When I attended Quaker worship for the first time at the Buffalo Friends Meeting in 1970, I felt an intense resonance and wanted to sing – but I didn’t. Then I realized, “Here’s exactly what I needed, even though I didn’t know it.” I found that I craved to be quiet, to simply rest in the silence, to feel more whole, less compulsive, and open to transformation. At once, I felt at home in the meeting, and at the same time, I felt like I was stepping into a potentially life-long inward journey. I encountered the power of the Divine in this gathered Quaker community, encountered the Spirit of God, which turned me into a rather different version of myself, into a devotional, prayerful worshipper.
But still, I wonder – Do I really believe in God? I love singing hymns. When I play the piano and sing with an assertive, swinging, gospel feeling, I’m all-in with God and Jesus. I love the hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” from 1887: “What a fellowship, what a joy divine, / Leaning on the everlasting arms; / What a blessedness, what a peace is mine, / Leaning on the everlasting arms.” There’s that refrain, repetitive, proclaiming the Good News of Jesus. As I sing it or play it, I’m absorbed in the present moment, singing and swinging, caught up and celebrating the moment, the powerful experience of being held and loved by the everlasting arms of God. But am I really moved to place my entire life into those everlasting, loving arms?
That is, do I really believe in God and Jesus? Is the theology about God and Jesus, however modified over the years, something that I subscribe to as my devotional theology? Probably not. But can I experience a Christian version of Jesus in the moment of singing? Definitely.
I find reassurance in Britain Yearly Meeting’s Book of Faith & Practice, which shows me that, despite my internal conflicts here, I have a place among Friends. The second chapter of this book concerns “Approaches to God – Worship and Prayer.” Whatever one’s contemporary experience of worship and prayer is, this chapter dazzles. It is a collection of excerpts from inspired devotional essays by Friends throughout hundreds of years, expressions of intense experiences in the heart and soul. The inner Light shines through these Friends, who share powerful ministry about the immediate presence of God.
Caroline E. Stephen (1890) recalls a vocal ministry that entered her heart during worship: “My whole soul was filled with the unutterable peace of the undisturbed opportunity for communion with God” as she joined “with others in simply seeking His presence.”
In 1987, Ruth Fawell writes of her experience of worship becoming “simple.” “How blessed that there were no restraints of belief. The promptings of love and truth were the starting places, and we could move at our own pace to recognize them as the leadings of God – the beyond which drew me and others on from our limitations and despairs and smallnesses.”
In 1933, Robert Davis expresses simplicity well: “All true worship is inspired by God.” And he ends: “Worship in Christian experience is our response to the God of love.”
Then there’s Thomas R. Kelly from 1941: “How, then, shall we lay hold of that Life and Power, and live the life of prayer without ceasing? By quiet, persistent practice in turning all our being, day and night, in prayer and inward worship and surrender, towards Him who calls in the deeps of our souls.”
Finally, the last example I’ll share here from BYM’s Faith & Practice is from Diana Lampen in 1979: “A friend tells me that when she prays for someone, she does not so much pray to God for them as for God for them. This seems to me a vital clue about prayer. It is God that the troubled person needs, not our advice and instructions. As we learn more about worship, we learn to listen more deeply so that we can be channels through which God’s love reaches the other person. It is God at work, not we ourselves; we are simply used.”
The complete title of this book I have been quoting is: Quaker Faith & Practice, Fifth edition, The book of Christian discipline of the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain. The word that catches my attention now is “Christian.” Quaker academic Ben Pink Dandelion has argued in various articles, as well as in his published dissertation (A Sociological Analysis of the Theology of Quakers: The Silent Revolution), that contemporary British Quakers are “post-Christian.” His research includes a bunch of surveys, from which he concludes: “Liberalism . . . accommodates the marginalization of Christianity, and a diversity based on the culture of pluralism . . .” Does this mean that the British Quaker Faith & Practice is interesting as history, but not as relevant advice today?
I would say “no,” despite my own ambivalent feelings toward the word “Christian.” As the excerpts above show, this book of Christian Quaker faith and practice offers valuable insights into the spiritual, experiential grounding of Quaker practices of worship and prayer. The quoted Friends all assume and incarnate the presence of God, the Divine, the Spirit. In a soulful and bodily (incarnate) manner, these Friends illustrate what it means to feel the reality of God in worship. They demonstrate that the root and center of Quaker worship connects the presence of God with the worshipper in soulful, bodily experiences.
Further, by describing heart-felt experiences of the immediate presence of God in worship and prayer, these Friends’ very words seem infused with Spirit and Light. The words originate in deep worshipful silence, then are carried along by metaphors of sacred connection with the Divine. Caroline F. Stephen writes that her “whole soul was filled with the unutterable peace.” Ruth Fawell writes of “leadings of God” drawing her deeper into worship, even seeming to overcome her despair. Diana Lampen writes of how “we can be channels through which God’s love reaches the other person.”
In the research I conducted through Pendle Hill in 2020, I interviewed both Pastoral and Non-Pastoral Friends about the meanings they find in the Quaker gathered meeting. As I studied these interviews through my devotional research, a passionate and insistent challenge from more than one person stood out: Are we really ready to be channels of the living God? What’s holding us back?
One of these Friends insisted that Quaker gathered worship depends on having a spiritual center. Without a clear spiritual center, rooted in the Divine – by whatever name – a Quaker meeting is unlikely to find the gathered, corporate experience of the unity and wholeness of the Quaker gathered experience.
This brings me back to music and hymns and singing.
I love the hymn “Holy Spirit, Truth Divine” from the mid-1800s, words by Samuel Longfellow and music by Louis M. Gottschalk. When I pray in worship, the second verse of the hymn comes to me often, reminding me both to center and to pray: “Holy Spirit, Love divine! / Glow within this heart of mine; / Kindle every high desire, / Perish self in Thy pure fire.” I pray to the Holy Spirit to glow within my heart, so that I might be transformed and reborn in God’s pure fire.
Stanford Searl is working on a memoir, The Black River in Vermont: A Memoir and a book stimulated by his gathered meeting research, Becoming Quaker: Broken Pieces and Celebrations. He is a member of Santa Monica Friends Meeting (PacYM).