Part of the reason I keep coming back to Quaker meeting is that I never know what I am going to get. There are some things that are certain. I know that there will be a defined starting time. I know that we will sit together in silence for about an hour. What I don’t know is that if anyone will speak or what they will say. In a Quaker context, I also don’t know what I, or our community is going to be called upon to give. Depending upon your point of view this could either be a bug or a feature. For me, it’s definitely a feature.
This stands in stark contrast to my Catholic upbringing where I could walk into church and know the recipe: First Reading, Second Reading, the Gospel, the Homily, Profession of Faith, Lords Prayer, Communion, Final Blessing. Go in Peace! I know this nourishes many and can be perfectly satisfying but it was too predictable for me. I don’t want to know the spoilers. I want to feel like I am helping craft the plot.
Quaker meeting began for me as a physical place—the understated Brooklyn Friends Meeting House; floor to ceiling windows, lots of light streaming in, benches that face one another and therefore we face each other. The idea is that you sit and listen in silence. I am not the kind of person who excels at sitting still for very long; a few minutes seem like an eternity. This restlessness did not help my academic performance in primary or secondary school, which could be described as mediocre at best but did improve with the autonomy of college. Fast forward to the late 90s and among Quakers, I have learned that I can sit still for a whole hour and even revel in it.
Fast forward to 2020: COVID came. The Meetinghouse was closed. I tried going to a Zoom meeting at 11am with many other Friends from Brooklyn and beyond but it felt a bit too much like the all-staff town hall meetings. Screen after screen of faces, many of them peaceful, everyone connected in their homes. It felt too much like work until I learned about a smaller Zoom at 9am. I could get back from my run, go to Meeting, and be done by 10— all before anyone else in my house was even awake. So the lovely facing benches were replaced with a single screen of anywhere from 8 to 14 faces on any given Sunday. But this meeting was different. We always ended about 15 minutes early and then everyone would check in—how are you doing? What’s going on in your world?
Folks weren’t shy. We would share good things: the sense of solidarity we felt when we went out to bang on pots and pans to thank essential workers, a sourdough culture that was flourishing, progress on picking a neglected hobby back up. But we were just as likely to share things that we were struggling with—a kid at home who wasn’t thriving in zoom school, missing relatives who we feared to visit lest we leave them with a case of COVID, or that we really weren’t doing that well at all.
Though the pandemic has come and gone this group continues to meet at 9am every Sunday on Zoom and I always leave inspired. This past Sunday I learned that St. Theresa favored small acts over radical martyrdom. Another friend shared that feelings of anxiety and dread are rarely prophetic. Another friend talked about how caregiving benefits both the receiver of the care and the giver.
These messages remind me of themes from Sharon Salzberg’s Real Life. Salzberg is an American Buddhist Educator. She connects Buddhism to modern psychology. The book is full of practical insights—and a theme that runs though it is the idea of interconnectedness. How do we show up for others who are going through difficult things? Respond to pain with presence. This is what our 9am meeting does.
There is no one minister to go calling on a person who needs help. We coordinate with one another. Some days you’re the one checking in on someone; some days you’re the one being checked in on.
One of the anecdotes Salzberg relays is of a child who was suffering and considered praying. The kid said “I need a God with skin.” The idea is that we can be the Gods with skin. Will you see the humanity in another person, and meet it? So while the messages you might hear are unpredictable what’s certain is that we show up for one another. That’s more than a set of beliefs—it’s a practice we undertake together.
