What happens when you try to sit in silence for an hour? These seven Quakers discuss the challenge of being alone with one’s thoughts in Quaker worship, and the opportunity for grace and true communion on the other side.
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Discussion Questions:
- How do you describe what happens to you when you sit in silence, either in a meeting for worship, in meditation, or just otherwise?
- What is difficult about being still and silent? What value do you find in it?
Transcript:
Zac Dutton
I’m bothered when people say “I don’t like to sit silently because I go crazy.”
I want to respond by saying, “Good. That’s good. You should go crazy.” If you’re not going crazy, you’re not actually worshiping.
Quaker Worship Part 1: The Challenge of Sitting in Silence
Abby Murray-Nikkel
I remember the first time I went to a Quaker Meeting at Guilford, I enjoyed it for the first part when someone was speaking, and then when I got to the silence, I didn’t know what to do. It’s just a really different way of worshiping and of being with people than what I have experienced in other life.
Rachel Ernst Stahlhut
It can be definitely challenging in our society of distractions, and it can be uncomfortable and it can be new.
Zac Dutton
I’m saying, “Oh, that’s anxiety. That’s utter terrified feelings. Oh, that’s me going off on some thought binge that’s going to lead down a really scary rabbit hole.” and, “Oh, this is where I am right now!” and just noticing those things.
But then eventually, if it’s a good worship, the observation, the mindfulness sort of transitions into an awareness of not merely my thoughts, not merely my body, but where I am sitting, the people around me. The fact that this is an artificial space that I’m in and that I’m part of a much bigger universe.
Su Penn
My sense that I’m in worship is almost a very physical sensation of being heavier than usual, of sinking into the chair. The chair feels different to me than it does when I’m just sitting and chatting or sitting and working at a computer or something and there’s this very strong stillness that is through my body and that also takes my mind with it.
“Like busting through the sound barrier”
Niyonu Spann
The silence has come to feel very close to the metaphor that Friends have used of a river or of a body of water that we’re all immersed in, and so somehow it feels like the connecting, the connector, the blood running through the body. That’s how I experience the silence now. It’s very alive and very rich.
AJ Mendoza
I remember the first time during open worship where I felt like I was able to touch the thing that Quakers have spoken to since the 1600s. It was like busting through the sound barrier. When you’re like “poof!” That has kept me coming back.
Callid Keefe-Perry
I’ve been in Meeting for Worship that people have called covered or people have called gathered. The feeling of the Holy Spirit is present. It is a different feeling than mere excitement or anxiety or joy or drugs. I’ve been in that world too and it’s not that. It’s a different thing. And I would name that as the Holy Spirit.
“A deep sense of unity and compassion”
Su Penn
And it’s not that I’m not thinking, but I’m not paying much attention to what I’m thinking. It’s not bothering me. It’s like a background noise. But this sense of stillness and heaviness is just all through me.
Zac Dutton
The awesome thing is that you’re doing this with other people and feeling crazy and vulnerable and weird and broken with others and there’s also this deep sense of unity and compassion that can emerge, when everyone else is also gotten themselves on the wave, because we see where we’re beautiful, as one body, even though we’re all broken.
Callid Keefe-Perry
We have, in those moments, a sense of what it means to be fully gathered as a people. There are tiny slivers of the kingdom that we become present to in the Meeting for Worship where people are not merely emotional but people see each other and themselves and hear the world as it was intended to be heard, as it was ordered in the gospel.
We love our brothers and sisters as full humans without those demons of sexism and racism and self-defeat, body image problems. We are present in that moment—even if it’s a tiny micro-moment—to the way that things are supposed to be ordered.
Rachel Ernst Stahlhut
It’s when I find energy. I leave Meeting for Worship energized to live, and I leave Meeting with a sense of clarity. It is a spiritual discipline, and it can offer surprising gifts.
What Friends shared here is inspiring — another great piece!
It would have been cool to hear some younger people’s voices — kids, middle school-age Friends. Meeting for Worship is for them, too, and they have beauty and wisdom to share from their experiences in the silence.
Thanks Jon and Friends Journal for this topic. I always enjoy these films which are a touchstone in a busy week…
I’d like to share where my thoughts went on this one. I wished (as I started to watch this) that I could share this video with people who are athletes, people who have type A personalities, people who value and create physical strength in our world but get burned out and need to know how to rest… (SOMETIMES I think of those as the Earth element folks, instead of the Ether and Air folks like myself). I know someone like this, and I want to help her.
But this video as it is feels only for insiders or people who are already liberal Quakers or at least mystics of some sort.
What instead? It feels like the last speaker started to go in that direction I’d wanted, and that maaaybe what would as well would be someone sharing more about the structure of the silent time, a structure that seems to organically rise, given by the Divine… or hearing from people of specific faith structures / orientations, such as a Christian or a Buddhist or a Jewish person… somehow breaking this down into language available to people who value Spirit but tend to focus on Spirit much more integrally attached to the Physical experience….folks who are not liberal Quaker”insiders” or mystics.
Earth qualities include structure, dense nutrition, “something solid you can grab on to”, etc. I think it’s easy for us to think that if we don’t need to include that because if people need that they aren’t Quakers/mystics or aren’t liberal Quakers anyway…. but it’s really not the case.
I believe that it’s just a missed opportunity to reach more people with this good “Gospel” when we don’t do the hard work (for mystics) of “pinning it down.” We don’t need to pin down what God or Light can do, but it would seem pretty great if we were willing to show that God / Light is doing very specific things with our silence… and not “fireworks” specific, but Solid, grounded, manifesting, structure-creating, physically good things…that Light is tangible. Communicate mysticism to an extroverted athlete, I say… Can we maybe? We’ll have created something amazing if we can do that!
Thoughts? I wish I had more to offer on that but I can’t fully see what I’m hoping that will become…just have only a glimpse of it.
Thank you for these video gifts…..lovely, inspiring and very well done.
I have been asked about silent worship several times. I reply by asking if the questioner does or has attended other worship services. If they reply yes them my answer to their question is easy.
Do they connect with every sermon? Does every sermon create a moving spiritual experience? Have they ever been bored and spent the time gazing at others or out the windows? Have they ever dozed off? Without exception, they have answered yes.
It is the same in Meeting. Sometimes I am only sitting for an hour waiting for the time keeper to rise. Sometimes I feel rested and mentally slowed down but no sense of any Gathering. I love the Meetings where my sense of Gathering is so strong that I am startled when everyone rises.
I have seen my wife making notes in her journal and at times I have sat quietly reading my bible. I have seen other members gazing around and usually when our eyes meet we both duck our heads as if we have been caught in some misdemeanor.
I ask, why should it be any different? We react differently to similar situations and sometimes it is not the event that causes this but something in ourselves. Our team may have a win over rival that excites us and next week it will not.
I don’t worry about the times I don’t feel I am sitting in the Light, I cherish the times I do.
What would worry me would be never experiencing it.
Carl
Sometimes people cannot sit still for 60 minutes. One meeting I attended was accomodating and no one seemed to mind if I sat as long as I could and then walked outside until the end of the meeting. However, the meeting in the area I now live has 2 women that yell at people and both of whom appeared angry that I wanted to leave. Both have told me that I could do it if I really wanted to.
Sometimes people have physical reasons that they cannot sit still.
Hi I am moved to comment on the last comment about a person yelling at somebody for getting up. So much of the world is about one person telling another person how they need to behave and I find that very unacceptable no matter what a person‘s does, it is their experience. And I’ll never ( if I’m lucky) understand what difference it makes, in the big picture, what someone ruled by rules, and pettiness says about anything.