Responding to the

Baltimore Yearly Meeting

First Month Query

By Jean James

 

Are meetings for worship held in expectant waiting for Divine guidance? Are Friends encouraged to share spiritual insights? Are special gifts of ministry recognized and encouraged?

 Do you come to meeting with heart and mind prepared? Are you careful not to disturb the spirit of the meeting by late arrival or in other ways?

 There were four main reasons for my becoming a Quaker:

• I believe in the testimonies of Quakerism.
• I believe in the central thought that “there is that of God in everyone.”
• I count on, believe, and need the silence and knowledge brought through the community of people and the silence of worship. The very act of worship in silence leads to a type of intimacy that I had never felt in a minister-driven church.
• I truly believe that if we open our hearts, quiet our spirits and ask, we can receive Divine Guidance. Further, I believe that this guidance will be what we need; not necessarily what we want, but what we need.

Having said this, I am going to start on this very personal query response with a quote from the Quaker pamphlet, “The Quakers or Our Neighbors The Friends”. This statement was distributed at the World Council of Churches meeting in 1948 to present the rationale for Quaker worship:

Worship, according to the ancient practice of the Religious Society of Friends, is entirely without human direction or supervision. A group of devout persons come together and sit down quietly with no prearrangement, each seeking to have an immediate sense of divine leading and to know at first hand the presence of the living Christ. It is not wholly accurate to say that such a meeting is held on the basis of silence; it is more accurate to say that it is held on the basis of ‘holy obedience.’

Having established a basic definition, we can look at the Query.

When Quakers gather together for worship, there are many feelings and expectations. I believe the overriding feeling is that we come to join others in quiet waiting for what may come. The “official” way of saying this is that the corporate meeting is waiting for guidance. For me, the word “corporate” is too intellectual. I’d rather talk about the peace and joy that is felt when we meet together for silent worship, the communion of prayer and meditation.

It’s a great pleasure for me to come to meeting early and watch people arrive. Some come in clearly in a state of silence and readiness. As families arrive, the children are encouraged to slow down and be quiet. Some folks come agitated and obviously in need of being wrapped in the loving blanket of our meeting. Some individuals arrive greeting others and then settle into the silence. Quiet begins to build, and as more people arrive they too settle. Even the children are generally quiet, the silence deepens and we have begun.

What does Divine Guidance mean? Does it mean speaking from the Spirit? Yes it does, but is that all? Do we have to speak at a meeting for it to be meaningful to the group? When attending meeting for worship, I believe that being open to Light and energy is the most basic way I can contribute to our communal worship. I feel I am waiting for Divine Guidance in my life as well in the meeting. I believe that by opening my heart to God I can receive what I need. Therefore, I can (we all can) receive through silence. No-one needs to speak, but we all need to listen and be open of heart.

The question of whether we encourage the sharing of spiritual insights is interesting. What are spiritual insights?   How do I recognize that my thoughts are a message from God and not just from me? Part of the answer is that the message appears to be for most of meeting, or the entire meeting.

How we recognize spiritual insights is basic to the development of our name, Quaker. There are several stories concerning this; my favorite is about what happens when we are in meeting and are given a message by God. Now, most of us do not want to rise up in meeting and talk. We are shy, or afraid of others thinking that the message was silly or not from the Spirit, or we aren’t sure if the message is from the Spirit, so we try really hard to ignore this feeling. We start asking questions of our inner voice and we begin to squirm, and fidget, and rock back and forth, and generally act like a kid that wants to go to first day school. The more we become convinced that this is truly a message for all, we feel that we don’t have any choice, some of us even feel someone pushing us in the back, and we stand up and speak. By then we are shaking, our voices are shaking; you could even say we are “quaking in our boots.” Hence our name and how we might recognize Divine Guidance!

Spiritual insights/Divine Guidance, within the meeting, can be marked in many ways. During a meeting in early December of 2005, we were in a state of agitation concerning the capture, by a militant Islamic organization, of four Christian Peacemaker Team members (one being a Quaker known by many in our meeting). The silence was troubled, not just by fidgeting, but also by the very air being disturbed. People were not settled into the silence. Slowing one by one members began to stand and express their feelings, concerns, and knowledge of the Quaker captive. They prayed for Light for both the captives and the kidnappers. As these folks spoke, the meeting settled deeper into the stillness, into the silence of prayer and meditation. The final message was delivered when a member stood and sang/prayed Jesus’ prayer for forgiveness. The feeling of togetherness and sending of Light and energy into the world was engraved upon many hearts. My heart was truly affected by this meeting.

When a message is delivered from the heart I can feel the message. It is real and looks to my needs. Often I and others in the meeting will express our gratitude for the message. One of the great joys of our meeting is that members are not afraid to show their emotions. I was raised in a household where we didn’t cry, so I am amazed that it is okay for everyone to cry, not just women, but men, too!

We, as a people, are trained to live in our heads; to be logical and to express everything in a calm way. That is not what Quakerism is about. We are a primitive Christian religion. One of the basic tenets of Quakerism is that we believe in ‘that of God in everyone’ and we therefore believe that everyone can access God within themselves. We no longer rely on structure and ceremony. We believe that for each of us it is the personal relationship with God and the sharing with others that is center of our religion. It is central to my being a Quaker. I must be open of heart.

To be truly open to God, I must allow my ‘being’ to be still, not just at meeting but during the week. That is easy to say, but hard to do. Heart knowledge is what I am looking for; that which is truly important to me. Divine Guidance, insights can be many things … something I may not have known until now, or were afraid to recognize! In order to be open I must take time to calm my mind, the more often I give myself a few minutes, the easier it becomes. A big tip for me is to practice deep breathing: this not only gives oxygen to the brain, but it slows me down to be in the moment. When I am in a hectic environment, I retreat to the bathroom for a few minutes of breathing.

The query asks, “Are you careful not to disturb the spirit of the meeting by late arrival or in other ways?” When the children go to first day school at 11:20, this is also the time that latecomers enter the meeting room. Those attenders arriving late are asked to be quiet while waiting for twenty after. I think the “waiters” are not aware that their energy is already in the meetingroom. They are not truly waiting, they are already part of the meeting and therefore a prayerful manner is needed. I also believe that if someone arrives late, no matter what the time, and they need to be in the meetingroom, they need to go on in. The twenty minutes is a convention and helpful to those already in the meeting room, but it is not meant to ban people from meeting.

Another concern, especially for people new to meeting, is that that they will go to sleep during worship. There is a likelihood that anyone, at some time, may nod off. We have a family rule: I can sleep during meeting, but I can’t snore. That will earn me a gentle, but firm, tap on the leg. In the Quaker past, there was a member assigned to walk around with a feather tied on the end of a stick and tickle the sleeping ones. I am much happier with the gentler approach.

Finally, when in worship or prayer, it seems reasonable to be patient and listen to your heart. There is a quote from White Eagle in The Woman’s Book of Courage that I am very fond of, not only for worship, but also as a way of life:

 “When you are in doubt, be still and wait. When doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, be still; be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mist—as it surely will. Then act with courage.”