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Attending some unprogrammed Quaker Meetings over the years has highlighted for me the challenge of being together in Silence, yet with the option to speak. In these Friends gatherings, the intent is for persons to sit in silence, receptive to a divine, or inner, leading to speak, and to do so as one with and for the edification of the Meeting. One is to speak without personalizing, be brief, then sit down. If the divine guidance is not present to speak, one does not speak. I have been in Meetings where several persons spoke, others when no one spoke. One is not to intend to or not intend to speak, only be open to the Light. The Light may illumine something for the worshiper to listen to but not share, or to share.
This is contrast to the meditation and contemplative prayer Work I have engaged in as teacher and participant. Here, once entering the Silence, no one is to speak. Sharing may occur prior to the Quiet, or after. This is a simpler process than the Friends gathering and less likely to invite a contradiction of its purpose. Why?
In both these setting, participants are to keep the custody of the mouth, standing guard over the mouth. Yet, in the Quaker Meeting, one is receptive to address the group. Standing guard in a gathering forbidding speech, no discernment is involved as to speak or not, guarding the mouth meaning only no speech. This is simpler, while the allowance to speak from the Silence among gathered Friends opens up the possibility that persons may not speak from the inspiration of the Light, even when misinterpreting the guidance and the opening to speak out was not present.
I have enjoyed being in both kinds of settings. I have felt inspiration to speak in Quaker meetings. I, also, have spoken and sensed afterward that I had misinterpreted the opening to speak, which was not such, after all. There have been times that the Silence has been felt to be so deep, I wished for no one to speak nor that I speak. This is one advantage of most meditation sits, no one can disturb this deep quiet. Yet, among Friends, the silence is Silence, a holy hush filled with Something unspeakable, but a Something that wants to communicate with us, to challenge us, to convict us, to encourage us, to teach us, and to console us, and always as a community, not a collection of persons or as a self in a personal gaze inward. The Friends gathering is less likely to promote someone sitting and having merely an individual experience, for the Quaker meeting is neither inward or outward, but wedding both in the collective of the gathered Meeting, with Grace speaking either without speech or with speech.
I share the above to speak of the matter of custody of the mouth. Likewise, to introduce the example following.
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