Quaker Worship and Children

I've been thinking about the way children often can't sit still in a Quaker meeting. They're often fidgety and sometimes they like to ask, "are we almost done yet?" And adults sometimes, too, you know.

And you know how Quakers got the name, Quaker? You probably do - people would "quake" or shake, because God was telling them to get up and do something, and they just couldn't hold it in. Or God didn't want them to hold it in, at least.

We often don't even think about the possibility that fidgety young Quakers, the ones who don't sit still in Quaker Meeting, might be unable to sit still because of some kind of Quaker ministry they're called to share.

Now, I'm not saying that every fidgety kid has something to say during meeting that all of us ought to hear.

But I wonder if every fidgety kid has some kind of "ministry" that we ought to be helping them express - it could be speaking, drawing, painting, cooking, fixing stuff with wrenches and hammers...

Stillness, Rising, Falling

So I was thinking about stillness, and how stillness is one of the things we look for in Quaker meetings, partly as a retreat from our crazy world, a place where we can feel safe.

And I was thinking about the joy and excitement that I think has been felt at the birth of new religious movements, including the beginning of the Quaker faith.

I guess both of these - looking for steadiness and retreat, and the looking for excitement - are healthy.

But I think the loud-and-excited side of faith is what's often caused dramatic growth in different religious movements, like early Christians or early Quakers.

I've also been thinking about the worry some folks have, about declining numbers of people participating in unprogrammed Quaker meetings. Maybe we'd really like the numbers to be steady.

Often, though, sameness is not really something the world does. Things rise, they fall, but they don't really sit still that well. Do our meetings for worship sit still well? Do we rise and fall? Do the numbers of Quakers rise and fall?

Often we don't feel safe even saying that we might like the numbers of Quakers to rise. And religions that let excitement take over are dangerous.

I don't know. Not like the number of Quakers "on the books" matters that much anyway, but I guess I'd like to see more of us be excited about our faith, and I think that'd have an impact on how many people come to worship with us...

Energy, More or Less?

It's easy to feel tired and overwhelmed in our busy American society today. Some of us respond to the feeling of tiredness by seeking out opportunities to be alone, maybe even to the point of feeling lonely and "cut off" from other people.

Some of us respond by trying to put everything that's "good" into our lives - helping out with good causes, being on committees, working, rushing from one activity to the next. Even with all of this busy-ness, it's possible to feel as though you haven't made much of a real connection with the people you've been around.

But this isn't the whole story.

I invite you to look at which activities in your life leave you feeling refreshed, ready to really take on whatever life has to offer next. Some of the things we do leave us feeling drained, while others feel like the require a lot of energy and yet leave us excited to keep going!

What kinds of things (in your life or the life of another person) have you seen that seem to bring energy out from nowhere, in a person?

Worship Every Hour?

I'm told a great spiritual teacher said that on days when he was extremely busy, it was important to spend twice as much time praying. Don't know if it's true. But I've been considering ways to arrange my activities and life around what feels connected to the divine. A Christian social/prayer/bible-study group weekly. Quaker worship weekly on Sundays and once or twice during the week too. A meeting for singing each month that feels very spiritually grounded. Participation in a practice called "5Rhythms" that amounts to a sort of "prayer through dance". But some of my favorite and most spiritually powerful experiences have been just sitting around sharing a deep conversation with friends, too. Let me invite you to be attentive to the ways that you connect with Spirit. Does "connecting with something deeper" as a regular habit, make each of these kinds of activities more powerful or fulfilling in your life?

What's in a Name?

I'd like to explain the name for this blog. I had kind of wished for a name that'd need no explanation, but "What did he say?" is a reference to a couple of things that many of you probably don't know about my life.

The more clear meaning is probably that I've often felt like the things I say make no sense to the people around me. Sometimes I'm off in my own space-case mental world, focused on what's going on inside my own mind. I guess it's easy to assume that the mental connections that happen in my own mind will happen for other people, too, and I'm sometimes prone to assuming people will know more about what I'm talking about than they actually do. Clearly, some of the things I say come across as bizzare, nonsensical, or irritating.

The bigger reason I chose the name for this blog, though, was the sort of revelation I had early in 2008 about what Jesus Christ said. To me, regardless of whether any historical person said quite what is written in the bible, the parts of the bible attributed to Jesus Christ directly have a deep ring of spiritual truth to me. They are simple, brief, and somewhat repetitious.

Consider the possible interpretation, that Jesus Christ is no more and no less than the Spirit behind these words:

"Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me" (Mark 10:21).

"Love your neighbor as yourself." (Galatians 5:14)

For me, that's what he said. Who is the "me" mentioned in Mark 10:21? The spirit that says "love your neighbor as yourself".

Quakers and Equality

It appears to me that many Quaker communities are facing a bit of a "chicken and egg" challenge in obtaining the participation of people who are new and people who, on the surface, are "not like us". I'd like to paraphrase some ideas folks have had about this challenge. I hope you'll consider how you might see yourself and people like you, in the "us" and the "them".

• "if their perspectives are listened to and if they participate in the leadership of the community, it will help create a community they will love to participate in"
• "if we invite them, and invite them persistently and lovingly, to participate in our community, then they will participate".
• "if we contribute money we'll feel more invested and participate more"
• "if we contribute our time as a service we'll feel more invested in the community and participate more"
• "if it's difficult for us to find a way to participate, we might not participate"

It strikes me that participation from various groups such as young adults in...

• leadership,
• financial support of the community,
• membership,
• worship,
• service,
• community life,

... that these forms of participation feed off of each other and each is needed for all the others to work out.

I hope you'll consider the possibility that neither you nor the Quaker community is "bad" or "wrong" for not having already looked at this more, or not having created more age/race/social class diversity. I hope you'll also consider that our faith community has a lot to rejoice in, in terms of the stand that we have taken for equality and the ways that has influenced us.

If you've read this far, I'd like to make this request of you:

Would you be willing to invite people to participate in ways that will help our community's base of support* include people who are new or whose age, social class, or race is different from your own?

*by that i I mean our membership, leadership, worship, etc.

Facetious Guidelines for Quaker Messages

Note to people with no sense of humor: This blog post is a joke!

In Quaker Worship, there are a couple of guidelines you should follow in order to discern whether what you are considering saying should be shared with the people you are with. It is fortunate that they are very simple and easy to remember. I discerned these guidelines today after reading one prominent Quaker's facebook status, which said : "(name) should not be on facebook during business meeting."

Guideline 1: The message should come from God.

Guideline 2: The message should be un-boring enough that people don't quit listening and go check facebook.

I encourage you to speak during a Quaker meeting for worship, or a Quaker meeting-for-worship-for-business if (and only if) what you have to say follows both of those guidelines.