What are Quakers doing when they sit in silence on Sunday morning? These 7 Friends share their answers.

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Transcript:

Faith Kelley
I’m a little bit of an overachiever, so I usually come in and I’m like, “I’m going to worship now. I’m going to sit here and be the best worshipper ever, and this is going to be it.” And I really have to let that go.

What Do Quakers Do in Meeting for Worship?

Peterson Toscano
I go to Quaker Meeting and I just let everything open up. I think of it as this wonderful scan disk of my hard drive, helping me clear out all of the gaps and be still and lay down things that are bothering me that really aren’t that important, just getting me to a place of stability and clarity. It’s been really important to me.

Preparing the Soil

Arthur Larrabee
Thinking about Meeting for Worship on Sunday, the first thing that comes to mind is to share that Meeting for Worship is a much more satisfactory experience if some spiritual preparation has been done in advance. The metaphor for me is “preparing the soil,” so the soil is ready for the message or for the seed.

Kristina KeefePerry
It feels like it is very important to be part of a group of people who are creating a container of deepening worship that is already in process as other Friends arrive.

Centering

Tenaja Henson
I remember my first Meeting for Worship when I was older that I could remember was really difficult because I wanted to talk or play a game or go run around.

Arthur Larrabee
So often the energy of life is a topsyturvy energy. It’s energy going in many different directions with many different pressures, being pulled hither and yon, and it’s centered in many many different places and not in one place.

Faith Kelley
I usually need the first 10, 15, 20, 30 – however long it takes – minutes to quiet myself.

Deborah Shaw
In the Meeting for Worship in the silence I am trying to center myself, which means to lay aside distractions of the world, and to listen carefully to the inward teacher, the inward guide, the inner Christ, that within me which is within me and also beyond me.

Faith Kelley
And for me that sort of involves that narrative voice that I sort of have going in the back of my head all the time, just sort of letting that go. It’s not so much about quieting it but just releasing it. The more I sort of try to like, stuff it down, the louder it gets and so it’s just sort of about letting it go. And that seems to make space for God to fill up.

Arthur Larrabee
There’s a quote that means a lot to me from Thomas Kelly’s essay, “The Light Within”, which is found within his volume A Testament of Devotion:

“Deep within us all, there is an amazing sanctuary of the soul: a holy place, a divine center, a speaking voice to which we may continuously return.”

That describes a centered place for me. This deep inner sanctuary of the soul. And I find meaning and value in trying to get there, making my way back home. Making my way back home.

Developing a Practice

Kristina KeefePerry
Thich Nhat Hanh, who is of course a Buddhist not a Quaker, talks about meditation as a process of sort of “tuning into the smile channel,” and somehow that description was very helpful for me. Let’s tune into the Spirit channel! Where in the body – in my body – do I perceive the Spirit moving among us?

Read more: http://quakerspeak.com/whatquakersd...
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The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.