Why Be a Quaker? Transcendent open worship--a powerful example from Pacific Yearly Meeting

Our worldwide Society of Friends has seriously splintered in the last 150 years into very different camps, most of whom have very little in common with the early founders of the spiritual movement. Quite a few of us have often pondered over this severe quandary.* Many books and conferences over the years have struggled...

Instead of dwelling in that past, let us be Present now. Here is an actual Transcendent experience of the Light at a Pacific Yearly Meeting for worship in California.

OPEN WORSHIP TRANSCENDS

Drowned in family tragedy, despairing, distraught--
that morning earlier;
thus, down encumbered,
he came to worship meeting, but not speaking
of his family’s severe circumstance, kept hidden;

But in the midst
of open expectant communion, Transcendent Light
shown forth in a stranger’s sudden
a cappella spiritual chorus--
a deep songing deepening within;
intense meaning lifted us gathered in communion--
vivid encouraging Hope;

That sacred chorus didn’t take away our shattered glass
lives, nor end many distraught
circumstances and tragedies--
but
Oh, what Hope fulled within.


In the LIGHT,

Dan Wilcox


In a later article, I could give my own understanding
of some of the complex series of tragic evidences of how it came that the Society kept breaking into contrary groups...
or of the equally troubling 'quietistic' era before that when there were many rigid religious restrictions on Quakers, including that no Quaker could marry a non-Quaker and remain in good standing.

We are in this sometimes disagreeable patchwork/collage called Friends, Quakerism, and
on why to continue to move toward the Light within this small 380-year-old movement.

1. For me personally, I visited a Friends meeting one Sunday and was drawn to its less-ritual, more open experiential worship.
Side Note: Besides the experiential factor that I came to Quakerism because I was a conscientious objector to the VietNam War serving my drafted time working in a mental hospital.

This was with other pacfists in the Fall of 1967 near Philadelphia, PA. I was helping pay the rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Trevose, PA. 3 Mennonite/Brethren C.O.'s slept in the bedroom on cots, me on a mat behind the couch in the living room:-).

I greatly valued creativity, openness, experiential spirituality, so one can see why the Society of Friends meeting was a wonderful new experience.

Before being drafted, I had been a Creative Writing major at Long Beach State in California. Now in September 1967, I was newly arrived in Pennsylvania near Washington's Crossing, and wanted to find a new church.

I had admired the Quakers in the news 6 years before back in 1961 for protesting against nuclear weapons, so I decided to give their meeting a visit.
After one Sunday going to a nearly empty meeting for worship near Newtown in September, I eventually began regularly attending worship in downtown Philly at Backbench Young Adult Friends gathering. Though as a mental health worker, I worked 10 days on, 4 days off so could only take the L-Train into downtown Philly 2 times a month.

How powerful those times of OPEN WORSHIP were!
I’m not into forms, not sharply, rigidly, traditionally, ritually-structured forms. As all artists and writers know, “form and freedom” are 2 contrary characteristics of any creative endeavor.

One needs both freedom and form. Not either or. Too much freedom, chaos and havoc and destruction rule, too much form, slavery and rigidity and still-death reign.
Quaker meeting for worship seemed the perfect combination of freedom and form!

2. While actual spiritual experiences--vivid stories that happen to us humans don't prove our views are correct, there is GREAT inherent worth in such transcendent experiences,
as shown with the poetic sharing of the Light-filled worship one First Day at Pacific Yearly Meeting in California.