Anne Watson
The uncertainty of Quaker meetings is our strength; the individual nature of ministry is, for many of us, why we prefer Quaker meetings to more predictable forms of worship. We all uphold the meeting by our attendance and discernment.
This has led me to think about the role of elders, who, while worshipping, are also responsible for the spiritual life of the Meeting as a whole and for the particular meeting they are serving. Like everything else, the last couple of years have led to there being new issues about Meetings for Worship (MfWs): audibility, inclusion, masks or not, ventilation or not. All these ruminations have been essential in order for us to have MfWs at all.
How hard this has been for elders! How vulnerable they are to criticism and misinterpretation! All the time they are worshipping alongside everyone else as equals in the Spirit but with a special care for spoken ministry. When people become elders they usually go to some kind of learning event and ‘what should I do if ….?’ are worries that are often shared. Stories are told; ideas are shared.
Elders of MfWs listen with care and love, to preserve the conditions of worship: the space between ministry; the audibility of ministry; the frequency of ministry; the habitual patterns of ministry; the duration of ministry. For example, they might sometimes extend the meeting if there has been ministry near the end; they might sometimes curtail someone’s ministry with care; they might ask someone to speak louder. I am not currently an elder but my past experience tells me that nothing is done without frequent and tender discernment. We all need to uphold our elders.
I am also aware of my own need to learn about ministry. When I first began attending Quaker MfWs it was mainly in a meeting that had about 40 regular attenders and, apart from some completely silent meetings, between one and four spoken ministries on a typical Sunday. Often these were about the experience of worship, internal or collective. It was during the growth of CND and peace campaigning in the late 70s, early 80s, and sometimes ministry would be about discernment for individual and collective action.
I grew to minister fairly frequently, probably too frequently looking back, and remember being gently ‘eldered’ after one meeting when a weighty Friend thanked me for the way I had turned talk of cruise missiles into talk about personal peacefulness. I say this was ‘eldering’ but I do not know whether it was intentional. I took it to be a sign that perhaps I too often gabbled on about the collective Light of Greenham rather than exploring any inner Light. I became quieter.
However, a few years later another Friend said to me that one of her children had come home from Uni for the weekend and been delighted to hear a ‘double whammy’. This turned out to mean ministry from a particular Friend, followed by me. I realised that this other Friend and I had fallen into a habit in which she talked about a personal realisation from her reading and I, after a suitable time, related this to how we are nested inside Quaker values and method of worship. So, I learnt to fall out of that habit.
I had thought that physical discomfort, feeling the beating heart, was a sign that what I was going to say was spirit-led. But I learnt, from watching others, that these were signs for me to be very still until I was absolutely sure, from something in the stillness and silence of the heart, that what I would say – whatever it turned out to be – would be spirit-led. This is different from planning a speech, waiting to speak, or being sure about what I would say.
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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 520 • August 2022
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW
Copyright 2022, Oxford Quakers