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Fifth Month 2008

When we are drowned in the overwhelming seas of the love of God, we find ourselves in a new and particular relation to a few of our fellows. The relation is so surprising and so rich that we despair of finding a word glorious enough and weighty enough to name it. The word “Fellowship” is discovered, but the word is pale and thin in comparison with the rich volume and warmth of experience which it would designate.

–Thomas Kelly, Testament of Devotion, p. 51

Dear Friends in the Twin Cities Friends Meeting community:

According to its handbook, Ministry and Counsel is charged to help TCFM, as a spiritual fellowship, “seek to build and nurture a religious community which unifies all in the Meeting in a shared spiritual life, and which inspires all to walk in the Light.”

Recently concerns both within and outside M&C have spurred a growing movement of the Spirit to look more carefully at our Meetings for Worship within TCFM.

All of our three regular Meetings for Worship receive our care and attention, and each has its own personality and its own particular challenges. Because of its size, intergenera-tional nature, and mix of experienced Friends and new attenders, the concerns we address below fall particularly on 11:00 worship but belong to us all, as a meeting community.

We affirm that the interconnectedness of our three Meetings for Worship means that the concerns apply in different ways to the 8:30 and Wednesday worships as well.  We seek prayerful reflection by the entire meeting community, including those who do not regularly attend 11:00 worship, for it is the holding of these concerns together that unite us in a “shared spiritual life.”

Worship and the clock

Many Friends among us value the current and familiar structure of the first part of 11:00 worship. We hope and plan for promptness so that all Friends present may settle collectively into silence and open ourselves to the Spirit without interruption.  We appreciate the sense of protected silence as the greeter closes the door.  In a meeting with many newcomers and children, that action provides an recognizable, explicit beginning point for what is a subtle and often inexplicable process.

And yet such a system has its flaws. Our practice of not allowing anyone to enter between 11:00 and 11:15 creates tensions for Friends who see this practice as inherently unwelcoming.  M&C has heard that some Friends in the meetingroom feel pained when the doors close, acutely aware of fellow worshipers who may be feeling “shut out” at a time when they may be in need of spiritual sustenance from the community. Among those worshipping in the library and hallway, there is a temptation to distraction, and there may be disappointment in not being party to vocal ministry, or a general feeling of sitting in a crowded waiting room rather than in worship.

The inflexibility of timing does not intersect well with those using public transit to attend meeting, whether out of a leading of the Spirit, by practical choice, or by necessity. The same is true of anyone who is dependent on a shared ride. Others arriving in family groups may be delayed by one family member who then impacts the entire group’s arrival time. Thus while promptness may be a virtue, the reasons for lateness are not always matters of one’s personal responsibility.

The timing of when the doors close is not the only concern.  Some Friends have expressed that they find the “11:15 rush” disturbing. At 11:15, children leave the room to continue First Day School elsewhere in the building (or during the summer to play), and then those who were waiting in the library and hallway enter the meetingroom as a group. This sudden shift presents a challenge to some of those who were settled into worship, significantly altering the flow of the Spirit in the room.

M&C has been asking ourselves if there are ways the Meeting can explicitly address these concerns.  We recognize that the patterns that TCFM abides by have been formed over the years by decisions made during Meetings for Worship with attention to Business.  No single committee can make an executive decision about whether or how to change things, and the slowness of the meeting’s business process can frustrate those who are eager to have us “get on with it.”

We see possibilities for a variety of changes, both in terms of process and use of space that could ease concerns on all sides, but we feel a “quick fix” will not in the end address underlying concerns.  What seem at first to be simple logistical questions are on further examination weighted down with all that each of us wish for in our worship.  Our wishes are not uniform or identical, and there is among our wishes an intersection of conflicting values, expectations, and hopes.

All Friends need mutual support and encouragement to remain among us and to be faithful to the leadings they are being called to bear.  All Friends who are in the room, settling into worship, need mutual support to maintain the discipline of “holding the space” so the worship may continue and deepen.  And all of us need mutual support to be able to find space for silence and worship in our tangled lives, wherever we are.

We encourage the meeting to consider these issues and intersections not as problems to be fixed but as symptoms of underlying conditions that will be brought into clearer focus through prayerful consideration.

QUERIES:  Worship and the clock

How do we encourage each other and ourselves to arrive promptly and enter the meetinghouse and the meetingroom mindful of those who are already worshipping? As we see others enter the meetingroom, do we take joy in their arrival - even if it is later than our own? If we are late ourselves, do our feelings about that lateness make it harder for us to come to a place of stillness and peace in worship?

How can we lend support to those among us who need a feeling of sanctuary in worship? At the same time, can we begin our worship by symbolically opening rather than shutting out? Can we bring the spirit of “opening” to the discussion of logistics itself?

Do we cherish our worship experience more than we cherish one another?  Do we think of the worship experience as “mine,” as “ours,” as Spirit’s?

When our personal or societal expectations drive us to judge one another, do we allow God to work in our hearts to help us love one another instead?

Worship, children, and families

Our First-Day school is unusually large for a Quaker meeting within the Yearly Meeting, and the children and families among us easily capture our attention during 11:00 worship.  Monthly Family Meetings and occasional intergenerational meetings offer alternative approaches to worship and sharing religious ideas with the children. We value this segment of TCFM and we enjoy the children of our meeting: they are a vibrant and vital part of Quakerism and our community.

We ask ourselves:  How do worshippers of all ages experience Meeting for Worship? Do we as a meeting consistently demonstrate how much we value the children and families among us?

Our concerns include situations like these:

Children, even those who have regularly attended meeting with their parents for a number of years, sometimes acknowledge that they really don’t “get” what worship is about and ask what it is that we’re really doing when we seem to be just sitting.

Toddlers who exhibit typical exuberance and inability to sit still for fifteen minutes delight some worshipers but cause others to wish their parents would take them out so that “the rest of us” can settle into silence.

Parents arriving at the meetinghouse with children may feel harried and rushed as a matter of course. This can be exacerbated by the combination of physically guiding those children to their place, and performing any other tasks that need to be done, such as First Day School preparation and deliveries to the Fellowship room.  It can be a lot for a parent to juggle, and does not lend itself to arriving with a quiet, peaceful state of mind and heart.

Though TCFM has in place Family Meeting and intergenerational worship to address concerns specific to children and families, M&C’s sense is that the meeting continues to value an apparent cumulative effect of closeness that occurs through weekly meetings for worship, with individuals and families together.  When traffic, parking, and a child’s inevitable last-minute bathroom stop foil even the best-intentioned parents’ efforts to have their family join in that worship, parents especially may need additional understanding and care when they arrive at the meetingroom.

QUERIES:  Worship, children, and families

Does our form of worship, and how we frame that worship, touch and reach the children of our meeting when they are among us?

How can we make the inevitable squirreliness of children, especially younger ones, not a distraction from the Truth we seek, but a part of that Truth?

During worship, do we meet our children where they are in their spiritual development?

When considering the spiritual nurture of our children, do we consider “What do we want for the children?” as compared to “What will make things run more smoothly for the adults?”

How can we as a meeting community and as individual members welcome children and their parents not just with tolerance, but with open arms and joy?

Worship and responsiveness to one another

As the meeting has grown over the years, so too has our capacity to open our arms to embrace and knit into our community a number of distinctive sub-communities and affinity groups.  Though we are reluctant to define ourselves or each other solely based on particular characteristics, we recognize that such issues as sexual orientation, gender identity, sensitivity to fragrances, parenting, aging, and health or mobility concerns do form powerful bonds among some members of the community.

We recognize and cherish the ways in which each individual and each affinity group helps the Meeting grow in our shared spiritual life and in living more fully into the Light. In addition, spiritual seekers from a variety of backgrounds find their way to Quaker meeting, and many join our community, despite their varied paths to TCFM. We cherish one another across whatever outward differences might otherwise divide us.

Yet, from time to time, M&C and the meeting as a whole is challenged in responding to the needs of worshipers who have come into a leading or who carry a spiritual concern.

Such leadings and concerns may start as an innocent pebble or stone that lodges itself in the heart of one or two individuals.  Seldom do Friends invite such burdens to be placed upon them.

In turn, when these Friends find the spiritual strength to speak, it is sometimes as if they have dropped the stone into the lake that is our meeting-dropped it in such a way that the rest of us never see the stone itself, never see it break the surface of the water. Instead, what we experience are the growing ripples that begin to lap against the shores of our meeting’s established systems and against the grounding of our long-held behaviors.

Being brought a spiritual concern by other Friends is like that:  we are made uncomfortable by how piercing the Light is, and we often react to the messenger rather than seek the Truth that is within the message.  At such a time, we must be careful–to paraphrase George Fox–to slow ourselves down and let the Light search us.

When the leading is connected to issues in the world at large, it may be especially difficult to discern that stone of spiritual leading. We are used to issues of the day being wrapped in wrathful speech, fearmongering, and hysteria, and when a related concern is expressed in meeting, it may evoke shadows of those feelings, whether or not they are part of the explicit message.

As a Quaker community, it falls to us to look and listen past this language of alienation and separation, to seek the bright kernel of Truth that is the heart of all true leadings.

QUERIES:  Worship and responsiveness to one another

Are our arms wide enough to embrace the changing needs and even diverse spiritual leadings that emerge among us as a faith community? Do we welcome these leadings not just into our community but into our hearts in worship?

Do we cherish our community members who feel called to have us review our meeting’s structures and systems?  Do we cherish those among us who have leadings that make us re-think our personal behavior? Do we take the time to hear not just their words but the message in their hearts?

Do we encourage Friends to continue to be faithful to their Guide?

In a time of challenge and discomfort, do we turn inwardly ourselves to learn from the Inward Teacher how we might be transformed?

In closing, we hope that tender and prayerful attention to the whole of this epistle will inspire individual and corporate consideration and discussion of the quality of our worship.  We hope that any individual responses to what we lift up here will form part of a wider renewal of our collective attention as a Monthly Meeting to that worship and to the condition of our fellowship within Twin Cities Friends Meeting.

Mind the light, that all may be refreshed one in another, and all in one. And the God of power and love keep all Friends in power, in love, that there be no surmisings, but pure refreshings in the unlimited love of God, which makes one another known in the conscience, to read one another’s hearts: being comprehended into this love, it is inseparable, and all are here one. And keep in the oneness… that one pure faith may be held in all, to guide and preserve all in the unity of the spirit and bond of peace; all one family of love…

–George Fox, Epistle IV

Ministry & Counsel Committee

Twin Cities Friends Meeting

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