Quaker Practices for Meeting for Worship

For our 'Quaker Basics' session on Quaker Worship session this week, Rosie Roberts produced a handout, drawn from various sources, outlining some of the practices that support Meeting for Worship. She offers them here for comment and discussion by the wider community.

QUAKER PRACTICES THAT, OVER TIME, HAVE BEEN FOUND TO SUPPORT WORSHIP IN A GATHERED MEETING (not just in Sheffield)

NB These ‘practices’ are collected together as a means to an end: that of our gathered Meetings for Worship, and all the ministries (verbal and non-verbal in Meetings for Worship, practical, and outreach) that flow from them.

ABOUT MEETINGS for WORSHIP

• Try to come with your heart and mind prepared for Meeting for Worship;
• Try to arrive on time – or better still, early. The Meeting for Worship begins when the first person sits down;
• Where to sit? Anywhere;
• Can we read in Meeting? If you wish to read to yourself, try to do so sparingly – reading tends to shut you off from sharing the experience of the Meeting, and those near you may find it distracting;
• Stillness and silence are as much a part of our worship as our speaking. Ministry in Meeting is both vocal and non-vocal;
• Shaking hands at the end of Meeting signifies the companionship of a gathered Meeting.

ABOUT MINISTRY IN MEETINGS for WORSHIP

• Listen
• Listen to all ministry in a spirit of acceptance. Whatever is said, even if it does not seem to speak directly to you, may speak to others in the room.
• In an hour-long Meeting, allow the Meeting to feel ‘gathered’ before ministering. How long …… ?
• If you feel prompted to speak, ask yourself whether the message is for the gathered Meeting – or maybe just for you? Even if for others, is this Meeting for Worship the right time for it? There are many alternatives: Meeting for Reflection, a discussion group or spiritual friendship group, an article, a blog, or simply a conversation. Are you in danger of entering a debate? Wait until you are sure that your message – and the time – are right.
  • Let your message grow within you, and then try to speak in humility, from your own experience and from the heart;
  • Speak clearly and loudly enough for all to hear;
  • Aim for simplicity and clarity;
  • It is usual to stand up – but feel free to remain seated if you have difficulty standing;

• When ministering, respect the ministry of others:
  • Leave time for yourself and others to absorb what has been said;
  • Speak your own truth, without challenging what has been said before – the Meeting is not for debating issues or taking sides;
  • It is very rarely helpful to speak more than once during Meeting.
    
    
• It is helpful for Meeting to close with a period of silence, so avoid ministering near the end. Remember that we have three groups of children joining us during the last ten minutes, who need to be able to come straight in.

Rosie would welcome your comments and responses to these suggestions. Is there anything you would change, or add to this description of Quaker practices? What is your experience of Meeting for Worship at Sheffield Central?

The next Quaker Basics session will be on Quaker Discernment, on Tuesday 20th May 7-9pm at Sheffield Central Quaker Meeting House. All are welcome.

'Quaker Basics' coming soon

What is supposed to be happening in Meeting for Worship? How do Quakers make decisions? Who runs things in a Quaker Meeting? What are the Testimonies?

'Quaker Basics' - a new series of evening sessions to find out all those things no-one ever explained about the Quaker Way... 

Fortnightly on Tuesday evenings – 7pm to 9pm at the Quaker Meeting House

May 6th    Quaker Worship

May 20th  Quaker Discernment 

June 3rd    Quaker Origins

June 17th  Quaker Testimonies

July 1st     Quaker Community

Each session includes a short talk, sharing and discussion in small groups, and a short period of worship. Ideal for newcomers to Quakers to learn more about the Quaker Way, or for more experienced Friends to share and explore with others. All welcome.

For further details contact Kate Napier, Paul Hunt or Craig Barnett

Effing the Ineffable

All right, this is naughty of me. Ineffable means cannot be expressed, from the Latin, in- meaning not, and effor meaning to utter. The word effable – can be expressed – does exist, but is archaic. Eff doesn’t exist – at least, not in polite company. Scientists studying primates – lemurs, monkeys, apes and humans – believe they have discovered a positive relationship between the size of the groups in which a species typically lives and the size of its brain. That is, if an animal lives in small groups, it doesn’t need a very big brain, but if it lives in bands, troops or clans, it needs a larger brain, so as to keep up with who everyone is. (This operates species by species, not individual by individual. Just because you personally have a lot of friends doesn’t mean that you personally have a large brain, just that you get out a lot.)
It seems the maximum number of humans who can know each other reasonably well, interact and cooperate with each other is about a hundred and fifty. There are some companies which, if the work force expands and reaches about two hundred, will divide into two companies of about a hundred each. I know that some people reckon their ‘friends,’ such as their Facebook contacts, in hundreds or even a thousand. They don’t have larger than average brains either, just a large hard drive. They probably need to get out more; fresh air now and again would do them good.
Suffice to say that we humans (or most of us) probably have a rather effective face-recognition app somewhere in our neural networks, which allows us to know and recognise about a hundred or a hundred and fifty acquaintances. Some people can’t do this. The very well-known and well-respected neurologist, Professor Oliver Sacks, can’t recognise faces, but can identify who someone is only when they speak to him. Professor Sacks clearly has voice-recognition software, rather than face-recognition.
I heard of a man whose face was seriously injured and scarred – I forget just how. Maybe it was a road traffic accident involving glass fragments. His face was badly damaged, but was successfully put together again by highly skilled plastic surgeons. The only problem was, he said, it was a good enough face, symmetrical and well-made, but it wasn’t his face any more. He found it very difficult and depressing to wake up each morning and have to wash and shave a face which he couldn’t recognise as his own.
Here’s the thing: you know the difference between an orchestra tuning up deedle deedle dee and an orchestra actually playing music, because the music means some-thing to you, but it is extremely difficult to put into words just what the music means. In fact, this is why orchestras exist: if the meaning of music could be conveyed in words, it would be a lot easier and cheaper to write a letter or send an e-mail than to train, fund and rehearse a whole orchestra. Professional music critics find it hard to describe music in words, and when they do, many people won’t agree with them anyway.
Likewise, it is often easy enough to recognise a face (although telling identical twins apart can be challenging) but very difficult to describe someone’s face to a third party so that the third party can identify the person. This is the problem that notoriously confronts detectives who question eye witnesses when seeking to identify someone they have seen. Classically, the police end up looking for a tall, short, bearded, clean-shaven, blond, dark-haired white man of mixed race. That’s the joke, but the police will tell you that there is truth in it.
So what distinguishes one very average, middle-of-the-range face from another? We can see it when we see it, but it seems impossible to say it. One technique is to say, “He looked a bit like [name a famous actor], but a bit [thinner].” It would be good if there was a standard bank of famous faces to use as a reference. I imagine that an experienced police artist or Identikit operator is skilled in evoking the key features of a face from eye witnesses.
What is the meaning of this, the spiritual equivalent? As a Quaker, what am I on about? It’s a case of struggling to express in words what we do not have words to say, like the meaning of music or the likeness of God. Now do you see? How to eff the ineffable. We can but try.

What it means to be a Quaker today

This current question intrigues me.   I would love if a variety of perspectives could be put forward from within our community so that we could all gain a greater clarity as to what it means for us to be Quakers today.  I am mindful of George Fox’s words (Quaker Faith & Practice: 19.07): “Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say”?  So I dare to offer my perspective trusting that others may feel led to do likewise!

 

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From a personal point of view, being a Quaker means that I seek at all times to take heed of the promptings of love and truth in my heart – trusting them as the leadings of God - always recognising that they will show me my darkness, but bring me new life. (Advice & Queries: 1)

John Macmurray, (Swarthmore Lecture, 1965) has helped me to understand that there is no such thing as a ‘person in isolation’ but only ‘persons in relationship’. So, as part of a Quaker community I feel invited to meet regularly for worship with F/friends bringing with me this same trust.  Then in the silence of worship, I seek to open myself to the spirit of God communicating directly to my heart but also indirectly through the ministry of others. My faith (trust) as a Quaker includes my willingness to share with others, as seems appropriate, what comes to my heart & mind in worship and my willingness to listen with an open heart & mind to what F/friends are moved to share in their ministry.

 Hopefully following on from worship we all go forward with a sense of  having being enriched. Then, actively in the world, as a community,  we endeavour ‘to let our lives speak’ and in various ways contribute  towards the building of God’s kingdom.  To me this is best understood  as a universal community of friendship in which under God all persons  are equal and free.                                                                         

The Experience of God.

The Thought For The Week in The Friend of 6th February is titled 'The Idea Of God'. Here is the Quaker philosopher, John Macmurray, on the subject of 'Belief In God', from “Creative Society, A Study of The Relation of Christianity to Communism”, 1935, pp 16-29:

“Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom.”

“[T]here is a sharp distinction between believing in God and believing in the idea of God. .. One cannot believe in God and at the same time believe that any idea men(sic) have framed … can be adequate to express the nature of that in which we believe. .. If I can insist that my idea of God must be maintained, how can I have the humility to recognize the existence of a Being in the light of whose infinite understanding all my knowledge must be the ignorant fantasy of a child?

“Belief in God is not an intellectual matter. .. [T]he bare statement that God exists has no meaning by itself. We cannot point to God, as we could to any finite object, and say 'that exists.' We can only assert the existence of something corresponding to our conception.

“Intellectual atheism … is equally meaningless until we know what is the conception of God which is denied. Atheism may have a relative truth. It may be a way of rejecting a conception of God which is false. .. An honest and courageous atheist is surely more pleasing to God than a dishonest and cowardly theist.

“Belief in God is properly an attitude to life which expresses itself in our ways of behaving. .. Perhaps the fundamental component of a belief in God is the expression in action of an attitude of faith or trust. .. It involves the recognition that the control and the determination of all that happens in the world lies in a power that is irresistible and yet friendly .. it is the capacity to live as it this were so. .. The opposite attitude, which is the core of real atheism, expresses itself in that individualism which makes a man feel alone and isolated in a world against which he must defend himself. .. This is to disbelieve in God. For belief in God, whatever else it might involve, at least includes the capacity to live as part of the whole of things in a world which is unified.

“Marx said [paraphrased] 'Let us turn from ideas to reality, let us look not at people's theories but at their actions. It is by seeing how societies and their institutions work in practice and not by accepting their own ideal accounts of what they are after that we shall understand their real faith.'

“Now that core of belief in God which is present in a large measure in Communism, and which is difficult to discover in organised Christianity as we know it now, is the only possible basis for a belief in God which is not a mere idea. .. There [is] nothing paradoxical [here] – It would be no more than a commentary upon the saying of Jesus to the religious leaders of his day, 'Verily I say unto you that the publicans and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you.'”

Friends: let go of your ideas and your disputes about the idea of God, "these different and strongly held opinions" as the author of 'The Idea of God' puts it, and look instead to the light within:

“But as I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. .. Thus when God doth work, who shall let [hinder] it? and this I knew experimentally [through experience]”. George Fox, Journal, 1647, quoted in Quaker Faith and Practice, 19.02.

Don’t Look Now

It is possible to communicate with God or the Spirit. By this, I mean not just that we can pray or worship, but I would say on rather rare occasions, we can hear or sense God or the Spirit communicating back to us. This – let’s call it a revelation or a burst of spiritual awareness – is of course wonderful and mystical. It can change lives. It is rare, special and immensely precious.
So how can we get more of it to happen? Ah! They say you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. I don’t imagine that we can bring the Spirit to us but not make it communicate. No, it’s the other way round. I suspect that we are the horse: we can take ourselves towards God, but in my experience, we can’t very often make ourselves communicate with him, or hear him communicating with us.
Winnie-the-Pooh says, “Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.” Pooh is not famous as a theologian, and he is talking about Poetry and Hums, rather than awareness of God, but apart from that, he’s spot-on.
OK, so how do we put ourselves in the right place so that God can find us? It may be more a case of, How do we put ourselves in the right place so that we can allow ourselves to let God find us? As you know, someone who tries too hard to achieve something, especially if that something is a horse-to-water phenomenon, can make it less likely to happen, rather than more likely. If I am desperate to get you to love me, so desperate that I fawn and cling and plead and agonise (or if I hit on you too obviously, or even stalk you) I may put you right off. Not more love, but less than ever.
Pooh and Piglet are walking in the forest, when they spot Tigger seriously stuck up a pine tree and mistake him for a Jagular. “. . . The Jagular called out to them. ‘Help! Help!’ it called. ‘That’s what Jagulars always do,’ said Pooh, much interested. ‘They call, “Help! Help!” and then when you look up, they drop on you.’ ‘I’m looking down,’ cried Piglet loudly, so as the Jagular shouldn’t do the wrong thing by accident.”
Sometimes, we need to not strive, if what we desire can’t be achieved by striving. They say, “God knows where you are. He will come and find you, when you least expect it.” “OK,” I say, “Lord, I’m not expecting you, right? See, I’m actually looking in the opposite direction. Now come and find me . . . Lord?” Piglet carefully looks down, so as to avoid the disaster of being dropped on by a Jagular. I don’t look too hard for God, so as to avoid the disaster of his not contacting me. Neither seems to work.

The Book of Life

Hello again. I haven't blogged for a while, but I'm back. The Book of Life Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is shaped like a pizza, and it works not according to the laws of physics, but the laws of magic. The only character who appears in all of the Discworld novels is Death, a seven-foot skeleton in a black robe holding a scythe, as is traditional. His house is like a Tardis, bigger on the inside than on the outside. In Death’s library are literally mile upon mile of shelves, which house the Book of Life of every individual, alive or dead. The Book of each dead person is complete, but the Book of every living person writes itself continuously, the words quietly scritching themselves onto the page. If you stand in Death’s library, the sound of the Books writing themselves is like the sound of a waterfall. I’m wondering what the Book finds to write, what happens in most people’s lives that is worth writing down? The key to this puzzle is probably that the Book writes itself. You don’t write your own Book, and no one else decides that your life is so interesting that it should be chronicled. It writes itself, of its own accord. Many people, if they wrote a diary every day, most days it would be, “Got up; had breakfast; went to work; came home; went to bed.” So what does the Book write about you? A lot more than that. Arthur Koestler said that most of us spend most of our time on the trivial level of life, the ‘What’s for tea?’ or ‘What’s on the telly?’ level, although we are capable of visiting the deeper level, which he calls the tragic level, for short periods. The Book finds a lot to write about your life that is on a deeper level than you know yourself. Again, not for the first time, I get the feeling that we live mainly on the outer surface of what we are, on the skin of the apple, so to speak. I think that it would not be right to worship the skin of the apple, no matter how attractive it looks; nor the flesh of the apple, nor even the core, although it is the core of ourselves. I’m guessing that there is something in the core, the seeds perhaps, that enables us to contact the One whom we can worship. On a good day, that is.