On Length of Ministry

At my Quaker meeting there is a friend who often asks, when he's spoken during meeting for worship, if his ministry was too long. He is quite verbose - I jokingly replied this Sunday past that if he spoke for less than five minutes, I'd worry that something was wrong, to which he burst out laughing.

He's got me thinking, though - how long is too long? I have not yet felt moved to speak in meeting, so I have no personal basis for comparison. Some people's ministry is very short - a few words, a reading of a passage from Quaker Faith & Practice that they find relevant to us all that day - and some is longer.

I think that while succintness and plainness of speech is prized among Friends, it is important that when we are moved to give ministry we share all of what we need to say - no more and no less. To deprive the meeting of your full ministry because you feel you have spoken too long would be a real shame, and I'd rather sit and listen to you for a while than miss out on what you have to say.

To those reading this - what are your feelings and experiences with ministry? How long do you think is too long?

Advices and Queries: 1

This is the beginning of my series about the little red book, Advices and Queries. I will be examining each of the different writings in turn, seeing what they mean to me and how they are relevant in my experience of Quakerism.

Advices and Queries is a small book of statements that is available for Quakers to read and consider, both in and out of meeting for worship. It is not doctrine - it is more a packet of seeds for Friends to plant in their minds and choose to water or not depending on what fits them best.

The first of them is this:
1. Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life.

I think this is one of the Advices that I struggle with. I am still personally undecided about the existence of a God - I believe more in forces of nature, or possibly just our own human spirituality, and what I think I experience during meeting is the feeling of human connection rather than much in the way of external power. I try to apply the word God to that experience for the sake of easier reading of Quaker writing that still uses more traditionally Christian language, but I can find it a little uncomfortable, particularly as I know other people will apply a much different meaning to it. The Light is a phrase which fits better for me, but in all honesty I don't think the perfect word has been invented to describe it yet - a sentiment I have heard more than a few people express.

As a result of this, I interpret this Advice as referring to listening to my own intuition - which is still something I struggle with due to years of mental illness leaving my trust in my own judgement more than a little strained. Part of my personal journey is reclaiming the parts of myself that I have lost to my illnesses, so in that respect this is a meaningful paragraph that makes me think introspectively a great deal.

What I take from this advice is motivation to pay more attention to my gut feelings, and learn to reconnect with the instinctive parts of myself that I spent so many years actively suppressing. Whether the promptings in my heart come from an external God, or the Light, or my inner self, or something entirely different, I believe they are there for a reason and it is good for me to learn to listen to them again, inside and outside of the meeting.

How Quakerism has helped my social anxiety

Let me preface this with a disclaimer: everyone's experience of anxiety is as unique as they are, and as such the ways of dealing with it are as numerous as the stars.

I have found worshipping in silence with other people a great way of helping my social anxiety. It gives us something in common, and a period of time together where nothing is expected - I don't feel obligated to carry a conversation, or act in a neurotypical manner, because all I am doing is sitting and being. After meeting, cups of tea and biscuits go a long way toward breaking the ice. It's much harder to feel uncomfortable with someone when they're smiling at you handing you a cup of tea, or offering something yummy.

The first time I went to a meeting in a different town - Brighton, with the Young Quakers group there - I had a thought pop into my head during the worship, at the beginning, that I was sitting in a room full of friends I just hadn't met yet. Sharing a silence with people is companionable, even if you don't know each other.

The period of time after worship when we sit together and chat is almost as valuable to me as the worship itself. Among Quakers it is not unusual to speak plainly, so it is much easier to take things at face value. A large source of my anxiety is centred around misunderstanding what others are trying to say, which tends to be much simplified in the honesty of the meeting. When a Quaker asks how you are, they are not simply greeting you - they really want to know, and I haven't met one yet without the patience to listen to the real answer.

I have made friends that I value greatly through Quakerism (shout out to the young Quakers at my meeting, you guys are the best), and the social successes I have had help me to boost my confidence a great deal. I cling to bad experiences like a fly to spider's web - I feel like I'm struggling as I constantly am tangled in the memories of when I've gotten things wrong. The good, low pressure experiences I've had with Quakers has given me strength to break free.

Advices and Queries number 27 says "Live adventurously." For me, there is no better manifestation of that than when I find the courage to go somewhere and do something I've never done with people I don't know - for example, a weekend away with the Young Friends General Meeting that I attended recently. I'm proud of myself for managing it, and thankful to the Friends I've met for helping me along the way, because I know that before I became a Quaker such a thing would have been unthinkable for me.