The ear listens, the mind translates. How many times during meeting for worship have I gotten it backwards! I listen with my mind. I ask a question or mull over a problem inside my head and hope God will hear me and answer back, inside me. Then if a worthy thought emerges, I stand to speak. Or if nothing, I’ll blame hearing the bus rumbling down the street, so loud and distracting.
Dear Editor: I write regarding the article “Place of Privilege” by Ann Clendenin in the May/June 2022 issue of Western Friend.
Our meetings for worship are in effect Holy Ground. A weekly gathering at once sublime and simple. Physical and spiritual terrains co-mingle. Become seamless. Limitless. Even eternal.
[This letter was abridged from a longer original, which you can find at: https://westernfriend.org/letters-marchapril-2022]
[This letter was abridged from a longer original, which you can find at: https://westernfriend.org/letters-marchapril-2022]
Dear Friends: In response to Anna Fritz’s article in support of in-person worship, I can only say, “That Friend speaks my mind.” I stopped sitting in front of a screen for meeting for worship when I discovered I could no longer be “present” there, nor pretend that I was.
[This letter was abridged from a longer original, which you can find at: https://westernfriend.org/letters-marchapril-2022]
As meetings consider how to reimagine worship, Friends have written movingly about the value of traditional in-person Quaker worship. As I consider these heartfelt thoughts, a song comes to mind from my Methodist days: “This Is My Father’s World.”
I didn’t want to join the committee. As a “released Friend,” my role is to follow the leadings of my music ministry out in the world, freed from responsibility for the business of Multnomah Monthly Meeting. But I have found myself reckoning lately with a firehose of Spirit blasting a message through me that has nothing to do with songs or cello.
It is one thing to understand words, testimonies, and descriptions; and it is another matter to understand, know, enjoy, possess, and live in that which the words relate to, describe, and bear witness of.
– Isaac Penington, 1670
The word of the LORD came to Jonah. . .
The Ministry and Oversight Committee of Chico Friends Meeting brings us the thrills and chills of deciding how to worship in 2021; includes a great list of resources.
