We are Christ-centered Friends who equip and encourage all people
to respond to God's love and transforming Spirit.

A Living Silence
September 13, 2009

This past week on one of my early morning runs I felt that old familiar fatigue that often sets in toward the end of a run. It was just at that moment when two runners came running up behind me and sped past me. They were full of energy and chatting away. I asked them if they would be my rabbits and let me shadow them, which I did for about a mile until I reached my car.

It made me think of the spiritual companions who have shown up at the just the right time, or place in my life, to encourage me to not give up, leading me toward a new level of growth or insight. Try as we may, we can't always make it alone without this kind of support. Maybe it is one of the reasons you have come here this morning.

On September 11, 2001 the world community witnessed a horrible tragedy. I am sure we all can remember where we were on that day. I hope you were able to pause and remember last Friday those who lost family and friends in the terrorist bombing of the NYC's Twin Towers. Interestingly, after that violent event eight years ago there were some people who came here to the Friends Church. Commonly, I heard, "I just needed to be with a spiritual community who have a tradition and history of peacemaking." Many of us felt a need for companionship as we tried to make sense of that horrific event. Some of you might remember the weekly candlelight prayer vigils we held on Wed. evenings for several months during that time. I think that we all longed to have our wounded psyches healed within the companionship of community, didn't we?

In the coming months we will be exploring together the themes of Light, Truth and Waiting as seen through the lens of Quaker spirituality. . .

Next Sunday, following meeting for worship, seasoned Friend, Jo Magee will be facilitating an adult Circle of Friends, where we will begin to look at our spiritual roots and identity as Friends. I hope you will plan to join us. I want this to be a fresh and transforming experience for us. We welcome dialogue and questions. (I will also try to get my meditations up on the website and perhaps our facilitators could post some of their material there, as well.)

This morning I would like to speak to the deep significance of Friends worship. After 350 years of our history, the meeting for worship continues to be at the very heart and center of our life together. Our corporate discernment and decision-making flows out of the meeting for worship.

In worship we seek, individually and collectively, to come into the living presence of God, opening ourselves to the leadings and promptings of God's Spirit. Friends have often described this experience as expectant waiting.

It has been said that a good meeting for worship comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. Sometimes in the silence we sense a new direction, or a redirection of our lives. The meeting for worship often sends its worshippers out into the world with a renewed passion to serve those in need.

Sometimes God's voice may come in the form of a gentle nudge, like the still small voice or gentle whisper of our Inward Guide. Or it may hit with the force of a thunderbolt. Korean Friend Ham Sok Han produced an autobiographical work entitled, "Kicked by God." Sometimes we almost need to be moved by God in this way, don't we?

Early Friends did not have paid clergy. Their meetings for worship were entirely unprogrammed. They gathered in a room much like this in the silence with no music or pre-arranged preaching. They waited to hear what God would say to them as individuals or through someone who was led in that hour to give a brief word of vocal ministry.

In our Quaker Mysteries Revealed class we will look at why this began to change over time. There still are completely unprogrammed Friends meetings today. We happen to be a part of NWYM of Friends churches, which are programmed meetings with pastors. If you don't understand why this happened or what this means, come to the Quaker class and learn more.

It is helpful to remember that Quaker worship emerged not from some theological theory but from a fresh, vital, direct experience of God. Early Friends discovered the Divine Presence within their hearts at a time when religion consisted primarily of belief in a distant God out there somewhere and that God's plan of salvation was recorded for us and could be found in a sacred book.

Early Quakers didn't discount the Bible but they added an important element, namely direct contact with the Source. The Divine Source of Life and Truth was often referred to as the 'Light Within," or, "that of God in every person." While this thought finds expression in John's gospel, Paul's epistles, and the writings of the Christian mystics, the Quakers of the 17th Century believed they had become aware of it directly in a fresh and new way in their own experience. For them religion could no longer be a matter of words, doctrines and outward rituals. "It was communion with Divinity itself, speaking with the very voice of Him who once spoke in Galilee."

So why do we value coming together to worship one Sunday a month in silence and generally have close to 15 minutes of silence each Sunday. I mean you could stay home and silently worship. Yet throughout our history we as Friends believe that there is something powerful that happens when we gather in corporate silence. Isaac Pennington writes of early Quaker groups, "They are like a heap of fresh and living coals, warming one another as a great strength, freshness, and vigor of life flows into all."

In my studying this past week I came across a story that speaks so movingly of the power of God at work in the gathered stillness of meeting for worship.
This comes from the life and experience of longtime respected Quaker, Kenneth Carroll. He writes,

"Many years ago a stranger came into our Dallas meeting sometime after worship had started. Probably it was his first experience with Quakerism, for he apparently knew nothing about our approach to worship. He seemed totally unprepared for the silence, which increasingly appeared to unnerve him. After a time of fidgeting, when he no longer could restrain himself, he rushed to the front of the meeting room, shook his Bible in an agitated fashion, glared at Friends, and blurted out "Why are you people just sitting there? Why aren't you doing something?" Then he dashed out to the meetingroom, not waiting for an answer."

Maybe some of you have felt this way before during the silence, thinking that nothing is really happening unless someone is talking. J (In my experience, this couldn't be further from the truth.)

Kenneth Carroll goes on to say,

"In the autumn of 1946, I attended my first Quaker meeting for worship, -hoping to find a religious approach and type of worship which might prove meaningful and alive to me. This was at the end of a spiritual pilgrimage, which had, at first, taken me away from the church in which I was raised and then led me to a rejection of organized or institutionalized religion as such. I became convinced that religion is purely personal, with there being no need for a religious community.
Ultimately, I came to see that I was wrong, that for me there is a real need for religious community-for the help, guidance, fellowship, encouragement, etc., that are so vital for a satisfying religious life. This discovery led me to sample a variety of religious approaches: Protestantism in many delicious flavors, Roman Catholicism, and even Reform Judaism. None of those spoke to my condition, so that there still remained the Quakers for me to visit. I knew about the Quaker peace testimony, which I found appealing, but had no real understanding of their worship-waiting in expectant silence until God spoke to them before speaking to each other.
Also, at this time when much of the world was marked with despair and almost overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness and helplessness (given the great destruction and collapse brought on by WWII), I too was wrestling with the question 'What can a person do in a world that needs so much help, so much healing, so much rebuilding?'

The meeting for worship was rather small about twenty or twenty-five people sitting in a circle in the middle of the Social Room at the Duke Divinity School building. Without a signal, and almost without notice, those present slipped from their initial joy in seeing each other. . . into a silence that soon became a living silence. Although totally unused to such an approach to worship I found myself increasingly a part of what was happening.
Well along in the hour the silence was broken for the first (and only) time when an elderly, white -haired man with a gently South Carolina accent uttered a brief message that came from his heart, and that spoke to most if not all of us, for it rang of experience, reality, and sincerity. This professor of medicine at the Duke Medical School told us how he, too, had been troubled by the question of what he as an individual could do to help in this world and age that cried out in so many ways for attention and action. He, too, had felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the needs, experiencing almost spiritual 'paralysis.' He, in the preceding week, had received a great deal of help and encouragement while reading a biography of Elizabeth Fry who had accepted the situation of women in English prisons as a challenge and then gave her life to meeting the need she found. As he had read this and then meditated on her work it had become increasingly clear to this man, David Smith that he was not called to take on all the world's problems. He now knew that he was called to meet those individual needs that called out to him for action.
This simple message, arising out of a living silence, stemming from what he had himself experienced, and delivered in a quiet way, spoke to my condition and my needs. I now knew that the Quaker meeting for worship, based upon silent waiting and entered into in holy expectancy, was what I had been seeking all those months of going from one church to another. Truly in this, my first, meeting for worship God had reached out to touch me."

As we enter into the silence this morning, do you sense inwardly that there is something screaming for your attention? Pay attention to it. Open yourself to God's guidance right now in this moment.

Secondly, in what way do you prepare yourself for this gathered meeting for worship? We live in a culture of busyness, packing in as much as we can before rushing off to the next thing. Are you willing to consider, as a holy experiment, arranging your Sunday morning routine so that you can arrive here on time with a space already prepared internally for expectant waiting with this group of fellow seekers? (This space is open between 9:30 - 10. We have childcare downstairs.)

And lastly, if you don't already do this, will you consider another holy experiment? Will you carve out a space each day in your busy lives for some prayerful silence? It takes practice to center down and listen to our Inward Guide. How are you minding the Light daily in your life so that this experience of the gathered meeting for worship is more meaningful for you?

May we be open to hear the voice of the Living Christ in the silence? Amen.