QuakerInfo.com Forum

[cphenson]

Friends,for a meeting for learning topic I will be speaking at my home Meeting about how Quakers view the Silence in their worship. I have a number of historic quotes and comments on the topic from well-known Quakers of the past and am aware that how we use the Silence today is sometimes quite different. I would be interested in the opinions of forum participants about how their own Meetings define the Silence and whether you think we have begun to redefine its use and value in our practice today.

[pilgrim]

I think of Silence as being part of the conversation between God & I.
There is the part where I speak: prayer.
Then there is the part where I listen.

Also, I don't like to think of it as just being just an individual experience, but something greater in the context of community.
_________________
in the howling waste of a wilderness:
http://howlingwaste.wordpress.com/

[cphenson]

Thank you Pilgrim for the response. If I could ask you more about how you view the roles of Silence, is it a personal space for you or a group space? How do others attending participate? At some Meetings I have attended over the last 5 years the, the Silence sometimes seems like a community chat forum. At others, the Ministry is infrequent and seems more appropriate (to me). What is "appropriate" though? Do we have a general sense in Quakerdom of what is useful and appropriate ministry?

[cphenson]

I missed your last sentence, which answers my first question. Thank you.

[pilgrim]

I'm not sure that I can say exactly what is appropriate for ministry and what isn't. I've never felt compelled to speak up in a Meeting. People have explained it as being an overwhelming feeling in which a certain thing needs to be said. But I haven't personally experienced that.
_________________
in the howling waste of a wilderness:
http://howlingwaste.wordpress.com/

[kevin roberts]

hey cphenson

what exactly do you mean when you say, " . . . the Silence?"

[avalon]

"the end of words is to bring us to the knowledge of things beyond what words can utter" Isaac Pennington 1670

[woundwort]

[kevin roberts]

well, cphenson, dunno how much commonality there is.

the conservatives don't view silence as a "thing," but rather as an absence of a "thing." to us, waiting worship is less an absence of anything as it is a presence of something. it would be like me trying to discuss my breakfast by saying things like, "breakfast is not when i'm going to the cinema," or "breakfast is not last wednesday."

but this is very different:

[woundwort]

[Jim Wilson]

I think one of the ways to understand Quaker silence is to compare it to other forms of silence. I have a Buddhist background and when I first began to participate in Quaker Meeting for Worship I was struck by the contrast between Buddhist silence and Quaker silence.

The clearest way to articulate this is how the two groups respond to someone speaking into the silence. In a Buddhist context, if someone rose to speak, it would be the job of the person running the meditaiton to take the person aside (either immediately or later) and explain that the behavior was inappropriate. I have had that kind of position in the past. From this perspective Buddhist silence is fragile, or brittle (depending on how you want to look at it), and it can be interrupted by human speech. This is because the function of Buddhist silence is to facilitate the cultivation (bhavana) of particular mental states.

Quaker silence, in contrast, is porous. Quaker silence isn't a form of concentration or cultivation and can, therefore, with ease be spoken into without breaking the silence. It has a different feel to it from the kind of silence one finds in a Buddhist context. There is more of a sense of trust in Quaker silence.

Thy Friend Jim
_________________
www.shapingwords.blogspot.com

[woundwort]

Again, yes. A few years ago, amidst all the noise which Garrison Keillor attracted when he achieved the near impossible (being the object of a fatwa by the Unitarians), he made a pertinent point imo... that identifying attractive or comfortable looking aspects of various world religions strikes a form of cultural piracy.

Quakerism and wider Western and Eastern Christianity offers a rich tradition. (This is not to dismiss Oriental Christianity, just to say it was isolated for a millennium and a half from the Church Body post Chalcedon and loss of its territories by the Greeks to Arabian expansion.) Where an instinct is to attempt to appropriate non-Christian traditions, I do wonder if this is due to either a reluctance to analyze in depth either tradition or a presumption that the non-Christian tradition is there to serve us.

Pentecost is approaching. I'd say there's a difference between hearing the Message in whatever the local language is (instead of speaking in tongues) and blithely assuming everyone is speaking for our benefit by confirming what we already have decided.

[james]

There's another word for cultural piracy, or cultural appropriation. That word is culture.

Really, it is. All culture results from cultures influencing other cultures, without exception. That's where it comes from. When we assume a culture to be original, that's just because we lost track of its influences.

(P.S. I don't mean there are no original ideas that arise as cultures change--definitely there are. But the idea of cultural purity is nothing but a misunderstanding.)
_________________
James Riemermann
www.nontheistfriends.org
www.liberalquakers.org

[woundwort]

Yes, in the words of the great sage, T Pratchett, sooner or later every arriving cultural group becomes just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.

I'm not so much referring to that as I am to the oft heard "X religious tradition is the same as Quakerism". Keillor's lugubrious complaint at the time was, as I recall, the taking of the lyrics of Silent Night and altering them so not to indicate the original Lutheran reflections.

Going back to T Pratchett, he - Keillor - found this as eaters of tomato and cheese pizzas might feel if another kitchen decided to make their own pizza with pineapple and say this was the true message of the original pizza. EDIT - or, remembering a discussion you and I had in Another Place, 'redefining' a Reuben sandwich as containing soya cheese.

[james]

I definitely agree, extreme statements that gloss over the differences between various religions as insignificant or even non-existent, are way off-base.

And yet, cheerful diversity and an openness to new light is a central quality of modern liberal Quakerism, and I think its seeds--not its equivalent but its seeds--can be found in the very beginnings of our religion. When you put as much emphasis on inward experience as the early Quakers did, in radical contrast to the ossified, authority-bound approach of the 17th century Church of England, you can bet this is a religion that will change. (Not that the other religions didn't change.)
_________________
James Riemermann
www.nontheistfriends.org
www.liberalquakers.org