Tag Archives ⇒ worship

Becoming one in worship

December 1, 2022
· Martin Kelley

An excerpt from my intro­duc­tion to the Decem­ber Friends Jour­nal issue on Atone­ment:

When I first sit down on a meet­ing­house bench on a Sun­day morn­ing, I’m any­thing but focused. My mind is aswirl in fam­i­ly and work to-dos, scenes from books I’ve read or shows I’ve watched, extend­ed fam­i­ly dra­mas, bills, or crises. If I’ve for­got­ten to turn off my phone, a stream of vibra­tions will nag me, each buzz demand­ing my attention.

If I con­scious­ly work to set­tle down — and am lucky or blessed — I can sink into the imper­fect silence and feel at-one with the gath­er­ing wor­ship. The sounds draw me clos­er: the rustling of Friends shift­ing soft­ly in their seats, the crack­ling of the fire­place on cool morn­ings, the wind out­side blow­ing leaves against the porch door. If we’re for­tu­nate, the offered min­istry that morn­ing will speak to our con­di­tions and bring us deep­er still, to the feet of the divine Teacher and Com­forter. We may not get there every week, but when we do, we feel at-one with one anoth­er and with a high­er power.

Reinventing Pendle Hill’s morning worship

May 19, 2020
· Martin Kelley

It seems I tend to for­get to share some of the work I’m most involved with here on the Quak­er Ranter email list and blog. In April I inter­viewed Fran­cis­co Bur­gos and Traci Hjelt Sul­li­van about Pen­dle Hill’s Zoom wor­ship. I’ve writ­ten before that I’ve been par­tic­i­pat­ing a cou­ple of times a week and it fas­ci­nates me. Every­one’s doing Zoom wor­ship, of course, but this one is dai­ly and com­plete­ly open to the pub­lic. It has man­aged to hold onto a dis­tinct sense of place.

Here’s a quote from Fran­cis­co on how the wor­ship mir­rors in-person wor­ship yet has dis­tinct challenges.

This is an ongo­ing learn­ing expe­ri­ence. At any month­ly meet­ing, you will have First Days in which the wor­ship expe­ri­ence is like a pop­corn meet­ing, with a lot of min­istry. Oth­er times, it is com­plete­ly silent. The online expe­ri­ence will be sim­i­lar to that. We are work­ing to find out what resources and sup­port struc­ture we can make avail­able to peo­ple. Some peo­ple real­ize that they have a stage with 140 peo­ple and feel the need to speak not just long, but very often. How can we encour­age Friends to sea­son the mes­sage that they are receiving? 


Transcending Geography

Tran­scend­ing Geography 

Rein­vent­ing Pen­dle Hill’s morn­ing worship.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

We don’t worship silence

May 1, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith:

There are a lot of Quak­ers for whom the qual­i­ty of their wor­ship is mea­sured by the qual­i­ty of the silence there­in, to the point that “dis­rup­tions” — whether they come from chil­dren, late­com­ers, folks who are not neu­rotyp­i­cal, or folks who don’t com­port them­selves in the man­ner of the white mid­dle class — are regard­ed as annoy­ances. This is not just a mistake. 

We don’t wor­ship silence

Are Quakers Christian?

April 15, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son takes on one of the trick­i­er ques­tions of mod­ern lib­er­al Quakerism:

I am going to make a bold apol­o­gy for a clar­i­fied lib­er­al Quak­er iden­ti­ty that retains its roots and recov­ers wor­ship in the spir­it of Christ, but yet releas­es us from the ortho­dox Chris­t­ian pre­oc­cu­pa­tions that no longer speak to so many unpro­grammed Friends. 

Are Quak­ers Christian?

Liberty of the Spirit

March 28, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Every once in awhile a Quak­er­S­peak video comes along that reminds me why I was blown away when I first got to know Quak­ers. Ayesha Imani talks about the first time she wor­shiped with Friends: 

I thought I had wan­dered into a group of peo­ple who actu­al­ly believed that God was able to speak direct­ly to them. I remem­ber say­ing, “Oh my God, this is Pen­te­cost!” I couldn’t believe that these peo­ple think God is actu­al­ly gll­l­l­l­lo­ing to speak to them! I’m down for this. This is where I belong. 

Most of the Quak­ers read­ing this can prob­a­bly guess where this is going – she pret­ty quick­ly got a les­son in the unwrit­ten norms against exu­ber­ance at many Quak­er meet­ings, the rules that pre­vent many expres­sions of wor­ship. Ayesha’s Black and many of the stric­tures on behav­ior are pret­ty middle-class white. But a lot of this isn’t real­ly about race. I’ve been led to do some very non-ordinary things at uptight Quak­er meet­ings and feel­ing incred­i­bly self-conscious over it. When I came to Friends, I loved the idea of the rad­i­cal spon­te­nae­ity of our wor­ship (any­one can min­is­ter any­time!) and the life it called us to but in prac­tice we often are crea­tures of habit, to our detri­ment. I love Ayesha’s talk of “exper­i­ment­ing with free­dom” and the “lib­er­ty of the spir­it.” I real­ize my sto­ries of non-ordinariness are all over a decade old. I wish I felt more of that lib­er­ty again.

How Does Cul­ture Influ­ence Quak­er Worship?