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What Happens in a Quaker Meeting? Part 2: Ministry

What Happens in a Quaker Meeting? Part 2: Ministry

Last updated on: January 24, 2009 at 12:30 pm by Cat Chapin-Bishop

What Happens in a Quaker Meeting? Part 2: Ministry 2009-01-24T12:30:00-04:00 Cat Chapin-Bishop

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Continued from Part 1: Worship

As I wait in the Light, sometimes images rise. Perhaps it is because of the years I spent doing Pagan trance journey–or perhaps it is because of some quirk of my mind, or something inherent in Spirit itself, for after all, most spiritual writings are rich with imagery, but when I am deep in worship, pictures form in my inner eye more reliably than words.

Some images repeat themselves. I often find myself filled with the memory of the sea of Light from C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

And one by one everybody on board drank. And for a long time they were all silent. They felt almost too well and strong to bear it; and presently they began to notice another result… [T]he light grew no less-if anything, it increased–but they could bear it. They could look straight up at the sun without blinking. They could see more light than they had ever seen before.

Light and water, of course, both have strong spiritual connotations within Christianity. But they do in Pagan mythologies as well, and at times I find myself contemplating a different source of water; often, I feel as though I am sitting before a fountain (sometimes it is a well) that flows over the root of a great tree, the World Tree, where sometimes I have spoken with a Lady who spins on a great flax wheel.

Sometimes, images of that Tree, of of a forest of trees, or of a hillside covered with woods, fill my mind.

But more often, images of water fill my mind. Sometimes it is the White River, that flowed behind my house in Vermont, roaring under a bridge in flood stage. Sometimes it is a small, silver stream.

Sometimes it is just the overwhelming sense of water, living water, and the wonderment of being able to drink our fill–and the different kind of wonder from realizing that this is always so, and yet we allow ourselves to suffer so much thirst in this life for lack of seeking it, this living water.

So I will be centered in worship, as open to the Light as I can be, and as little technique-ing onto it as I can manage. And then, sometimes, Spirit will pull me in deeper. And sometimes a message will rise. It might be within me; it might be from another member of the meeting.

Sometimes someone in meeting has a message, and they stand up and speak into the silence. And generally, even if the message seems to be more about their own life and their own ideas than not, if they have been centered down into that Light too, then they speak enough truth that their words will pull me deeper. Even the reflected Light is strong.

J–, a member of our meeting, has sometimes said that spoken ministry is, to him, more often a distraction than not. That, normally, it’s what is happening in the silence that brings him closer to God. And J–is one of those weighty Friends who you can see almost at a glance are the real deal. When he is in meeting, we are deeper; when he speaks, even if the message is not for me or makes no immediate sense to me, he speaks from such a deep and grounded place that, again, we all, as a meeting, go deeper.

That’s what the best messages do, of course.

But sometimes those messages are pretty clearly from the “meeting for good ideas” (as opposed to the meeting for worship) and that can be a little distracting. And there’s a kind of balancing act that I do with those messages, where I sort of wobble between trying to hold the message and the speaker gently and tenderly in my heart, and remember how precious this person is to the meeting even if they do sometimes wander into their heads in worship, and I just love them and listen to them. And that’s a good thing. But at other times I fall into the trap of sort of trying to technique them into giving “better” ministry, by not so much holding them in the Light as trying to somewhat willfully yank them into it in “prayer.” And that’s not so good–a waste of time at best, and a form of spiritual self-puffery in general.

But when I manage to stay centered, I can hold a from-the-head message in love inside myself in the same way I can hold the sometimes clamorous noises our kids make outside or a family might make if they arrive late for worship. ‘Cause, you know, kids are loud, people do bustle, and it’s really all part of the sound of a meeting that’s humming along, filled with life. The sounds of the sheep in the pasture outside–Mt. Toby really does have sheep in a pasture just outside–help me to center, and on a good day, so do even the less-spiritually led messages in meeting.

It helps that our meeting is rarely “popcorn”–that is, we almost never have a meeting where it’s one message after another, with barely enough time for one speaker to sit before another rises… let alone time for my spirit to center down into the Light between messages. I appreciate the discipline we show as a community, and I’m very grateful that I’ve been learning how to be a Quaker amid what seems to be a good moment in the cycles of our spiritual life as a meeting.

Sometimes a message rises for the meeting in me. That is scarey and wonderful… The scarey… well, that’s mostly because I know myself. As any reader of this blog can attest, my verbal cup runneth over, the the risk of outrunning my Guide or speaking from enthusiasm rather than a true leading is, in me, very, very great. I know myself and my failings well, and this is one of them.

So, when I get an urge to rise and speak, I do try hard to practice discernment with some seriousness. Not only do I work hard to try to discern whether or not what I am sensing is a message (as opposed to one of Cat’s Patented Brilliant Ideas (tm)) but also whether I am taking something that is meant for me to ponder in my heart, maybe for a long, quiet, private time, and imagining it is a message for the meeting because I just want it to be.

I do sometimes want to give a message to the meeting for all kinds of reasons and in all kinds of ways that are much more about me and my needs than the Spirit. Sometimes, I find myself wanting to be thought well of. I want to impress, and I’m feeling impressive, and, well, that’s not a good reason to rise with a message. So I then go to work to set that aside.

Then there are the times that I am feeling so joyfully caught up in the worship that I just want to jump up, like a puppy onto the legs of the guests, and share my sense of the wonderfulness of it all. That’s dandy, but there’s some real ego in thinking that I have a special mission to tell other Friends how good the worship is today. I mean, if Spirit wants me to rant and rave to the other bathers about how clear and cool the water is, that’s one thing… but to assume that no one can figure that out for myself, or that words (much as I love them) are the best way of responding to those feelings of joy and gratitude in myself… well, that’s pretty much crap, and I know it. But the temptation to jump up and gush is sometimes incredibly powerful.

And maybe sometimes that upwelling of enthusiasm is the message. I do have a passion–I so want for every single person who attends meeting for worship to drink deeply from that fountain of drinkable Light. I so want for us never, never to settle for anything less, because the direct encounter with Spirit is so magnificent that to settle for a pale, intellectual shadow of it strikes me as a terrible tragedy.

And it does happen. Sometimes, people get lost, and wind up in a meeting for Thinking Good Thoughts, or for liberal meditation, or…

And sometime that puppy-like joy at being in worship has been shaped into a message. But sometimes, I know that holding the joy in silence is my real ministry to my meeting.

There are a handful of members of my meeting whose silence is a richer ministry than any words.

Sometimes it seems to me that I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about vocal ministry, and about what is or is not appropriate vocal ministry. As if ministry were the point, when, really, the point is the worship–the communion with God.

And the faithfulness. But when you’ve really been there, held close in that Spirit, faithfulness becomes simple: “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I say this, and yet, I expect I will always struggle against my nature in some ways. I am, by nature, voluble. I am, by nature, impulsive.

All the members of my meeting should be grateful that I blog. An awful lot of what I blessedly do not speak in meeting winds up here.

But what happens when an image takes on words and I begin to feel the need to share it with my meeting?

As I say, I have a hard time, at times, sorting out my joy and a message that is meant to be spoken. So I wrestle with that a good long time, testing first to see if writing it isn’t really a better response. Or perhaps I can share this nudging feeling during our after-worship meeting. (That’s a great gift to me when I am struggling to know whether or not I am supposed to speak!)

I try not to watch the clock. Often, at this point, it’s pretty far along in worship, and I know that the kids will enter soon from First Day School, and I wonder if the message is for them–if it is a message–and I get nervous about not speaking and having the meeting end without having spoken (which feels just terrible when, indeed, it was a message that I was supposed to share).

I try not to rough out the forming message in my head. I do love to string one word after another in a sequence, and I fear that, if I let myself, the sheer momentum of words might propel me to my feet.

I try to set all the wondering aside, and stay in the calm, bright center where the Something that knows can guide me.

Then, sometimes, I feel a restlessness taking hold of me. Sometimes it has felt like a bubble in my chest, expanding and filling me up and making me lighter, and pulling me to my feet.

Other times, it’s less clear, that urge to rise. I find myself certain–yes! I need to stand and speak!–and then the sense of certainty fades, and I settle again, only to find the same restlessness building again. Sometimes it takes a few false starts, and then–surprise!–I’m up.

Oh. Well!

When I find myself on my feet, I try to remember the advice I have been given about speaking “without preamble or apology” and also that it is not my job to shape the narrative or craft it any any way. My only job, I remind myself, is to try to stay close to that original root. Oh, yes–and to try to remember to speak loudly and clearly for the benefit of the hard of hearing. Happily, either instinct or Spirit tends to take care of that, as I often find myself with pretty watery knees at that point.

Often I reach out my hand to touch the back of the bench to steady myself a bit. Then, too, it reminds me of an experience of worship I have had at times, of how Spirit flows like a powerful river around us at all times, and all we need to do, if we only knew it, to know that experientially, is to reach out one gentle hand… and touch the railing of the bridge over those waters, on which each present moment rests.

All the universe is quaking, and in worship, I feel it rising up through me from the soles of my feet and the tips of my fingers, touching that wooden bench.

My eyes are closed. I try not to compose my words, but to get out of their way. It’s not like drawing down and speaking as a priestess from trance, though–it is me speaking, but I try to speak only what is pressing against me to be said.

If the words stop, I try to sit down right away. I try, too, not to link whatever is flowing with any associated images or thoughts or nifty associations that may have been linked to the message as it formed in me, during reverie (as opposed to worship)

I’ve failed at this, once or twice. I really don’t care for how it feels, to have warped a message, in trying to shape it!

I’ve also had the experience at least once of delivering all that was given me to say, and sitting down, and having a sudden feeling of tension, almost frustration, rise in me as I realize, Wait! That wasn’t all there was! Something got left out! without really knowing what it was that was missing… only to hear, moments later, another member of the meeting rise and speak the part of the message that, somehow, wasn’t there in my words, but was meant.

I love giving vocal ministry. I love it for its own sake, and I suspect that love I have for it is something that could throw me badly off balance. I can feel the tug of things like wanting to possess the Spirit I sense in meeting, or to make speaking in meeting be a reflection of my specialness instead of about Spirit. These things tug at me like currents in a river I’m trying to ford.

But there are other worries that tug at me, too–things like the possibility of thinking of vocal ministry as the point of worship, rather than the other way around. And I worry about getting it wrong, blowing the discernment (I’m certainly far from perfect!) and failing to be faithful.

I even have a sense–and this comes from my experience leading Pagan worship–of the price of success: allow Spirit to flow through you freely, and you can become, for a shorter or a longer time, a pretty charismatic and attractive figure. And Pagans, at least, dearly love to shove those who show signs of charisma onto pedestals. Pedestals are not only tippy places to stand, and good targets for the disaffected, they also tend to raise your feet dangerously above the ground that nourishes you.

I’ve seen Quaker ministry that might just have been powerful enough to light the city of Philadelphia for a year; I don’t envy those ministers who delivered it the task of staying faithful to that much Light!

Nonetheless, I love giving vocal ministry.

I love the intimacy of it.

I love the sheer joyful sensuousness of letting the Spirit roll. Virtue, vice, or simple creaturely reality, I love the sense of the direct touch of God that comes in vocal ministry.

(Personally, I’m hoping to get better at finding that touch, and staying centered in it, in the silent ministry, too–that of worship, deeply and fully held. From where I sit, that’s where the Big Quaker Boys and Girls go play.)

To be continued.

Photo by Sam Minter.

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