Listening Each Other Into Wholeness

In this week’s QuakerSpeak video, O talks about the role of listening in healing our humanity. What happens when we really listen to one another?

In this week’s QuakerSpeak video, O talks about the role of listening in healing our humanity. What happens when we really listen to one another?

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Based on my limited understanding, we are amazingly powerful, whether we get it or not. We are extremely powerful, and often, we feel powerless. Anywhere from depression to anxiety to whatever, we are “feelers.”

Listening Each Other Into Wholeness

When I listen––when I really listen––I am listening to hear God speak. I am listening for God’s voice, God’s signal. What that means to me is the signal that moves me to alive-ness. The signal that allows me to feel the fullness.

And when I speak I am not frivolous with my words because I recognize that my words are power. “Henceforth Christ was known as the word of God” because my judgment is he truly understood the power of word, the power of speaking. So I listen so that I know where I am, where I don’t want to be. What’s possible. To be touched, called, formed. And when I speak, I speak knowing that I’m working with God’s power. And when I speak I want to speak in a way that facilitates healing, that facilitates blessing, that facilitates wholeness, that facilitates creative possibility for integration.

When We Don’t Listen

My concern is that we don’t listen to each other, and it creates the world we see. It creates the world we experience. People not being heard, not being seen, not being appreciated, not being valued, not being recognized. People not being recognized for that of God that dwells within them. Not seen. Not recognized. Not reclaimed and embraced. Whole-heartedly embraced. And so we fragment. We fragment. We become broken because we are not seen for who we really are. The body breaks. It just breaks.

Listening Each Other Into Wholeness

The positive news… (That’s the sad news. That’s the sad news, how about some happy news?) The happy news is at any point in time we can take our power back, we can fine tune, re-hone, calibrate our capacity to hear and recognize each other. And so my belief is there’s a way of listening, that Quakers have this belief or this sentence: “Listening each other into wholeness.” That we have the capacity to listen each other into wholeness, and we can take that back at any point in time and feel the richness of deep listening, where our heart is actually touched. Deep listening. And deep speaking. It’s exciting.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

The Quaker Practice of Discernment

When Quakers are faced with difficult choices, we have a tool for that.

When Quakers are faced with difficult choices, we have a tool for that.

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Christopher Sammond: Discernment is really the heart and the core of everything we do as Friends. It’s the core of our practice in worship, it’s the core of our practice in worship for business, it’s the center of how we make decisions in our lives, to marry, for our employment, for our work in the world, for our ministry…

The Quaker Practice of Discernment

Niyonu Spann: The process of discernment and being called, or having a leading or the deepest knowing—all of those feel like incredibly connected, if not the exact same thing.

Walter Hjelt Sullivan: For me, discernment is the core technology of Quakerism. It is the thing that we learn to do and that our faith supports. And that is to thresh through the complexity of life and find the kernel, find the root, find the way: the way for me today, at this moment.

Patricia McBee: Some people may call it seeking the will of God. Others may call it consulting their deep inner wisdom. I think a lot of people do discernment relatively spontaneously when they have a sticky issue to deal with, and they stop, they let it rest a while. They let an answer rise up in them.

Walter Hjelt Sullivan: …to tell the difference between the still small voice that’s guiding me well and the many other voices—the many other fine, human voices—that are within me.

Callid Keefe-Perry: So, discernment is listening for God’s will for us to move us more fully into God’s understanding of the kingdom of heaven, of right order between all creation—humans and plants and animals and ideas, I would even say.

Balancing the Spiritual with the Intellectual

Patricia McBee: Of course, part of Quaker discernment is the rational, reasonable assessment of the pros and cons of the decision at hand. Discernment takes it a step farther than that and invites us to go to a deep place, a centered place, and to see how… how where our rational minds have led us sits in us.

Christopher Sammond: Discernment is accessing that place where God is at work in us, and it’s well beyond rational, thoughtful weighing of the situation. It’s not without an information gathering phase where we have to understand the parameters clearly, but then, after that, it comes down to accessing that same place that vocal ministry comes from, that place of deep faithfulness where we don’t care whether it’s this or that. We have no investment in which side of that question we fall on, and: “God what do you want me to do here?”

Callid Keefe-Perry: And so then we listen with the reason, we listen with emotion, we listen with inspiration, and, kind of, more than a touch of hope. And I’ll say, experientially, I know that it functions. It works. That when we trust one another, when we are able to be vulnerable with one another, when we allow ourselves to think that it might actually be the case that God is an actual thing that we might actually be able to hear and might live into actually better lives, well—lo and behold—something happens in that space.

Niyonu Spann: So, discernment, for me, is definitely a listening, but it also is this process of allowing and letting go.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Can There Be a Nonviolent Response to Terrorism?

Quaker professor George Lakey’s 8 nonviolent strategies to respond to terrorism piqued the Pentagon’s interest. Learn what happened next.

Quaker professor George Lakey’s 8 nonviolent strategies to respond to terrorism piqued the Pentagon’s interest. Learn what happened next.

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As an experiment, because I was teaching here at Swarthmore College, I decided to offer a course called “Nonviolent Responses to Terrorism,” and see if anybody would come. We had to lottery the course, there were so many students who were excited about this different approach.

Can There Be a Nonviolent Response to Terrorism?

What their job was, was to write. Each student had to choose a country that is currently threatened by terrorism; get to know that country—its strengths, its weaknesses; and develop a defense strategy against the threat, a strategy that would be nonviolent in character. That was their term paper for the semester.

The 8 Tools of Nonviolent Defense

There were eight different tools that I discovered in my research that have been used, actually, by various nation-states as defense modes. For example, one of those tools—you wanted an example—one of those tools is economic development. Do economic development in the area where the prime recruiting ground is for terrorists, because terrorist are very often motivated by economic injustice, and economic oppression. If you turn that situation around and provide plentiful jobs, a lot of the people that would otherwise decide on a career of terrorism will get a job and, you know, be straightforward citizens. And so, that’s one of the eight.

Healing as a Strategic Tool

What terror does—even the threat of terror to some degree—but what the actual act of terror does is traumatize the people most affected and the people that know them. The trauma, then, takes political form and increases that nation’s likelihood of doing stuff to the attacker that increases the amount of the attack. That’s what happened on 9/11. The U.S., by its response to Afghanistan, and then Iraq, increased the total number of terrorists available in the world, increased Osama Bin Laden’s prominence. It was just amazing… the U.S. decided to be the primary recruiter of terrorists against itself. But it did that not because it’s so stupid as to want to recruit terrorists for Osama Bin Laden, not intentionally. But because the trauma itself forced the U.S. into doing this mad thing that anybody pragmatic would not want to do. So, another tool of these eight is to go right into a healing mode for the people who were traumatized. In this case, in the U.S., it was really the whole population that was traumatized by the 9/11 experience. So, that’s another example of a tool.

Implementing Nonviolence as Policy

It’s hard to summarize those tools, because it took a whole semester to really lay them out, so that students would have enough ability to operate with them. They did. They did fantastic papers. In the meantime, the Pentagon heard about this, and asked me to come down. And so, I went down and met with a policy unit of the Pentagon that had to do with responding to terrorism. These were professionals in the field. I’m not a professional in the field of terrorism, but there they were.

So, I laid it all out and I said, in the beginning, the one reason that I want to lay out these eight for you, is not only because the students—who are definitely not experts, they’re undergraduates—were able to make so much sense for the defense planning for the various countries that they chose, including Israel, including the U.S., including Indonesia and other countries that were threatened. Not only were the students able to write papers that made so much sense but also, you, as experts, I’m hoping for you to show more about how synergies will happen by the combination of the eight. Because, yes, there are countries that have tried number two and number five but what if you take all eight, and forget about the military response, just say, instead of a military response, we’ll have a nonviolent response. Use those eight synergistically with each other, so that the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts. I want you, as experts to give me that kind of feedback.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Why Do Quakers Care About Politics?

Why do Quakers care about politics? We asked Marge Abbott and Noah Baker Merrill.

Why do Quakers care about politics? We asked Marge Abbott and Noah Baker Merrill.

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Noah Baker Merrill: We’re a small group. We’re politically insignificant in so many ways, but it’s not our power that we’re bringing to these conversations. We’re being as faithful as we can be to the truth that’s being revealed to us, and we’re trusting that if we follow that through, that that will speak in others as well, you know, that that same power that we’re encountering is also at work in every heart.

Why Do Quakers Care About Politics?

Marge Abbott: Friends always been very active in addressing our government and its rule. They had started out in the earliest days having to try and change laws that were affecting them directly. As time went by a century later they were among the most active lobbyists to end slavery, active in women’s suffrage, in temperance movements… many, many places where they were lobbying over the centuries.

The Story of Paul and the Jail Cell

Noah: There’s a story in the Book of Acts that I really love where these two traveling ministers, Paul and Silas, are in this jail…

Marge: …and in the middle the night there was an earthquake or something that broke open his jail cell…

Noah: …and everybody’s chains come off. So they’re sitting in this broken prison…

Marge: …and he could have easily walked away, and never been seen again, and never have to deal with the consequences…

Noah: …and the jailer comes in and he says he starts to kill himself, because he’s afraid to get executed because his prisoners have escaped, and Paul and Silas call out and say, “Don’t harm yourself. We are all still here.”

Marge: He stayed and faced his jailers and said, “You guys are doing it wrong. You can’t be imprisoning me. You’re taking away my rights as a Roman citizen.”

Noah: So that image is really important in terms of understanding what it means for Quakers to be engaged in prophetic work, that we can touch that experience of everybody’s chains coming off and then we stand and we wait in the broken prison and we bring that message to others, and invite others to live in that reality as well.

Creating the Kingdom of God,
Waiting in the Broken Prison

Marge: Friends have always had this sense that the Kingdom of God can be realized here on earth, and so for early Friends, sometimes that vision was taken from Isaiah with the image of the lion and the lamb living side by side without doing damage to the other, this sense that we can all share this Earth together if we treat each other with respect.

They really wanted to prick the consciences of the magistrates, the soldiers, whoever was around, and get them to change the laws so other people would not have to suffer. So it was not just about themselves, it was about concern for the whole of the community and that unjust laws should be changed.

Noah: So it’s not like maybe in some churches where people are looking for a ticket out of this world, or it’s not like some places where they’re trying to just benefit themselves or disengage from the connection with the world.

The Quaker call to prophetic work is about having that experience of that transforming love and then seeking to live it in the world, in all relationships.

Transformation Through Relationship

Noah: The systems that we create as people, the systems of government and systems of power and the way that we distribute resources are all inhabited by people, and at its most powerful, this prophetic work is about relationships. And so when we reach out to people across the political divide, people can feel that if it’s coming from a real place. Getting out of that sense of, “We are going to force you to do something,” but offering that invitation that it could be different. That we could we could together build a world that is so much more whole, so much more alive than the one that we live in today.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

How Mysticism Informs Quaker Activism

Jennie Isbell explores her journey from skepticism into activism.

Jennie Isbell explores her journey from skepticism into activism.

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A great bit of my help in understanding the difference between mysticism and activism came from reading a bit of Rufus Jones, when he explains that the Christian mystic is fundamentally frog-like in nature, traveling between land and water—and maybe that’s all of Christian identity, actually—that people of faith are required to take that faith and come to places of not-faith and live faithfully.

How Mysticism Informs Quaker Activism

So I used to have a pretty bad attitude about activists. Even during my involvement with Quaker meetings, I have run away from the people coming coming to me to get me to write political letters and I have made fun of bumper stickers in the parking lot. I now have bumper stickers, but that’s another story! But there’s a bit of conversion that has happened in my sense of the mystic and the activist aspects of being a person.

The Spiritual Impulse to Act in the World

No matter what else we may imagine the life of Jesus to be, it is certainly understood to be a revelation of God’s love through a human life, and what that means, among other things, is that humans and God are not so far apart as we may be led to believe—that God’s love would be revealed to us through a human life.

That sort of ups the ante in terms of what it means to be incarnation people, because if God’s love can be revealed through a human life then God’s love can be revealed through my life. And what a thing to need to live into—to live up to—if in those mystical encounters of prayer and contemplation and communion with others on the path, I find myself truly compelled to live in response to the glimpse I’ve been given of the holy, then: wow. We better get to it, you know? There are people to feed and people to love and people to to bring back.

Becoming Active

One of the things that kept me out of being activist for a very long time was a fear of getting it wrong—or a fear of needing to know more than I could stand to know, actually—just more than I was interested in knowing. I think that’s one of the reasons, I just want to say, my involvement with Friends Committee on National Legislation has been a life changer.

The feeling companioned and equipped for important work during these lobby events that they have a couple times a year has helped me understand the way in which my own contemplative practice, my own sense that God has intentions and hopes for the world and that God is deeply relational and we’re giving glimpses of God’s way for the world and that we are in fact compelled—we’re under compulsion to respond to those if we really believe we’ve been given them, that they can still be a stop, a fear. I don’t know enough or I’m scared And yet Friends Committee on National Legislation has the the nuts and bolts down and have kind of held my hand through becoming more active in the political arena in a way that feels mature and effective, and has made me understand that the letter writers that I ran from have been been blowing on the coals trying to re-light the fire of clarity that those of us who are given over to mystical inclinations must act in the world.
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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

The Courage to Be a Quaker

Being a Quaker isn’t just about going to Meeting on Sunday morning. It’s about opening yourself to being transformed and then living in way that not everyone will understand. How do we find the courage?

Being a Quaker isn’t just about going to Meeting on Sunday morning. It’s about opening yourself to being transformed and then living in way that not everyone will understand. How do we find the courage?

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Quakers believe that there is that of God or the sacred in every person and that all are equal before God.

The Courage to Be a Quaker

My name is Deborah Shaw. I live in Greensboro, North Carolina. I’m a member of Friendship Friends Meeting, which is part of North Carolina Yearly Meeting, Conservative. And I work at Guilford College, as the director of the Quaker Leadership Scholars Program.

Quakerism as Countercultural

To listen to the still, small voice does feel very countercultural. It feels like a radical step against what the world—capital-W World—is telling us to do. I think in our culture, we’re told we have to figure everything out. We have to do it. There’s this idea that we’re fiercely independent.

The thing about the still, small voice and Quakerism, as I experience it, is that I hear something and then I go and test it with a trusted Friend.
I say, “this is what I’m hearing. How does that appear to you? Does that make sense to you? I’m not holding it up against an advertisement of the newest vehicle or the newest electronic gadget, but I’m holding it in the heart. I’m asking a Friend, or a group of Friends or the Meeting to hold it in their hearts and to listen carefully themselves to “Is that right? Does it feel like that’s of God? Or does that feel like it’s Deborah’s ego?”

Mentoring Younger Quakers

In my work with the Quaker Leadership Scholars at Guilford College, I often find myself talking to them—18 to 21 year olds—about the radical courage it takes to stand against the culture. The culture is so insidious and overwhelming. Everywhere we are, we are bombarded by it constantly, and it is telling us something very different than what our Quaker faith tells us, or what the still, small voice tells us, or what our inward teacher tells us.

So I say to them, it is a hard path to choose and to walk. And you need allies in it, and you need people who are trying to do the same thing. To do it alone is virtually impossible. To stand against the culture, and to stand against the influx. Just the continual bombardment of the culture, which is telling us we’re not worthy, which is a lie. That we’re not worthy unless we do these certain things and buy these other things and act a certain way or achieve this certain goal of material possessions. There’s so much of it.

Or that we’re not thin enough or that our noses aren’t right. It just takes a lot of courage and companionship to say, “No. I am a beloved child of God, just as I am. With all of my imperfections and yes, I’m striving to be more perfect and more whole and more fully who I’m supposed to be but even as I am right this minute, I’m a beloved child of God.”

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

What Do Quakers Do in Silent Worship?

What are Quakers doing when they sit in silence on Sunday morning? These 7 Friends share their answers.

What are Quakers doing when they sit in silence on Sunday morning? These 7 Friends share their answers.

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Faith Kelley
I’m a little bit of an overachiever, so I usually come in and I’m like, “I’m going to worship now. I’m going to sit here and be the best worshipper ever, and this is going to be it.” And I really have to let that go.

What Quakers Do in Silent Worship

Peterson Toscano
I go to Quaker Meeting and I just let everything open up. I think of it as this wonderful scan disk of my hard drive, helping me clear out all of the gaps and be still and lay down things that are bothering me that really aren’t that important, just getting me to a place of stability and clarity. It’s been really important to me.
Preparing the Soil

Arthur Larrabee
Thinking about Meeting for Worship on Sunday, the first thing that comes to mind is to share that Meeting for Worship is a much more satisfactory experience if some spiritual preparation has been done in advance. The metaphor for me is “preparing the soil,” so the soil is ready for the message or for the seed.

Kristina Keefe-Perry
It feels like it is very important to be part of a group of people who are creating a container of deepening worship that is already in process as other Friends arrive.

Centering

Tenaja Henson
I remember my first Meeting for Worship when I was older that I could remember was really difficult because I wanted to talk or play a game or go run around.

Arthur Larrabee
So often the energy of life is a topsy-turvy energy. It’s energy going in many different directions with many different pressures, being pulled hither and yon, and it’s centered in many many different places and not in one place.

Faith Kelley
I usually need the first 10, 15, 20, 30 – however long it takes – minutes to quiet myself.

Deborah Shaw
In the Meeting for Worship in the silence I am trying to center myself, which means to lay aside distractions of the world, and to listen carefully to the inward teacher, the inward guide, the inner Christ, that within me which is within me and also beyond me.

Faith Kelley
And for me that sort of involves that narrative voice that I sort of have going in the back of my head all the time, just sort of letting that go. It’s not so much about quieting it but just releasing it. The more I sort of try to like, stuff it down, the louder it gets and so it’s just sort of about letting it go. And that seems to make space for God to fill up.

Arthur Larrabee
There’s a quote that means a lot to me from Thomas Kelly’s essay, “The Light Within”, which is found within his volume A Testament of Devotion:

“Deep within us all, there is an amazing sanctuary of the soul: a holy place, a divine center, a speaking voice to which we may continuously return.”

That describes a centered place for me. This deep inner sanctuary of the soul. And I find meaning and value in trying to get there, making my way back home. Making my way back home.

Developing a Practice

Kristina Keefe-Perry
Thich Nhat Hanh, who is of course a Buddhist not a Quaker, talks about meditation as a process of sort of “tuning into the smile channel,” and somehow that description was very helpful for me. Let’s tune into the Spirit channel! Where in the body – in my body – do I perceive the Spirit moving among us?

Christie Duncan-Tessmer
I start by paying attention to my breath and my body, and slowing down my breath and feeling my body. I love the sense of settling into my body, and my body settling into space, and I feel my breath sort of going deeper and deeper.

Arthur Larrabee
Sometimes my mind will go to what has happened the preceding week, and I’ll ask the question, “How can I identify the movement of Spirit and what has happened for me in the week preceding this worship?”

Tenaja Henson
Something I do, I have these prayer beads that I wear all the time, and I’ll think of all the people in my life and I’ll hold them in the Light for a few minutes and let them know that I’m thinking about them and giving them positive energy.

Christie Duncan-Tessmer
Sometimes I focus on a particular phrase or word or image and try to hold that as long as I can and then keep coming back to it.

Tenaja Henson
I mean, I think for me, it let’s me know that even if somebody thinks they’re alone, you know, I can say, “No, you’re not. I’ve been thinking about you. And I don’t know if it’s impacted anyone else, I’ve never told anyone that so I guess, secrets out!

Waiting Expectantly

Kristina Keefe-Perry
Sandra Cronk, in her pamphlet on gospel order, has a sentence in the beginning of the pamphlet:

“Early Friends expected and experienced the in-breaking of the Spirit in their Meetings for Worship.”

And that sentence has been so important for me to hold onto like a life raft, continue to hold expectation. I think that’s why we call it “expectant waiting worship”, that positive expectation that we will experience the presence of the Holy Spirit among us, and we are just waiting for it to show up. It’s not an if, it’s a when.

Deborah Shaw
And then, when I get to that place, it’s a communal effort, it’s not just about me and my relationship with the divine – although that is an important part of it – but it’s also feeling the gathered assembly around me, the gathered Friends around me and paying attention to what might be needed: whether I’m going to be called to deliver a message or sing a song, or pray particularly for someone in the group, or might just be mindful of someone. I see that as a very communal thing, how the group comes together and is able to center in the silence.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

The Top 7 Most Quaker Bible Verses

What are the most relevant Bible passages to the Quaker faith? Mark Wutka shares his list.

What are the most relevant Bible passages to the Quaker faith? Mark Wutka shares his list.

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If we were to say, “What’s a scriptural foundation of Quakerism?”, there are verses we would point to and say, for instance, “This is where we got our name. This is where have our understanding of God. This is where the idea of unity comes from.” (Although it’s mentioned in many places.

Top 7 Most Quaker Bible Verses

These verses are verses that are both important to me and are verses that I hear other Friends use, either directly by quoting them or indirectly by living out what they describe. Other people may have a different list; these are mine.

#7 Ephesians 4:1

So the first verse is Ephesians 4:1.

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

The reason I had thought of that one is because we like the phrase, “Walk worthy of your calling.”

#6 Isaiah 6:8

A lot of times when I’m in meetings with people traveling in the ministry or talking about ministry among Friends, Isaiah 6:8 comes up a lot, because it has to do with being willing to serve.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

#5 Matthew 5:33

The testimony of not swearing oaths dates back to the early Friends, and it is really tied to the testimony of integrity: that we should be telling the truth all the time.

But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair black or white. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’.

An oath is sort of saying, “You know, I lie sometimes, but this time I’m really telling the truth.” And if you’re always telling the truth, you shouldn’t have to swear an oath.

#4 John 15:12

The Religious Society of Friends took its name from John 15.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

The reason I like this one is it’s an encapsulation of not just our origin, but the idea of loving one another is central to us, just as the understanding of “God is Love” is central.

#3 John 1:9

This was one of the ones that George Fox used so many times you can’t really count. You’d have a very long list if you listed all the references.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

A lot of times when people say there’s “That of God” in others, it’s speaking to the idea that, because everyone has that of God, you should treat them a certain way. I think that’s a very worthy way to look at it, but the other way that it would’ve meant in George Fox’s time was that we all have access to God and the Spirit that teaches us is available to everyone, and so it’s also helpful to focus on that of God in ourselves and listen to that.

#2 Matthew 22:37

Of course in Jesus’ ministry, people were always asking questions to try to trip him up, and in this particular case, one of the people he was debating with asked him, “What is the greatest commandment?” and he said,

“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

So again, it goes back to love. You love God, you love your neighbor. Everything else derives from those relationships.

#1 Galatians 5:22

So this verse is two verses. It’s Galatians 5:22 and 23, and it often serves as a touchstone for people because it’s about the fruit of the Spirit.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

For me, and I know for a lot of others, this is a great test of: “Are we in touch with the Spirit?” That when we are, these things are what should flow from us.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Quakers and the Still, Small Voice

When we sit in silence on Sunday morning, Quakers often like to say that we’re “listening”. But what does that still small voice sound like?

When we sit in silence on Sunday morning, Quakers often like to say that we’re “listening”. But what does that still small voice sound like?

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Noah Merrill
What I’ve found again and again is that there are moments where I am able to make enough space to listen to that still, small voice—to that inward voice of Christ that leads me into a different way of living. A different way of loving in the world.

Quakers and the Still, Small Voice

Brian Drayton
The first Friends—especially George Fox—the core of their message is that “Christ has come to teach his people himself.” It’s not a theological thing: Friends experienced unmediated discipleship. Just like Peter followed Jesus and heard Jesus’ voice, got the teachings direct, had to encounter Jesus’ personality for good and for ill—that’s what Friends were experiencing. That was the inward teacher.

Fascinatingly, just like the Holy Spirit spoke through the apostles at the Pentecost in such a way that everybody heard the Spirit speaking in their own language, so, too, the Christ Spirit in all ages has been speaking in ways that people could understand in their situation and in their times.

The Still, Small Voice

Deborah Shaw
So the still, small voice is about us understanding that when we still ourselves and quiet ourselves and, I think part of it is making yourself not be the center of the story, like that I am not the center of the story…

Deborah Suess
I think it’s helpful to remember that for most of us, we don’t see writing on the wall. Most of us don’t hear a vocal leading. Most of us don’t frequently have these, like, dynamic mystical experiences, although they happen.

Deborah Shaw
And so we have to be quiet. We have to lean forward and say, “Oh, yes…”

What We Hear When We Listen

O
When I listen—when I really listen—I am listening to hear God speak. I am listening for God’s voice. God’s signal. What that means to me is the signal that moves me to aliveness.

Deborah Shaw
So the still, small voice might be consolation. It also might be reproof. It also might be inspiration or challenge or encouragement. I get a sense of a way forward and a comfortable-ness in my body-mind-spirit which is saying “yes, that’s not just you”—although I have to be a part of that co-creating—but that’s God speaking to me. The inward Christ, the inward teacher.

Brian Drayton
Now, that inward teacher we believe has been present in all ages and in all people, because the inward teacher is another way of talking about the inward light. And that’s the Christ Spirit at work in all ages, if you follow John, which Friends like to do… the gospel of John I mean.

The Challenge of Listening

Noah Merrill
It’s been my experience that the most clear invitations to live in a way that is about love and wholeness come in a voice that is very easy to ignore, that it’s very easy for me to let my ego, let my fears, my anxieties, the ways that I’m bound up govern the way I live my life.

O
It’s almost as if the energy of the soul, in all of its power and its richness and its movement… that which has the capacity to create universes, my belief is that we have a tendency to suppress it.

Deborah Suess
…and so often times I think it’s important that we learn to quiet enough to discern the Spirit Christ’s pattern of speaking to us.

O
Finding a way to really tap, locate, that energy and allowing it to come forth… it’s a power. It’s a power. And that power, in order to break through the ego structures and the racisms and the classism and the homophobia-isms, and all those isms—in order for Spirit to come through that, there is this aliveness and power that pushes up and out and the body quakes. That’s one way of accessing it.

Putting the Still, Small Voice at the Center of Our Lives

Jay O’Hara
Putting the still, small voice at the center looks like not doing anything until it’s clear—until you’re truly led.

Deborah Shaw
Even if it’s telling me I must do something that I’m not happy about maybe engaging in, or even if that is a discomfort place, I still have the sense of comfort and calm. There’s a sense of a deeper peace that accompanies that, those commands or those encouragements.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

How Do We Save Quakerism?

Are your Meeting’s numbers dwindling? Do you worry that there won’t be a “next” generation to pass Quakerism on to?

Are your Meeting’s numbers dwindling? Do you worry that there won’t be a “next” generation to pass Quakerism on to?
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You aren’t alone. As I’ve traveled the country visiting different kinds of Quaker Meetings, I’ve noticed that many Quaker Meetings are holding a similar, underlying anxiety: what’s next?

Of course there are Meetings that don’t fit this categorization, but if you are one of those Friends who holds a concern for the future of the Religious Society of Friends, read on.

Step 1: Ask Ourselves, “What Are We Trying to Save?”

As someone who gets most excited about Quakerism when I think about the Early Friends, I believe that the litmus test for whether we have life is the fire and Spirit that motivated the emergence of the Quaker movement.
Continue reading “How Do We Save Quakerism?”

Why I Blockaded 40,000 Tons of Coal With a Lobster Boat

Massachusetts Quaker Jay O’Hara felt led to blockade a 40,000-ton coal shipment with a tiny lobster boat. What happened next might surprise you.

Massachusetts Quaker Jay O’Hara felt led to blockade a 40,000-ton coal shipment with a tiny lobster boat. What happened next might surprise you.

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We had no idea we were supposed to get a lobster boat, until we ended up with a lobster boat, and then that became the symbol: this little white lobster boat in front of this big, hulking black ship of coal.
We opened ourselves to a place of love and humility, knowing that we were supposed to be there but not having any sense of anger or opposition.

Ken Ward
Hi, this is Ken Ward. I’m on board the boat, the Henry David T., off the pier at Brayton Point, and I wanted to let you know that we’re conducting a nonviolent, completely peaceful protest against the use of coal, and we’ll be completely cooperative.

On May 15th, 2013, I and my friend Ken motored our 32-foot white lobster boat, named the Henry David T., into Brayton Point, which is the largest single source of climate changing carbon emissions in all of New England.

We’ve got the red, white, and blue flying up there, and Brayton Point station in back of us with a giant pile of coal.

…and we dropped anchor—a rather large anchor—in a place that would prevent the incoming shipment of West Virginia coal from being docked and unloaded.

Captain of the Energy Enterprise
Ok, this is the captain of the vessel. You’re impeding the safe passage of my vessel. I’ve contacted the United States Coast Guard and I’ll let you deal with them.

Jay O’Hara
Roger, Captain. Thank you.

Captain of the Energy Enterprise
And if we are attacked, we will defend ourselves.

Jay O’Hara
Uh, Roger Captain. This is Jay of the Henry David T. Just to let you know, this is a peaceful and nonviolent protest, and we’re here to witness that coal should not be being burned here in Massachusetts and New England. This is Henry David T. standing by, 16.

For six hours, the Energy Enterprise was prevented from unloading its shipment of 40,000 tons of Appalachian coal.

There was this clarity that we need to start being really bold in what we do, and we need to start making visible the tragedy that we’re perpetuating on ourselves and be bold in disclosing our role in that when we flip on the lightswitch.

For Jay, the protest was an act of faith.

My journey into faithfulness started through activism. In order to be effective you have to be not striving for effectiveness, because the measures that we have for effectiveness rely on the world’s measurement of what is effective. The world doesn’t actually believe we can do what needs to happen, but our hearts know what’s possible. I have faith that God has some plans, or some ability, or that the Great Big Spirit Mama of the Universe can move us in the right direction if we pay attention and if we listen.

The whole story of going to block this coal ship is a cascade of doors opening that we had no control over, at almost every turn being guided: “Oh no, this is the way. This is the way.”

Ken and Jay were charged with conspiracy, disturbing the peace, failure to avoid collision, and negligent operation of a motor vessel.

They faced the potential of several years in prison.

I am in a place where I can’t pretend to know what should happen or what the most effective outcome would be. I don’t know. And in my giving over my life, I’m trusting and hoping that I’ll be used for the highest good, but under no illusion that I know what that is. But I know that if I stay low and stay open and keep my focus on my faithfulness in every moment that’s opened to me, I’m gonna end up in the right place.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Let Your Heart Sing: Quakers and Music

Do Quakers sing in worship? These Quakers do! Laura Dungan and Aaron Fowler from Wichita, Kansas talk music, Spirit, and a sound so low the human ear can’t perceive it.

Do Quakers sing in worship? These Quakers do! Laura Dungan and Aaron Fowler from Wichita, Kansas talk music, Spirit, and a sound so low the human ear can’t perceive it.

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When friends by shame are undefiled,
How can I keep from singing?
How can I keep from singing?
Let Your Heart Sing

I�m Laura Dungan. Wichita, Kansas, a member of University Friends Meeting/Church, depending on who you�re talking to and where you�re at.

I�m Aaron Fowler. Wichita, Kansas, Heartland Friends Meeting in Wichita.

Spirit as Vibration

Aaron Fowler
When I do a science of sound project with elementary age kids and we have a big bass speaker and we talk about 2 Hz, we�re playing 2 Hz and we say, �Can you hear it?� They all lean forward and say, �We can�t hear it!� but they�re watching the bass speaker and this bass speaker is vibrating and its moving and you can�t hear the sound, but you know that there�s an energy and something moving.

You can�t identify it, you can�t touch it and feel but its there, you just know. It�s kind of like an earthquake. You don�t hear it but you can feel it and you know that there�s something very powerful that�s present. That happens in worship. Worship in silence where someone stands up and shares a message out of the silence, it�s like, �whoa, OK. Something�s rocking here.�

Friends and Music

Laura Dungan
We were raised in the United Methodist Church and I was raised in a very musical family. Aaron had a lot of music coming from his grandmother and both of his parents sang in the church choir. So anyway, we grew up with that kind of environment, and then we came to Quakers in college. When I read George Fox�s Journal, it was all about the power of the Spirit and I had already experienced the power of the Spirit through music.

I never� in Kansas� I don�t know if it�s the brand of Quakers down there that tend to be a little more evangelical, but you know, you�ve got your hymns and you�ve got your music going on. I never had any bar about that at all. It wasn�t until I came hanging out with Eastern Quakers that I was like �Ohhh� I realized that there�s something that people are working on here, with music and being a Quaker. For me, it wasn�t ever divided.

Aaron Fowler
I think that music division across the different Quaker roots, Quaker branches� from the Evangelical side, music always was there. And when we go to the gathering and when we go to unprogrammed Meetings, there is such a deep hungering to sing together� and I think it goes back to that whole, �What�s happening with the vibrations? What�s moving that we don�t know?� It rises up within us.

And so, hey! Let your heart sing! Let your heart sing. It�s OK. You won�t get in trouble. I don�t think anybody will kick you out of Meeting now. Maybe.

Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear that music ringing.
It sounds an echo in my soul, how can I keep from singing?

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Guided By An Inner Truth: Quaker Hip-Hop Artist Sterling Duns

West Philly rapper Sterling Duns talks about his writing process and how he came to be a Quaker.

West Philly rapper Sterling Duns talks about his writing process and how he came to be a Quaker.

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I put my life on pause, rewound, now I’m pressing play.
Then come up,
grinding until the sun up,
knowing it could all be gone if one person puts their guns up.
A black Quaker no savior, I’m on my Bayard Rustin

I really feel like, in a lot of ways, that the lyrics that come to me, I really do feel like I’m just a vessel. I’m just somebody being used to spread messages of love and growth and empathy.

My name is Sterling Duns. I’m from West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and I attend Merion Meeting in Merion, PA, so not too far from West Philly.

I went to public school for all my life up until the 9th grade. My Mom had heard about a scholarship program at Friends Central School right outside of West Philly so I went there for 4 years. It was a very transformative experience. One of the most life changing moments was when I was 14 I went down to the American Friends Service Committee and sat down in a room, 14, and someone came in and was like, “Alright, we’re going to write holiday letters to death row inmates.”
And I was like, “How do I even comprehend what I’m doing? What this means?”

And that seed was planted. It’s serendipitous, it’s the universe, but little did I know, 13 years later I’d be working on prison reform in our country and really trying to educate myself and others about the prison system in this country.

Writing Poetry as a Spiritual Discipline

I feel like I’ve been writing hip hop verses or rapping for as long as I can remember, but I think when I got to college I really started to hone in on rapping and crafting my skills. I was an English major and poetry minor. I got my masters in poetry. Definitely having the opportunity to find my voice through poetry has influenced the hip hop that I do, and it’s been such a gift. It’s so cathartic for me – hip hop specifically – it’s this way that I use to speak my truth.

I think being patient with yourself, which I learned a lot through Quaker Meeting – has been really important in music. I’ll write something down, and want it to be finished right then and then. And I’m like, “I can’t force this.”

I think in a similar way, when sitting in Meeting, you could be grappling with something and you want resolution right then and there, knowing that it’s all about the process. It’s not about finding all the answers right in that moment. And you may come back a week later or a month later, and somebody will share a message and you’re like, “Oh, that’s exactly what I needed to hear.”

Guided By An Inner Truth

Quakers are constantly searching and re-defining what it means to really just embody Light and see that of God in everyone. You really are able to ask yourself some deep questions and be introspective and then from that introspection, I love the aspect of really dedicating yourself to social justice issues. That’s one of the things that really drew me to Quakerism. The spirituality, but also this action. You can’t just sit in the Meeting room and think about things, and then once you get out of there, you know, “my job’s done for the day.”

I was asking myself these questions about what’s going on in the world and what’s my place in it all, and do I have a place in it all? And you know, the way was open and opportunities came up for me to put into practice things that I really felt deep in my core, and next thing I knew I was at Quaker Meeting every Sunday and I was helping to organize different learning opportunities around the prison system and doing work around education reform and playing music that had to do with social justice issues. Things just started to open up because I really started listening and being guided by this inner truth.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

How Jesus Affirms My Queerness

Today, as some Christians in Indiana claim their religion justifies refusing service to LGBTQ customers, Quaker Kody Hersh lifts up the Jesus who stood with those on the margins of society.

Today, as some Christians in Indiana claim their religion justifies refusing service to LGBTQ customers, Quaker Kody Hersh lifts up the Jesus who stood with those on the margins of society.

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Jesus affirms: a summary of the scriptures is “Love the lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and with all your strength and love thy neighbor as thyself.”

If that’s really the summary of everything that’s in there, then I test that against my experience of love working in the world, and I’ve seen that love working in all sorts of relationships and through all sorts of people, and there’s nothing in my experience now that makes me think that queer relationships are manifestations of God’s love any less than straight relationships.

How Jesus Affirms My Queerness

My name is Kody Hersh. I live in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia and I still have membership in the Meeting that I grew up in in Miami, Florida, Southeastern Yearly Meeting.

I call myself queer even though I know that that’s a challenging word for some folks—especially people of a different generation that I am—because it’s important to me that that term feels like it has space, both for the complexity of how I experience my sexuality and the fact that I experience my sexuality as in resistance to a lot of cultural norms and expectations about what that’s supposed to look like.

And something that’s really affirming for me as a Christian is looking at the life of Jesus and the amount of time that Jesus spent with people who were on the fringes of the culture that he was embedded in, that he really sought out the people who weren’t the most privileged or the most respected or the most appropriate people for him to hang out with, and that’s powerful for me.

Also, the fact that God, seeking to have a human experience, would choose to have that human experience embodied as someone who was born to a mother who was not supposed to be bearing children, given her relationship status and cultural status, born to somebody in a situation of not just poverty, but imperial impression in Palestine—that that was the human experience that God chose to have to me is a really powerful message, a really exciting message.

What all of that together means to me, Jesus seeking to hang out with outcasts and God embodying in a kind of marginalized human form, is that it’s not just that the Kingdom of God includes everybody, even folks at the margins. It’s that the kingdom of God includes everybody, especially folks at the margins.

If you don’t quite fit in the structures of this world, if you find yourself in conflict and resistance with them, if you find that the power structures of this world shut you out from a lot of resources or authority or self-determination, you are a central figure in the kingdom of God.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

The Difference Between Quaker Meeting and Other Christian Services

How does Quaker Meeting compare to other Christian services? Quaker author Ben Pink Dandelion explores this question.

How does Quaker Meeting compare to other Christian services? Quaker author Ben Pink Dandelion explores this question.

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We don’t believe we’re going to get the final answers, and therefore in one sort of curious way, we might say that the silence of our worship is not only the medium to approach God, but it is also possibly the best response to the Divine.

Our vocal ministry adds to the silence, but in the end, we’re left with the silence—with that sense of connection with the presence that we find in and through our silent meetings.

The Difference Between Quaker Meeting and Other Christian Services

I think one of the core insights of Quakers in the 20th century has been an increasing caution around theology, so that we’re necessarily a little bit suspicious about tying God down too much, about becoming too detailed about the nature of God—too doctrine-centric, if you like.

So we could say that we’re part of a tradition of open, expectant waiting. We go into the silence and stillness—in a sense, we’re making a grand claim that we can just have this direct connection with God without the help of any minister or text or outward form of liturgy. But we do have a liturgy; it’s a silent liturgy.

And we’ve found over the centuries that we have a very strong sense of presence that comes through absence. We can say that absence leads to a sense of presence.

Ideally, we’ll have some dramatic, radical sense of encounter in the silence. We may or may not minister. We may give vocal ministry or we might not, but we’re then left with this sense of encounter but without necessarily a very clear way of talking about it. So we’re not going to then formulate that into a spoken creed or a liturgical form. Our liturgy is inward, and it’s one of exploration and one of seeking.

A “Seeking” Faith Community

It is one of the divisions between Friends worldwide, but in my tradition, then, certainly we’re clear that we need to be a little bit hesitant about trying to become too detailed or too focused on the exact nature of God.

There was a recent article by Harvey Gillman in The Friend that said, “Even the term ‘God’ is not the name for God.” We struggle with the words, we’re trying to get close to the experience, but we know that somehow we won’t match the depth of experience.

So I think one of the ways we can think about Quaker Meeting would be in terms of being part of a seeking faith community. So one of the differences, say, between Quaker Meeting and other Christian services is that we’re really not sure. We’re not sure of what we’re going to experience in Meeting, and we’re also—in some curious way—not particularly sure about what it is we’re finding in our experience.

I think this should be tremendously popular in today’s society. There’s a lot of people out there who are spiritually hungry who may be slightly cautious about organized religion, and what we as Quakers are offering is a space in which to explore our spirituality. We do have boundaries around it, we have particular ways of doing things, we have keen insights into practice as it were, but we offer a huge amount of space to allow people to explore their journey, and I suppose that’s one of the main differences. We’re not offering clear answers, but we’re trying to ask the right questions.
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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Announcing… Season 2! (QuakerSpeak Lives On!)

This Thursday, tune in to our YouTube channel for the first video of Season 2 and subscribe to get a new QuakerSpeak video in your inbox every Thursday for the next 9 months!

Dear Friends,

It’s been a big three months! Since I wrote my last post about the YouTube Channel that I work on, and how I’ve been working with Friends Journal to find the resources needed to create a second season, I have heard from so many of you about how the project has touched you or your Meeting. Thank you for those beautiful and inspiring messages, and thank you to everyone who ordered a DVD and/or contributed to a Season 2!
Continue reading “Announcing… Season 2! (QuakerSpeak Lives On!)”

What’s Next for QuakerSpeak?

So QuakerSpeak’s funding didn’t get renewed for a second year. On Monday I will meet with staff at Friends Journal to begin to discern whether the project can continue to be housed there and if so, where the support for Season 2 might come from. I would appreciate your prayers in this time.

UPDATE #2: Season 2 is on!

UPDATE #1: Since we first heard that we didn’t get our funding for a second year, I have spoken with the folks at Friends Journal and they are confident that they want to keep me on for a season 2, and while we’re not totally clear on the details of how that will happen, it seems like things are moving in the right direction.

And if you are interested in helping make a season 2 happen, there is a way for you to help! Just go to QuakerSpeak.com/DVD and pre-order our new DVD… you’ll have the option to put in a little extra to help support season 2. Thanks to everyone who commented on this post, you gave me some Light in a moment where it was obscured! So much gratitude. With grace, there are enough folks like you out there that want to see another year of QuakerSpeak!


Original Post:

So QuakerSpeak‘s funding didn’t get renewed for a second year.

Without getting too much into the dynamics of the funding organization, I’ll just say that I am not too surprised, but I am disappointed. Most folks I talk to seem to feel like the project has been wildly successful in its first year.

So what comes next? I’m not sure yet.
Continue reading “What’s Next for QuakerSpeak?”

What to Expect in Quaker Meeting for Worship

What can you expect in a Quaker Worship Service? This is a guide for newcomers on the basics: what to expect in Quaker Meeting for Worship.

What can you expect in a Quaker Worship Service? This is a guide for newcomers on the basics: what to expect in Quaker Meeting for Worship.

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Josh Brown
Quakers believe that if you want to find out what God has to say, you need to listen. And so we spend a lot of time listening in quiet prayer. That quiet prayer time, which can happen anytime, anywhere, is the heart of the Quaker religious experience.

What to Expect in Quaker Meeting for Worship

Maggie Harrison
If you are going to go into Quaker Meeting for the first time, first of all, congratulations. So you walk in, sit down, be quiet. What to expect when you’re there, besides just “go with the flow” is different things depending on where you are.

What Should I Wear?

Vanessa Julye
Unlike some other churches, you don’t need to dress up with suit and tie or a fancy dress. Most of the folks come in jeans, t-shirts, or shorts/t-shirts. Whatever you’re comfortable in.
Should I Bring My Kids?

Maggie Harrison
So you’re thinking about coming to Meeting and you have children. You really need to know that you have to bring them. They may or may not enjoy themselves but we’re always so thrilled to have young people join us. They come and they’re bringing their alive-ness and their love and their genuine-ness. So please, yes, bring them.

Entering The Space:
A Plain Setting

Maggie Harrison
So if you come into this space and you’re looking for images or words on the walls, some kind of direction, and you’re going to notice that there isn’t going to be any there. From the very beginning of Quakerism, its about the inside. So it’s about you not looking around you for that, but really going inward for your own wisdom, for your own piece of the divine that’s been given to you.

Kody Hersh
Sometimes a worship room will look like a really old building with benches that have been sat on by thousands of Quakers over hundreds of years and sometimes it will look like the basement of another local church.

Entering the Space:
Where Should I Sit?

Kody Hersh
Something that’s common to them is that people often will enter already in silence, find a place in the room and sit down in silence. Anyone coming into the room can sit anywhere, there’s not a right place or a wrong place to sit.

The Service:
Learning to Listen

Christie Duncan-Tessmer
So before you go into Meeting for Worship for the first time, I’ll tell you what I’ve always told my kids when they were little, every week before we went in, which is just, “remember when you go in, to just sit down and listen for God. God is here with us and this is a space to listen.”

Charlotte Cloyd
The first time I went to Quaker Meeting I didn’t know how to listen. Because I had never listened in church before. I had to work on that process of figuring out: what am I listening for? Am I listening to myself? What’s going on? What is everyone else listening to and how does that affect the community and me?

Maggie Harrison
So in that quiet-ness you walk in, you say, “Ok, everyone is sitting there quietly, when are the directions going to come? What am I going to do?” Just follow suit.

Christie Duncan-Tessmer
Just sit down in that space. Just feel the space and the people around you and open yourself as much as you can. Just continue to notice how you can be aware of all that’s around you and all that’s within you, and how that’s all connected to everybody else in the room.

The Service:
There is No Program

Josh Brown
It’s called “unprogrammed worship” because there’s no sermon, there’s no hymns, no Bible readings, no prayers written out ahead of time. The whole idea of unprogrammed worship is to spend quiet time in prayer with our hearts and minds open to God.

AJ Mendoza
If God has ever spoken, then God is still speaking. And expecting God to move, through somebody… maybe through me, maybe not through me, maybe just internally and the message is just for me, maybe one that needs to be shared – and I think that is so provocative. It’s provocative to say, “there’s no guidelines here!” I want to know what I’m expecting. And I don’t! I don’t know what I’m expecting every Sunday, but I know that I’m expecting.

The Service:
Anyone Can Bring the Message

Josh Brown
Sometimes during that quiet time, people will feel moved to speak. It might be just a couple of words or it might be several minutes. And then there will be some more quiet time and then someone else will speak. They might continue what the first person says or they might go in a different direction.

Vanessa Julye
We’ve had people dance a message, we’ve had people walk a message, we’ve had people sing a message in addition to the usual standing up and giving a verbal message.

The Service:
Ending with a Handshake

Maggie Harrison
And it might just be like that for an hour. And then, what to expect at the end? It’ll be like it’s just somehow, it just started happening, everyone will start shaking hands.

Ross Hennesy
Which sort of signifies the changing from the spiritual to the secular world of sorts

Maggie Harrison
And then we’ll all be aware that’s happening and we’ll all follow suit, so all of this hand-shaking is going to happen and this greeting.

After the Service:
Fellowship

Ross Hennesy
Generally Quakers have a litany of announcements of various activities that are going on, what protests we’re involved with this time around, or good organizations to be a part of or what potlucks are happening, things like that. And then, usually, Quakers gather for coffee, tea, catch up with each other, things how things are going on throughout the week.

Kody Hersh
Particularly when I’m new to a community, I want to sneak in and sneak out again and I find that it’s a good discipline for me. Often there’s this community-building conversation activity that happens after worship, which is really an important part of the worship experience. Building connections with one another that make the worship experience richer and deeper

Ross Hennesy
And that’s about it. That’s a Quaker Meeting for Worship.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir

Also known as All God’s CREATURES Got a Place in the Choir. Peter and Annie Blood-Patterson, creators of the Rise Up Singing Songbook, sing the classic children’s song, All God’s Creatures Got a Place in the Choir.

Also known as All God’s CREATURES Got a Place in the Choir. Peter and Annie Blood-Patterson, creators of the Rise Up Singing Songbook, sing the classic children’s song, All God’s Creatures Got a Place in the Choir.

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Transcript

All God’s critters got a place in the choir
Some sing low, some sing higher,
Some sing out loud on the telephone wires,
And some just clap their hands, or paws, or anything they
got now

REPEAT

Listen to the bass, it’s the one on the bottom
Where the bullfrog croaks and the hippopotamus
Moans and groans with a big t’do
And the old cow just goes moo.

The dogs and the cats they take up the middle
While the honeybee hums and the cricket fiddles,
The donkey brays and the pony neighs
And the old coyote howls.
CHORUS

Listen to the top where the little birds sing
On the melodies with the high notes ringing,
The hoot owl hollers over everything
And the jaybird disagrees.

Singin’ in the night time, singing in the day,
The little duck quacks, then he’s on his way.
The ‘possum ain’t got much to say
And the porcupine talks to himself.

CHORUS

It’s a simple song of living sung everywhere
By the ox and the fox and the grizzly gear,
The grumpy alligator the the hawk above,
The sly raccoon and the turtle dove.

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