Our "Friends"...

Becka:
Here’s what happened. The “service for worship” (note: if you’re not used to it, church vocab is different/peculiar/startling) started at 10am. Kailey and I had decided to get there a little early so that we could also observe the end of the “service for singing” which started at 9:15. We probably showed up about 9:20 and right away we were a little confused because our car was almost the only one in the lot. There may have been one or two others, but that was it (and mind you, this lot is also used for parking for the Quaker-owned apartments next door). As we walked up to the building, too, we could only see one person moving around through the window. Not being sure yet if they had cancelled the services for the day or what mistake we might have made, we sat down on the benches outside to regroup. Luckily (for my stress level) we only just sat down when the woman we had seen inside came out and invited us in through the kitchen – the church building is a converted home. She was very friendly and (at first) decidedly normal, which was a relief to me, not being sure what to expect of a Quaker. We chatted for a few minutes (where are you from? What do you do?) and she gave us nametags and a brochure that explained what to expect during the service for worship. So far so good. But just as I was starting to relax, she casually remarked, “We have our service for singing now. Do either of you play the guitar?” I looked nervously around for the “we” I seemed to have missed, thinking we were going to have an embarrassingly small singing group; I can’t necessarily carry a tune, so the more singers, the better. Turns out there really wasn’t anyone else there. The nice lady handed us each a hymnbook and asked us to pull two more chairs next to hers. We set our chairs in a semicircle and flipped through the hymnbooks trying to find something we all knew. Since neither Kailey nor I claimed guitar proficiency, the nice lady played (chords only). The rest of the Friends trickled in and wrote nametags as our voices faintly strained out the last verse of hymn number four or five. As we headed over to mingle before the next service, I asked the nice lady how many people usually came. “Ten to twenty,” she said. “Since Quakers make every decision unanimously, their congregations tend to be small.”

There were fourteen people (besides us) attending the service for worship this Sunday, ranging in age from a high school boy to a white-haired man with a cane. One woman had “cool” hair (reassuring for us – from what I remember of 19th century fiction, Quakers dressed plainly in grey and I wasn’t sure if our clothes and hair would be offensive) and everyone was very friendly, or at least not unfriendly. The sixteen of us made our way over to the chairs which had been set up two rows deep in three sides of a square, facing the center. And then, as the brochure had explained, we sat in silence. For an hour. Mostly we kept our heads down. Some people closed their eyes. The brochure had explained that we would remain in silence, clearing our minds and keeping ourselves open to any “inward light” we might experience. If anyone was moved to, they could speak. This happened twice for our group.* Mostly, though, there was just a lot of silence. It was actually very nice. I did notice that no one mentioned Jesus, and the references to God were somewhat vague. Turns out you don’t need to believe in Jesus to be a Quaker, and unfortunately I think these Friends leaned in that direction. Afterwards, everyone shook hands and there were some announcements. A service for learning came next, in which they were going to discuss the question “Why do I do what I do?”: not a reference to Romans 7:19, but rather why they chose to be Quakers. Probably very interesting, but we did not stay. I think we both felt like we’d had a long enough first experience.

One final note: I do agree with Kailey. It was incredibly refreshing to spend that much sustained time in silence with God and in the company of people who were doing the same thing. Honestly, I wasn’t doing as the Quakers instructed (we were not supposed to be actively “thinking,” but I was actively praying). I do wish longer communal silence happened more (or at all) among the Christians I know.

*Speaker #1: A lady maybe in her 60’s. As far as I can remember, said first, “Let us speak in the vernacular of the age and of the times.” And went on to talk about our souls as inboxes and the need for a spam filter. She finished by exhorting us to make sure we stay connected to the “computer of the universe.”

Speaker #2: An elderly (and somewhat tottery) man. He chose to speak about the golden rule, which, as he side-noted, was also the name of a department store when he was young. He mentioned that he had been trying to live by the golden rule for a week, and recommended the same course of action to the rest of us. He pointed out that the golden rule was also sometimes expressed negatively (do unto others as you would have them do unto you versus don’t do unto others what you would not have them do unto you) and suggested that perhaps these two ways of describing the golden rule were in fact getting at the very same thing. He finished by suggesting that we make the golden rule a “rule for action [in our lives] as opposed to a method of conduct.”

Kailey:
I might have been more apprehensive when Beck and I peeked through window of the church at the lone woman in the empty room, but we just assumed we’d gotten the service time wrong, or maybe the website was out of date. It said “worship begins” at 9:15, “service begins” at 10am. It was about 9:20, but there was only this woman, and now us. It was lovely enough outside, so we just stayed and sat down in a small but charming stone patio area near the rear entrance. A minute or two later, the woman we’d seen poked her head out of the door, caught sight of us, and promptly came over. “Are you here for worship?” she asked with a friendly smile. We said yes, we’d gotten the time wrong, etc., etc. We had a brief and pleasant exchange of names and what-brought-you-here’s, and at the end she casually mentioned that we were, in fact, right on time for worship. As the realization dawned on us, Beck and I were barely able to steal a brief look of panic before she had ushered us both into the empty room and into two newly plucked and positioned upholstered chairs in front of a music stand.

And thus commenced the most awkward 20 minutes I’ve experienced so far this entire year. The lady herself, though not past her 40’s, appeared somewhat antiquated. She wore a white button down shirt and roundish tweed skirt, sneakers with socks, and glasses with one of those ropes attached that screams “homeschool pride.” She handed us 2 hymnals, and then asked us what songs we’d like to sing. Beck and I continued to periodically survey each other dumbly, both waiting for and expecting the other to bail us out—but eventually resigning to the reality that we were, in fact, going to sing hymns basically to one another. I think we settled on amazing grace, mostly because we were both sure to know the tune. The friendly woman grabbed her guitar, and off we went. If it was terrible—I still feel reasonably certain that God probably took some tangible measure of pleasure in our musical humiliation.

Fun times.

Much to our relief, people began showing up shortly after we’d launched into the second verse of Be Thou My Vision, and our worship leader had to attend to those arriving. I was surprised when all of the newcomers did not fit the same stereotype that I’d already pegged onto the friendly woman who’d greeted us. There were folks in jeans, people talking about their facebook photos, etc. We were clearly the only visitors, but we were received with genuine warmth and a distinct absence of the awkwardness of our first 20 minutes. It was refreshing. They explained to us how the worship service worked—that it consisted of an hour of reverent silence. If you feel so led to speak in the spirit, you do, but it’s by no means necessary. When the clock struck the hour, people gradually dropped away from the social circle and began taking seats within a large circle of chairs around the room.

We sat down, and I looked around for cues from the others. Some kept their eyes open, some closed. No one spoke or focused on the other people around them, and I followed suit, slowly settling into the silence. It’s a strange beast, quiet. At first it’s so foreign that I feel almost a sense of panic—like I’ve forgotten to do something really important, like study for an exam or turn off the burners. It took me a few minutes to fight through the unquiet in my head before I could claim to have been truly silent. But as the minutes passed, first my thoughts were calmed, later I began to enjoy the silence, and later still I found that I was actually waiting on God. It was lovely. I felt that I’d connected with God more in that hour of silence than I had in many of the contrived (though skillfully and prayerfully executed) worship services I’ve been a part of. I think reverent silence (and even prayer) is a felt absence in a lot of the churches I’ve visited or been a part of. (Or at least it should be felt—but I’m not sure we slow down long enough to really feel it.) I don’t think the absence of it is intentional—but after this visit, I think the presence of it should be.

A note on Becka’s observations: I’m glad you mentioned that they never spoke the name of Jesus. I wrestled with this after we left, and the jury is still out for me about whether or not I feel comfortable worshipping YHWH in a circle of people who may or may not be worshipping another God altogether. But I suppose if my (albeit, unrealized) goal is to live a life of worship at all times, I’ll always be worshipping God in the presence of people who may or may not be worshipping any number of other things. Regardless, my biggest take away is that I should be quiet more often—even if I’m already not talking.