When we requested articles for this issue, we received so many responses that there wasn't enough space for them all. Therefore, some will be posted on the NYYM Web site. They will be posted in PDF, so that Friends may print them out.

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Life as Worship

Many of us long for deeper, more powerful worship, worship that guides us, nurtures us, fills us, and prepares us for the week ahead. We often expect this to happen by itself as we walk into meeting for worship on Sunday, or we hope that someone else will be bringing what we need. If we don't get it, many of us come to the conclusion that there is something amiss with our worshiping community.

If our worship is not all that we would hope for, we might want to look first at ourselves.

Our testimony of integrity gives witness to the fact that we have one life, one integrated whole, not a life in meeting for worship and a rest of our lives separate from that worship time. What happens to us in worship is directly related, is integral, to how we have been living the rest of our week. How do we worship throughout our week? How do we practice our faith such that when Sunday rolls around, we have riches to share instead of a barrenness to be filled (we hope, by others)?

I cannot separate quality of worship from the testimony of simplicity. When I make my life too full, my worship suffers. When I am scattered all week, when I am too busy and anxious, when I don't pray enough and abide in a felt sense of God's presence, I come begging to worship. Sometimes others fill me; some times we all go away hungry.

As we are engaged in corporate worship, in this phenomenon we call a monthly meeting or worship group, we need to question what level of commitment we owe to each other to come prepared to worship. If, as Lloyd Lee Wilson asserts (and I agree with him), a worshiping community is a covenant community, in which we support each other in being faithful, what does that commitment imply for what we bring to worship? What obligation do we have to each other, as well as to ourselves, to lead a worship life, and not just to go to worship?

Oddly enough, it is easier for me to be faithful in my spiritual discipline when I know it will directly impact others, than to just do it for myself. Awareness of how others are depending upon me gives my practice a sense of meaning and depth. Yet I rarely connect with the truth that my coming empty to worship does indeed impact others. We are all bound together in our mutual life in the Spirit. I wonder how our worship might flourish if we all lived our daily lives with a fuller realization of how our weekday lives impact others joined with us in fellowship.

Christopher Sammond

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Preparation for Worship:
Measure of the Light

When I inquire, "What is your experience of the Spirit?" many Friends say, "I don't." They see the Spirit in others, appreciate it, and want to be around it.

Yes, each of us has a different measure of the Light; yet each is given some measure of the Light. Mountaintop experiences and still, small moments when the family laughs as I wipe the dishes convince me of the glory of creation. Realizing that it was my tax dollars that built the bomb that tore through a friend's home convicts me to see beyond my humble shortcomings to the ever-forgiving, ever-loving Divine.

Deep listening leads to plain speaking. Listening to the Inner Guide prepares me for speaking from that place. Practicing this listening and speaking in worship sharing, spiritual friendships, or personal practice prepares me to do it publicly in my daily life.

Gradually I began to see life as praying without ceasing. Once, I kept a journal of the percentage of each day I felt aware of the Spirit. Eventually, the act of noticing the Spark of Life became a habit. Each breath, leaf, sunray, tear, breeze, sound, word, act, every moment is endlessly filled with the wonders of the Living Spirit constantly moving imperceptibly yet palpably.

Messages started to come at any time. I began to test them in the silence of my morning devotions, against the experiences of others in religious texts, by characteristics of simplicity, persistence, and seeming impossibility, and by "the cross" of bringing me down low to service rather than up toward fame.

If the message is for me, I record it in my journal, reflect upon it and let it work within me.

If it is for others, I deliver it. Yes, I bring messages to worship that have come to me at other times, but I still settle into the worship to test if the message holds and if the time is right for delivery.

Being taken under the burden of messages—their testing, timing, delivery, and workings—is preparation for worship. This experimenting with the Living Spirit in daily life has been known as the "conversion of manners." It's not a matter of figuring things out with my mind or with the sympathies of my heart, though both contribute fully and freely. It is a matter of a broader spiritual sense, which I may or may not like, agree with, or even want. Often the truth seems inadequate or overwhelming; if I were God it would not be like this! So I let my opinions, desires, and leanings fall away and open up to the Spirit. I am changed in the little things, which lead to bigger things. "Mind the Light and more shall be granted thee." This daily experiment increases my intimate acquaintance with the Spirit and prepares me for deeper worship.

Yet to distinguish between what is of the Seed and what is contrary—confusion, ego, desire, neuroses, or evil dressed in lamb's clothing—becomes increasing difficult as I go deeper. I need friends to join in experimenting with the Spirit in our lives: to testify to each other, to be clear and forthright in our best discernment, and to yield to our corporate discernment.

When I hear others' testimony, I cannot help but wonder whether the message is true for me also. When we find the same thing true for each of us, a new corporate testimony is revealed. It's been a long time since Friends practiced personally and corporately in a manner that produced new corporate testimony. I find a few Friends willing to join in such an experiment, but rarely a meeting. In practicing corporate discernment for the conversion of manners (experimenting with the Living Spirit in daily life), we become more acutely aware of our interdependence in the Spirit, an unsettling sense in our deeply individualistic, independent society.

Fox said when you are in that place of God in you and I am in that place in me, it is there we will unite. It takes three, six, a dozen people to experiment together; to sincerely consider and test revelation; to yield to it despite the terror; and to trust in the love, truth, and power of the Living Spirit as it comes through all of us to all of us. Without this agreement, we are not actually prepared for the deeper revelations and guidance of worship.

United in worship, we experience a de-programming of "the hour." We settle into worship expecting to be gathered in and guided by the Spirit. Worship may or may not rise up to a spoken message, but we are done when we feel touched, opened, and available to divine guidance.

Rufus Jones was pressed on exactly how long morning worship took in his family. After repeated resistance, he reluctantly reflected that it took thirty to forty minutes, occasionally more quickly in twenty minutes or so, but if there were a great deal going on and much they had to face it could take an hour and a half or more.

When we embark on this journey, our faith will be deepened to the degree that we are willing to risk our reputations and security for it. As Sandra Cronk has pointed out, to ask for guidance and not yield into it plants a dis-ease. It is better not to have asked at all. Our worship will deepen as we are prepared to place our faith in the

Living Spirit and lose our worldly selves for God's sake.

Traditionally the meeting is responsible for attending to sufferings undergone as a result of this practice. The difficulty is that this is a terrifying thing to do. For one of us to yield in the face of this terror is challenging for all of us. For many of us to yield simultaneously—for us as a people to take on the risks of yielding to continuing revelation in worship simultaneously—that is, to find a contemporary testimony—would appear overwhelming. It would be to participate in continuing revelation. It would be done through worship. When we are truly relying on spiritual guidance, we come to worship prepared for the undertaking.

We need to live past our fears and the illusions of our independence and come into full awareness of our interdependence in faith, wherein yielding to the Living Spirit as a community is the most natural and sure thing in the world.

The experiment is as full of joy, pleasure, and belly laughs as it is of struggle, privation, and suffering. As we seriously experiment with the Living Spirit in our lives, we also hold our practice lightly and humorously. Our responsibility is to be aware, available, and yielding; the rest is the Living Spirit's.

Nadine Hoover, Alfred Meeting

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Ministry and Counsel
Care for Meeting for Worship

1. Getting Feedback from Members and Attenders: One of the most important things that we have done is to follow the recommendations of an FUM pamphlet titled Becoming the Meeting God Has Called You to Be, which recommended regularly contacting members and attenders to ask about how the meeting was meeting their needs. Members and attenders appreciate the care and concern of our reaching out, and it also gives them an opportunity to express concerns, which often related to the quality of meeting for worship. Knowing concerns then gives us a chance to take action.

2. Education and Nurturing Vocal Ministry: In the fall of 2004 we received a wonderful set of queries on vocal ministry from a Yearly Meeting Ministry and Council Coordinating Committee working group that spoke directly to the concerns we were hearing from members and attenders about vocal ministry and the quality of meeting for worship. We published these in our newsletter and decided to have three short sessions that would address vocal ministry. We decided to do these immediately at the rise of worship, instead of an adult education forum, in order to engage the most people. We also decided to keep the sessions short, twenty minutes, for the same reason.

The first session included a handout that focused on the roots of Quaker worship and the issue of discernment. We had excerpts from a Friends Journal article, "Divine Sources of Vocal Ministry" by Benjamin Lloyd, which outlined modern temptations that weaken our connection to the Divine Source. We also had a sheet that outlined specific steps that could be taken to help individuals discern whether a leading was from God and meant for the community or was just for private edification. The second and third sessions were an opportunity for assembled Friends to answer and discuss the queries. The sessions were lively, and the feedback that we received was positive. Friends were appreciative that Ministry and Oversight was doing its job to help nurture the spiritual connection of meeting for worship.

3. Discipline and Eldering: Our feedback from members and attenders and the queries themselves reminded us that nurture alone can not be expected to do the job without some efforts at discipline through careful eldering. Our outreach and feedback from individuals revealed complaints about behaviors in the meeting that affected the quality of meeting for worship. The complaints fell into the following areas: disruptive behavior, such as chronically coming to meeting late and entering noisily; inappropriate messages, especially those that debated difficult issues that should have been kept for a threshing session or business meeting; and long and rambling messages that were difficult to follow and seemed too much from the head. As a committee, we sat with these concerns and sought to discern when we should simply urge tolerance and when we should act and elder. In the rare cases where we felt that eldering was essential for the health of the meeting, we have been gentle but persistent. When gentle speech and reminders have not affected change, we have, on occasion, written formal letters outlining the troubling behaviors and our commitment to continue to discipline for the good of the individual involved and the health of the meeting as a whole.

Although our meetings for worship are certainly not perfect, our members and attenders have appreciated an active Ministry and Oversight Committee that listens to their concerns and seeks to nurture and discipline for positive change. Because of this, combined with the work of other functioning committees, Westbury Meeting is experiencing growth in membership and witness that we feel stems from a Divine connection in worship.

Herb Lape, Westbury Meeting

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Meditation and Awareness

The second query in Faith and Practice asks, "Do we make opportunity in our daily lives for communion with God and the opening of our hearts to an awareness of the Christ Within? Are we thankful for each day as an opportunity for a new adventure of life with God?" Meditative activity such as reading, journaling, music, art, craft, walking, caring for others, household maintenance, or simple prayer can nourish the soul and prepare us for worship.

A meeting I once belonged to began each First Day with a half hour of open singing, followed by a half hour of Quaker Bible study—Friends read until stopped by a convener, who asked them to comment on an aspect of what they had just read and then asked others (of all ages) to comment as well—then we went into worship. This was preparation.

My experience of semiprogrammed meetings is that it's corporate preparation for open worship, rather than leaving preparation entirely up to individuals with busy lives and other priorities.

I've had the opportunity to spend time in a monastery, where the community gathers morning, noon, and night, to pray, chant psalms, and follow the lectionary. This communal exercise prepares its members for prayer, which is what happens during the rest of the day. Good Quakers and good monastics are very similar in leading centered lives.

Dan Gottlieb, a friend of Friends in Philadelphia who has a weekly radio program largely on psychological matters, once reported on research showing that if you spend 15 minutes on a meditative activity—even reading the telephone book—it will change your brain waves.

Meditation is anything that causes us to turn away from the world and the demands of self, towards God/the Creator/Christ within and without. I try to spend at least a few minutes several times a day in passive or active mediation, prayer, and worship. It doesn't happen as much as I would like, but I've found that when I do take the time, I am better able to deal with what happens during the day without getting upset, and that meeting for worship is more productive. I've also learned that using the Bible makes a difference beyond logical explanation.

While many of us (myself included) are somewhat Bible-battered, or at least apprehensive about reading a book that has been used to cause so much harm, it is still a unique and incomparable resource in preparing for worship. Reading about, and listening to, the eminent Friends who have bequeathed to us the respect of the wider society, has made it clear to me that the Bible was (and is) essential to their eminence. Friends with that special quality of inner peace read the Bible a lot. They also keep journals, go on retreats, and spend time in extended periods of open worship. I've tried it and found it to be true.

This isn't the place for descriptions or explanations of spiritual disciplines. There are books, tapes, and workshops for that. They are important. Find the resources, learn how, and then do. Also try to find others to do them with. Meetings can/should sponsor activities or you may be able to find an interfaith group. The particulars are less important than the doing.

Few of us can readily say that we have all the time we need to prepare for worship. It's something that each of us has to find in the creases of our lives. I knew a woman who had a Bible open on her dresser and read it as she brushed her long hair. When our children were small I read the Bible in the hall as they were going to sleep. Ask others in your meeting how they have found time to prepare and look for the opportunities that you already have—if you don't have any, ask/pray and be open to what comes into your awareness. Soon you'll discover that things you once "didn't have time for" have become things you can't imagine living without. You'll also find that meeting for worship doesn't last as long and that it leaves you more refreshed and able to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in others.

Roger Dreisbach-Williams, Rahway and Plainfield Meeting

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Worship with a Concern for Business

A group of Friends responding to this query would find one answer in the very process of attending to the matter, through a meeting for worship with a concern for business. "Friends are not to meet like a company of people about town or parish business, neither in their men's or women's meetings, but to wait upon the Lord," says George Fox in an epistle from Winchester prison.

We conduct our business, not by "making" decisions but by seeking in worship the decision intended for us. We seek a "sense of the meeting" so that in searching and in waiting, we may discover a "shared understanding of the place to which the Spirit has led us," as one Friend describes it.

This is not a process of debate, not a contest between one group or one position and another to see which side can gain more adherents. Rather, we seek together that unity in Spirit by which we come to discern the direction toward which we are called to move. What is paramount is the worship, the waiting for greater light to appear. Edward Burrough expressed this very clearly and powerfully in 1662:

Being orderly come together, [you are] not to spend time with needless, unnecessary and fruitless discourses; but to proceed in the wisdom of God, not in the way of the world, as a worldly assembly of men, by hot contests, by seeking to outspeak and over-reach one another in discourse as if it were controversy between party and party of men, or two sides violently striving for dominion, not deciding affairs by the greater vote. But in the wisdom, love and fellowship of God, in gravity, patience, meekness, in unity and concord, submitting one to another in lowliness of heart, and in the holy Spirit of truth and righteousness all things [are] to be carried on; by hearing, and determining every matter coming before you, in love, coolness, gentleness and dear unity; I say, as only one party, all for the truth of Christ, and for the carrying on the work of the Lord, and assisting one another in whatsoever ability God hath given.

Discerning the sense of the meeting requires a meeting strongly grounded in worship. This can be achieved only by the united and continued effort of all present. The reading of queries and advices, the use of queries particular to the matter at hand, the grounding of elders who hold the meeting—are all intended to support this effort, this grounding, this worship.

Those who speak to a meeting for worship with a concern for our business must make the effort to speak from silence to the needs and aspirations of the meeting as a whole, not their personal wishes. They must listen for the promptings of the Light within them. As this Light is refracted through the individual prisms of the participants, it will ideally result in a re-creation of the original Ray. The clerk should encourage each participant who is so moved to share her or his measure of Light; only in this way will there be a chance for the full Light to be seen. When this stage is reached, or at least approached as near as seems possible, the clerk (or recording clerk) must try to express the sense of the meeting in a minute.

In order to maintain the necessary condition of centered and centering worship throughout the meeting, we must be sensitive to the need for periods during the discussion when our worship must return to silence. These opportunities should never be thought of as "interruptions."

In Beyond Consensus: Salvaging Sense of the Meeting, Barry Morley writes,

In seeking the sense of the meeting, process is paramount. When I try to think of decisions made in business meetings that were more important than the process by which they were made, I am unable to. The gifts generated by that process seem endless. As you come to treasure sense of the meeting, awareness of the Presence becomes part of you. You are changed by it. You perceive the world differently; and Quakers at their best are people who perceive the world differently.

Our aspiration should constantly be to reach what Morley calls the "highest common denominator" of the truth of Divine Will for us now, so we may unite in support of this truth. This is contrasted with the "lowest common denominator" reached by the easier path of compromise and consensus. We can reach this highest common denominator only when the meeting, and all who participate, are strongly grounded in worship, in that Divine center where truth dwells.

Our meetings for worship with concern for business are treasures that we must guard and nourish, so that their light upon the hill may become a beacon for others. This is the place in our meetings where we seek unity in the truth of the Spirit. But we are unlikely to find it, or even approach it, unless we remember the story of the blind people and the elephant. With the humility this story teaches us, we can learn to listen tenderly to one another and wait for greater Truth to be opened to us.

Tom Rothschild, Brooklyn Meeting

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Vocal Ministry

So, my first experience with vocal ministry was a most valuable one: it was as a listener. Faith and Practice advises us that our primary purpose in meeting for worship is as listeners; we understand that, if there is that of God in each person, then words that issue from the mouth of another may truly be those which God wants us to hear. They may be said because I need to hear them. For a while, I thought of vocal ministry as something that someone else did. If I felt what I later came to realize was a leading to speak, I perceived it as an intrusion on the silence, and I wondered if I had anything valuable to say. But speaking in meeting for worship is not about me; it is about whoever is led to listen to me.

Faith and Practice quotes Thomas R. Kelly: "When one rises to speak in [a gathered] meeting one has a sense of being used, of being played upon, of being spoken through. It is as amazing an experience as that of being prayed through, when we, the praying ones, are no longer the initiators of the supplication, but seem to be transmitters, who second an impulse welling up from the depths of the soul." I remember telling a Friend that feeling the leading to speak is a "spiritual sneeze," something that one cannot hold back but must allow to come through. If a Friend is centered and at one with the Spirit moving through the meeting, one realizes that ignoring the leading to speak is subverting the Spirit.

I have felt, at times, a true desperation before my mouth finally opens, a sincere knowledge that someone needs to hear a message; perhaps it is even a message that confounds my own understanding and leaves me more bemused than enlightened. I may sit wondering why I have spoken; yet these are the times when I hear, "That Friend speaks my mind." Jean Toomer speaks about this desperation when he says, "To find out how urgent it is, I press it down and try to forget it. If time passes, and it does not take hold of me with increased strength, I conclude that it is not to be spoken of at this time. If, on the other hand, it will not be downed, if it rebounds and insists and will not leave me alone, I give it expression." (Faith and Practice, p. 25, 1998 edition)

The decision to speak is never a casual one, but it is also not logical. If it is over-thought or attacked with too much reflection, this can kill the message. Some of the most valuable messages I have heard in meeting have come from children or from newcomers; just because one is not a weighty Friend does not make him or her an unlikely person to deliver clarity and wisdom. And the act itself of following the leading to speak is fulfilling, can bring the warmth of the Spirit and validate the unity in worship of Friends present.

Betsy Pozo, Cornwall Meeting

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Meetings for Healing

One especially meaningful experience for me was a called meeting for healing held under the care of Long Island Quarterly Meeting. After an introductory explanation and a blessing, Friend after Friend stood witnessing to either their own pain or illness, or that of another person they cared for deeply. As we held each other in prayer, it felt as though waves of love and light were coursing through us as a joined body. People commented afterward, some tearfully, on how profoundly they were moved.

I asked some Friends whether they might want to share a short paragraph or two about any experience they might have had being held in the Light or holding others in the Light at such a called meeting for healing, whether in a meetinghouse, in a hospital, or at their home or that of another. I was blessed with the following responses.

1. My husband welcomed meetings for healing in his hospital room as he faced leukemia. Being held in the Light helped him find peace as it became clear that his condition was terminal. Through the power of being held in a loving presence, peace came. Prayers did not give hope of a cure, because that would have been false, even cruel. Instead, prayers gave us courage to accept the inevitable with dignity. We were healed in the spirit.

2. My experience has been one of shared intimacy, whether I have been the main focus of a meeting for healing or I have been . . . a member of a healing group to support someone else. The Inward Light holds all persons and peoples together in large spiritual processes. In such groups I am aware of how the persons of the group are differentiated from one another, how we are interrelated with one another, and how we are all one integral people. I have experienced "light," "warmth," and "healing." There is an intimacy, a closeness with a healing group that is unique to those processes. I have had the sense of renewed hope in a healing group. I have often gone through a healing crisis during the group and afterward, and that crisis has left me more or less despondent. Still there has always been a sense of hopefulness that is more real than the despondency. The significance of a healing group is ongoing, and the effects of the healing encounter last through time.

3. I think the time I felt the Spirit most closely during a meeting for healing, was when I went to a hospital with some other friends to hold a dear friend and his wife in the Light while she discerned whether to "pull the plug" as the doctors recommended and let him go. I visualized him rising above a beautiful small lake, as in baroque painting of Jesus ascending into heaven, with light streaming down on him from a parting in the clouds and angels rejoicing around him. The vision was so vivid that I made a screen print of it. In my picture, the angels became doves, and our friend was being held above the lake in a huge cloud like a hand. People below were reaching out to him, not wanting to let him go, but he was joyfully reaching for the light. Making the picture had a strong healing effect on my grief.

Just recently, a few friends and I began meeting weekly with a friend who is undergoing treatment for cancer. We gather at her home to hold her in the Light and play with water colors. Our purpose is to be positive and joyful, visualizing healing, and not dwelling on her cancer. This is a new experience for me that I am finding very rewarding. I am finding myself thinking that although life is so very precious, death will come to all of us at some time and getting into a mind set of accepting it as something unknown but not frightening has a calming effect on me.

4. I had an experience of overcoming the very real fear that I might die. There was a telescoping of time and I had this realization several days in advance of the meeting for healing, so that at the actual meeting it was more like a social occasion than a dire religious convocation. Still, I would credit the meeting for healing, in some unfathomable way, with helping to effect a cure of my soul, a necessary precondition of an overall cure.

5. One summer, I was critically ill and undergoing lengthy surgery at a time when I would normally be at Silver Bay for Yearly Meeting sessions. When I came out of the recovery room, I was told that the Yearly Meeting clerk, who knew of my surgery, had interrupted the meeting for business and asked the assembled Friends to hold me in the Light and offer prayers for my recovery. The effect on me was one of overwhelming joyful gratitude and lifted my spirits that all those Friends were doing this on my behalf.

The following excerpt from London Yearly Meeting (1923) might well inspire us:

"You have the opportunity of liberating power for others. Your prayers and thoughts go out further than you think, and as you wait in patience and communion with God, you may be made ministers of peace and healing."

Therefore, Friends, may we rejoice in one another as we live in the Light endeavoring to do God's work.

Amen

Irene Goodman, Westbury Meeting

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Meetings for Faithfulness

We gather about monthly at one of our homes as we have since the fall of 2003. We turn off land-line and cellular phones. We enter the silence, settling into worship much as any in meeting for worship. But unlike typical meetings for worship, we sit in extended worship for up to three hours. One or two sip tea; another scratches thoughts on a pad. Individually, we take bathroom and stretch breaks in the silence, if we need to.

Grounded in the Spirit, we seek understanding of what it means for each of us to base our lives on our faith—to live out of our faith. We speak of what comes.

We are few in number—no more than eight and sometimes as few as four. It is very likely that each of us will speak at least once during our time in worship. Limiting our size to eight ensures that there is time. There is time to relax into the silence, to center, to gently turn ourselves to seeking, to listening. There is space for each to speak and there is space between speaking. After everyone who is moved to speak has spoken, there is time for silence—perhaps thirty minutes—at the end, to absorb and reflect. We do not rush. We do not plan other consuming activities on meeting days. This is important, and we treat it so.

Following our morning meeting, we typically move into discussion and then to lunch with more discussion. This building of community and companionship has proved valuable in fostering our ease and openness with one another.

We see patterns, threads running through the group. Concerns regarding violence, oppression, prisons, what we pay for, what we support are frequently voiced as are our seeking to live more simply, to recognize the importance of every relationship, every encounter, to notice beauty and to nurture joy.

We see patterns, threads running through one another as well, that we ourselves may not see on our own.

One Friend told me, "You've been talking about resistance ever since we've been holding these meetings. Of course you are drawn to Jonah House." (Jonah House is a faith-based residential community committed to building community, living nonviolently, and resisting empire.)

Another smiled and slowly nodded thoughtfully, as if to say, "Yes, that is true."

Oh.

Of course.

Yes. It does fit.

It is the next step.

We speak of this practice, this meeting, as essential. It is essential for the work we do, for discerning what that work is and for providing and receiving support in that work. We understand that the work we do is not "our" work. As Nadine Hoover says, the work she does in Indonesia as not about her. It is about the Spirit working through a faithful community and in turn working through her. Without the religious society, without the faithfulness meeting, the work would not happen.

Similarly, my crossing onto Fort Benning property and risking arrest, to call attention to the "work" of the School of the Americas, was/is not about me. It is about the Spirit working through me—the Spirit that I would not hear if not for my monthly meeting and the faithfulness meeting, the Spirit I could not follow if not for the support of these and other meetings.

We need one another. We need corporate worship. We need to create space for deep listening, and when we hear, we need to support one another in the work that follows.

I think it is naïve to believe that we can live hectic, overstressed lives at least five days out of seven, and on Sundays for one hour, we will be able to make ourselves available, our minds still and open, ready to receive.

If we seek to base our lives on faith, allowing our lives to be directed by the Spirit, we need to develop practices that will foster our ability to center and be open. I have found the extended worship and spiritual companionship of our meetings for faithfulness to be an important piece of my practice.

During and following the meetings, we seek to name truths that are working within each of us as well as what is true for us as a gathered body. We have recorded two minutes. One has been approved by both Alfred and Central Finger Lakes meetings. It is now being considered by Farmington-Scipio Regional Meeting. It reads:

The Living Spirit works in the world to give life, joy, peace and prosperity through love, integrity and compassionate justice among people. We are united in this Power. We acknowledge that paying for war violates our religious conviction. Each of us will seek ways to witness in our communities. Vicki Cooley, Nadine Hoover, Sharon Hoover, Shirley Way 12/15/03

The second is a travel minute that I carried to the 2005 annual vigil and rally calling for the closure of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia.

Several Friends have expressed interest in participating in meetings for faithfulness. We have had many one- or two-time visitors. We encourage people to experiment and create new meetings for faithfulness.

I believe that deep listening is and always has been essential, but it seems that given the violence we take in on a daily basis, the violence and oppression that are perpetuated in our name, we need now more than ever to be fully present and available to the Spirit. We are called to seek Truth, to be faithful listeners and to act on what we receive.

Shirley Way, Central Finger Lakes Meeting

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C e n t e r i n g

The Centered Response

But I honor this step more in the breach than in practice. The knee-jerk reaction is hard to overcome especially if the challenge is to my deepest convictions or to my self-image. It is especially hard having been trained in an environment where competition hones one's skills, where justice is founded on adversary appraisal, and where spirituality is not for "real" men.

Giving oneself time is just one aspect of active mindfulness or caring, and it is one that you choose. It is, however, a choice that requires a foundation of daily worship in that "secret place," for it is allowing the Spirit to be active in your day. You may recognize its nature in such phrases as "centering," "settling," and "getting focused" and in saying a quiet "God help me." At times, however, I have been so scared or angry that I froze and couldn't even get off a prayer. At that point, two more things help release me to God: breathing deeply from the small of the back, and an open, alert face, both emanating from a desire to seek "that of God" in the other person. (With respect to one's "face," I have found that the "half smile" is too often misinterpreted as laughing at someone and can quickly sour a relationship. I also know that what is called for is an assertive, positive whole-body language.)

This approach can also be taken in response to a situation—it is not limited to a response to an individual. At an appropriate time, the process may be started by stating a concern, waiting ten seconds, and then asking whether it might be helpful to review the matter or discuss it. The ten seconds does more than let the concern "sink in"; it transforms the situation into one that you are asking the individual or group to take ownership in. Techniques facilitate this transformation, but faith effects it. And my faith needs constant affirmation! I need to practice the presence of God every moment of the day, that I may "do it as for thee" and that behind my outward actions lies a prayer and a faith. Practicing the presence requires practicing a spiritual discipline on a daily basis. My experience of people's reactions to this is that the right discipline—lectio divina, keeping a journal, centering prayer, prayerful letter writing, art, music, crafts, etc.—is one that chooses us, that is in line with our gifts. At its best, it is a way to know "the Other."

When my faith is tested or I go through a period of "unbelief," I think of doing the dishes. I never liked doing the dishes until I paced myself, rewarded myself for doing them, and, above all, saw the colors in the soap bubbles. Then I recall my mother blowing bubbles for my four-year-old, and a smile appears. When three potentially difficult situations occurred in AVP settings and I was being tested severely, the ten-second pause and the deep breathing helped immensely to gain clarity on the appropriate response. In each incident, I felt physically transformed and the response was out of my hands. As in ministry in meeting for worship the words were not mine and I could not recreate them.

The nontheist and the Jungian psychologist have dismissed my reliance on "God" (or the Light, the Seed, or any of the other metaphors that George Fox used to describe the living power in his life) by saying that if it works for me and does no harm, it's okay. But I suspect they have never allowed themselves to be transformed nor created a basis for transformation in morning worship. Perhaps this thought, though real, is not helpful! Intellectually, I share their doubts, but experientially, I know the power of unconditional love.

I now believe that each one of us has the potential to respond to difficult situations in a healing mode, allowing ourselves to be led as befits our gifts—sometimes even allowing ourselves to be led to discover our gifts. Whether called upon to be schooled by the Spirit in family settings or at work or with a hostile crowd or anywhere else, we can use the calming, centering techniques of the ten-second pause, the deep breathing, and the open, alert expression to help us respond. They are modes of worship. They allow the Spirit to work and let us respond from the center.

John Perry, Bulls Head-Oswego Meeting

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One Friend's Experience

For me, the act of centering in meeting for worship is based in my faith and practice and is inextricably tied to that: the certain belief that ALL is present and will lead me, coupled with working at making myself available to be led. I believe practice is an integral part of this for in those times when I work at being attentive to the Spirit my life is more centered, and centering in meeting for worship seems to come more easily.

When I was an attender some 20 years ago a Friend shared that there were only two ways to "spoil" meeting for worship. The first was to be prepared to speak. The second was to be unprepared to speak. Over time I've come to understand that my attentiveness to Spirit in daily life, my faith and practice are integral parts of my preparation for meeting for worship. I hesitate to write of the specifics of how I center for worship, acknowledging that each of us is unique and therefore relates to the Presence in unique ways. So I write of my experience only—not as a prescription, but as one woman's way.

For me, the act of centering in meeting for worship has come to follow a set pattern. Upon entering the meeting room and choosing a seat I try to prepare to be neither disturbed or disturbing (removing my watch, unzipping my coat, opening a cough drop, etc.). Then I settle into the position that I've used for as long as I've been sitting in worship—feet flat on the floor, 90-degree bends at the ankles, knees, and hips, hands open softly, palms up in my lap, eyes closed. My whole being has become so attuned to this position for worship that when I assume it, it is as if everything in me says, "Ah, it's time to worship." My mind is quieted to a mode of deep listening and availability, and I rest in the sacred arms for an hour listening to, being fed by ALL.

When I am centered, when I am prepared, not to speak, but to enter into this mystery, an hour of worship flies by and I wish it could just keep going. When I am in the midst of centered Friends, worshiping together, holding one another, the mystery deepens. When I am truly centered in meeting for worship it takes a great deal to shake me. Closing my eyes removes the possibility of visual disturbances. I come prepared for most temperature conditions. So what of noise? In most of our lives we are able to tune out sounds. For me, maintaining centered worship requires that all of me, all of my senses, be focused on Spirit. When a sound jars me (motorcycles rushing by, heavy equipment, something falling), once the initial shock is past it can be dismissed. When a sound lulls me (music, a nursing or even fussing baby), it becomes the background music. When I'm really struggling to return to center I choose a word or a phrase and use it as a mantra—silently repeating that word or phrase with the rhythm of my breath until I am again quieted and ready to listen. The query relates specifically to centering in meeting for worship. For me the ability to center in meeting for worship is inextricably entwined with the attempt to live a centered life—a life based in Friends' faith and practice—and consistently working at making myself open and available to the leadings of the Spirit.

Greta Mickey, Bulls Head-Oswego Meeting

Centering—Stillness, Settling, Fullness

There's a stillness, a settling away from distractions, then a sense of fullness in my heart.

But it's not always there. Sometimes worldly concerns push away the stillness. When that happens, I find that mentally singing a favorite hymn or silently saying a prayer can help. So can deep, slow, meditative breathing.

When the world slows and the stillness comes, there is a sense of communication with God/ Spirit/ Light, a welling up of knowledge and wisdom that comes from within myself and yet from an energy beyond myself.

Abstract concept becomes concrete, tangible. God/ Spirit/ Light becomes personal, intimate, a feeling of being led by blessed peace.

Joy Weaver, Conscience Bay Meeting

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Centering

Everyday life can fill every crevasse of my mind from the time I wake to the time I fall asleep. I found, at meeting, that overfilled space was cleared. When I was studying Buddhism, the instructor advised that I try not eating one day of the week and that I not talk one day of the week. This I did for months. There were many lessons to be learned in that exercise. Not the least, my husband was quite fascinated by the days I didn't talk. It left room, like spring cleaning; it left room for new to enter. So it is when I sit on the wooden bench at meeting.

The initial process of centering, I would say, is more about what I don't do than what I do. And it happened without expectations, without a plan, without instructions. In the first few meetings I attended, my eyes were open. Mostly I noticed the trees outside and would occasionally catch a glimpse of someone's face across the room. Then, noticing that some people had their eyes closed, having talked to a few attendees at refreshment time, and having read a little about Quakers, I sat with my eyes closed just to see how that was. Both were comfortable, but each was different. Closing my eyes was calming but, also led to two things not entirely desirable. One, the quiet of closing my eyes initially led to filling my mind with daily thoughts, and second, if I was tired, would lead to a resting state like that just before sleep. However, if I am alert, keeping my eyes closed is fine. I have to say I prefer having my eyes open. It takes me a minute or two longer to center, but I think is a better place for me personally.

Centering, for me, is a matter of making room and letting what will happen just unfold, without trying to control it, without saying this is right or that is wrong, but just allowing it all to happen. Each week is different from the week before, and so for me, it is interesting how silence can be ever new.

Turid Mann, Conscience Bay Meeting

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An Opportunity for Being

I have been going to unprogrammed meeting since I was a small child. I vividly remember mental games I played as a child so as not to expire from boredom. As an adult, I thrive on the rarified stillness of mind and body for that all-too-brief hour.

Many years ago, I began to notice how quarrelsome and difficult my family and I became while preparing to go to meeting. That was when I realized what a dangerous encounter meeting is. We are, after all, consciously wading into an hour of squarely facing spirit, life, the source. Most of our lives are spent in a multitude of diversions from the simple fact of being; it is a radical act, on First Day morning, to engage deliberately in a time of stilling the endless chatter of our minds and the ceaseless activity of our bodies. To open ourselves to – who knows what? When I truly center in meeting and simply be, with no agenda whatsoever, I am vulnerable to possibility and transformation. By possibility I mean an opening, however expected or unforeseen, however large or small. In the moment of being, I may receive an opening that shows I have harmed my husband and I need to apologize. So much for my plan to give him the cold shoulder for insulting me! By transformation, I mean an irrevocable leap to a new place. Once, during Yearly Meeting sessions, I had a momentary glimpse of the perfection of our world. I was, of course, familiar with the teaching that "all is well". Now I knew.

Openings and transformation are the death of the ego and illusion. This is why meeting for worship is dangerous. No wonder we arrive late for meeting, and sit in the back rows. Sitting in the front and center seats suggests we may get "called on", and we fear we may not like the question or the assignment. More than that, we fear we may find out how good and powerful we are.

Most of the time, I don't manage to achieve much danger in meeting. I struggle for control of my thought process. I focus for a while on something I consider spiritual, like forgiving my husband (it really was his fault, you see), or understanding the conflict in the Middle East, or appreciating the unspeakable beauty of the trees outside the window. Occasionally I relax deeply; peace and stillness are enough, and a radical act in themselves. Sometimes my thoughts venture into brand new terrain; my mind is still active, but has opened enough to let in fresh insight. I try not to judge my experience, and to recognize there are many levels on the way to being. Some days I may only make it to the next level, once in a while I may zoom almost to the penthouse.

I seek in particular the gathered meeting. I try to sense the spirit of the group. Or I identify concerns that might inhibit my unity with the meeting, and see if I can let them go. If there is vocal ministry, especially from more than one person, and especially when it revolves around different themes, I try to trace the underlying truth or message giving rise to the varied ministry. This is particularly challenging when I myself have felt a message arising, and the ministry of others seems to be going in a different direction. In that case, I try to discover how the message that has come to me might need to be altered to flow with or deepen the others. Once, in an otherwise silent meeting, a bird called loudly outside. I immediately felt the entire meeting gather in amusement and joy. Another time I felt us gather when the smell of soup cooking on the wood stove suddenly permeated the meeting room.

The beauty is that meeting for worship does not have to be confined to First Day morning at the Quaker Meetinghouse. Once I was crossing the immense lobby of Grand Central Station at rush hour. Surrounded by bustling commuters, I suddenly felt we were one being, despite differences in appearance, motives, goals, histories.

How do I test my promptings to minister, without a belief in divine inspiration? Usually I sit with eyes closed, while I consider, is this message a reaction, or a creation? Does it have to do only with me, or with others? Does the message suggest others change their ways, or does it challenge or address me as well as my community? How does the message resonate with previous ministry? Can I share this message with love? Can I not share this message? Sometimes other tests occur to me. If the message seems to be strong, and I think I am called to give it, I open my eyes and look around the room. I take in the other worshipers, and ask again, are these the people to whom you need to give this ministry?

I often begin quaking as I proceed. (My heart is beating harder just writing these sentences.) I test this too. Is it my ego having stage fright? While I have once or twice been mesmerized by the trembling into outrunning my guide, I generally trust quaking. It seems to accompany clear moments of pure presence. Modern physicists are telling us that all matter is constantly in motion; spiritual leaders and old hippies tell us about the vibrations of the cosmos. Perhaps quaking is an outward sign that we have achieved the frequency of life. Just think, rather than Quakers, we might have been called Vibrators. (Whoa, how did that get past the tests?! Did I mention it's risky opening to spirit?)

Robin Alpern, Scarsdale Meeting

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To Seek Our Own Nature

At least once during meeting, I carefully and prayerfully hold each person at meeting for worship in the Light. I experience this as very centering, though it involves my consciously extending myself outward and embracing each person. Sometimes, if I know something that is at work in them or something they are struggling with I will hold that too in prayer. I don't pray for things to change, usually, only that the person I am holding in the Light will be given the strength and courage to face whatever they are called to face.

Something else that I do involves using memorized words. I have memorized many passages from the world's great mystic traditions that I use in daily meditation. When I am having trouble focusing, settling or centering, I may repeat one of those to myself. A favorite is by Hildegard of Bingen:

Fish cannot drown in the water,
Birds cannot sink in the air.
Gold cannot perish in the refiner's fire.
This has God given to all creatures
to foster and seek their own nature.
How then can I withstand mine?

Sometimes, when everything feels thick, and stuck, I simply give in and wait in what I hope is patient attention. The one thing I try not to do is to kick myself around or force things to happen. Each meeting for worship is different, and I am different each time I worship. I try hard to see each meeting for worship as simply a different face of the Divine and not be impatient if the face I'm experiencing is not the thrilling, intimate surge of closeness, but instead a kind of cottony cloudiness that means that what I need most is simply to wait and be patient. At times I remember what my friend Michael Nagler wrote to me when I shared my joy at feeling so close to the Divine in both worship and meditation. He kindly pointed out that God didn't move—I was the one who moved. Remembering this often helps me simply sit with whatever's happening and stay centered with it. Finally when all else fails, I remember John Milton's wonderful poem on his blindness, which ends, "they also serve who only stand and wait." Sometimes, that is all I can do to center . . . patiently wait.

Sue Tannehill, Buffalo Meeting

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The Fire of Seeking

My experience is that the more I experience God, the more of God I want to experience. The extended worship itself, and the community drawn to it, provide essential support for me to live more fully in the Spirit. Even though I fall down constantly at this work, I know I have this place where I can recenter. Our home meetings are often so full of heartfelt busyness that it can be hard for us to tend to our own or each other's spiritual development, to remember the real reason we all gather.

Not every meeting for extended worship is cookies and tea with Jesus. When it's not, it's because my being uncentered and unfocused has kept my attention away from God. I'm frazzled from getting lost, or anxious about a road trip I've foolishly planned to start immediately after worship, or unable to discern the Spirit in other Friends' messages. And while that's frustrating at the moment, I've come to believe that even those experiences are okay, because to me a big part of faithfulness is showing up, and continuing to show up even after events don't follow our plans.

I've come to appreciate several aspects of the Philadelphia YM gatherings for extended worship that I believe contribute mightily to their vitality: The program grew organically from group experiences followed by deep discernment, and a core group of committed Friends continue to oversee (and participate in) the gatherings, staying open to movement of the Spirit. In their combined weightiness (by which I mean commitment, integrity, ability to sense movement of the Spirit, efforts to live faithfully), I find an atmosphere of safety and warmth, where the idea of sitting in worship for three hours stopped being scary very quickly. Experience often keeps us out of the sort of trouble into which good intentions alone can lead us, and so it is this core group that gently keeps the gatherings on course.

God [is] still giving gifts of ministry and eldering, but such gifts [are] not sufficiently recognized or nurtured by meetings, and neither meetings nor individuals [are] held accountable for them being well used and received. The result has been a significant decline in the quality of worship and ministry, and a diminishment of spiritual vitality in many meeting communities. [Many Friends] called to ministry or eldering … were concerned about the quality of worship and vocal ministry in their meetings. Wouldn't it be good for us to come together, worship, support one another, and listen for guidance from God?

from Marcelle Martin's Pendle Hill pamphlet Invitation to a Deeper Communion.

Heather Cook, Summit Meeting