Going Back

Going back to the silence when you've been away for a while is difficult.

I live every moment of my life surrounded by noise - I listen to music as I walk, to podcasts as I do my house chores... even working in a library is never really quiet.

The silence of a Quaker meeting lets your mind wander and you end up in the strangest of places. Whatever it is that leads you there - your subconscious, God, the inner light - it's important to just sit in it for a while. It's sometimes disconcerting, travelling by silence, but the journey is important.

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.

Look Again

At a Meeting for Worship that I recently attended, a Friend gave ministry regarding an oak tree situated next to his home. He had walked past this tree every day, often multiple times a day, for nearly fifty years, and had only noticed that morning the unusual size of its leaves. He then went on to talk about how when we become used to something it can blend into the background of our lives, without us seeing its unusual properties and any significance they might have. 

The conclusion I drew from this was that it is important to occasionally take a step back and re-examine that which has become overly familiar. I think back to the amount of times I walked past the Quaker Meeting House throughout my life - it sits on my town's secondary high street, opposite the library that I have frequented my whole life. For many years I passed it on a weekly basis, never knowing how much it or the organisation it represents would come to mean to me on a personal level. From the outside it is a building of great ordinariness - not standing out at all from the town around it, until you take a second look and see what makes it unique. 

Quaker Lingo

Quakers use a particular vocabulary. This is a brief and continually expanding glossary in which I will attempt to explain these terms in a beginner-friendly way. Please bear in mind this is specific to the Quakers in Britain!

Attender: Someone who regularly goes to Quaker meetings but is not a formal member.

Britain Yearly Meeting: The national organisation of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain.

Business Meeting: A specific kind of Meeting for Worship where Quakers attempt to discern the correct path for decision-making. All Quakers are equal, so everyone is given equal weight. (edit - my previous definition included the word unanimous, which Quakers do not use. I'm still learning! Please look at the comments for a good addendum to this one.)

Centring/Centring Down: The state of tranquillity most Quakers acquire or aim for during Meeting for Worship. Generally regarded as a connection to the inner light.

Clearness Meeting: A meeting where an individual asks support from Friends with an issue in their life. An example may be the decision to become a Member, or making a career change. 

Clerk: Someone who oversees Business Meetings and records minutes of the will of the group. They also look after the inner workings of the meeting.

Meeting for Worship: When Quakers gather together in silence for stillness and contemplation, attempting to connect with... each other, or God, or the inner light... or whatever you want to call it.

Quaker Faith & Practice (QF&P): Although Quakers do not follow a specific creed or holy book, QF&P is still important to many Friends. It is a book that is written by Quakers for Quakers, updated every generation at the Britain Yearly Meeting. It contains Quaker perspectives on many different topics.

Weighty Friend: A Quaker who is heavily involved in the Society, who takes part in a lot of events and assists a lot with organising things within the Society.

Young Friends General Meeting (YFGM): The association of Quakers and people associated with Quakers in Britain aged 18-35. Can also refer to the thrice-yearly weekends away hosted by the organisation.

An Intro

Welcome.

This is a blog about my experiences as a new young Quaker in Britain. My background is a secular one (with a smattering of Catholicism from my grandparents) so I am approaching religion with fairly fresh eyes. 

I found Quakerism through this YouTube video in July of this year. I had long been searching for a spiritual home, but I was distrustful of a lot of organised religion as a bisexual woman. I am also quite contrary by nature, so I struggle with being told what to believe but still wanted to feel supported by a community. As you can imagine, I was pretty convinced I wouldn't find anything that fit my profile! I wasn't actually actively searching when I came across the video - I'm just a fan of Jessica and tend to watch whatever she puts on her channel (if you like vintage beauty and disability activism I urge you to subscribe to her, her videos are always excellent). I was immediately intrigued by the incredibly accepting group she described and threw myself into research, listening to all of the Young Quaker Podcast (which is also excellent, by the way, and very much worth checking out) in a single day, all the while sat on my computer and reading as much as I could find on the subject. I discovered that my local meeting was having a meeting for worship followed by a picnic lunch the very next day, so I screwed up my courage and went along.

I have a severe anxiety disorder, so this was a pretty nerve-wracking thing for me to do - it can be quite scary to walk into a room of strangers, particularly if they are already a community, and though I'd prepared in the best way I knew how (research, research and more research) I was still afraid. I trembled as I walked in and was approached by a kind lady who welcomed me and offered me a cup of tea before the meeting started. That first meeting eased my mind, and by the time of the picnic lunch afterwards I was comfortable enough to converse naturally - astonishing to me at the time since I hadn't actually exchanged a word with anyone yet, just sat with them in the peace and stillness of meeting.

My initial experience of a meeting for worship was that of a comfortable silence. It allowed me to calm down and feel a sense of connection with the people in the room, something I often struggle with. I have been to many meetings since, but that first one is a fond memory for me. The sensation I find in meeting is very similar to the one I get when I stand on the beach and watch the sea - a calm joy.

I will be posting more about my experiences and perspective as a shiny and new young Quaker, including reflections on ministry given at meeting, my experiences getting used to interacting with Quakers as an organisation and as individuals, and what I think and feel as I learn and grow. This blog will be very Britain-centric as that's where all my experience comes from, so if you are a Quaker from elsewhere or have experience with them, I'd be intrigued to hear about it. 

More on Quakers in Britain:

quaker.org.uk

https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/