Before we sat down to
a formal dinner at an educational institution which shall remain nameless, the
head of that institution was required to recite a Latin grace. My host, who had
studied Latin all the way through high school, elbowed me: “Psst! don’t smirk. [The
head] doesn’t know Latin, as you are about to learn.” Soon enough we heard,
“Bennie DICK tuss: Bennie DIE, cat!” One could have been forgiven for thinking
that the poor man had endured one too many nights of Bennie the tom cat tussling
with other felines in the alley behind his home and, taking him to the vet to
be neutered, was secretly wishing for a one-way trip. In reality, only one
syllable was significantly mispronounced: replacing “dee” for “die” would have
made the Latin comprehensible as “Benedictus
benedicat,” or, “Let the Blessed One bless.” Minor accent reduction on some
of the other vowels would have been icing on the cake that we pictured
ourselves about to consume.
“Benedictus benedicat”
is a lovely non-sectarian blessing that works on a variety of occasions, but it
is incomprehensible if we do not know the language. (History does not relate why no
one took this fine person aside at the beginning to explain the pronunciation, but it is probably related to
concerns about disrupting the academic pecking order.) Likewise, the way
unprogrammed Quaker Meetings begin, end, and progress through their central
portions is a mystery to those who have not experienced them. Unprogrammed
Meetings for Worship do not begin with an invocation, do not contain a creed,
and do not end with a formal benediction. The old playground rhyme runs,
“Quakers’ Meeting has begun. No more laughing, no more fun. If you show your
teeth or tongue, you will have to pay a forfeit.” When I first attended a
Friends Meeting, I figured that worship would not begin with the recitation of
that rhyme (if it had, I would have been sunk, as I had paid multiple forfeits on
the playgrounds in my youth in northeastern Vermont, lorded over by better-behaved
classmates who had even less of an image of what a Quaker Meeting entailed). But
I had no idea that the beginning was simply a critical mass of people sitting
down together in an appointed place at or near the appointed time, and that it
ended with a handshake.
People who have a
basic familiarity with the unprogrammed flavor of Quakerism are familiar with
our concept of waiting upon the Divine in silence, and of vocal ministry
arising out of that silence. An intellectual understanding, however, does not
make it easier to grasp in practice. It turns out that people —or, at least, a
cross-section of Virginians in a recent psychology study— do not like being
asked to sit alone in silence, even for as little as fifteen minutes. The
authors of this study (actually an aggregation of eleven related studies),
reported in the July 4, 2014 issue of Science, found that some 64 per cent of male and 25 per cent of female
subjects would rather administer themselves an electric shock than sit alone in
silence for fifteen minutes in an unadorned room without electronic devices,
reading materials, or any other form of entertainment. All of the participants
had previously indicated that they disliked electric shocks. Having
participants prepare briefly before entering the room seems not to have made a
difference. A review of this study published in the journal Nature supports these
conclusions.
Clearly, Quakers,
along with Zen Buddhists, practitioners of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and others versed in
contemplative traditions, would have no trouble sitting in silence in an
unadorned room for fifteen minutes. (Although the article in Science does not specify how the
volunteers for the studies were recruited, presumably people falling into these
categories were excluded.) Does the fact that we typically worship in groups
make a difference? It does, for a variety of theological and cultural reasons,
but most of us could, and many of us do, sit alone in private worship for a
reasonable length of time.
Does the fact that
many adult Quakers were socialized before the advent (or at least the ubiquity)
of electronic devices make it easier to develop the habit of silent worship? While
Friends are too small a group for most psychological studies, the answer is
almost certainly “yes.” Even as early as the late 1980’s, Ursula Franklin, a
Quaker metallurgist and philosopher of science from the University of Toronto,
shared her concern about the intrusion of technology into silence (see links to
her article “Silence and the
Notion of the Commons” in Soundscape 7, 1994 and
her 1989 Massey lectures, later revised, inter alia). More recently, commentators
such George Prochnik have raised concerns
—indeed, alarms— about how the noise and busyness of modern life have crowded
out silence, while Sherry Turkle has written about the
related problem of the overreliance on technology and the decline of social
interaction.
If the Quaker
tradition of silent worship is to attract newcomers and retain its young
people, it should consider how this recent research might be used to revamp our
outreach and religious education. In suggesting this, I realize that a
data-driven approach may not be popular. There is no small irony in the fact
that unprogrammed Friends, who often have a high level of formal education and
a better than average understanding of scientific concepts, sometimes eschew
the results of scientific research as it applies to us. “Knowing something
experimentally” in the words of George Fox means knowing something through a
combination of faith and experience —possessing what one professes— and not
learning something through the scientific method. Nevertheless, when we have
relevant research at our disposal, what are we waiting for? More research? In
this case, further studies, while useful in determining which types of introduction
to silence may be successful, are unlikely to disprove the basic premise that
the average person has trouble with his or her own thoughts, and that the
situation is getting worse, and not better.
The researchers who
conducted the study summarized Science,
along with the reviewer in Nature,
suggested that one way to help beginners deal with silence is to give them
specific suggestions about something to think about and ways to direct their
meditation. (The researchers looked at mindfulness training specifically, but
did not limit their suggestions to any particular approach.) Introductory
pamphlets tend to be strong on theory but have less specific guidance, because
of concerns about being prescriptive, but here is where being a bit more
prescriptive could be helpful. The British
introductory brochure, Your First Time in a
Quaker Meeting, suggests using images of light and advises people to “bring whatever is pressing on your mind to
the Meeting.” This is very good, but it might be even more effective to reframe
this idea as a Query, by adding a further sentence or two: “Friends often consider
what is on our minds and then ask ourselves in Meeting, ‘In what way can our
daily thoughts and concerns, however mundane, relate to our spiritual lives, the
lives of our fellow human beings, and life on earth? Conversely, in what ways
can silent worship nourish and deepen all other activities of our daily lives
and the lives of those around us?’” (My inspiration for this sentence is part
of Query 2 in the 1985 Faith and Practice
of New England Yearly Meeting, “Do all other activities of your meeting find
their inspiration in worship, and do they, in turn, help to uphold the
worshipping group?”)
The Quaker Advices and
Queries are often used for just this purpose of focusing a Meeting and planting
seeds for potential vocal ministry. It is likely that they should be used more
often. Perhaps, when members of the Committee of Ministry and Counsel (or
Elders in Yearly Meetings that have them) notice a reasonable number of
visitors —or perhaps even one visitor— the committee might authorize one of its
members in advance to make an ad hoc decision to read a brief selection from
the Advices and Queries, along with a brief explanation of what they are.
In the interim,
introductory brochures should be more specific about how Meeting for Worship
begins. (We are clear about how it ends.) Saying that it begins when Friends
sit down in the specified location at the appointed time to wait on God in
silence is not enough for a newcomer, who may still expect a delegated Friend
to stand up after a few minutes and say words to the effect of, “Welcome to
Podunk Friends Meeting on this glorious/rainy/snowy Sunday morning. We welcome
all of you to wait upon God with us in the silence and, if, so moved, to
provide a brief vocal message, which we call ministry, arising from that
silence. Our worship will end with a designated person beginning a handshake around the room in about an hour.” We need to say that there is no invocation, or call to worship, of
any verbal sort, although in our silence we may well reflect upon the phrase
“Benedictus benedicat.”
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| Not everyone has trouble relaxing in silence for fifteen minutes, even if some might consider resting on a coat atop a snow scraper supported by the back and arm of a bench to be rather uncomfortable. photograph ©Kristin Lord 2014 |
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