Meeting for Worship and the Heavenly Host

Several Years ago this west coast Friend took a trip to the East Coast where I worshipped one Sunday in a 200+ year old Friends Meeting and then traveled down to Philadelphia and visited the Arch Street Meeting house.   While many older East coast Meeting houses  still have signs of when men and women were divided during worship – West coast meeting house are often built in the last 75 years or are rented facilities.   Thus I was very struck by how as I sat worshipping in the NY meeting I felt the palpable Presence of Friends in black and grey, in bonnets and with broad rimmed hats in their lap.  And this same feeling was overwhelming in the empty gigantic worship room of

Arch street

.  I felt like I could feel hundreds of souls gathered to hear the Truth, and was roused by thinking what it would have been like to have the majority of all one’s neighbors actually be Friends.

I thought of that however as basically a tourist experience – meaningful primarily to a current Friend and not perceivable to the average tourist.  This week however, in a book study group for my Meeting which I attend we got to talking somehow about how the vast majority of members sit in the same seat each Sunday and we shared somewhat amusing antidotes about why we sit in the seat we have each selected.  As I thought about it I realized with was mostly true at many Meetings I have gone to over the years.

I also realized that I still feel the presence of several of the dozen deceased Friends from our Meeting who have died in the past decade.  Each had their familiar chair they sat in which usually stay vacant until some unsuspecting new person claimed the chair.  Other’s nodded as I shared that I still felt them with us in worship.

 We decided, with some amusement that this Sunday we would each sit in a completely different spot and see what happened.  My own thought was that the familiarity of the spot somehow helped us to center and that it would be a distraction.  However, perhaps it was a coincident, but we had a very Gathered worship this Sunday- after a long period where we have had primarily silence in Meeting for worship.  I must say I’m sort of struck with a rather quantum mechanics idea of time: past, present and future being also simultaneous.  Next time you sit down to worship you might wonder upon whose lap you sit?