Quaker Meeting for Worship Pt 2: Giving Vocal Ministry
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
- In the Quaker religion, adherents believe that a higher power can speak through them. We asked Quakers what it’s actually like to experience this in Quaker Meeting for Worship.
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Transcript:
Callid Keefe-Perry
In the Liberal tradition of Quakerism, at least-although it's present in other places as well-we say we don’t have a priest or a pastor. We don’t have a human priest or pastor. The impetus-the power that was really exciting, and George Fox (one of the founders of the Religious Society of Friends) really says in a number of places-what we worship, when we enter into worship, is God. And God gives us, as in the days of the apostles, a word via the office of prophet. So we’re sitting in Meeting for Worship underneath the highest priest.
Faith Kelley
Waiting worship is a time which we sit and focus on the possibility that God is speaking to us. It’s an experience that’s really unlike any other experience I’ve had.
Receiving the Call to Speak
Zac Dutton
The telltale sign of when you’re sitting in Meeting for Worship and are supposed to give vocal ministry, which is standing up and giving a message that others in the room hear, is the quickening of the heartbeat.
Christie Duncan-Tessmer
It feels a little bit shaky and flowy, maybe. I can just feel it moving through me.
Zac Dutton
…and the feeling like you’re in sixth grade again and you’re running for your first office in the student council and its the first time you’re going to stand up and speak to a group of people. It’s that kind of hyper-anxiety.
Micah Bales
Usually there’s something that feels like it’s crystallizing in me. I’d almost describe it as maybe a sped-up version of what a clam might experience when they get that bit of sand stuck inside and over time it turns into a pearl. Of course usually we only have an hour for that sand to turn into a pearl in the Meeting for Worship, but God puts some spiritual sand in my heart and I wrestle with it. It may just be some sand that I need to wrestle with and its for me, but sometimes it turns into a pearl in a way where I just have to share it, I can’t keep the pearl to myself and it’s clearly been given for the whole community.
Discerning the Call
Victoria Greene
I think I’ve given a message twice. My concern was this, and I’ve asked a few members, “how do you know that’s God talking to you, how do you know it’s not just you?” And they say, “well, you listen to the still, small voice,” but the still, small voice could be your still small voice. Anyway, I always had a like, “Is this really God speaking to me?”
Faith Kelley
I’m kind of an over-sharer sometimes, and so I need to really sit with it, because I’ve had that experience of God giving me something and it’s just for me, and it actually is usually just for me. And so I have to be careful to only stand up when I feel like God has called me to share that.
Christopher Sammond
I am very good at subtly talking myself out of a leading. And then I can say, “Oh, the leading has gone away. I don’t need to rise and speak.” I can say, “I spoke last week and I shouldn’t speak again,” or, “This isn’t a topic that’s going to go over well in the Meeting,” or, “That’s too close to the bone, I’d rather not share that.”
Unless I go to a place of complete faithfulness and say, “I will share whatever I am led to share,” I can make myself feel like the leading has gone away.
And then just live with a mild discomfort. So frequently my process is one of having to wrestle with my resistance to speaking and then coming to that place of genuine faithfulness where I will say anything that I am feeling led to say and to share that.
Full Transcript:
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Thank you for this video. Just a spell-check: It says in your video: "Recieving the Call to Speak"; which should be: " Receiving ...". Cheers & be with Earth & God.
While I enjoy listening to these expressions reflecting on the experience of giving spoken ministry in meeting for worship, even within the diversity of voices here, there is a very narrow range of theologies and resulting language sets represented here. There are many other ways that Friends discuss the experience including using group process language, agnostic and atheist language, group consciousness language, and language that is uncertain about that which must not be imaged. I am concerned that the availability of Friends Meetings to sectors of the public outside this range of opinions is unheard. That being said, I am grateful for this video, those that worked on it and spoke in it. This is a critique of a valuable piece of work, not a condemnation of it.
Thanks, Brad -- we are always looking for more eloquent Friends to help demystify the Quaker way, so perhaps you can suggest people we might get in touch with.
Or, perhaps, I want to mystify Quakerism more because its form (or formlessness) for many of us is just so. I will look for some "not sure where I stand," some non-theist, some agnostic, some mystic, some Buddhist Quakers who are articulate. My own mystic orientation leads me to say neither "god is" nor "god is not." The unreflective reification of theological identity metaphors leaves me wanting less culturally conditioned expressions of our experiences of truth, not just for me but the many who can and do resonate outside of this frame. I am good with persons who find those expressions valuable and resonate within the various theistic frames; but I am good with broader expressions as well, more intentionally poetic, and want them not to be neglected. I might add, that there may be persons in Accra, Ghana, Hill House Meeting, where I worship now for the next year, that may also add another cultural dimension. Hill House MM is the only Quaker Meeting of any kind in Ghana, unprogrammed, and except for my family, all Ghanian. I will check with some of them too.
@@Quakerspeak David Britton of NYC's Morningside Meeting is non-theist and very compassionate, eloquent. Are you filming all of these in the PA area?
Great installment!
How do those who cannot speak take part?
Physicality should not limit access to understanding.
What does exactly "vocal ministry" mean? do you refer to me any sources about this topic?
Quaker meetings come in two basic varieties: programmed and unprogrammed. Programmed meetings have adopted elements of Protestant service and may include songs, set readings, and/or a sermon interspersed by periods of quiet reflection.
Unprogrammed meetings have no set elements: people gather in silence and sit in silence for a period of time. Vocal ministry can occur during this silence, when someone feels moved to stand and address the people. It might be just a sentence or two, it might go on for several minutes, or it may be just a word. It may be a verse of song, or a quote, or an inspired utterance. Then the person sits down, and the silence resumes until someone else is moved to speak. It is called vocal ministry both because it occurs during otherwise silence worship and reflection, and to distinguish it from the ministry we try to express in day-to-day life.
Where was Calid sitting when filmed?
Hi David! We filmed Callid's interview during New England Yearly Meeting sessions, which was held on the campus of Castleton College in Vermont. We were in the old chapel there.
*****, I'm so glad you came to NEYM Sessions.
***** Thank you! There seems to be no photos of the interior of that church on the interwebs.
spelling!!!!!!!!!!!