Four themes emerged from the conversations that Ministry and Worship held with meeting attenders and members: First, the centrality of silence and the need to continue to learn and deepen its uses. Second, help the children, older and younger, to develop spiritually and as members (not just fringe) of the meeting community. Third, build the meeting community, welcoming and engaging newcomers and each other. Fourth, mind the transformation from intellectual to spiritual.
1. Silence and Meeting for Worship – The center Silence, our most profound response to God, is the medium to a slower, quieter self and the means to being present at our center. It enables us to listen deeply, intuit the feeling underlying a message, and provide solace and healing. In silence, we hear more clearly what we are called to say and how to say it in the context of previous messages, building a corporate understanding and contributing to the possibility of a gathered meeting.
Our attempts to listen may cause us to question ourselves. One Friend noted, ‘Sometimes I am led to wonder ‘Why?’ when a message is bothersome.’ Another lamented that at times worship is not so much a shared experience as an experience focused on oneself.
We also wonder under what circumstances the person serving as Head of Meeting should speak up. Some of us want what we find inappropriate cautioned against quickly. Others want us to grow more tolerant and robust by sustaining worship despite distracting statements or noise. Early Friends kept meeting even after the authorities came into their worship places, overturning furniture and pushing them around. Friends simply went outside and worshipped there. We believe that we have made progress in developing a more robust tolerance for noise when the children come into meeting, people arrive late, someone goes out, or the door is open.
2. Children’s spiritual development – Work in progress We are concerned that we may not be serving our children well. How should we develop their understanding and appreciation for the fact that that we worship in silence? This fundamental idea must be passed along to our young Friends as part of their heritage.
As a meeting, we continue to be concerned about losing touch with our older children and youth. There are notable exceptions of individuals who work generously with our children. In general, however, we adults are not reaching out adequately to provide experiences that are satisfying in themselves and also build the children’s sense of what it means to be a Friend. While we perceive progress in intergenerational contact, we also see the need for proactive outreach to families.
Some suggested activities that have helped teens to be engaged and grow: reading, regular social action (e.g., feeding people), social protest, and workcamps. Other possibilities include involving teens in committees, providing clerking experiences, and urging children to share a joy or sorrow at the end of meeting. The activity lists are,
however, of limited use if we do not use them to demonstrate to the children we want them with us.
As one Friend said, ‘While we do have young people who are engaged with us, we older members and attenders need to ask ourselves what we may do to reach out more effectively to our youth groups [so] they may come to know how much we value their participation in Meeting for Worship. We need also to make it clear that we do want to be available to them as they go through the tough transition from teen years with all the challenges that those years entail. Here there may be openings for some to step forward with a topic or Biblical story for study that might well be examined and thought through in discussions with our young members.’
3. Building our community – Welcoming newcomers and each other To strengthen our community, we must open ourselves generously as in the ‘cheerfully’ part of George Fox’s admonition about ‘answering to that of God’ in everyone.
Some newcomers say they sense the caring in BFM for one another and for social justice. We also see that while, at first, newcomers are greeted, we may neglect them when they are no longer completely new, but still not easy joining the circles that form during coffee hour, let alone participating in the business of the meeting. We need to make sure everyone is engaged in our community. One Friend said that he had felt the need to share experience with a group so he wouldn’t feel alone. As he expressed this he evoked, unknowingly, the practice of worship sharing.
The work we must engage in is consistent with our common desire for exchanges that are genuine, open, and thoughtful. Our empathy became engaged and we were challenged as a Friend said ‘We are all trying to grow and all need help to do so, even the awkward speaker who talks too much or too strangely. Keep him/her here rather than pushing them away. Help her/him.’ Another said ‘we are responsible for the corporate state of the meeting – must support it in many ways so it stays healthy and grows (perhaps in numbers, but spiritual growth is primary) – welcome others, especially families.’
One worrisome response voiced continuing discomfort with the minute we sent in response to a 2008 request from BYM for input about its relationship with FUM. We prepared our response after many sessions of various sorts (e.g., worship-sharing, informative, threshing) and after reaching a sense of the meeting that our advice was to end the formal relationship. Nonetheless, this Friend said that ‘those who were strident’ held sway over the outcome. There are those in the meeting with whom this statement resonated. Others found the decision to be rightly ordered and derived from a process that they described as gathered and profound. The worrisome aspects of this discomfort include the fact that some Friends did not feel able to voice their concerns either at the time the minute was being considered or since then, until speaking about the spiritual state of our meeting. Does this apparent reticence suggest a lack of trust on this issue, and perhaps others, that we need to address?
As we reflect further, we recognize times when we were generous and our giving was
welcome. One Friend spoke of the concern for him expressed when he was dealing with a stressful home situation. He was touched and very appreciative. Friends also were grateful for activities engaged in by BFM as a community, such as potlucks, the Spring Fling, and Catoctin weekends. Activities like these help new and old become or stay involved in the meeting community, feeling they belong to something substantial.
One Friend celebrated the meeting’s rich and complicated sense of community as cherished in DC, where such community is rare.’ Another that the meeting community ‘allows and encourages folks to leave past failings behind and strive to be the best they can be.’ Others spoke of an atmosphere that is not too theistic and where spirituality does not depend on dogma, a community and the individuals in it that are not self-important, and the practice of sharing of a spiritual search or journey.
4. From intellectual to spiritual – Listen with all you have The question of what is ‘spiritual’ was raised several times. Two descriptions were quite thoughtful. First that ‘a spiritual person is peaceful, well-centered, and a careful listener at peace with self.’ Second, Quaker history emphasizes ‘the passage in Galatians enumerating the ‘fruits of the spirit.’ Teaching those to children should show them how to handle difficult others – it is a source of power.’
One Friend offered this: ‘I can understand, and sometimes even feel upset as well, about current crises or events but I need and want to deepen my spiritual development and this brief time on First Day is special/rare—I need and want the solace and guidance of reaching within to listen for God’s guidance, especially when I am struggling with some of my own work and activities.’
As we discussed ways to develop spiritually and to apply spiritual gifts, we returned to our first theme. Humans are inherently spiritual and we must relate to each other openly. We must consider each offered message through what it may mean to its bearer. The responsibility to do so stems from our belief that one’s spiritual center can find the best in others since it is the seat of the inner light. The attempt may open an opportunity to take the message deeper. That is another responsibility. It is also a form of welcoming born of a generous energy that transforms our openness and that of seekers who come to us into insight, focus, and, perhaps, centered depth. The extent to which we offer such welcome is an index of the health of our generosity, vulnerability, and vitality.
In conclusion, part of being a Friend is growing in the light. We cannot grow unless we use our life force energy to reach out, cheerfully and deliberately to others in the world. As we progress, our life force may grow palpable to others, resonant and compelling. Our giving may become the practice of generosity–constantly providing assistance. Children are naturally vital and open. In time, these gifts may energize their acquisition of insights, generosity, and focus. Such growth may be expedited if adults, using our own generosity, model our spiritual gifts in ways the children may observe, understand, and apply. And we may regain childlike delight as one of our resources.
Our clearest message, this year, was a powerful desire to deepen our spirituality. In worship we are engaged in ways that can move us from insight to depth of understanding, from focus to centeredness, from giving on occasion to being generous by nature, and – strange as it may seem – from being open sometimes to accepting and then embracing the vulnerability that comes as a necessary complement to openness and which is required to fully realize our potential. As these transformations unfold, our insights accumulate until we reach a point where depth is our milieu. Our ability to focus also deepens as we grow more capable of finding our center, the place where our ‘That of God’ is, and that connects us to others and to the universe. Truly centered, we stand in the light rid of roles, cares, pretense, and vanity. We can only approach such a place in the company of our beloved friends.
