Some months ago I got up late and decided instead of going to my Meeting I would go to another Meeting in my neighborhood which meets later on Sunday. As I settled into worship I realized that I was excited. I did not know most of the worshipers. I had no preconceived ideas about who would usually speak or what they would usually say. (Sound familiar?). And because it is a large Meeting I felt fairly sure that a message would be given.
I wound up giving a message because as I noticed my excitement I realized that it was "expectant waiting" and with that phrase I remembered that this is actually the spirit in which we are invited by our traditions to wait in silence for the Holy One to speak...through us. Ironically, Spirit seemed to want me to speak and remind Friends gathered that this is what we are waiting for.
I think modern Friends are very easily losing this idea. I have heard Friends from different Meetings across the country complain about Friends who come with a book to read from "for inspiration" or the now famous NY Times headline message, or its' sister the book report message. Additionally, I have heard Friends complain about the person who speaks every Sunday or who speaks clearly not from the Spirit. But primarily they are complaining about Friends not following protocol. I do wish they were complaining about our failure to expect Spirit to show up.
After all this is really not different from those of us who go for "peace and quiet" from our families, "a place to think", for the fellowship, or to sit and try to figure out our problems. All of these fail to wait expectantly for Divine whisperings although we follow protocol.
In fact I think that most Friends would not make a distinction between a Living silence and a dead silence. Next time your in Meeting try to notice...which is it? Recently a member of my Meeting told a very funny story to which we all laughed about how when her kids were young they arrived late one day and she was fussing about this and her daughter said: "Don't worry Mom, I think we are late enough that they will all already be asleep." Amusing as this, I think it speaks to a dead silence if a child cannot feel anything moving in that silence. In fact my teenager complains that the Young Friends do not like to come to business meeting with us in any of their Meetings because they cannot feel the Spirit present or available to us in our conducting of business.
This of course brings us to the problem: how do we bring forth a living silence in our Meetings and an expectant waiting? Well some of this may have to do with what we have lost when we did away with the facing bench and the elders. They were not just grim old folks who stared down at the other members. Part of their "job" was actually to hold the Meeting for Worship in prayer - to attempt to ground the whole Meeting for Worship. I remember once when I was on Ministry and Worship suggesting that the member of the committee who had responsibility for breaking Meeting also hold the Meeting in prayer during the whole Meeting. I no longer remember what we concluded about that experiment, but I do remember that during that same time I often felt we had Gathered Meetings. What if we asked our whole Meeting to do such an experiment on the same Sunday?
And of course there is always how do we tend to the Life of the Spirit in our Meeting for worship throughout the month? Do we tend our own spiritual life? Do we prepare for worship? Do we use worship sharing formats to share with each other about our spiritual lives? So often we meet in Silence and have no real personal exchanges and do not know each other spiritually. Early Friends lived in small farming communities where they knew the members of Meeting as their neighbors and local business owners. They did not have to have sharing time at Meeting to know of births and deaths and other highs and lows of the lives of their fellow members. But now we don't know unless we create a way to know. My Meeting started at tradition over a decade ago of during the last 10 minutes of Meeting for Worship we ask for the sharing of joys and concerns to be shared in the spirit of worship. (We added that last phrase to remind or inform new folks that we expect still to have silence before and after each sharing. But we do not hold the same bar of expecting a divine prompting to share a joy or concern.) Occasionally regular messages are also still shared during this time as well. In my opinion it has deepened our community because we know each other better.
I have heard Friends from different Meetings describe starting worship by focusing for a moment on each Member present (and sometimes even those absent) and holding them in Light. This is something only possible when we know each other in personal ways, but it again speaks to this idea of grounding into worship. Prayer is something we can do any where, but to come into communal worship - to expect to be used by Spirit for each other and to be ministered to by Spirit through each other is a very different matter indeed.
