Becoming one in worship

December 1, 2022

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

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? 

We don’t worship silence

May 1, 2019

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

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?