What if Quaker worship came with instructions?

This past First Day, the monthly meeting held an adult education session that was based on earlier work undertaken by a committee. It was a time for us to share with one another ways in which we prepare ourselves for worship.

To help frame the session, a Friend read a few queries that had been printed in the meeting's newsletter:

How do I prepare for Meeting for Worship?

How can I come to MfW better able to worship?

What is the difference between coming to worship on time and coming prepared?

What makes MfW a shared experience rather than a collection of individual meditations?

How can we shorten the time of “settling in” at the start of a Meeting for Worship?

Have you ever considered coming early to MfW and beginning to worship ten minutes before the official start in order to help anchor the silence?

At some point, the conversation shifted when a relatively new attender said, "I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to be doing during worship. Is there something I'm supposed to be doing in order to help me feel that connection that some of you talk about?"

Soon after that remark, another Friend said, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, "Well, I grew up Quaker, and no one ever told me what to do. Wouldn't it be amazing if worship came with instructions?"

The danger of having technical instructions

I have to say, at that point, my own fear and worry came up: I worry that having "instructions" amounts to a depending on a formula that then can become rote; that the instructions might force the experience to look, feel, and be a certain way.

From there, I worry that those same instructions would ultimately disconnect us from the thing we are wanting to accomplish: a shared experience of being covered by the Living Presence.

For me, the life, depth, and vibrancy of Quaker worship is about the experience of discovering waiting worship for ourselves, the experience of letting the Spirit work in us directly simply by being present to it.

The hope of having spiritual instruction

Still, at the thought of "instructions," my own mind jumped to George Fox's Epistle X, though the counsel there refers more specifically what to do when one finds oneself in "trouble." It doesn't necessarily speak to how to engage in corporate worship.

I was thankful, then, for the Friend who briefly mentioned Bill Taber's Four Doors to Meeting for Worship, a pamphlet I read long ago and sadly had pushed aside to make room for other Quaker books and pamphlets.

It was about time I pull that out again, and I'm glad I did.

For one thing, on pages 14-16, Bill Taber enumerates a handful of specific ways that "some people, many people, other people" engage in traditional Quaker worship.

He doesn't say that this is a perfect recipe for how to do worship. In fact, he cautions against interpreting it as such:

All of these suggestions make it sound as if we are doing something, as if it all depends on us. While a few of these techniques may be helpful to some people, especially in their early years of attending Quaker meetings, most people eventually come to realize that as we learn to relax our anxiety to do the right thing, and as we learn what it feels like just to be present, then technique becomes far less important than our desire to be fully present. For some experienced Friends... they simply sit down, allow body and mind to be both relaxed and alert, close or relax their eyes; and they are soon there because they have been there so many times already, and because their desire to be there again is so great.
--p. 16

My revisiting this pamphlet sparks a memory: Is Bill Taber the Friend who spoke and/or wrote about how Quakerism is caught and not taught?

It seems that such a concept comes to bear on the thought of "instruction."

A matter of spiritual translation

Revisiting portions of this pamphlet and working on this post reminded me of a very different conversation I had had with another Friend.

She and I were talking recently about how, when I was studying Spanish--probably in high school--the teacher at some point encouraged the class of advanced Spanish students to stop translating in our heads from Spanish to English (and vice versa). Instead, we were to listen to the Spanish entirely.

Not translate.

Just be with it.

In Spanish.

Some part of me knew what the teacher meant by that. I challenged myself to stop pulling apart the Spanish sentences I was hearing, stop thinking word-by-word of what each corresponding word was in English, and stop re-assembling the English word-by-word back into Spanish.

When I was able to let myself accept the Spanish as it came to me, without "figuring it out," I was able to leave behind the anxiety of vocabulary memorization and patterned verb conjugation. I was able to relax into the experience of understanding Spanish in its complete, connected wholeness.

I think it was a similar shift in my participation in worship during my early years among Friends:

At some point, as new Quakers engaging in corporate waiting worship, we come to a point where we stop trying to connect, we stop trying to worship, and we just are.

We relax into the experience of worship in its complete, connected wholeness.

We fall into worship, just like that.

To paraphrase Bill Taber, we can take ourselves "there" because we have been "there" so many times before: "There" with the body in worship. "There" with the Living Presence. "There" in holy communion, with the Spirit, in the Living Stream.

Blessings,
Liz

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

RESOURCES that offer "instructions" on how to "do" Quakerism

Bill Taber's Four Doors to Meeting for Worship

Lloyd Lee Wilson's Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order

Thomas Kelly's A Testament of Devotion

Rex Ambler's A Light to Live By

Michael Birkel's Silence and Witness

Howard Brinton's Guide to Quaker Practice

Tom Gates' Members One of Another

Tom Gates' Opening the Scriptures

Quaker Information Center's resources on worship

Guest Piece: Marshall on the historical nature of Quaker journals

What follows below is a couple of informative comments that Marshall Massey left on my previous post.

At one point in our exchange of comments, I posed to Marshall, "How can we know what it was that Woolman wanted to convey [in his journal] with that story?"--that story being the one where Woolman is worshiping with a group of Native Americans, offers some vocal ministry, and is met with with the words of Native American worshiper among them: "I love to feel where the words come from..."

In his thoughtful replies, Marshall describes the historical nature, purpose, and structure of the journals of early Friends and of journal writers long before--and since--that era. For any of us who might be keeping a journal, whether for personal reasons, for purposes of accountability, or out of a sense of God's leading, this post might be of interest.

I present this guest piece, then, with Marshall's permission. I have set it up as a sort of dialogue between him and me, since his comments emerge in response to my own questions. The hope is that by viewing my original questions, readers will understand the context out of which Marshall answers.

I have added line breaks and blockquotes in some places as well. Lastly, wherever convenient and available, I've included links to items that Marshall references.

Blessings,
Liz

LIZ: How can we know what it was that Woolman wanted to convey with that story--or did he explicitly say, This is why I'm writing this...?

MARSHALL: How we can know, dear Liz, is because this was the traditional purpose of Quaker journals, for a hundred years before Woolman and a hundred years after him: to record the evidence of divine grace working through the writer.

It was also the purpose of Calvinists' journals, from long before Quakerism got started through the time of Jonathan Edwards and beyond. The Quaker journal-writing tradition was, in fact, an adaptation of the Calvinist journal-writing tradition.

Woolman was working within a well-established, well-defined Quaker spiritual discipline. There is no evidence that he rejected Quaker discipline of any sort.

LIZ: As usual, I appreciate how you are able to put things into a larger historical and Quaker context. My guess is, though, that if I asked five other Quaker historians about why Quaker ministers kept journals, I might get another five or six answers!

MARSHALL: Hi again, Liz!

I would certainly encourage you to ask other Quaker historians about the reason, if you have the time.

Failing that, there is actually a wealth of scholarly opinion about the topic available in book form. Daniel B. Shea's Spiritual Autobiography in Early America (University of Wisconsin Press, 1968, 1988) might be a good place to start, since Woolman's Journal is one of the ones he examines.

Shea, who is regarded as a leading figure in this field, writes,

"The explicit arguments of early spiritual narratives were highly conventional. ... The spiritual autobiographer is primarily concerned with the question of grace: whether or not the individual has been accepted into divine life, an acceptance signified by psychological and moral changes which the autobiographer comes to discern in his past experience. ... Quaker journalists dealt less with the subtleties of the conversion process than with the witnessing life wrought by conversion. ... Each of these selections [reviewed in Shea's book] obeys conventions established for the journal in seventeenth-century England, in content and vocabulary, and in the vindication of Quaker habits and beliefs. ....Outbursts of originality were incidental, brief, and contained within the larger structure of the journal, which was already well established by 1700. Conformity to this structure resulted from a group mentality, but also of course from the common experiences of traveling Friends." (Pp. xxv-xxvii, 9-10, 39-40.)

If your quarrel is with my statement that "the traditional purpose of Quaker journals ... [was] to record the evidence of divine grace working through the writer," you might also want to give some consideration to the opening words of Woolman's Journal: "I have often felt a motion of Love to leave some hints of my experience of the Goodness of God...."

As Shea points out, these words are not very different from the opening words of the memoirs of Jane Reynolds and Elizabeth Collins; nor, I might add, from those of the memoirs of Elizabeth Ashbridge, Thomas Chalkley, Ruth Follows, John Griffith, Alice Hayes, Jane Hoskens, Henry Hull, Joseph Oxley, Jane Pearson, Joseph Pike, Elizabeth Stirredge, and many other Quaker journal-keepers.

The standard formula was something along the lines of

"[I have had it on my mind/I have felt drawings/It hath been in my heart] for many years to [write an account/leave some hints/leave a short testimony] of the [providence/precious visitations] and [tender/gracious/merciful dealings] of the [Almighty/Lord/All-Wise] with me from my youth up."

Often the writer adds this is "for the benefit of my children" or "for those who come after" or something similar.

A few writers elaborate the basic idea more fully, such as Thomas Shillitoe, who began, "Believing it required of me in my early life, to keep a record of the merciful dealings of the Lord with me, and the remarkable manner in which he, in his tender compassion, has followed me by his reproofs of instruction, accompanied by such offers of help, as when faithfully co-operated with, never have failed to be all-sufficient for every work and service He has been pleased to call me to perform...."

Or Daniel Wheeler, who opened by saying, "Having frequently derived much valuable instruction, from the perusal of the narratives of those who have long since exchanged an earthly for an heavenly inheritance, the thought has at times occurred to me, that a short memoir of my own life, — however evil 'the days of the years of my pilgrimage' have been; might, under the divine blessing, be made in like manner useful to others."

In every case, the words amount to the writer's own ideas of the journal's purpose, which is a fusion of (1) wanting to note how she has been a beneficiary of grace, (2) wanting to show that she has been blessed to be an instrument through which grace came to others, and (3) wanting the journal itself to serve as such an instrument. The three motives do not seem to me to be separable; they are, in fact, three aspects of a single motive driving the work.

Perhaps the other historians you have in mind will be able to offer the other understandings to which you refer. If so, I'll be most interested to read them!

With all good wishes —
Marshall

Reminder for Quaker Youth Book Project

Here's a quick shout-out to young Friends between the ages of 15-35 from all over the globe:

There is an international project going on to help get the voices and artwork of young Friends "out there," to share their experiences about being a Quaker, being among adult Quakers, how technology like cell phones, YouTube, and blogs are impacting Quakerism, how events like the World Gathering of Young Friends and Young Friends of North America are affecting you, and so on.

Submissions are due at the very end of February 2009--and we all know how quickly time disappears during the winter holidays! So if you've got a blog post drafted and aren't sure when or where to post it, or if you've got a long journal entry that you think is significant but haven't pulled it out for awhile to revise it, or if you've got just an idea for that drawing you wanted to get to, now's as good a time as any.

In case you're interested and you don't want to search too hard for the info that's located on the above linked page, here are the submission guidelines (emphases are my own):

Friends ages 15–35 are invited to submit up to five pieces of writing and/or visual art. We encourage Friends to carefully select the works they submit. Membership in a Quaker meeting or church is not required. Though the primary age range for this project is 15–35, we will also accept pieces from Friends who all outside of that age range but identify as a teenage or young adult Friend.

All submissions should include the name, address, phone number, e-mail, and Friends affiliation of the writer and/or artist. A short, two sentence biography of the writer/artist is optional.

Prose, essays etc. should be approximately 200 to 2000 words, to a maximum of four typed pages. Handwritten pieces are also welcome. Poems should be a maximum of 100 lines.

Visual art such as paintings, collage, photographs, etc. should be submitted in their original form or as a digital scan or photograph with a minimum quality of 300 dpi (dots per inch). Digitized images are preferred but not required. All original works of visual art will be returned to the artist after the selection process has been completed. Visual art will be reproduced in black and white in the book.

Friends are invited to submit written pieces in whatever language they feel most comfortable. The editorial board will be working with submissions primarily in English and Spanish, but we are confident we will be able to provide translation services for most languages spoken by Friends.

Submissions are due (in case you missed it at the beginning of this post) on February 28, 2009 and they can be sent electronically to the Quaker Youth Book Project or snail-mailed to:

Quaker Youth Book Project of QUIP*
1216 Arch Street, 2B
Philadelphia, PA 19107.

If you don't think you'll be submitting anything, the least you could do is encourage one or two other young Quakers to take a look at this call for submissions and consider sending something in. Tell 'em the Quaker blogosphere sent you!

Blessings,
Liz

*QUIP stands for Quakers Uniting In Publishing

It Happened One Night - A virtual interview with Brent Bill

It happened one night last week: I was finishing up a phone call with Robin M when she off-handedly asked me if I was doing the blog contest with Brent Bill. I had been so out of the blog loop for the weeks leading up to that point, I had no idea what she was talking about.

Robin explained to me that the Quaker author and fellow blogger was having a contest of sorts, to help promote his book, Sacred Compass: The Way of Spiritual Discernment. Robin pointed me to Brent's blog post that described the contest's parameters, which I took a peek at.

Then I briefly considered going to bed.

The thing is, the contest was scheduled to end that day. And I had hung up the phone with Robin at 11:10 pm.

Central time.

Maybe I still had a chance to squeak in under the wire... if midnight was relative in Brent's eyes.

What time did I say I wanted to get up in the morning...?! I had asked myself. Ah, well.

At 11:51 pm, Central Daylight Time, I emailed my five best, hurried-but-thoughtful questions to Brent, along with an explanation for my late entry and the request that even if my questions were received too late for the contest, could he answer them anyway, for my own satisfaction?

Brent was kind enough not only to answer my questions but also to include my literal eleventh-hour entry.

Before sharing the interview, I want to add that I chose not to look at the interviews that had already been posted by a number of fFriends (the list and links are included below).

I also chose not to beat myself over the head for not having read Sacred Compass, let alone any other Brent Bill book.

Instead, I've just made it a point to strike out on my own, having no clue what Brent's writing style is like, what he covers in his book, or what others are interested in asking.

Also, after receiving his answers, I found that I had a follow-up comment and question to one item in particular, so I've included a paraprhase of it--and Brent's additional response--within the flow of the interview itself.

My interview with Brent is below, though I've rearranged the order in which I originally asked the questions.

The Interview

Q. What was your first experience when you began to have an inkling about having an inner compass?

Hmmm, I was pretty young. I'd say 11-12. I wouldn't have called it a compass back then. But I did sense that God had things for me to do -- including what we Evangelical Friends called "full-time Christian service," which usually meant being a pastor or missionary.

Missionary didn't fit me -- so I assumed I'd be a pastor. Lots of things in my life led me toward that -- even when I resisted. But my heart/soul always seemed to be called back to following God and saying, "Okay, what do you want me to do." The same feeling I had as a kid.

Q. What trends have you noticed among contemporary Friends, either towards or away from the understanding of an Inward Teacher? Is there something that seems to move Friends toward a clearer understanding? away from it?

I think it depends on the type of Friends you're thinking about. Certainly, the more fundamentalist types of Friends seem to place so much emphasis on the Bible that they distrust even the idea of an Inner Teacher.

On the other end, some very liberal Friends place so much emphasis on the Inner Teacher that they forget that that Teacher can use external things such as the Bible to help guide us.

Both extremes are dangerous, I think, and we need to find a balance between Christ as Inner Teacher and Outer Teacher.

Q. I was raised in a Jewish household and am only recently beginning to appreciate Scripture and its place in contemporary Quakerism. Recently I've begun wondering if there are certain stories or passages in the Torah, the "first five books," that Quakers draw on for teachings--aside from "Love thy neighbor" and "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength..." (Deuteronomy 6:5)

It seems as if Quakers don't draw on the Old Testament in anywhere near the same proportion as we do with the New Testament, yet Jesus was Jewish.

I'm finding I want to hear from Quakers who are better versed than I in Scripture as to what elements of the Old Testament do Friends look to for guidance; and is there a reason we don't hear many Friends quote these [Hebrew] texts? (...or am I just worshiping in the wrong meeting?)

Well, I don't do much, I guess with Torah, but I have done a lot with the Jewish Bible.

I spend a lot of time in the Psalms, which seem to me to be the Quaker Old Testament book in the same way John is our New Testament go-to gospel.

The Psalms reveal the struggle to heed the Inner Teacher -- and to complain, seek, whine, rejoice, etc with the God who goes with and in us. The Psalms, to me, often sound a lot like Fox's Journal -- without all the Christ language.

I think too many of us Quaker-types stay away from the Old Testament because we don't know what to do with all the war and violence parts. Which is a mistake in no small part because Torah describes not just the ancient world but today's world -- and just possibly could provide some clues for how we should behold God in the living of our lives today.

Hmmm, perhaps that's one reason it's still being read by millions even to this day. LOL.

Q. What is one thing you are afraid or hesitant to tell other Quakers about yourself?

Ah, probably that I cuss too much. But then the Quakers who know me really well already know that. The older I get, the more transparent I'm trying to be.

That's much different for me than it was 20 years ago, when I felt like I had to present myself as pretty smart and spiritually deep. Which, of course, didn't work well! Though I've always tried say, "What you see is what you get" when it comes to presenting myself, I used to be pretty careful about how self-revelatory I was. I still am fairly private in some matters, I guess, but have gotten over the having to be perfect sort of ideal.

I'm stuck on this reply in particular, about one thing you are hesitant to tell other Quakers about yourself:

On the one hand, given what seems to be a common intersection between the secular world and contemporary Quakerism, I'm personally not surprised to learn that you "cuss too much."

On the other hand, if the perception you have of how others experience you is that you are... virtuous... morally superior...? (insert superlative adjective here), then it makes sense that there may be some trepidation in "getting off your own pedestal." Transparency, as you put it, helps with that, sure, and cursing can let someone know you have feelings and frustrations like the rest of us.

What I'm curious to know is, do you struggle to be seen and known as a "peer" within your meeting? Do you already experience a sense of "being known in that which is eternal," or is it something you yearn for? What gets in the way of being known deeply, and/or what seems to help?

Well, Liz, I'm not sure what others' experience of me is -- virtuous or not. I have certainly never consciously tried to set myself up in such a way that people might think I am "morally superior." If I have, it's a failing that I regret.

Somebody, recently, told me that they (and some others) considered me a weighty Friend. That thought really unnerved me -- so much so that I even hesitate to mention it. I don't see myself that way and it's not out of any false humility. I am well aware of my inadequacies of faith and practice. I am no paragon of piety and, while I hopefully am growing toward God, I am well aware that I've a long way left on that journey.

One of my greatest joys is that, in our little worship group, I'm considered just one member there, no more and no less important than any other. I hope, as a minister of writing (in particular), that I offer helpful words of spiritual significance, but if I do it's because the Spirit has worked in and through those words and they come through no virtue of my own.

One thing that I think is an obstacle of being known deeply, especially within the context of the faithful community, is the issue of trust. Transparency requires a certain level of trust even at its most basic level.

I think to be known deeply requires a deep level of trust, the sort of trust that is probably developed best in smaller worship-sharing groups than larger faith communities. Thus I feel pretty free to be completely transparent at the Friends in Fellowship group of 10-15 of us who meeting regularly, but less so at the local Friends meeting that I've attended (depending on where I lived at the time) off and on for almost 30 years (gosh am I that old????).

So trust, and enough spiritual maturity to finally realize it's not all about me (or even mostly about me), helps me be known.

Q. Given how much the secular world has crept into our Quaker faith--attending to busy schedules; watching the clock towards the "end" of Meeting for Worship; individualism; etc.--what two or three things of Quakerism might you wish would creep into the secular world?

I do wish that the idea of slowness would infect the secular world.

It seems to me that Quakerism, when done well, is faith going slow -- both literally and figuratively. Time is not of the essence in quite the same way in a Quaker meeting as at the local community church. We take time to slow our thoughts and souls and hearts. As we do so, we become more attentive to the life around us -- spiritual life, communal life, physical life. I think that's a good thing.

We're a sort of spiritual version of the "slow food" movement. Slow soul food -- perhaps that should be our marketing slogan. If we could ever decide to market!

I hope the answers are okay. I tried to keep 'em short since it's a blog. They were really good and fun to wrestle with.

I hope to meet you in person some day.

Friends,
Brent

I trust we'll meet someday, somewhere--most likely at a Convergent Friends dinner or panel discussion! And again, thanks, Brent, for the opportunity to be part of this exchange.

Now off I go to read the other bloggers' posts who have interviewed Brent!

Blessings,
Liz

RELATED POSTS:

I N T E R V I E W S
Wess' interview
Lovin' Life Liz's interview
Shawna's interview
Robin's first post for her interview, posted over several entries
Brent himself has posted an interview with Jo Morgan, since Jo no longer blogs

O T H E R
Brent Bill's own page about his book Sacred Compass
An audio clip from the book's introduction
Podcasts that are read from the book: there is a link at this post of Brent's
Books about corporate discernment

What's on my nightstand

Since it seems like I'm too busy working on Gathering-related work, I haven't had a chance to consider writing anything substantive for The Good Raised Up. But there is plenty of good Quaker blog reading out there as it is.

Speaking of reading, here's what is currently on my nightstand--both what I've been reading and what I'm looking forward to reading.

Reading materials for Quakerism 101

Fellow Quaker blogger Paul L has been leading a group of about 30 Friends through 7 sessions of Quakerism 101. Since I have not had the opportunity to attend other Q101 groups that Paul has led in the past, I decided to participate in this one. Half of the reason is because of Paul himself and his earnestness to talk about, live into, and share with others the principles of Quakerism; the other half is because of the "non-traditional" reading list he created for this Q101, which includes:

Lloyd Lee Wilsons' Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order

Tom Gates' pamphlet Members One of Another

Michael Birkel's Silence and Witness

Thomas Hamm's The Quakers in America

Samuel Caldwell's essay The Inward Light: How Quakerism Unites Universalism and Christianity.

I'm sure I'm leaving off a handful of other things we read, in full or in part. It's been worth it just to have reading assignments each week from these great books and well known Friends.

UPDATE, Third Month 2007: Paul L has now written about his recent experience teaching Quakerism 101 (scroll down about halfway in his post).

Current reading

Over the past month, I have begun making my way through two things:

Marcus Borg's popular Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time

and

Daniel Seeger's 1991 pamphlet put out by Quaker Universalist Fellowship, called The Boundaries of Our Faith.

I wanted to read something by Marcus Borg because he is scheduled to be one of the evening plenary speakers this summer at FGC's 2007 Gathering. I figure this is as good a time as any to read something by the guy, and I feel as though I've come far enough in my own journey with Christian Friends that I might do okay dealing with a whole book about Jesus.

Daniel Seeger's pamphlet apparently grew out of some turbulent times in the late 1980s/early 1990s within New York Yearly Meeting in response to Friends' pursuit of practicing "Goddess spirituality," Paganism, etc. I'm hoping that his pamphlet can shed some light on recent and current concerns within the Religious Society of Friends about topics such as Quaker sweatlodges, nontheism among Friends, &c.

In addition to these Quaker writings, I want to spend some "quality time" with a brief statement that came out of North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative) and its Ministry & Oversight Gathering held in 2006, about the threads that make up the fabric of Conservative Friends. It's got lots to chew on, given how short a piece it is, and the document can be downloaded as a pdf file if you're interested.

Looking ahead

Once I cross off Marcus Borg and Daniel Seeger, I hope to dig into a few shorter things:

One thing is something I just came across on the internet--I can't remember how I found it: A Brief Synopsis of the Principles and Testimonies of the Religious Society of Friends. But read the fine print: Adopted by the yearly meetings of New England, Canada, Ohio, Western, Iowa, Kansas, and North Carolina in 1912. Last weekend I happen to have met the Friend who posted this umpteen-page synopsis on the internet, and he is a Friend from North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative), so I've got some incentive to take a look at this document.

Then there's my dear friend Michael Wajda who just had a pamphlet printed through Pendle Hill, Expectant Listening: Finding God's Thread of Guidance.

That pamphlet will be in addition to another pamphlet I discovered by Thomas Hamm, Opening the Quaker Time Capsule. Just in case I get bored or bogged down, I can always find another diversion.

(You can see why Quaker Books of FGC is always happy to hear from me.)

Blessings,
Liz