2: Toronto Monthly Meeting

For this week's post, I wanted to find something that would contrast with my visit last week to the Prayer Palace, and what immediately came to mind was an unprogrammed Quaker meeting.

Unlike the loud and sometimes frantic service at the Prayer Palace, Quaker worship tends to be quiet and contemplative.  The Toronto Monthly Meeting has no band or gospel choir, and with about thirty people in attendance, it's definitely not on the scale of a megachurch.  Also, on a personal level, while the Prayer Palace was a new environment for me where I didn't really know what to expect, the Toronto Meeting feels much more familiar to me: I had visited the meeting years ago a handful of times, and I have a fair number of Quaker ancestors in my family tree, so I've felt more of a historical connection to the Quakers than to most denominations.

At the Toronto Meeting, the seats are arranged in rings all facing the centre. A glass wall forms one side of the meeting room, looking out on the meeting house's small garden. The room itself is an expression of the Quaker emphasis on simplicity: no artwork or religious symbols adorn the walls, and the closest the room has to decoration is the large circular wooden table in the centre, upon which one of the members placed a small bud vase holding a sprig of a leafy green plant I couldn't identify.

For those who aren't familiar with the Quakers: an unprogrammed Quaker meeting is quite different from other forms of Christian worship.  A typical meeting is mostly silent, and there is no priest or minister... or, perhaps more accurately, there is no laity.  As a guide on the Meeting's web site puts it:

A Quaker Meeting for Worship is based on silence. It is a silence based on
expectancy. During the Meeting for Worship the expectant waiting is an attempt
to bring us nearer to God and to each other. Meeting for Worship starts as soon
as the first person enters the room and sits down.

A Meeting for Worship is a public event, to which anyone is welcome and may
share. In Meeting everyone has a part to play; the visitor is welcomed, the
regular attender is cherished, the member feels at home. All are part of the quiet
waiting upon God: anyone present is free to minister verbally when moved by the
Spirit, or continue in silent worship.

Quakers describe this form of worship as "unprogrammed", which means that
there is no one who leads the meeting through a set form. Therefore the practice
of silence places responsibility for any outcome on each person present. The
silence provides everyone with a chance to discern "God's will" individually. Do
not be anxious about distracting thoughts. Give way quietly to your awareness of
God's presence in us, among us, and in the world.

The way I've heard it put to me before was that the early Quakers were very concerned about discerning God's will.  Their concern was that ritual could be self-perpetuating: that some aspect of the worship service could end up being present because it was how things had always been done, not because it was how Christ wanted his church to worship.

The approach that the Quakers came up with to deal with this is - in theory, at least - to allow Christ to lead the worship service directly.  The congregation would pray for guidance in how to worship, and would follow whatever guidance they discerned: if someone felt guided to speak, he would speak.  Or sing, or read a passage from the Bible, as the person felt guided.

After I sat down, while I reflected on things in the silence, I found myself wondering how much this attitude was still present in modern Quakers.  While the founders of the movement were virtually obsessed with maximizing their obedience to the Christian God, what I've seen from modern Quakers often tends to be much more liberal and accepting of other religious points of view.  The meeting house bulletin board even had a posting for an upcoming nearby Buddhist meditation workshop.

I began to lose my sense of exactly how much time was passing, but we sat in silence for what seemed like quite a long time.  At first, I found it somewhat uncomfortable: any time someone would shift in their seat, I'd think to myself "this is it!  Someone's going to get up and speak!"  But they didn't.  After a while, though, I stopped worrying about it.  I thought to myself that this may be one of those meetings where nobody spoke at all, but then finally someone rose.

I suppose he was thinking about the silence as well, because that's what he spoke about: silence.  He talked about how words were limited, but silence is not... and how connecting to silence meant connecting to the divine.  He closed with "thanks be to God", sat down again, and the silence resumed.

A few minutes later, the elderly woman next to me rose to speak.  She talked about silence as well, but from a different perspective: she talked about how her friend (both a personal friend and fellow member of the congregation) had died earlier in the week, and how as she grieved, she found that her biggest regrets were found in her moments of past silence: the things she had wanted to say to her friend, but never did.  She sat back down, leaving the room in silence again.

Another few minutes later, a man rose, saying "it is said that the truth shall set you free, but history has shown that this is not always the case..."  He went on to explain how while the truth can result in painful consequences, it sets one free from fear.

While I was still mulling this over, the meeting ended: two of the members turned to each other and shook hands, signalling to everyone else to shake hands with those around them.  And with that, the silence was broken and the world that had seemingly been held at bay for an hour rused back in again.