lost the impulse that brought us to our feet. The exercise of the whole meeting should make a unity of which our contribution is only a small part. In a silent meeting we may experience a sense of creative achievement without any words being spoken aloud.
IV. CORPORATE WORSHIP: "Unity" (Fellowship in Christ)—At some point during the meeting, a sense of "unity in fellowship" develops within the Meeting for Worship. Until that sense has been achieved, the meeting remains incomplete and dull. A movement of Power visits the meeting, which proceeds to "gather itself" into a still deeper silence. Individual consciousness is merged into a non-individual or corporate awareness. The unity in worship takes place beneath a "Cloud of Glory" under which the meeting is "gathered." Little by little the "weight" of our own personal cares and anxieties are lifted from [individual] shoulders.
Howard Brinton writes: "The Quaker Meeting ... approximates the characteristics of a living organism ... the whole does not dominate the parts nor do the parts go their own way ... Each determines and is determined by the other ... The "life of the meeting" permeates the group and harmonizes the deepest will of every mem-ber ... The term 'gathered meeting' indicates that this common life has been realized ... [Words uttered 'in the life of the meeting'] express in a measure the life of the whole ... a meeting in the life may be held in complete si-lence ... God binds together through God's Love the scattered and disordered elements on one level of existence so that a new unity emerges on a higher level ... The "new unit" of life for whose birth our world [awaits] is the integrated group of Friends in Christ, [i.e.] corporate Christian worship." Robert Barclay writes: "As every one is (gathered) they come to feel the good arise over the evil & the pure over the impure, in which God ... draws near to every individual ... [And each] is a sharer in the whole body ... having a joint fellowship with all ... When many are gathered together in the same life there is more of the Glory of God & God's Power appears to the refreshment of each individual for that [one] partakes not only of the light raised in oneself but in all the rest."
V. ADORATION OR COMMUNION IN CORPORATE WORSHIP—There is no means of predicting when the final transition [to communion with God] will occur. If Quaker communion is judged by its fruits in character and conduct, it must be adjudged valuable. A critical phase occurs between contemplation and communion, which I believe to be "achievement of unity." The 1st crisis in meeting is [moving] toward "lethargy." The 2nd crisis is [moving] toward talking or thinking about Christ, rather than towards receiving Christ in the midst of unified fellowship. Few frequent attenders have not realized and been shocked by how far they are from conforming to the Mind of Christ. Having pretense and sham stripped away is salutary as it is humbling and humiliating. [It is then that the Eternal Christ says], "I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail." These prayers are holy and creative energies and power. Power to change, grow, and be renewed in character and conduct. As sunlight to the flower, so is the Prayer of the Eternal Christ to the human personality. Here on earth the Creator meets the creature and a personal relation of love and being loved is established between them.
In worship, God ministers not only to the whole but also to each individual. Friends have come confidently to expect Christ's ministry to their particular need in their meeting. Friends consider the 1st meeting in the Friends' manner of corporate worship to be the disciples' meeting on Pentecost. [On that day, I imagine] a sudden, sharp storm of wind and rain. As the cloud passed away from the face of the sun, shafts of sunlight lit up the meeting room and the bent heads of the worshippers. They were met in unity with one accord and saw the rushing wind and flame as divine inspiration and divine illumination respectively. Those who spoke were heard in the native language of each ones secret heart. After meetings such as I have described we emerge into a world renewed. Neither the world nor we are ever quite the same again.
I once watched great Atlantic breakers as they swept past my feet on their way to the far distant shore. The wave is a true symbol of the harmonized life; worship is the crest whilst action is the trough; both together [in succession] make a rhythmic life. To enter upon this life & to persevere in it, we must die daily to self-will and self-desire. In corporate worship says Barclay, "There is an inward travail & wrestling ... [& then, with grace], an overcoming of the power ... of darkness & we enjoy ... the holy fellowship & communion of the body & blood of Christ by which our inward [person] is nourished. Penington writes: "Our worship ... doth not consist of exercising the natural mind to speak, hear or pray according to [our understanding] of our needs. We wait ... to hear with new ear what God shall please to speak ... and we pray ... as God pleases to quicken and open our hearts towards God's self ... Then is sweet communion enjoyed and sweet peace reaped ... the seeds of life are planted."
Appendix A: ON BODILY RELAXATION AND POISE—We should sit erect. The lower part of the spine and shoulder-blades should be supported. [Legs should be relaxed, knees together; feet can be crossed at ankles (don't cross knees)]. The most restful attitude for hands is for the upturned palm of one hand to support the back of the other hand, while wrists rest on thighs. The head should neither droop forward or strain backwards. The eyes, whether open or closed, should be directed forward, not down. The body is relaxed and still.
Relaxation. Real muscular relaxation is an essential preliminary to meditation. [The relaxed limb will fall heavily to the table or floor when unsupported by another limb]. A relaxed muscle "feels soft." If we are reaching inward stillness too slowly, we need to note any bodily strain, tension or fatigue. Muscles may have to be consciously relaxed. Special attention should be paid to the muscles of the head, face, and neck. The jaw is often clenched. The eyes may be firmly rather than lightly closed. With a little practice, muscular relaxation can be achieved in minutes or seconds. Relaxation has applications in everyday life also.
Appendix B: "ON CEASING FROM THOUGHT"—Thinking in words and irregular and improperly controlled breathing may still need to be quieted. A stage is soon reached in which the attention must be disjoined from the words [of scripture] and redirected to some image that "symbolizes" the chosen scripture for you. The regularity, depth and nature of our breathing greatly affects our ability to relax. We should breathe deeply with our abdominal muscles, not our chest muscles. As you sit in silence let the breaths come and go easily, gently and regularly without strain. This "exercise" has a stilling effect on both mind and body.
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449 The Ecology of Quaker Meeting (by James W. Hood; 2018)
About the Author—James W. Hood teaches 19th century British literature, literature & ethics, & nature writing at Guilford College, NC. He edited a collection of essays titled Quakers & Literature. He has attended various Friends meetings in FL, NC, CT, IN, PA, & Britain. He serves on the executive committee of Friends Association for Higher Education and the board of New Garden Friends School. Some of his interests are hiking, canoeing, and birding.
Entering the Woods, Entering Meeting—My familiar hiking path is a half-mile from the meetinghouse in Greensboro, NC where I worship. Some mature white oaks, red oaks, beeches, tulip poplars and hickories line the descending pathway or hold fast to a small escarpment. I can pick out a cardinal and a woodpecker; the other songs and calls blend with the wind. The long loop slopes easily upward for the 1st ⅓, levels out for the 2nd, and comes back around to this level for the 3rd; my feet know its roots and rocks.
[My familiar meeting surroundings] are in an old house, the meeting room on the old slab for the garage. The chairs are tan-colored, plastic & bent-rod metal, 3 rows on the south side, a long facing bench & a single row on the north. East & west sides have 2 rows each. I sit in the northernmost chair of the east-facing row, placing my silenced mobile phone & reading glasses on the floor beneath my seat. It is a ritual that brings comfort, even joy. Other people enter & take familiar places as well. Rustling, a crackle, then [relative silence with 4-lane traffic noise in background].
Quaker meeting for worship is a unique spiritual ecosystem. When gathered, with the participants' hearts & minds aligned along the Spirit's leadings, this ecosystem thrums with intricate connection. Such gathering only happens occasionally; we know it when it does. There is always a system that binds & guards our struggled striving, enclosing all in relationship to "something greater." Light is very much a key component to nature's ecosystems, & to the meeting's.
The Florida Everglades near where I lived seemed separate from the suburban realm [I grew up in]. The draining & canaling & damming done by the Army Corp of Engineers, we now know, altered fundamentally the flow of water from Lake Okeechobee south. The imported Australian melaleuca & pine & the Brazilian pepper trees have gobbled up great swaths of swamp. This idea that the human & the natural systems existed & managed themselves separately was & is a myth. There was so much ecosystem that all of our "little" changes could not effect a irreversible change. That was dream, head-in-the-sand, an ignorance profound. We must reconceive, spiritually, our human enterprises as dependent upon those natural systems that thrived & adapted for millions of years before we evolved. Having banished nature from our spiritual practice, we must now return nature & ecological balance into our worship. Quaker meeting is the perfect place in which to make that reclamation.
David Abram, the Alphabet, and the Sensuous—There is a spring to my left, where the sponge of hill that rises above a flat place lets out its water in a long, slow, almost imperceptible trickle. There are downed trees here: red and black oaks; a tulip poplar; a sweet gum; 2 Virginia pines. This is an old part of the woods, unlogged since early in the 19th century, and I suppose some of the trees simply tire of standing and lay themselves down on the forest floor for transformation. Pawpaws seem to grow in patches, little ones competing for resources and spreading along stream banks. There are thicket of shrubs and vines that have migrated from nearby suburban homes to the sunnier places opened up where the hardwood canopy fails.
In 1996, David Abram published a book titled The Spell of the Sensuous. Abram argues that the formation of the alphabet as we now know it, with its [symbols of human sounds rather than symbols of the natural realm], caused us to forsake our visceral, bodily connection to nature. The early writing systems of our species remained tied to the mysteries of a more-than-human world, from petroglyphs to cave paintings, to pictographic systems.
Words were written as pictures of tangible things. On the other hand, writing with a phonetic alphabet, with its 26 letters making thousands upon thousands of words, becomes incredibly efficient, at the expense the written characters no longer referring to any sensible phenomenon of the world, but solely to a gesture to be made by the human mouth. When we came to write down our stories, they became mobile, divorced completely from the sacredness or particularity of place where they were performed.
Sacred rivers and mountains are no longer necessary to the remembrance of the stories. Exiled from their homeland, the ancient Hebrews evolved a religious system in which alphabetic writing allowed them to preserve their cultural stories intact. The written text became a kind of portable homeland for the Hebrew people. There are forms of worship that engage the body; liturgical dance and singing spring to mind most readily. Worship takes place in the echo chamber of the human mind, disconnected from the sense-rich world of nature around us, which leads to attitudes and actions, depletion and manipulation that have produced ecological crisis.
Quaker Meeting for Worship & the Sensuous—The path turns slowly north & climbs. Farther on, there's a field to the right, a place where someone grew food not so long ago. The path shifts north again, & the ground is lighter colored, a creamish sand or porcelain-like clay. The trail veers close to a 2-lane residential road. Mature hardwoods here are large enough to grab most of the light, so the understory is spare & struggling. Rotting remnants of a windstorm from 17 years ago are being sculpted by decay & time into stranger forms. Loblolly pines mix at the edge of this tract with Virginia pines. I hear a hollow, rhythmic pounding that could be a pileated woodpecker. I expect—I want—to hear & see more birds, but my walking means I'm not watching & waiting.
The genius of Quaker meeting for worship is silence, the practice that keeps the gathered body tuned to the more-than-human & the smartest thing Quakers worshipping can do. Settling into silence heightens my listening, smelling, touching, tasting, & even seeing. In silent settling, I feel a deeper linkage between body & mind. My senses are attuned in a way not unlike the way they function when I walk in the woods. Rufus Jones talks about this "group-influence" in sensory terms, calling it: "Some subtle telepathy that comes into play in the living silence of a congregation which makes every seeker quicker to feel God's presence, more acute of inner ear, more tender of heart to feel the bubbling of the springs of life than any one of them in isolation. The sensory acuity we gain in the silence is in part the natural product of concentration, the paring away of distraction, & the tuning to something other. I am arrested by the acuter sense of other human beings gathering with me in silent contemplation. Iris Murdoch writes that the primary enemy of the moral life is "the fat relentless ego," that focusing upon the self & the self's needs devours our attention & keeps us internally focused in an ultimately debilitating way.
Nature and good art produces take-one-out-of-oneself moments. Our attention is a precious commodity, one we all too often spend profligately on our internal state or frivolous, ephemeral things. The arresting and enfolding beauty of art and the natural world countermand the ego's tendency toward frippery and self-aggrandizement. Rufus Jones writes about the difference between the almost pre-cognitive [consciousness-and-experience] moment, and the analytical moment, when we remove ourselves from the direct immediacy of the encounter and begin to categorize or abstract it. Analysis is a wonderful human skill, [leading to innovations throughout history]. Language and naming may in fact be the most fundamental expression of analysis. Viewing a single tree as one member of a class of things is to transform it from subject to object in a fundamental way.
The consciousness-and-experience moment obliterates such distance. Jones says, "We seem to be nearer the heart of things, more embedded in life & in reality ... unified in an undifferentiated whole of experience." The meditative quality of meeting for worship is designed to engage us in consciousness-and-experience moments. In addition to the interconnectivity the meeting fosters, it also embeds us in the primacy of experience, absent analysis. The goal in centering worship is to relinquish control & let go into the flow of that stream of consciousness that is a [something-more] than my noisy brain interior. Meeting's ecology parallels the woods' ecology [with its] constant state of non-analytical, full-on sensory awareness, tuned to the basics of reproduction & survival.
I was mesmerized by the simple flowing of traffic in Kunming, China. Bicycles & mopeds weaved past & around each other in an arabesque choreographed by no one. The entire enterprise looked like an organism, not a set of discrete vehicles but a stream of blood cells flowing fluidly, the parts barely differentiated from the sum. It was ecological in the sense that individual actors subordinated to the over-all motion of the larger group. The many individual actions never seemed to stick out very far from the ecological whole. In the ecosystem that is the gathered meeting for worship, interconnectivity transcends the limitations of single actors, the whole becoming something quite different than the mere collection of discrete parts, an energy, a Light that mingles among the living, breathing, actual, sense-enhanced bodies sharing the space of the meeting room, here and now.
The Ecology of Quaker Worship—Pawpaws congregate in a V-shaped wet weather streambed, like cattle standing in a pond, oblivious to anything beyond their soaking. Their blooms have to hang on for a long time for them to become the mango-&-banana-flavored green-yellow mushy fruit I might eat in the fall. So many opportunities to fail. Later, the much-narrower trail carries me past a couple of blooming wild cherry trees; [I don't know the variety, &] need to bring my field guide [next time]. The trail comes out on a broader swath that follows the border stream that empties the lake back where I entered the woods. The ground is flat here, & there are more sweet gums & sycamores, those trees that tolerate wet roots for a longer time; multiflora roses line the path's edges that are open to sunshine. A small bridge spans the stream on my right & I am back where I began.
The word "meeting" refers to connection, proximity & interrelationship. That's why we call Quaker worship a "meeting." Meeting for worship requires a connective relationship among participants. [Vocal ministry is examined internally, before it is given, by the questions]: Am I speaking on my own behalf or am I compelled to deliver this message by a leading? Am I speaking to a shared need or am I simply speaking out of my singular desire or need? An individual speaking apart from the "group influence" can't offer ministry.
When Rufus Jones uses the phrases "group influence" and "subtle telepathy," he is not speaking of some version of group-think. A powerful connection needs to exist between the individual's action and the meeting's [something more], its centered presence and purpose. [The connection serves to silently weigh and approve an individual's vocal ministry. This is the ecology of it all; the relationship is everything. [Symbiosis and interdependence abounds]. Perhaps the goal of the spiritual life is to strip away everything frivolous, to pare it all back to the necessity of connection with the other and take away our forever unmet need of things superfluous.
For transcendentalist writers, the spiritual value of the natural world seemed to lie in the idea that nature points toward a non-earthly, ideal spirit, far away from the grit and tangible reality of this earth. The transcendental quality of the natural world inherently functions as analogy. As a representation directing us toward the higher and greater beauty and knowing of the spiritual realm. This notion provided key ideas in shaping the conservation movement that began in earnest in the 19th century. Even so, Western European philosophical and religious traditions maintained a clear separation between the natural and human worlds. [Biblical pronouncements of human dominion over the earth had great influence].
More recent writers on the natural world have moved beyond the transcendentalist position by returning to much earlier ideas about nature having intrinsic, not only symbolic, spiritual value. Annie Dillard revels in and marvels continually at the sheer magnitude of natural wonder, detailing over and over the intricacies and profligate bounty of both beauty and horror in nature. For her, this takes the form of an openness to relationship, a willingness to be "wholly acted upon." She writes: "What I aim to do is not so much learn the names of the shreds of creation that live in this valley, but to keep myself open to their meanings, which is to try to impress myself at all times with the fullest possible force of their reality."
The Spirit resides in nature, and the immanence of the Divine within the natural world, so crucial for writers like Dillard and Abram, is a key component in reconstituting the human relationship with nature at our pre-sent time of ecological collapse. "Ecology" is the science of the relationship between organisms and their environment, and it is the relationship itself. Spirit is immanent within nature most profoundly through ecological relationship. The ecology of the forest, with its complex connections between living entities is the true locus of Spirit. The ecology is the something more, [the indescribable]—invisible but known.
With climate change, we have finally comprehend how intensely we are affected by the very alterations we have catalyzed in ecosystems. We are relearning that there really is no real distinction between the human & natural realm. The energy of the Light and the motion of the Spirit abide the same in the natural-human world and the gathered meeting for worship. Indigenous cultures have drawn no boundary between religious practice and being in the natural world. If we can return to treating religious practice as ecological relationship, we will have come a long way toward righting our relations with nature. The natural world appears to function like a species of perpetual motion machine, without the necessity of some stage manager cueing the sun to rise or the temperature to drop on October nights. Quaker meeting requires much more orchestration than this.
What the gathered meeting requires is precisely not human intention, but instead a letting go of directorial responsibility into the potent, driving energy of the Light, which powers the connecting relationships that form and sustains the ecology of worship. What appears to demand great concentration and formidable attentiveness actually begs us to relinquish control, to give up our pre-scripted agendas, desires, and intentions, abandoning our selves into the mercy of the energy that flows between and alongside the other. The collective non-self of the gathered meeting forms as each worshiper relinquishes self into the greater knowing of the group. We enter the realm of the sensuous, keenly alert to the more-than-human that always surrounds us but becomes obscured by thought or wanting. The gathered meeting, at its best, can arrest us into an unselfing. Peaceable surrender releases us into our native way of being where we can exist by spiritual instinct.
As I walk back up out of the woods, around the metal gate, I hear a whirr of wings and a chickadee's nasal calling. The bird is very close, and I realize there must be something at the post. [I look down into the hollow of the post], and there is a delicately woven nest with 3, small, non-descript eggs. I'm disturbing its home by my very presence. I move away, leaving the chickadee and wondering why it chose to nest there, [so close to] where people and dogs pass by regularly. As I think of them later on, I marvel at the tenacity of such birds to build nests where they do. To walk where chickadee nests is to worship with the other [in our shared ecology], this blue, vital, and spinning planet we need so much to better share.
[Queries]—What role does nature play in your spiritual life? Are there places you relate to as sacred space? How is meeting for worship different from individual worship? Do you feel spiritually distanced from the living world? Are you aware of the experience of "unselfing" in response to beauty or in other ways? What is the difference between the moment of consciousness and experience and the analysis of the experience? What is the value of each?
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288. Improvisation & Spiritual Disciplines: Continuing the Divine-Human Duet (by Carol Conti-Etin; 1989)
About the Author—Carol Conti-Entin found and joined Friends in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has music degrees from Univ. of MI, Univ. of Madison and has taught at Lawrence University and the Symphony School of America, as well as performing; she earned a degree in computer science in Maryland.
Introduction—When I attended my 1st meeting for worship, just before my college studies got under way, I was relieved to find a form of worship which seemed more natural to me than the Protestant church services of my childhood. What unfolds seems to this former musician to be an improvisation on a God-given theme. One’s spiritual journey could be described as an improvisatory duet with the Inner Guide. The Inner Guide will gladly propose the variation appropriate to the life’s theme. [One description of an improvised duet is that one hears and one answers throughout the piece]. [It can be like listening to music one is not prepared to understand]. [Perhaps] something similar happened to the disciples as they watched Jesus perform. Faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to hear and answer the Inner Guide’s next gesture and allow the duet to continue.
Sabbath Observance—What is there in the concept of sabbath which might be worth preserving? The word 1st occurs in connection Yahweh’s provision of food to the Israelites during the Exodus. From the very 1st, observing a sabbath has required trusting in Yahweh to provide what one most needs, in the right quantity & when one needs it. [That includes one day a week for] abstinence from work. Yahweh also insisted on sabbath-benefit coverage not only for people & animals, but also for the environment, especially the fields, which were to lie fallow. Each 50th year, the fields lay fallow, liberty was proclaimed & property restored to its original owner.
How did sabbath observance come to be mired in petty regulations? [It may be that others control time [and do not allow for sabbath rest]. For most of us the lack of time is our own doing. George Fox warned against: “Drawing your minds into your business, and clogging them with it; so that ye can hardly do anything to the service of God but there will be crying ‘my business, my business.” [I have come up with creative solutions to work] just half time. There still remains the temptation to take on more than my duet partner asks of me. Sabbath keeping came to be over-regulated because it is so easy to assign an extremely low priority to its observance and so difficult to trust that turning over one’s anxieties to God is not only safe but more productive.
The author of the last section of Isaiah promised that those who brought glory to the sabbath by not doing as they pleased would delight themselves in Yahweh & ride on the heights of the earth. To delight ourselves in Yahweh must be the essence of sabbath keeping, whenever & for however long it is observed. Jesus, in rejecting the inflexibility of certain regulations, did not abandon the underlying concept. Sabbath & holy days typically found him in a synagogue of the temple, and he withdrew from everyone after intensive periods of teaching and healing. [To really] enter into sabbath observance, we must believe that it is possible to enjoy God’s company and must long to do exactly that. Why not offer your duet partner [the Spirit] a daily time together and a much long, minimally distracted “jam session” once a week? Then, listen to the new music that comes of it.
Bible Reading—The “Word of God is not the words contained within the pages of the Bible but rather the logos as described at the beginning of the 4th gospel. George Fox corrected a Nottingham priest who declared Scriptural authority. It was not that, George said, “but the Holy Spirit, by which the holy men of God gave forth the Scriptures. I had no slight esteem of the Holy Scriptures, but they were very precious to me, for I was in that spirit by which they were given forth, and what the Lord opened in me I afterward found was agreeable to them.”
How can one read the Scriptures, if one finds them irrelevant or hurtful? [The hurt I suffered was] solely of having lived my days on this earth as a female. From the slight wounding I have received has sprung an awareness of others’ more severe pain. Should anyone who finds the Bible uninviting begin or resume a program of Bible reading? Not unless the Inner Guide proposes such study.
After a decade of dormancy, I once again longed for an immediacy of relationship with the immanent God. The contents of the Bible have become very precious to me because I have been in the company of that spirit by which they were given forth. There will come a moment when what someone else has experienced and recorded resonates with what you have experienced. Eventually it helps to read the entire Bible so that the passages which have come alive will have a context. [By the third reading of the Bible] I had seen similarities between my own rocky spiritual journey and those of so many forthright people in the Bible; far fewer passages seemed foreign.
I also found that all the English translations whetted my appetite for studying the original languages, [the many] meanings for key words, & how grammar, syntax, & vocabulary affected the perception of an event. [When I read a passage, & before I apply it to today & myself, I need to as best I can wear the sandals of the per-son or persons in the story, feel what they feel. This will avoid reading in things that are not there, & overlooking crucial things that are. Paint the scene; study it in a group; when a passage invites you to linger, meditate on it.
Journal Keeping—William Penn wrote: “Thou didst omit to take up Christ’s holy yoke, to bear thy daily cross; thou wast careless of thy affections & kept no journal or check upon thy actions; but declinedst to audit accounts in thy conscience with Christ thy light.” My early attempts at journal keeping had been immensely frustrating ones. [I could not tolerate inconsistencies of feeling from one week to the next, nor could I record anything unpolished]. Months passed between entries. To learn how the individual bits of guidance I had received fit together, I would have to ponder them in writing. My Inner Guide let me know that I had to write down [just] a short phrase of thanks; this led to longer written ponderings]. [In comparing reflection to music, the writing process is similar to composing music, & oral reflection is similar to improvising it. My suspicion is that the more one both improvises & composes, the thinner becomes the wall which separates them. Also, recording a perception is like performing a piece, rather than merely reflecting on a perception or “listening to a piece].”
When I was avoiding journal keeping, I wrote on slips of paper any passage I wanted to spend time with; I also jotted certain insights in note form. Among the things daily notes of thanks taught me were how reluctant I was to give God credit for human invention and how often I belittled or overlooked the talents I had been given and the small pleasures I had experienced. [I also briefly listed traits that were blocking my spiritual journey]. These 2 miniature journal entries together occupying just one line of narrow-ruled notebook paper per day, have helped me so much, that they continue to occupy a key section of my journal. If journal contents have as their deepest hope the development of a compassionate nature, they will in time leave narcissism behind.
Another portion of the journal may record dreams, those in which God offers immediate guidance & those which are requests for attention from one’s subconscious. Dream aspects you are reluctant to record may portray your duet partner’s latest efforts to lead you to a fuller integration of your total personality. Unanswered questions may well become regular features in your journal, as well as heartfelt emotions. The form is less important than the spirit which gives it life; as long as a journal reflects a desire for transformation, it will serve well.
Tithing—[There is a difference between tithing & the tithes George Fox railed against]: “The Independents, Baptists, and Presbyterians [once] cried tithes were anti-christian … Then they all got into steeple-houses & tithes, [saying they were the law of God]. They imprisoned & persecuted Friends because we would not give them tithes, [seizing many goods, & making many widows & orphans of the ones who died in prison].
The earliest responses of tithing from Abraham and Jacob were done out of gratitude for the blessings they received; tithing was intended to be a joyful activity. 14 years ago I was startled to hear my duet partner asking me to do precisely that. Did I in fact own any or all of my income? Tithing seemed to occupy a natural place within the Quaker testimony of simplicity. I discovered that learning what to give away, what to keep, what to acquire and what to do without was a vital part of the process of hearing and answering.
Physical objects turned out to be the least of my possessions. What the Inner Guide said next was, “Tithe your time.” The next possession was my self-will. But what would surrendering my self-will entail? I was told to put my instrument on the shelf and leave it there for an entire year. I discovered that I was no less a musician just because I had ceased practicing and performing. Perhaps tithing is analogous to the warm-up exercise a musician performs in order to place the body more fully at the service of the music. [Tithing places me] more fully at God’s disposal; [God’s love then flows] through me unselfishly to others.
Praying—There is quite a difference between reciting a prayer written by someone else and praying spontaneously. What expressed thoughts hinder our spiritual growth, and how may we cultivate only those forms of prayer which help us mature? Prayer is an attempt to get ourselves into that active cooperation with God where we may discern what is authentic and be ready to carry it out. Whenever we have earnestly desired to feel connected to the creator and creation we have been praying.
It is important to pray to God in the 2nd person. When praying in the 3rd person, there is no longer an intimate connection. And when duty has become burdensome, when Boss’s yoke is no longer easy, then I know that I am the one producing the source of friction. [When the Spirit asks]: “Do you love me more than these?” only when I can again answer “Yes” can I again lovingly feed God’s lamb.
Any attempt on our parts, no matter how feeble to reverse a spiritual downtrend is more than matched by God’s joyous welcome back. Non-verbal forms of prayer span an entire spectrum from subtle feelings of gratitude to concrete actions. If we count all the [subtle] prayers that are converted into action, praying without ceasing comes to seem less exotic and far more attainable. Persistence in prayer is an automatic by-product of deep desire, not the result of strenuous, self-propelled efforts. May our prayer become as natural and indispensable as breathing. And may we experience the all-sufficiency of the one with whom we are communing as we pray.
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140. A Joint and Visible Fellowship (by Beatrice Saxon Snell ; 1965)
Foreword by Henry J. Cadbury/A Note from the Author—My 1st personal attraction to her writing was her skill in finding the unusual & appropriate quotation. These little essays treat of worship. [While] the Quaker manner of worship is in some ways distinctive, it is as likely as others to become habitual, formal, self-centered, or without meaning. [It applies to any group’s worship] that we enrich our worship by a more conscious sense of having fellow worshipers to give it collective breadth & reality].
The following chapters are reprinted from articles which appeared in London Friend. I want to stress the importance of preparing for the Meeting for Worship in the individuals' private devotional lives. As we do this, making God a partner in our thoughts & actions, many difficulties we have in group worship will melt away.
Worship is remembering & forgetting … Remembering the Lord, humble & clothed in flesh,/ Walking the dusty roads of Palestine,/ His glance judgment, his words life, his touch healing,/ His feet shod with mercy…/Remembering thus our God we forget: fear…grief…sin…weariness…hatred…Worship is both remembering & forgetting.
"Not long after I had sat down, a heavenly & watery cloud overshadowing my mind brake into a sweet shower of celestial rain; [most of us] were broken together, dissolved & comforted in the same divine & holy presence & influence of the true, holy, heavenly Lord … The meeting being ended, the Peace of God … remained as a holy canopy over my mind in a silence out of the reach of words; where no idea but the Word himself can be conceived.” Thomas Story
A Joint & Visible Fellowship—One of the most remarkable things about the Society of Friends is the balance it maintains between individual & community. I am convinced that to be a complete Christian is to learn to live both in isolation & community. The group-minded must overcome one’s fear of solitude. [Those who commune] in isolation don’t always realize that the Bread of Heaven must be broken & passed on. Offering with & to my fellow human beings lest I live only a half-life of worship is the mainspring of attending Meeting.
Robert Barclay said: “To meet together we think necessary for God’s people. So long as we are clothed with the outward Tabernacle, there is a necessity to the entertaining of a joint & visible fellowship, & bearing of an outward Testimony for God … as Iron sharpeneth Iron, the seeing of the faces one of another, when both are inward gathered, giveth occasion for Life secretly to rise & pass from Vessel to Vessel.”
Those at meeting who are dry & empty or in great need have weakness itself to lay before God in trust & love. Your very perseverance in group worship in the face of flatness & dislike may be an offering of more value than easy acceptance & enjoyment. [In a totally silent meeting] it is highly probable that at least one of the worshipers came to the meeting in spite of not feeling particularly eager to come, helping by his faithfulness the faith of the rest. Group worship differs from private devotion as orchestra music differs from solo music; it differs in kind. Ruth Fawell said: “We are all part of God's great family, & we can’t fully be ourselves without the help of other people… As Meeting goes on, we may all be lifted together above our ordinary lives into a wonderful sense of unity & peace… ‘It isn’t scattered embers, but piled-up logs that send great flames to heaven.”
“God Be Our Speed in Our Beginning”—These words have been engraved on an old bell in the little church of Lockinge in Berkshire. A “few snatched words” are snatched in Meeting-House lobbies as well as in church porches; all too often they snatch our thoughts from the One to whom we come to make our offering of worship. [Take care of your list of trivial distracting tasks the night before & don’t let your morning routine distract you either]. Prepare for these things as you would if you were going to meet your dearest friend; that is exactly what you’re going to do. George Fox wrote: “Friends, be watchful & careful in meetings ye come into. When a man is come newly out of the world he cometh out of the dirt… When he cometh into a silent meeting … he must come & feel his own spirit how it is. The others are still & cool, & he may rather do them hurt if he get them out of the cool state into the heating state.” If we look around with angry curiosity, we aren’t helping either the latecomer’s fault or misfortune.
Robert Barclay wrote: “Sometimes when one hath come in, that hath been unwatchful and wandering in his mind [into] outward business, and not inwardly gathered with the rest, [may] retire himself inwardly, and this power being raised in the whole meeting, will suddenly lay hold upon his spirit and wonderfully help to raise up the good in him, melting and warming his heart.” [What if an effort is made to feel not an interruption, but that another of our brothers and sisters has arrived to share our worship of God]? [For] in the days of horse travel and unmade roads the Meeting often took far longer to assemble in body, but was more gathered in spirit.
The Gathered Meeting in Our Past ...—Gathered meetings began with the gathering experiences of Jesus' early followers & re-emerged with the Quaker movement's birth. At the original Pentecost, several 1,000's were converted to the Way Jesus taught with a manifestation of the Spirit. Jesus' baptism & the transfiguration are other examples of early gathered meetings. The 1st recorded gathered meeting in Quaker tradition was at Firbank Fell in 1652, when several 1,000's of Seekers were "convinced." Most likely, "gathered" comes from Matt. 18:20, "where 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." This passage is a scriptural foundations of Quaker worship. Early Friends seem not to have used the phrase "gathered meeting." The phrase came into popular use later, certainly by the late 1930's, early '40's when Thomas Kelly wrote The Gathered Meeting.
The Current State of the Gathered Meeting/ My Experience of the Gathered Meeting—Why have our meetings for worship become increasingly bereft of "gathered meetings?" The decline in regular personal & family devotional life contributes. How many Friends spend Sunday morning preparing [their self] for worship? The gathered meeting lies at the end of a spiral of increasingly Spirit-led vocal ministry, which Friends no longer consider a sacred calling; our meeting rarely foster this sense actively. Some Friends feel our theological diversity and our attitudes toward this diversity hinder gathering in the Spirit. Not sharing a sense of where our center lies would tend to hinder our gathering. [We still have gathered meetings]. It is in the gathered meeting that we will receive the inspiration and direction to create the future of our movement. What happens in being gathered? How do we recognize the gathered meeting? At the consultation entitled "Quaker Treasure: What do we hold in trust together?
Quakerism's promise was fulfilled for me in the consultation's final 2 meetings for worship. 6 small groups had to reach agreement on queries within each group. On Saturday evening each group presented its collective "conviction" statement. With Jan Wood as our Spirit-led clerk, the whole group sought unity on our common Quaker treasure. [Our cultural and theological diversity, combined with different words and fears led to a long discussion before we could] listen to each other and the Holy Spirit. One Friend noted 4 things in common in all the statements: a individual and corporate call to a direct, unmediated relationship with God; continuing revelation and re-illuminating of God's self and scripture; a call to live outward lives in harmony with our inward truth.
At the consultation entitled “Quaker Treasure: What do we hold in trust together? Quakerism’s promise was fulfilled for me in the consultation’s final 2 meeting for worship. 6 small groups had to reach agreement on queries with each group. On Saturday each group. On Saturday each group presented its collective “conviction” statement. With Jan Wood as our Spirit-led clerk the whole group sought unity on our common Quaker treasure. [Our cultural and theological diversity, combined with different words and fears led to a long discussion before we could listen to other and the Holy Spirit. One Friend noted 4 things in common in all the statement: an individual and corporate call to a direct, unmediated relationship with God; continuing revelation and re-illuminating of God's self and scripture; a call to live outward lives in harmony with our inward truth.
We moved past the words and fears into unity and love. [Beginning with agreement in principle on the] 4 things common to each group, we were swept along until we ended up agreeing on all the answers that the small groups had brought forward. I felt gratitude for the unity, the joy, and the clarity about the essentials of my faith. In meeting the next morning, Jan Wood pointed out [the love present in our work]. She read Bible passages about love, connecting them to our work, pulling us deeper into God's love with each passage. The morning meeting felt more gathered than the one the night before. Some Friends felt Satan had seized the gathering [powerfully], that we had been led into untruth by the Adversary Deceiver. Thus I learned that a meeting can be gathered when not everyone shares or experiences the meeting the same way. From that gathering I received a calling to seek and to foster the gathered meeting in my local meeting and as a writer to a larger audience.
Qualities of the Gathered Meeting—In the gathered meeting, a community experiences direct communion with God. How do we know that it is Holy Spirit gathering us & not another spirit, perhaps even an unholy, deceiving one? Not everyone must share the experience, [only] "2 or 3." "By their fruits ye shall ye know" a gathered meeting," "Has it deepened your faith or brought you together? Has it raised up love in your hearts for each other? Gathered meetings fall on a spectrum. Whether it comes as peace or as soul-quaking transformation, we recognize it by its fruits. Gathered meetings are transcendental & concrete; mystical & practical. It is psychic bonding of worshipers; it is unity & knowledge [of presence], and incomparable joy.
Energy/ Presence/ Knowledge—In the gathered meeting I have felt truly awake, inwardly alive, fully charged & opened to the Life around me & within me. My head, especially, has felt like it was somehow pressurized, as though it wanted to burst, though not in a painful way; I have quaked.
Sense of presence has been strong, but most often is "generalized." I felt other worshipers' presence, only rarely individuals. There is extra power & depth that comes with the presence of [perhaps] synergy of the worshipers' & the meeting's consciousness. Sometimes a deeper Presence is in those depths. Thomas Kelly said of "group mysticism," "We know we stand erect in holy presence, & others with us are experiencing the same exaltation ... We are in contact with one another because we are communicated to & through by Divine presence." We are suffused with a fullness of mind, fulfillment of spirit and transcendental joy, united in co(m)-union.
We know Truth, a miniature of a more transcendent Truth that is deeper than what we are experiencing & yet one with it. This knowledge, [or knowing] feels like a lasting sensation of discovery & clarity of a life-changing "something" perhaps a dynamic, living, working Life, a touch of persuading Power & a need to share it.
Unity/ Joy/ Holy Communion—There isn't necessarily any content unless it is a gathered meeting for worship with attention to business. Through this content seemingly insurmountable obstacles to unity suddenly melt away, & knowledge of what to do comes. The Truth is drawn up from the Well, gathering all the threads of seeking together into a greater truth, & the meeting suddenly finds the way opened into unity of purpose. There is a sense of extra certainty & enthusiasm in the "sense of the meeting" that is arrived at. We each know the truth of that moment & its joy, & somehow we also know that others know & they know we do; we have found ourselves in unity and in joy. The knowledge transcends consciousness and individuality. It is a collective experience.
The energy, presence, unity & knowledge of gathered meeting inspires joy. Presence gladdens the heart. It awakens a unique kind of love for each other & God. God breaks down the middle wall of partition between separate personalities & has flooded us with fellowship. Patricia Loring writes: "Many glances search each other in awareness & affirmation of the intimacy & ineffability of the shared experience." Joy is the unmistakable mark of the gathered meeting & the corporate religious experience, a delightful knowledge & truth flooding the consciousness. A gathered meeting is a holy communion, a direct & inward experience of God's grace.
The Faith of the Gathered Meeting—I see 4 essential promises of Quakerism that came to light from that consultation's gathering: direct individual spiritual experience; direct collective spiritual experience (the gathered meeting); Continuing (constant) revelation; testimonial life (testimony give through our lives and actions). The gathered meeting affects our individual experience by: cementing our individual faith; renews our commitment; confirms our capacity to experiencing God's gifts. Continuing revelation is the gathered meeting bearing the fruits of the Spirit. The basic Quaker testimony and any new testimonies are the fruits of a gathered meeting or a series of gathered meetings. A gathered meeting confirms our faith that you can commune directly with the Divine, both as individuals and as worshiping communities; we have seen the promise fulfilled.
Seeking the Gathered Meeting—Seeking the presence of God in the gathered meeting should be a very high priority for our meeting communities. How do we bring our meetings to a level of spiritual fullness in which a gathered meeting isn't an uncommon experience? I believe having a critical mass of individuals who possess in themselves a certain spiritual depth makes a difference. These Friends are seasoned by regular immersion in the Spirit & personal communion with the Divine in their own devotions. A meeting should have a robust religious education program & a meaningful approach to spiritual formation. Members & attenders should have enough exposure to a range of spiritual disciplines to help them find a personal spiritual practice that works. [When enough Friends come to meeting prepared by home devotions earlier that morning], a critical mass can ignite a chain reaction toward deep collective communion.
Gathered meeting need to be familiar to & longed for by a significant number of the worshipers. In any meeting for worship, the gathering can come through a cascade of increasingly powerful vocal ministries; each offering carries us deeper into Peace. How will what I say draw us down & inward, deeper into the Well & closer to the Source? I deeply question myself if I want to refer to superficial affairs, outward events, or make a personal observation. Kelly writes: "When [vocal ministry] is truly spoken 'in the Life,' then when such words cease, the uninterrupted silence & worship continues, for silence & words have been of 1 texture, 1 piece." Elders, anyone who takes special responsibility for the spiritual health of the meeting & its worship, come early & come prepared. They help ready the meeting room spiritually for worship before other Friends gather. With the elders' own deepening as the meeting progresses, the way opens into the depths. Elders hold other worshipers in the Light, so that they may find the way that lies open. We can all take individual actions to deepen the meeting.
Individual Actions—The center-path is clearer when you've already traveled it recently. Come early; ["Pass your peace into the meeting space]. Pray for: those giving vocal ministry; those bearing a burden; the gathered meeting; God's presence. Pray to God. Develop attunement to Love's motions in you & to your fellow worshipers' spiritual needs. I like to focus on a person, or a section of the room, long enough to allow an impression of others' needs to emerge. Listen for that "still small voice" that might mature into a spoken message.
Try to commune with the meeting's angel. Attune to the meeting as a community, as a collective with character & personality. Seeking to apprehend this collective of which we are a part may strengthen our bond with the worshiping body & thus our bonds with each other. Express gratitude for the community's gifts. Gathered meetings are more likely when fewer worshipers disrupt the "settling in" by being late. It takes about 20 minutes for a human being to shed the world, & it takes several minutes between messages to fully absorb vocal ministry.
Actions the Whole Meeting Can Take—Sit close enough together so that you can feel each other's presence & no one feels left out. What aspects of your meeting foster or hinder a gathered meeting? Getting Friends out of isolated corners might make them pretty unhappy at first. Sitting close enough for our fields, our pheromones, or whatever to do their jobs is necessary to meld limited little auras into a continuous cloud of spirit. The problem is getting worse as those meeting in spaces already too large are shrinking. My meeting has roped off some of the back benches, & that helps.
Architectural factors seem to make a difference: size, shape, bench configuration & comfort, "feeling." I urge meetings to discern how important "quantitative" factors might be for the spiritual quality of worship. Meetings in which worshipers regularly enter the meeting room late are common. Tardiness pushes back in time the centering & therefore gathering of the whole meeting. We are virtually incapable of solving tardiness; 1 possibility is holding latecomers until 10 minutes have passed. A certain level of knowledge in the meeting's workings creates a faith context for the gathered meeting. Those who have experienced gathered meetings should share their experiences, so that everyone in meeting can feel their joy, acquire their faith, & share their hunger.
Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business/ "The Greatest of These"—At the heart of the meeting for business is the gathered meeting experience. It underlies our listening, and [includes, a way of life that applies our thoughts, beliefs, and intentions to actions consistent with them]. Patricia Loring
[A business meeting is most likely to be gathered when it is remembered that it is worship, even in mundane moments]. Real & worshipful pauses need to be taken between agenda items. Have faith that faithful waiting bears fruit. A spirit-led clerk maintains the sense of worship by protecting silence between contributions, to give Friends time to recognize truth (or folly) in what was said. They choose who is to speak next by intuition, not just convention. All should be in some ways like a clerk, paying close attention to the Spirit's movement, & help lead the community into Truth & unity of Spirit; help & protect the clerk, even from the body of the meeting.
Perhaps the most important factor fostering a gathered meeting is love, because it connects people powerfully & we all understand it & possess it. If enough Friends focus on love, if enough Friends channel that love, silently or vocally, the meeting can't help but fall into the Heart. When a worshiper achieves a measure of love for someone they otherwise don't love, the meeting has been gathered in the Spirit. Then there is grace so that the meeting can be gathered spontaneously just like that, without regard to any prerequisites or effort on our part.
Final Thoughts: Gathered Meeting; Quakerism's Future—The gathered meeting is the distinctive form of spiritual nurture that we Friends can offer to those who seek real communion with God. The Holy Spirit's presence in gathered meeting will ensure that Quakerism remains a living, evolving religion; it is in this gathering. It is in the Christ-Spirit's gathering that we move forward. The gathered meeting's Spirit will most surely bring new souls to us, visitors who see that God [and God's vision] is working among us, and will want to join their hearts and souls and strengths to that vision. The Source's Well requires us to come with a cup, which is our attention and intention, preparedness and discipline, silence and attentive waiting.
I use the image of siphon. If I drop my mind-soul, already primed with a little Spirit into the Living Spirit's Well, when I draw upon that exhaustible Well, the Spirit will gush into me & pour out of me, until it has manifested in the world outside the meetinghouse walls in the awakened lives of our members. The gathered meeting is one of the great gifts we have to offer the world. If we lovingly enfold into our fellowship, into a gathered meeting, those who come to us, they will know who we really are. They will know what Quakerism is and what it has to offer them. We will have brought them to God, to the Mystery Reality within true & holy communion.
Queries—What happened at an especially valuable meeting and how was it important to you? What does "gathered meeting" mean to you? What was a gathered meeting like for you? How does an individual or a meeting prepare for a gathered meeting? How do you nurture your spiritual life or prepare for meeting for silent worship and worship with attention to business?
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26. Quaker Meeting: Personal Experience & Method Described & Analysed (by Howard E. Collier; 1945)
About the Author—Howard E. Collier was a physician and surgeon in Worcester, England, who delivered Woodbrooke’s Swarthmore Lecture in 1936. He was an authority on health in industry and taught Industrial Hygiene and Medicine at the University of Birmingham. Howard sojourned at Pendle Hill in 1938, on a journey undertaken mainly to observe industrial conditions in the United States. Howard approached the subject of Quaker meeting as an experimental scientist guided by scientific procedure.
Preface—I was a medical student when, early in 1914, I attended my 1st Quaker meeting. I was led back into "the silent assemblies of God's people" when I began to lose interest in my work and my emotional springs were running dry. No one will suppose that the higher experiences of worship can be learned from a book. Some degree of peace, some element of true worship will be experienced in every rightly held Quaker meeting. I will describe the discipline and method that has helped me to learn to meditate and worship. [The point is] to know God in worship experimentally. [Take what speaks to your condition and leave the rest]. "Speaking from the pure to the pure in others is what commends one to God" [Isaac Penington]
I. THE NATURE OF RELIGIOUS OR MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE—One of my greatest difficulties has been to select words that are personally accurate and also generally accepted and understood. The distinction between [mental activities and spiritual activities] is precise enough to give us a starting point. Bertrand Russell sees "an element of wisdom to be learnt from the mystical way living which does not seem to be attainable in any other manner. [Even the scientist's truth] must be fostered and nourished by mystical spirit and wisdom. Here we will be considering the practice and development of intuitive feeling in religious worship. I expect that the development of spiritual healing through worship will make a great contribution to Medicine.
[I assume 2 things: intuitive experience is normal and universal; worship experiences are developments of intuitive experience. [I hope to make clear] that worship is the flower of a plant whose roots lie deep in ordinary daily life. Artist, scientists, technicians, and writers experience moments of [sudden], clear insight. Unity with Nature [can provide insight]. I was tranquilized and steadied by the beauty, the stability of Nature. I had the illusion that I was enveloped in light; such experiences are initiations into worship. There are also intuitive experiences that arise from intercourse with our fellows. At this level a purely human religion must forever be content to live. Most people don't need to learn a special technique in order to produce a condition of social participation.
For intuition to become active, awareness of self must be lost, and our bodies must be relatively idle. Our minds must be emptied of passionate and immediate concern for the self. There must be an object other than the self, towards which desire can be directed. [A relationship must be felt between worshipper and object]. The intuitive experience is an interaction between subject and object (worshipper and God).
II. MEDITATION ("WAITING"): Inward Stillness—Quaker meditation is only a preliminary to the contemplation and adoration of God in Christ. The member of a Quaker meeting meditates with others and is pursuing a social purpose. An important objective of the Quaker meeting is to create a Christian "fellowship." The Meeting for Worship is the heart of the Religious Society of Friends and the source and support of all its practical activities. The childlike often enter the inner Temple whilst the learned and the "tough minded" are still knocking at the outer gates. None is too skilled to profit from others or too ignorant to help another.
We must prepare the mind and heart for meeting. [At meeting], our first task is to collect our wandering thoughts and to silence the most insistent clamors of the everyday world. In an appendix I have discussed how to relax and position the body as a preliminary to meditation. There needs to be an equal degree of mental relaxation or the cessation of discursive thought. Jacob Boehme writes: "Be silent before the Lord, sitting alone with God in thine inmost and hidden cell, thy mind being centrally united in itself and attending God's will in the patience of hope." I have a 2nd appendix with a few practical hints that have been useful to me.
[If we can] reach bodily & mental quietude, the entire meeting will sink into a profound stillness. [It can now] climb the hill towards contemplation or seeking, or descend into a valley of deadness. I believe the commonest cause of [this deadness or] lethargy is the failure of the worshippers to transition from "passive waiting" to active contemplation. [Some member needs to call the meeting's attention to this state and call the meeting to a fresh start or a deeper silence]. In my experience, the time a meeting spends in meditation before total stillness is reached varies from a few minutes to ½ an hour. John Bellers (18th century) writes: "But except all excesses of the body and passions of the mind be avoided by watchfulness, the soul does not attain true silence."
III. CONTEMPLATION OR "SEEKING—The image of God within us is only a pale reflection of Transcendent Reality, but it constitutes the point of contact between ourselves and God in Christ. The subject for our contemplation in worship should not be chosen by us but waited for from Christ. Receiving light from Christ awakens the worshipper's spirit to an active, searching state which opens the world of values, longings and desires, the world of the artist, poet, and prophet; it is a world unexplored by most modern people and feared by many. If I assume that Christ's spirit is in fact active in human experience, then the Christ experience is every experience that might be due to that spirit's activities. [The Eternal Christ is the object of my contemplation].
[If a different "object" is necessary], choose whatever or whoever you have known as the Best & place that within the empty circle as you move into contemplation. Universal experience shows that the idea of the Best is converted into a living Image of the Christ by a disciplined study of the New Testament, by living according to its standards, & by being in a Christian fellowship. When an impulse from the Divine enters the meeting, it is invested with a moving power & authority. If it comes as a fully formed concept, picture, symbol, or saying, [I am to share it]. If it comes as an indefinite emotion & empty of form, someone else is about to do vocal ministry.
One hot summer day, there formed in my mind the words: "I know my judgment is true, because I seek not my own will, but the will of God who sent me." The enlightened conscience, disciplined by subjection to God's will, is the final authority & guide, [subject to] the correcting influence of a deeper insight into God's will. I knew [this concept] in a moment, & [felt its authority with a strong conviction]; they are flashes of truth. Since creative contemplation is the product of intuition rather than of reason, we find that pictures, images & symbols arise from worship, rather than chains of ideas or thoughts. There may be a long succession of fleeting images. As we center down more deeply, a particular word or image may recur & become fixed, with perhaps a subdued emotion attached. That word or image is probably important to the receiver or to the meeting as a whole. One must rest in the image [and Power] received.
I once received a vivid picture of a stranded, abandoned rowboat; the image came with Power. It seemed to possess neither significance nor meaning until another member spoke of Jesus asleep in the storm-tossed boat, awakened & arising to calm the storm. The boat in my vision was a symbol of my condition & the state of most people during the war's early days. We were in danger of being swamped—of losing our Faith and our Guide.
Another time, a sentence from the Gospels came to me and was forgotten more than once. [I realized that I "forgot and lost" the sentence because I didn't want to admit its meaning to me. The words were "Put up thy sword in its place." In a personal conduct problem, I had been inclined to strive for certain supposed personal rights. Christ's message to me, and the deeper hidden wisdom of my better self was "Cease striving for selfish ends." It is more usual for personal guidance to come to us through the spoken words of some other member of the group. It almost always happens that some phrase or picture will "light up" for me and will sink into my un-conscious, where it may lie like a seed in the soil and in due time produce altered character and conduct. We must never fear brevity or go on speaking after we have lost the impulse that brought us to our feet. The exercise of the whole meeting should make a unity of which our contribution is only a small part. In a silent meeting we may experience a sense of creative achievement without any words being spoken aloud.
IV. CORPORATE WORSHIP: "Unity" (Fellowship in Christ)—At some point during the meeting, a sense of "unity in fellowship" develops within the Meeting for Worship. Until that sense has been achieved, the meeting remains incomplete and dull. A movement of Power visits the meeting, which proceeds to "gather itself" into a still deeper silence. Individual consciousness is merged into a non-individual or corporate awareness. The unity in worship takes place beneath a "Cloud of Glory" under which the meeting is "gathered." Little by little the "weight" of our own personal cares and anxieties are lifted from [individual] shoulders.
Howard Brinton writes: "The Quaker Meeting ... approximates the characteristics of a living organism ... the whole does not dominate the parts nor do the parts go their own way ... Each determines and is determined by the other ... The "life of the meeting" permeates the group and harmonizes the deepest will of every mem-ber ... The term 'gathered meeting' indicates that this common life has been realized ... [Words uttered 'in the life of the meeting'] express in a measure the life of the whole ... a meeting in the life may be held in complete si-lence ... God binds together through God's Love the scattered and disordered elements on one level of existence so that a new unity emerges on a higher level ... The "new unit" of life for whose birth our world [awaits] is the integrated group of Friends in Christ, [i.e.] corporate Christian worship." Robert Barclay writes: "As every one is (gathered) they come to feel the good arise over the evil & the pure over the impure, in which God ... draws near to every individual ... [And each] is a sharer in the whole body ... having a joint fellowship with all ... When many are gathered together in the same life there is more of the Glory of God & God's Power appears to the refreshment of each individual for that [one] partakes not only of the light raised in oneself but in all the rest."
V. ADORATION OR COMMUNION IN CORPORATE WORSHIP—There is no means of predicting when the final transition [to communion with God] will occur. If Quaker communion is judged by its fruits in character and conduct, it must be adjudged valuable. A critical phase occurs between contemplation and communion, which I believe to be "achievement of unity." The 1st crisis in meeting is [moving] toward "lethargy." The 2nd crisis is [moving] toward talking or thinking about Christ, rather than towards receiving Christ in the midst of unified fellowship. Few frequent attenders have not realized and been shocked by how far they are from conforming to the Mind of Christ. Having pretense and sham stripped away is salutary as it is humbling and humiliating. [It is then that the Eternal Christ says], "I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail." These prayers are holy and creative energies and power. Power to change, grow, and be renewed in character and conduct. As sunlight to the flower, so is the Prayer of the Eternal Christ to the human personality. Here on earth the Creator meets the creature and a personal relation of love and being loved is established between them.
In worship, God ministers not only to the whole but also to each individual. Friends have come confidently to expect Christ's ministry to their particular need in their meeting. Friends consider the 1st meeting in the Friends' manner of corporate worship to be the disciples' meeting on Pentecost. [On that day, I imagine] a sudden, sharp storm of wind and rain. As the cloud passed away from the face of the sun, shafts of sunlight lit up the meeting room and the bent heads of the worshippers. They were met in unity with one accord and saw the rushing wind and flame as divine inspiration and divine illumination respectively. Those who spoke were heard in the native language of each ones secret heart. After meetings such as I have described we emerge into a world renewed. Neither the world nor we are ever quite the same again.
I once watched great Atlantic breakers as they swept past my feet on their way to the far distant shore. The wave is a true symbol of the harmonized life; worship is the crest whilst action is the trough; both together [in succession] make a rhythmic life. To enter upon this life & to persevere in it, we must die daily to self-will and self-desire. In corporate worship says Barclay, "There is an inward travail & wrestling ... [& then, with grace], an overcoming of the power ... of darkness & we enjoy ... the holy fellowship & communion of the body & blood of Christ by which our inward [person] is nourished. Penington writes: "Our worship ... doth not consist of exercising the natural mind to speak, hear or pray according to [our understanding] of our needs. We wait ... to hear with new ear what God shall please to speak ... and we pray ... as God pleases to quicken and open our hearts towards God's self ... Then is sweet communion enjoyed and sweet peace reaped ... the seeds of life are planted."
Appendix A: ON BODILY RELAXATION AND POISE—We should sit erect. The lower part of the spine and shoulder-blades should be supported. [Legs should be relaxed, knees together; feet can be crossed at ankles (don't cross knees)]. The most restful attitude for hands is for the upturned palm of one hand to support the back of the other hand, while wrists rest on thighs. The head should neither droop forward or strain backwards. The eyes, whether open or closed, should be directed forward, not down. The body is relaxed and still.
Relaxation. Real muscular relaxation is an essential preliminary to meditation. [The relaxed limb will fall heavily to the table or floor when unsupported by another limb]. A relaxed muscle "feels soft." If we are reaching inward stillness too slowly, we need to note any bodily strain, tension or fatigue. Muscles may have to be consciously relaxed. Special attention should be paid to the muscles of the head, face, and neck. The jaw is often clenched. The eyes may be firmly rather than lightly closed. With a little practice, muscular relaxation can be achieved in minutes or seconds. Relaxation has applications in everyday life also.
Appendix B: "ON CEASING FROM THOUGHT"—Thinking in words and irregular and improperly controlled breathing may still need to be quieted. A stage is soon reached in which the attention must be disjoined from the words [of scripture] and redirected to some image that "symbolizes" the chosen scripture for you. The regularity, depth and nature of our breathing greatly affects our ability to relax. We should breathe deeply with our abdominal muscles, not our chest muscles. As you sit in silence let the breaths come and go easily, gently and regularly without strain. This "exercise" has a stilling effect on both mind and body.
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449 The Ecology of Quaker Meeting (by James W. Hood; 2018)
About the Author—James W. Hood teaches 19th century British literature, literature & ethics, & nature writing at Guilford College, NC. He edited a collection of essays titled Quakers & Literature. He has attended various Friends meetings in FL, NC, CT, IN, PA, & Britain. He serves on the executive committee of Friends Association for Higher Education and the board of New Garden Friends School. Some of his interests are hiking, canoeing, and birding.
Entering the Woods, Entering Meeting—My familiar hiking path is a half-mile from the meetinghouse in Greensboro, NC where I worship. Some mature white oaks, red oaks, beeches, tulip poplars and hickories line the descending pathway or hold fast to a small escarpment. I can pick out a cardinal and a woodpecker; the other songs and calls blend with the wind. The long loop slopes easily upward for the 1st ⅓, levels out for the 2nd, and comes back around to this level for the 3rd; my feet know its roots and rocks.
[My familiar meeting surroundings] are in an old house, the meeting room on the old slab for the garage. The chairs are tan-colored, plastic & bent-rod metal, 3 rows on the south side, a long facing bench & a single row on the north. East & west sides have 2 rows each. I sit in the northernmost chair of the east-facing row, placing my silenced mobile phone & reading glasses on the floor beneath my seat. It is a ritual that brings comfort, even joy. Other people enter & take familiar places as well. Rustling, a crackle, then [relative silence with 4-lane traffic noise in background].
Quaker meeting for worship is a unique spiritual ecosystem. When gathered, with the participants' hearts & minds aligned along the Spirit's leadings, this ecosystem thrums with intricate connection. Such gathering only happens occasionally; we know it when it does. There is always a system that binds & guards our struggled striving, enclosing all in relationship to "something greater." Light is very much a key component to nature's ecosystems, & to the meeting's.
The Florida Everglades near where I lived seemed separate from the suburban realm [I grew up in]. The draining & canaling & damming done by the Army Corp of Engineers, we now know, altered fundamentally the flow of water from Lake Okeechobee south. The imported Australian melaleuca & pine & the Brazilian pepper trees have gobbled up great swaths of swamp. This idea that the human & the natural systems existed & managed themselves separately was & is a myth. There was so much ecosystem that all of our "little" changes could not effect a irreversible change. That was dream, head-in-the-sand, an ignorance profound. We must reconceive, spiritually, our human enterprises as dependent upon those natural systems that thrived & adapted for millions of years before we evolved. Having banished nature from our spiritual practice, we must now return nature & ecological balance into our worship. Quaker meeting is the perfect place in which to make that reclamation.
David Abram, the Alphabet, and the Sensuous—There is a spring to my left, where the sponge of hill that rises above a flat place lets out its water in a long, slow, almost imperceptible trickle. There are downed trees here: red and black oaks; a tulip poplar; a sweet gum; 2 Virginia pines. This is an old part of the woods, unlogged since early in the 19th century, and I suppose some of the trees simply tire of standing and lay themselves down on the forest floor for transformation. Pawpaws seem to grow in patches, little ones competing for resources and spreading along stream banks. There are thicket of shrubs and vines that have migrated from nearby suburban homes to the sunnier places opened up where the hardwood canopy fails.
In 1996, David Abram published a book titled The Spell of the Sensuous. Abram argues that the formation of the alphabet as we now know it, with its [symbols of human sounds rather than symbols of the natural realm], caused us to forsake our visceral, bodily connection to nature. The early writing systems of our species remained tied to the mysteries of a more-than-human world, from petroglyphs to cave paintings, to pictographic systems.
Words were written as pictures of tangible things. On the other hand, writing with a phonetic alphabet, with its 26 letters making thousands upon thousands of words, becomes incredibly efficient, at the expense the written characters no longer referring to any sensible phenomenon of the world, but solely to a gesture to be made by the human mouth. When we came to write down our stories, they became mobile, divorced completely from the sacredness or particularity of place where they were performed.
Sacred rivers and mountains are no longer necessary to the remembrance of the stories. Exiled from their homeland, the ancient Hebrews evolved a religious system in which alphabetic writing allowed them to preserve their cultural stories intact. The written text became a kind of portable homeland for the Hebrew people. There are forms of worship that engage the body; liturgical dance and singing spring to mind most readily. Worship takes place in the echo chamber of the human mind, disconnected from the sense-rich world of nature around us, which leads to attitudes and actions, depletion and manipulation that have produced ecological crisis.
Quaker Meeting for Worship & the Sensuous—The path turns slowly north & climbs. Farther on, there's a field to the right, a place where someone grew food not so long ago. The path shifts north again, & the ground is lighter colored, a creamish sand or porcelain-like clay. The trail veers close to a 2-lane residential road. Mature hardwoods here are large enough to grab most of the light, so the understory is spare & struggling. Rotting remnants of a windstorm from 17 years ago are being sculpted by decay & time into stranger forms. Loblolly pines mix at the edge of this tract with Virginia pines. I hear a hollow, rhythmic pounding that could be a pileated woodpecker. I expect—I want—to hear & see more birds, but my walking means I'm not watching & waiting.
The genius of Quaker meeting for worship is silence, the practice that keeps the gathered body tuned to the more-than-human & the smartest thing Quakers worshipping can do. Settling into silence heightens my listening, smelling, touching, tasting, & even seeing. In silent settling, I feel a deeper linkage between body & mind. My senses are attuned in a way not unlike the way they function when I walk in the woods. Rufus Jones talks about this "group-influence" in sensory terms, calling it: "Some subtle telepathy that comes into play in the living silence of a congregation which makes every seeker quicker to feel God's presence, more acute of inner ear, more tender of heart to feel the bubbling of the springs of life than any one of them in isolation. The sensory acuity we gain in the silence is in part the natural product of concentration, the paring away of distraction, & the tuning to something other. I am arrested by the acuter sense of other human beings gathering with me in silent contemplation. Iris Murdoch writes that the primary enemy of the moral life is "the fat relentless ego," that focusing upon the self & the self's needs devours our attention & keeps us internally focused in an ultimately debilitating way.
Nature and good art produces take-one-out-of-oneself moments. Our attention is a precious commodity, one we all too often spend profligately on our internal state or frivolous, ephemeral things. The arresting and enfolding beauty of art and the natural world countermand the ego's tendency toward frippery and self-aggrandizement. Rufus Jones writes about the difference between the almost pre-cognitive [consciousness-and-experience] moment, and the analytical moment, when we remove ourselves from the direct immediacy of the encounter and begin to categorize or abstract it. Analysis is a wonderful human skill, [leading to innovations throughout history]. Language and naming may in fact be the most fundamental expression of analysis. Viewing a single tree as one member of a class of things is to transform it from subject to object in a fundamental way.
The consciousness-and-experience moment obliterates such distance. Jones says, "We seem to be nearer the heart of things, more embedded in life & in reality ... unified in an undifferentiated whole of experience." The meditative quality of meeting for worship is designed to engage us in consciousness-and-experience moments. In addition to the interconnectivity the meeting fosters, it also embeds us in the primacy of experience, absent analysis. The goal in centering worship is to relinquish control & let go into the flow of that stream of consciousness that is a [something-more] than my noisy brain interior. Meeting's ecology parallels the woods' ecology [with its] constant state of non-analytical, full-on sensory awareness, tuned to the basics of reproduction & survival.
I was mesmerized by the simple flowing of traffic in Kunming, China. Bicycles & mopeds weaved past & around each other in an arabesque choreographed by no one. The entire enterprise looked like an organism, not a set of discrete vehicles but a stream of blood cells flowing fluidly, the parts barely differentiated from the sum. It was ecological in the sense that individual actors subordinated to the over-all motion of the larger group. The many individual actions never seemed to stick out very far from the ecological whole. In the ecosystem that is the gathered meeting for worship, interconnectivity transcends the limitations of single actors, the whole becoming something quite different than the mere collection of discrete parts, an energy, a Light that mingles among the living, breathing, actual, sense-enhanced bodies sharing the space of the meeting room, here and now.
The Ecology of Quaker Worship—Pawpaws congregate in a V-shaped wet weather streambed, like cattle standing in a pond, oblivious to anything beyond their soaking. Their blooms have to hang on for a long time for them to become the mango-&-banana-flavored green-yellow mushy fruit I might eat in the fall. So many opportunities to fail. Later, the much-narrower trail carries me past a couple of blooming wild cherry trees; [I don't know the variety, &] need to bring my field guide [next time]. The trail comes out on a broader swath that follows the border stream that empties the lake back where I entered the woods. The ground is flat here, & there are more sweet gums & sycamores, those trees that tolerate wet roots for a longer time; multiflora roses line the path's edges that are open to sunshine. A small bridge spans the stream on my right & I am back where I began.
The word "meeting" refers to connection, proximity & interrelationship. That's why we call Quaker worship a "meeting." Meeting for worship requires a connective relationship among participants. [Vocal ministry is examined internally, before it is given, by the questions]: Am I speaking on my own behalf or am I compelled to deliver this message by a leading? Am I speaking to a shared need or am I simply speaking out of my singular desire or need? An individual speaking apart from the "group influence" can't offer ministry.
When Rufus Jones uses the phrases "group influence" and "subtle telepathy," he is not speaking of some version of group-think. A powerful connection needs to exist between the individual's action and the meeting's [something more], its centered presence and purpose. [The connection serves to silently weigh and approve an individual's vocal ministry. This is the ecology of it all; the relationship is everything. [Symbiosis and interdependence abounds]. Perhaps the goal of the spiritual life is to strip away everything frivolous, to pare it all back to the necessity of connection with the other and take away our forever unmet need of things superfluous.
For transcendentalist writers, the spiritual value of the natural world seemed to lie in the idea that nature points toward a non-earthly, ideal spirit, far away from the grit and tangible reality of this earth. The transcendental quality of the natural world inherently functions as analogy. As a representation directing us toward the higher and greater beauty and knowing of the spiritual realm. This notion provided key ideas in shaping the conservation movement that began in earnest in the 19th century. Even so, Western European philosophical and religious traditions maintained a clear separation between the natural and human worlds. [Biblical pronouncements of human dominion over the earth had great influence].
More recent writers on the natural world have moved beyond the transcendentalist position by returning to much earlier ideas about nature having intrinsic, not only symbolic, spiritual value. Annie Dillard revels in and marvels continually at the sheer magnitude of natural wonder, detailing over and over the intricacies and profligate bounty of both beauty and horror in nature. For her, this takes the form of an openness to relationship, a willingness to be "wholly acted upon." She writes: "What I aim to do is not so much learn the names of the shreds of creation that live in this valley, but to keep myself open to their meanings, which is to try to impress myself at all times with the fullest possible force of their reality."
The Spirit resides in nature, and the immanence of the Divine within the natural world, so crucial for writers like Dillard and Abram, is a key component in reconstituting the human relationship with nature at our pre-sent time of ecological collapse. "Ecology" is the science of the relationship between organisms and their environment, and it is the relationship itself. Spirit is immanent within nature most profoundly through ecological relationship. The ecology of the forest, with its complex connections between living entities is the true locus of Spirit. The ecology is the something more, [the indescribable]—invisible but known.
With climate change, we have finally comprehend how intensely we are affected by the very alterations we have catalyzed in ecosystems. We are relearning that there really is no real distinction between the human & natural realm. The energy of the Light and the motion of the Spirit abide the same in the natural-human world and the gathered meeting for worship. Indigenous cultures have drawn no boundary between religious practice and being in the natural world. If we can return to treating religious practice as ecological relationship, we will have come a long way toward righting our relations with nature. The natural world appears to function like a species of perpetual motion machine, without the necessity of some stage manager cueing the sun to rise or the temperature to drop on October nights. Quaker meeting requires much more orchestration than this.
What the gathered meeting requires is precisely not human intention, but instead a letting go of directorial responsibility into the potent, driving energy of the Light, which powers the connecting relationships that form and sustains the ecology of worship. What appears to demand great concentration and formidable attentiveness actually begs us to relinquish control, to give up our pre-scripted agendas, desires, and intentions, abandoning our selves into the mercy of the energy that flows between and alongside the other. The collective non-self of the gathered meeting forms as each worshiper relinquishes self into the greater knowing of the group. We enter the realm of the sensuous, keenly alert to the more-than-human that always surrounds us but becomes obscured by thought or wanting. The gathered meeting, at its best, can arrest us into an unselfing. Peaceable surrender releases us into our native way of being where we can exist by spiritual instinct.
As I walk back up out of the woods, around the metal gate, I hear a whirr of wings and a chickadee's nasal calling. The bird is very close, and I realize there must be something at the post. [I look down into the hollow of the post], and there is a delicately woven nest with 3, small, non-descript eggs. I'm disturbing its home by my very presence. I move away, leaving the chickadee and wondering why it chose to nest there, [so close to] where people and dogs pass by regularly. As I think of them later on, I marvel at the tenacity of such birds to build nests where they do. To walk where chickadee nests is to worship with the other [in our shared ecology], this blue, vital, and spinning planet we need so much to better share.
[Queries]—What role does nature play in your spiritual life? Are there places you relate to as sacred space? How is meeting for worship different from individual worship? Do you feel spiritually distanced from the living world? Are you aware of the experience of "unselfing" in response to beauty or in other ways? What is the difference between the moment of consciousness and experience and the analysis of the experience? What is the value of each?
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288. Improvisation & Spiritual Disciplines: Continuing the Divine-Human Duet (by Carol Conti-Etin; 1989)
About the Author—Carol Conti-Entin found and joined Friends in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has music degrees from Univ. of MI, Univ. of Madison and has taught at Lawrence University and the Symphony School of America, as well as performing; she earned a degree in computer science in Maryland.
Introduction—When I attended my 1st meeting for worship, just before my college studies got under way, I was relieved to find a form of worship which seemed more natural to me than the Protestant church services of my childhood. What unfolds seems to this former musician to be an improvisation on a God-given theme. One’s spiritual journey could be described as an improvisatory duet with the Inner Guide. The Inner Guide will gladly propose the variation appropriate to the life’s theme. [One description of an improvised duet is that one hears and one answers throughout the piece]. [It can be like listening to music one is not prepared to understand]. [Perhaps] something similar happened to the disciples as they watched Jesus perform. Faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to hear and answer the Inner Guide’s next gesture and allow the duet to continue.
Sabbath Observance—What is there in the concept of sabbath which might be worth preserving? The word 1st occurs in connection Yahweh’s provision of food to the Israelites during the Exodus. From the very 1st, observing a sabbath has required trusting in Yahweh to provide what one most needs, in the right quantity & when one needs it. [That includes one day a week for] abstinence from work. Yahweh also insisted on sabbath-benefit coverage not only for people & animals, but also for the environment, especially the fields, which were to lie fallow. Each 50th year, the fields lay fallow, liberty was proclaimed & property restored to its original owner.
How did sabbath observance come to be mired in petty regulations? [It may be that others control time [and do not allow for sabbath rest]. For most of us the lack of time is our own doing. George Fox warned against: “Drawing your minds into your business, and clogging them with it; so that ye can hardly do anything to the service of God but there will be crying ‘my business, my business.” [I have come up with creative solutions to work] just half time. There still remains the temptation to take on more than my duet partner asks of me. Sabbath keeping came to be over-regulated because it is so easy to assign an extremely low priority to its observance and so difficult to trust that turning over one’s anxieties to God is not only safe but more productive.
The author of the last section of Isaiah promised that those who brought glory to the sabbath by not doing as they pleased would delight themselves in Yahweh & ride on the heights of the earth. To delight ourselves in Yahweh must be the essence of sabbath keeping, whenever & for however long it is observed. Jesus, in rejecting the inflexibility of certain regulations, did not abandon the underlying concept. Sabbath & holy days typically found him in a synagogue of the temple, and he withdrew from everyone after intensive periods of teaching and healing. [To really] enter into sabbath observance, we must believe that it is possible to enjoy God’s company and must long to do exactly that. Why not offer your duet partner [the Spirit] a daily time together and a much long, minimally distracted “jam session” once a week? Then, listen to the new music that comes of it.
Bible Reading—The “Word of God is not the words contained within the pages of the Bible but rather the logos as described at the beginning of the 4th gospel. George Fox corrected a Nottingham priest who declared Scriptural authority. It was not that, George said, “but the Holy Spirit, by which the holy men of God gave forth the Scriptures. I had no slight esteem of the Holy Scriptures, but they were very precious to me, for I was in that spirit by which they were given forth, and what the Lord opened in me I afterward found was agreeable to them.”
How can one read the Scriptures, if one finds them irrelevant or hurtful? [The hurt I suffered was] solely of having lived my days on this earth as a female. From the slight wounding I have received has sprung an awareness of others’ more severe pain. Should anyone who finds the Bible uninviting begin or resume a program of Bible reading? Not unless the Inner Guide proposes such study.
After a decade of dormancy, I once again longed for an immediacy of relationship with the immanent God. The contents of the Bible have become very precious to me because I have been in the company of that spirit by which they were given forth. There will come a moment when what someone else has experienced and recorded resonates with what you have experienced. Eventually it helps to read the entire Bible so that the passages which have come alive will have a context. [By the third reading of the Bible] I had seen similarities between my own rocky spiritual journey and those of so many forthright people in the Bible; far fewer passages seemed foreign.
I also found that all the English translations whetted my appetite for studying the original languages, [the many] meanings for key words, & how grammar, syntax, & vocabulary affected the perception of an event. [When I read a passage, & before I apply it to today & myself, I need to as best I can wear the sandals of the per-son or persons in the story, feel what they feel. This will avoid reading in things that are not there, & overlooking crucial things that are. Paint the scene; study it in a group; when a passage invites you to linger, meditate on it.
Journal Keeping—William Penn wrote: “Thou didst omit to take up Christ’s holy yoke, to bear thy daily cross; thou wast careless of thy affections & kept no journal or check upon thy actions; but declinedst to audit accounts in thy conscience with Christ thy light.” My early attempts at journal keeping had been immensely frustrating ones. [I could not tolerate inconsistencies of feeling from one week to the next, nor could I record anything unpolished]. Months passed between entries. To learn how the individual bits of guidance I had received fit together, I would have to ponder them in writing. My Inner Guide let me know that I had to write down [just] a short phrase of thanks; this led to longer written ponderings]. [In comparing reflection to music, the writing process is similar to composing music, & oral reflection is similar to improvising it. My suspicion is that the more one both improvises & composes, the thinner becomes the wall which separates them. Also, recording a perception is like performing a piece, rather than merely reflecting on a perception or “listening to a piece].”
When I was avoiding journal keeping, I wrote on slips of paper any passage I wanted to spend time with; I also jotted certain insights in note form. Among the things daily notes of thanks taught me were how reluctant I was to give God credit for human invention and how often I belittled or overlooked the talents I had been given and the small pleasures I had experienced. [I also briefly listed traits that were blocking my spiritual journey]. These 2 miniature journal entries together occupying just one line of narrow-ruled notebook paper per day, have helped me so much, that they continue to occupy a key section of my journal. If journal contents have as their deepest hope the development of a compassionate nature, they will in time leave narcissism behind.
Another portion of the journal may record dreams, those in which God offers immediate guidance & those which are requests for attention from one’s subconscious. Dream aspects you are reluctant to record may portray your duet partner’s latest efforts to lead you to a fuller integration of your total personality. Unanswered questions may well become regular features in your journal, as well as heartfelt emotions. The form is less important than the spirit which gives it life; as long as a journal reflects a desire for transformation, it will serve well.
Tithing—[There is a difference between tithing & the tithes George Fox railed against]: “The Independents, Baptists, and Presbyterians [once] cried tithes were anti-christian … Then they all got into steeple-houses & tithes, [saying they were the law of God]. They imprisoned & persecuted Friends because we would not give them tithes, [seizing many goods, & making many widows & orphans of the ones who died in prison].
The earliest responses of tithing from Abraham and Jacob were done out of gratitude for the blessings they received; tithing was intended to be a joyful activity. 14 years ago I was startled to hear my duet partner asking me to do precisely that. Did I in fact own any or all of my income? Tithing seemed to occupy a natural place within the Quaker testimony of simplicity. I discovered that learning what to give away, what to keep, what to acquire and what to do without was a vital part of the process of hearing and answering.
Physical objects turned out to be the least of my possessions. What the Inner Guide said next was, “Tithe your time.” The next possession was my self-will. But what would surrendering my self-will entail? I was told to put my instrument on the shelf and leave it there for an entire year. I discovered that I was no less a musician just because I had ceased practicing and performing. Perhaps tithing is analogous to the warm-up exercise a musician performs in order to place the body more fully at the service of the music. [Tithing places me] more fully at God’s disposal; [God’s love then flows] through me unselfishly to others.
Praying—There is quite a difference between reciting a prayer written by someone else and praying spontaneously. What expressed thoughts hinder our spiritual growth, and how may we cultivate only those forms of prayer which help us mature? Prayer is an attempt to get ourselves into that active cooperation with God where we may discern what is authentic and be ready to carry it out. Whenever we have earnestly desired to feel connected to the creator and creation we have been praying.
It is important to pray to God in the 2nd person. When praying in the 3rd person, there is no longer an intimate connection. And when duty has become burdensome, when Boss’s yoke is no longer easy, then I know that I am the one producing the source of friction. [When the Spirit asks]: “Do you love me more than these?” only when I can again answer “Yes” can I again lovingly feed God’s lamb.
Any attempt on our parts, no matter how feeble to reverse a spiritual downtrend is more than matched by God’s joyous welcome back. Non-verbal forms of prayer span an entire spectrum from subtle feelings of gratitude to concrete actions. If we count all the [subtle] prayers that are converted into action, praying without ceasing comes to seem less exotic and far more attainable. Persistence in prayer is an automatic by-product of deep desire, not the result of strenuous, self-propelled efforts. May our prayer become as natural and indispensable as breathing. And may we experience the all-sufficiency of the one with whom we are communing as we pray.
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140. A Joint and Visible Fellowship (by Beatrice Saxon Snell ; 1965)
Foreword by Henry J. Cadbury/A Note from the Author—My 1st personal attraction to her writing was her skill in finding the unusual & appropriate quotation. These little essays treat of worship. [While] the Quaker manner of worship is in some ways distinctive, it is as likely as others to become habitual, formal, self-centered, or without meaning. [It applies to any group’s worship] that we enrich our worship by a more conscious sense of having fellow worshipers to give it collective breadth & reality].
The following chapters are reprinted from articles which appeared in London Friend. I want to stress the importance of preparing for the Meeting for Worship in the individuals' private devotional lives. As we do this, making God a partner in our thoughts & actions, many difficulties we have in group worship will melt away.
Worship is remembering & forgetting … Remembering the Lord, humble & clothed in flesh,/ Walking the dusty roads of Palestine,/ His glance judgment, his words life, his touch healing,/ His feet shod with mercy…/Remembering thus our God we forget: fear…grief…sin…weariness…hatred…Worship is both remembering & forgetting.
"Not long after I had sat down, a heavenly & watery cloud overshadowing my mind brake into a sweet shower of celestial rain; [most of us] were broken together, dissolved & comforted in the same divine & holy presence & influence of the true, holy, heavenly Lord … The meeting being ended, the Peace of God … remained as a holy canopy over my mind in a silence out of the reach of words; where no idea but the Word himself can be conceived.” Thomas Story
A Joint & Visible Fellowship—One of the most remarkable things about the Society of Friends is the balance it maintains between individual & community. I am convinced that to be a complete Christian is to learn to live both in isolation & community. The group-minded must overcome one’s fear of solitude. [Those who commune] in isolation don’t always realize that the Bread of Heaven must be broken & passed on. Offering with & to my fellow human beings lest I live only a half-life of worship is the mainspring of attending Meeting.
Robert Barclay said: “To meet together we think necessary for God’s people. So long as we are clothed with the outward Tabernacle, there is a necessity to the entertaining of a joint & visible fellowship, & bearing of an outward Testimony for God … as Iron sharpeneth Iron, the seeing of the faces one of another, when both are inward gathered, giveth occasion for Life secretly to rise & pass from Vessel to Vessel.”
Those at meeting who are dry & empty or in great need have weakness itself to lay before God in trust & love. Your very perseverance in group worship in the face of flatness & dislike may be an offering of more value than easy acceptance & enjoyment. [In a totally silent meeting] it is highly probable that at least one of the worshipers came to the meeting in spite of not feeling particularly eager to come, helping by his faithfulness the faith of the rest. Group worship differs from private devotion as orchestra music differs from solo music; it differs in kind. Ruth Fawell said: “We are all part of God's great family, & we can’t fully be ourselves without the help of other people… As Meeting goes on, we may all be lifted together above our ordinary lives into a wonderful sense of unity & peace… ‘It isn’t scattered embers, but piled-up logs that send great flames to heaven.”
“God Be Our Speed in Our Beginning”—These words have been engraved on an old bell in the little church of Lockinge in Berkshire. A “few snatched words” are snatched in Meeting-House lobbies as well as in church porches; all too often they snatch our thoughts from the One to whom we come to make our offering of worship. [Take care of your list of trivial distracting tasks the night before & don’t let your morning routine distract you either]. Prepare for these things as you would if you were going to meet your dearest friend; that is exactly what you’re going to do. George Fox wrote: “Friends, be watchful & careful in meetings ye come into. When a man is come newly out of the world he cometh out of the dirt… When he cometh into a silent meeting … he must come & feel his own spirit how it is. The others are still & cool, & he may rather do them hurt if he get them out of the cool state into the heating state.” If we look around with angry curiosity, we aren’t helping either the latecomer’s fault or misfortune.
Robert Barclay wrote: “Sometimes when one hath come in, that hath been unwatchful and wandering in his mind [into] outward business, and not inwardly gathered with the rest, [may] retire himself inwardly, and this power being raised in the whole meeting, will suddenly lay hold upon his spirit and wonderfully help to raise up the good in him, melting and warming his heart.” [What if an effort is made to feel not an interruption, but that another of our brothers and sisters has arrived to share our worship of God]? [For] in the days of horse travel and unmade roads the Meeting often took far longer to assemble in body, but was more gathered in spirit.
[Thomas Story tells of coming in late]: “Not long after I had sat down, a heavenly & watery cloud overshadowing my mind brake into a sweet shower of celestial rain; [most of us] were broken together, dissolved & comforted in the same divine & holy presence & influence of the true, holy, heavenly Lord … The meeting being ended, the Peace of God … remained as a holy canopy over my mind in a silence out of the reach of words; where no idea but the Word himself can be conceived.” [Every meeting should end this way, proceed this way and begin with the words]: “God be our speed in our beginning.”
Centering Down—[Too often] moments of centering, that hush in which we attune ourselves to hear God’s voice, pass in greedy waiting for something to happen. To all those who experience difficulty [in the silence], I would say: “Begin at the beginning.” 1st, relax with the behind away from the extreme back of the seat, & the middle of the back supported by it. Let your chair hold you. If you feel sleepy, change your posture.
Now, begin to fill your mind with thoughts of God. Remember that God is the source of all goodness. Recollect all that you have known of goodness, truth and beauty in your life, especially the goodness of people. Praise God for it if you can, but do not force a feeling of thankfulness. Make an act of loyalty instead. Resolve that you will keep on trying to be for this goodness and will not let it down. If you persevere in this method, you will find that you have unconsciously settled down into “waiting in the Spirit.”
Alexander Parker wrote: “The 1st that enters into meeting … turn in thy mind to the light and wait upon God singly, as if none were present but the Lord. Let the next that comes in, let them in simplicity of heart sit down and turn in the same light. To all the rest, in fear of the Lord sit down in pure stillness and silence of all flesh and wait in the light… Say in yourselves, “it is good to be here.”
I would [also] let my eyes rest & my mind gently dwell on each companion, thanking God for the good I know of each one. [So far as “emptying the mind” is concerned], it is almost impossible to lose a thing deliberately. If turning to the thought of God doesn’t keep trivialities at bay, offer your weakness & instability to God, trusting God to take them from you. I have found that God will always gather wandering thoughts to God.
The Ministry of Silence—There is a ministry of silence as well as ministry of speech. Never think your unspoken thoughts and feelings have no effect on the Meeting. [In vocal ministry], the Meeting should breathe at once to God that the speaker may be guided & upheld. Faithfulness in obeying the call against one’s inclination, or in remaining silent when words come all too readily, mean a real expense of spirit to those who minister.
Centering down in Meeting is as if a hollow space filled gently with the water of life [and its calm surface]. Anything unhelpful is as if a stone were thrown into the pool; both surface and reflection are broken. Isaac Penington said: “One who would understand the Words of Life, must 1st have life [within].” The headmaster of schoolboys would grasp the precious meaning of an old-fashioned missionary’s jargon [and break] the very crusty bread so that it was food for the whole Meeting. Friends must never forget that every Meeting is a sacrament, a baptismal receiving of the cleansing water of forgiveness, and a communion. Our forefathers worshipped in the faith which accepted the ministry of silence when God gave no ministry of speech. John Rutty wrote: “A silent meeting, and not one minister, but Jesus himself, was present.”
Breaking the Bread of Life—The body & blood, God’s life & love are transmitted to us that we in our turn may transmit them to others. The ministry of words is to be put into the waiting hands with the command to break & distribute it here & now. The Quaker minister’s 1st dilemma is: How shall I recognize the call to speak when it comes? John Woolman said: Í stood up & said some words in a meeting; but not keeping close to the divine opening I said more than was required… I was afflicted for some weeks… Being thus humbled & disciplined under the Cross my understanding became more strengthened to distinguish the pure Spirit which inwardly moves upon the heart. I waited some times many weeks for that rise that prepares the creature to stand like a trumpet through which the Lord speaks.”
For myself there is most often the sense that if I do not rise & speak I shall not have been “faithful.” We should not shrink unduly from offering love. Sometimes broken words and thoughts may be sacramental to our selves and others and lead on to a deeper experience of worship. To those who can honestly say they feel called to their feet week after week, I would suggest that their ministry may be intended for a wider circle.
Some friends argue: Shouldn't all ministry be entirely spontaneous? How can anyone know whether or not something which came to one’s mind before Meeting isn't destined to be a little loaf given him by God to break & distribute? There are those who do give a deeper ministry without conscious preparation & those whose hearts are enlarged towards the meeting by the preparation they give to it. We shouldn't label ministry that begins with “I’ve been thinking,” or as “anecdotal” simply because it deals with personal experience.
Offer what you have to God & let it go. Offer bread for a blessing, & just as you sometimes feel the “re-newed putting forth,” you ought also sometimes to feel “the stop.” [Early Friends like James Nayler & Thomas Shillitoe paid careful attention to “stops].” [I myself experienced a “stop” which made it possible] for a young, diffident Friend to rise & weave from daily life a parable to feed our souls. [On different occasions], working through different temperaments, alike in nothing but dedication, Love finds out the way [to work its ministry].
Children of God—We think too readily of the last stage of birth, and forget the long months of growth which change the fetus to the babe, [whether we are talking literally, or are thinking of the spiritual birth of Paul, George Fox, or our own]. Nor is birth the completion of growth. A 1775 Yearly Epistle reminds Friends that “whoever would be truly a Disciple of Christ must know not only a beginning but an abiding in the Spirit.” George Fox writes” “Wait … in the measure of the Life of God, in it to grow in love, in virtue and in immortality, in that which doth not fade, which joins and unites your hearts together.”
The growth of a child of God is growth in worship, in recognition of and response to his Spirit, in learning to pass on the good we have received from God, not only in our times of joy and strength, but also in our times of sorrow and weakness. Isaac Penington wrote: “Our life is love & peace, & tenderness, & bearing one with another, & forgiving one another—& helping one another up with a tender hand, if there has been a slip or fall… O wait to feel this spirit, & to be guided to walk in this spirit, that ye may enjoy the Lord in sweetness, & walk sweetly, meekly, tenderly, peaceably, & lovingly one with another…
There is a kind of false humility that will neither speak nor act at the right time for fear of making a mistake or doing harm. It is only as we pray throughout life that we become conscious “that our own deepest selves are united with a deathless movement of loving action which flows through our littleness, submerges it and carries it forward.” The tasks of the sons and daughters of God is to draw all men into the family circle by giving them that inextricable mingling of justice and mercy which is love.
Elizabeth Fry wrote: “I want less love of money, less judging others, less tattling, less dependence upon external appearance. I want to see more fruit of the Spirit in all things, more devotion of heart, more spirit of prayer, more real cultivation of mind, more enlargement of heart towards all.”
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Centering Down—[Too often] moments of centering, that hush in which we attune ourselves to hear God’s voice, pass in greedy waiting for something to happen. To all those who experience difficulty [in the silence], I would say: “Begin at the beginning.” 1st, relax with the behind away from the extreme back of the seat, & the middle of the back supported by it. Let your chair hold you. If you feel sleepy, change your posture.
Now, begin to fill your mind with thoughts of God. Remember that God is the source of all goodness. Recollect all that you have known of goodness, truth and beauty in your life, especially the goodness of people. Praise God for it if you can, but do not force a feeling of thankfulness. Make an act of loyalty instead. Resolve that you will keep on trying to be for this goodness and will not let it down. If you persevere in this method, you will find that you have unconsciously settled down into “waiting in the Spirit.”
Alexander Parker wrote: “The 1st that enters into meeting … turn in thy mind to the light and wait upon God singly, as if none were present but the Lord. Let the next that comes in, let them in simplicity of heart sit down and turn in the same light. To all the rest, in fear of the Lord sit down in pure stillness and silence of all flesh and wait in the light… Say in yourselves, “it is good to be here.”
I would [also] let my eyes rest & my mind gently dwell on each companion, thanking God for the good I know of each one. [So far as “emptying the mind” is concerned], it is almost impossible to lose a thing deliberately. If turning to the thought of God doesn’t keep trivialities at bay, offer your weakness & instability to God, trusting God to take them from you. I have found that God will always gather wandering thoughts to God.
The Ministry of Silence—There is a ministry of silence as well as ministry of speech. Never think your unspoken thoughts and feelings have no effect on the Meeting. [In vocal ministry], the Meeting should breathe at once to God that the speaker may be guided & upheld. Faithfulness in obeying the call against one’s inclination, or in remaining silent when words come all too readily, mean a real expense of spirit to those who minister.
Centering down in Meeting is as if a hollow space filled gently with the water of life [and its calm surface]. Anything unhelpful is as if a stone were thrown into the pool; both surface and reflection are broken. Isaac Penington said: “One who would understand the Words of Life, must 1st have life [within].” The headmaster of schoolboys would grasp the precious meaning of an old-fashioned missionary’s jargon [and break] the very crusty bread so that it was food for the whole Meeting. Friends must never forget that every Meeting is a sacrament, a baptismal receiving of the cleansing water of forgiveness, and a communion. Our forefathers worshipped in the faith which accepted the ministry of silence when God gave no ministry of speech. John Rutty wrote: “A silent meeting, and not one minister, but Jesus himself, was present.”
Breaking the Bread of Life—The body & blood, God’s life & love are transmitted to us that we in our turn may transmit them to others. The ministry of words is to be put into the waiting hands with the command to break & distribute it here & now. The Quaker minister’s 1st dilemma is: How shall I recognize the call to speak when it comes? John Woolman said: Í stood up & said some words in a meeting; but not keeping close to the divine opening I said more than was required… I was afflicted for some weeks… Being thus humbled & disciplined under the Cross my understanding became more strengthened to distinguish the pure Spirit which inwardly moves upon the heart. I waited some times many weeks for that rise that prepares the creature to stand like a trumpet through which the Lord speaks.”
For myself there is most often the sense that if I do not rise & speak I shall not have been “faithful.” We should not shrink unduly from offering love. Sometimes broken words and thoughts may be sacramental to our selves and others and lead on to a deeper experience of worship. To those who can honestly say they feel called to their feet week after week, I would suggest that their ministry may be intended for a wider circle.
Some friends argue: Shouldn't all ministry be entirely spontaneous? How can anyone know whether or not something which came to one’s mind before Meeting isn't destined to be a little loaf given him by God to break & distribute? There are those who do give a deeper ministry without conscious preparation & those whose hearts are enlarged towards the meeting by the preparation they give to it. We shouldn't label ministry that begins with “I’ve been thinking,” or as “anecdotal” simply because it deals with personal experience.
Offer what you have to God & let it go. Offer bread for a blessing, & just as you sometimes feel the “re-newed putting forth,” you ought also sometimes to feel “the stop.” [Early Friends like James Nayler & Thomas Shillitoe paid careful attention to “stops].” [I myself experienced a “stop” which made it possible] for a young, diffident Friend to rise & weave from daily life a parable to feed our souls. [On different occasions], working through different temperaments, alike in nothing but dedication, Love finds out the way [to work its ministry].
Children of God—We think too readily of the last stage of birth, and forget the long months of growth which change the fetus to the babe, [whether we are talking literally, or are thinking of the spiritual birth of Paul, George Fox, or our own]. Nor is birth the completion of growth. A 1775 Yearly Epistle reminds Friends that “whoever would be truly a Disciple of Christ must know not only a beginning but an abiding in the Spirit.” George Fox writes” “Wait … in the measure of the Life of God, in it to grow in love, in virtue and in immortality, in that which doth not fade, which joins and unites your hearts together.”
The growth of a child of God is growth in worship, in recognition of and response to his Spirit, in learning to pass on the good we have received from God, not only in our times of joy and strength, but also in our times of sorrow and weakness. Isaac Penington wrote: “Our life is love & peace, & tenderness, & bearing one with another, & forgiving one another—& helping one another up with a tender hand, if there has been a slip or fall… O wait to feel this spirit, & to be guided to walk in this spirit, that ye may enjoy the Lord in sweetness, & walk sweetly, meekly, tenderly, peaceably, & lovingly one with another…
There is a kind of false humility that will neither speak nor act at the right time for fear of making a mistake or doing harm. It is only as we pray throughout life that we become conscious “that our own deepest selves are united with a deathless movement of loving action which flows through our littleness, submerges it and carries it forward.” The tasks of the sons and daughters of God is to draw all men into the family circle by giving them that inextricable mingling of justice and mercy which is love.
Elizabeth Fry wrote: “I want less love of money, less judging others, less tattling, less dependence upon external appearance. I want to see more fruit of the Spirit in all things, more devotion of heart, more spirit of prayer, more real cultivation of mind, more enlargement of heart towards all.”
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
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