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.

Finding the Way Forward

It seems that real growth in ethics, justice, and other sorts of human advancement comes like a forest fire. First there’s an initial spark--not more stirring of cold, dead ashes of past events and forms--

and then a patch of ethical flames, and finally, a roaring forest fire of change--of a new movement toward truth.

To whimsy this profound reality versus the conservative tendency to hideout in past achievements:
That was then,
zen is now:-)

Consider this adapted Zen story:

A well-known professor from George Fox University went to visit a Quaker human rights activist. As the friendly activist got out a bottle of spiced rum2 and a large glass for the tired traveler, the brilliant Professor Kno described his ideas of what Quakerism was,
is,
and ought to be. He explained its treasured historical forms, committees, and meetings. But then rung his hands, as he spoke, because Friends as a movement was seriously declining in attenders, and experiencing a severe loss of adherents. Kno pulled out charts and statistical analyses and waved them, considerably upset.

Yet the activist remained quiet so Professor Kno spoke on and on with more erudition and vast knowledge. Meanwhile, the activist poured more liquor into Kno’s untouched glass.

Even when rum reached the brim of the Professor's glass, the activist kept pouring. Alcohol overflowed, spilling onto the tray, table, and down onto the carpet and their shoes, until the professor could no longer stand it.

“Stop!” Kno almost shouted. “Can’t you see my glass is too full?”

“This is you,” said the activist. “How can you find new insights, new truths, until you first decant some of that glut and surfeit in your glass--your own excessive assumed opinions, speculations, and conclusions?

“How can we find new ethical insight, more clarity and Light unless we first clear our rigid forms from our glutted, surfeited, stained glass?”



Side Note: 2See the video: Quaker Speaks
Did the early Quakers drink alcohol?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ2kPDjojPE


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox