Part One

Stand still in that power which brings peace.

George Fox

What is a Quaker Meeting?

‘Meeting’ means everything to Quakers. There are meetings for worship, meetings for business and meetings for clearness. When a Quaker marries, it is a meeting for worship for marriage; when a Quaker dies, they call it a memorial meeting. Their annual conference is a yearly meeting. A small group of Quakers is described as a local meeting and that meeting often holds its meetings in the meeting room of a meeting house. They don’t own churches, chapels or temples, nor do they hold services. Everything is a meeting. At first sight it’s confusing.

Take it slowly, though, and the mists begin to clear. Quakers’ use of the word has logic on its side. What matters most to them, after all, is personal experience. No one directs Quaker events. They are not rituals, ceremonies or services. Each is a unique coming together of minds, bodies and souls. Calling these communal encounters ‘meetings’ makes sense. They are shared collectively by everyone.

Quaker groups which meet together regularly are also called ‘meetings’. The reasoning is the same: these are people who know each other well, whose lives are often linked by their common concerns and who spend a lot of time together. So the Quakers in Brighton, say, are collectively known as ‘Brighton Meeting’. When they choose to assemble for devotion and prayer, they hold a meeting for worship. As they set off from home, they may say to their loved ones, ‘I’m going to meeting’. And in most cases but not all, the event will take place in a meeting house that was built for the purpose.

It is all jargon, of course, and as ever it makes sense to the initiated while appearing odd from the outside. You will get used to it quickly – with luck, in the next few pages. In the sections that follow, I hope to explain in detail how a meeting for worship works and why it affects people deeply, in some cases helping them to take life-changing decisions. I’ll go on to clarify the ways in which groups of Quakers run their affairs with no one in charge. I’ll describe how the pattern of the meeting for worship is used for the creation of common policy. Then in the final pages of Part One, I’ll explain how it is also used for weddings and funerals.

Meeting for Worship

If you want to know more about Quakers, a good first step is to pay them a visit and take part in a meeting for worship. Go to the British Quaker website (www.quaker.org.uk) and you will find your nearest meeting place by typing in your postcode. Alternatively, you can buy the Book of Meetings online at the same web address, or by ringing the Quaker Centre (020 7663 1030). If you are in any doubt about the time the meeting for worship starts or the best options for public transport, a quick phone call to the listed contact person should sort everything out.

One of Quakers’ most strongly held beliefs is that there is no difference between the sacred and the secular. All days are precious, as holy as each other. So it follows that they do not celebrate a Sabbath. They hold meetings for worship at times that are convenient for their particular group: that usually means a gathering every Sunday, since it’s time off for most people. In some towns Quakers also hold midweek meetings at lunchtime and during the evening. Traditional festivals such as Christmas, Passover, Easter or Diwali are not considered to be of greater spiritual significance than other days, so Quakers give them no special emphasis. Many enjoy family celebrations at home on those occasions, but they don’t feel the need to grace the day with any particular religious message.

In the same way, Quakers believe that everywhere – each dwelling, road, tree and blade of grass – is precious and holy. That means that they don’t consecrate Quaker meeting houses or regard them as especially hallowed. They are often beautiful to look at and many of them are greatly loved, but none of them has ever been blessed or declared ceremonially to be a centre of worship. Most Quaker groups own such a building and manage it themselves, renting it out around the clock for a multitude of uses: my own local meeting house has hosted everything from a nursery school to Gamblers Anonymous. Meetings without their own property usually gather in a nearby community centre or hall. Occasionally, they may use a private house. One group I know meets in a small theatre.

When you get there, you may come across someone offering to shake your hand. It is common practice at many meetings and is not reserved for newcomers – everyone who comes is greeted at the door. It is useful, because if you want to ask questions, read a leaflet, or look round the building, your welcomer can point you in the right direction. Many people, of course, prefer to be left alone on the first day. If you are one of them – I certainly was – I suggest you go straight to the room where the worship is to be held and take a seat anywhere you like. The meeting begins when the first person sits down, so there’s no announcement to indicate that everything is suddenly under way. By the agreed starting time, just about everyone will have arrived – it’s not a good idea to be late if you can help it, because you’ll miss something – and those particular people assembled at that particular time on that particular day will have begun to share their own collective religious experience.

The room will be set out with seats forming a circle or square, so that everyone can see everyone else. In the oldest meeting houses, there are often two permanent banks of seating facing one another. The layout always emphasises the communal nature of worship. In the centre, there will be a small table. It may have flowers on it. And there will be books, too. A Bible is usually there, and possibly one or two key texts from non-Christian religions, together with a pair of specifically Quaker works that are always found: Advices and queries (see Appendix 3) and a much loved volume known as QF&P, or Quaker faith and practice.

Quaker faith and practice is an essential text. You can read it in full at the Quaker website or buy it in book form. It gives Quakers information and advice on holding their meetings and running their affairs, but that is only the beginning. It also comprises a collection of extracts, paragraphs and sentences written by Quakers over the last three and a half centuries that I and many others have found to be uniquely valuable and inspiring. There are chapters on personal journeys, close relationships and living faithful lives; you can read passages on peacemaking and social responsibility; one section, entitled ‘Reflections’, has become a source of spiritual nurture to large numbers of Quakers who make time to read from it every day. It is a treasury of wisdom and hope. Unusually for the core work of a religious group, the whole book is re-compiled from scratch every thirty years or so, ensuring that it remains contemporary and relevant to each new generation.

These books are not intended to be read throughout the meeting, but are on the table for anyone who feels the need to refer to them. If you want to spend time exploring Quaker faith and practice, or indeed any other Quaker books, you will be able to borrow them from the meeting’s library afterwards. For the moment, I suggest you simply sit in the gathering silence with the people who have joined you. You might want to look around and see who your companions will be for the next hour. Or perhaps you prefer to sit with your eyes closed and settle into the tranquillity.

If you are familiar with transcendental or Buddhist meditation, your experience may come in useful in the process of ‘centring down’, as Quakers call it. Accomplished meditators often say that the techniques and mantras they have learnt through their discipline are essential to them as they settle in the silence, and I’ll have more to say about that later. For the moment, though, I think it’s important to be clear that most Quakers doubt whether meditation, even as a group event, has much in common with the meeting for worship itself. Outwardly, of course, they are similar – in fact, someone looking at them objectively might find it hard to tell the difference – but from the inside, they feel entirely distinct. The principal reason only takes a moment’s thought: it is possible to meditate alone, whereas, self-evidently, a Quaker meeting involves more than one person. It has to be shared. And it also carries with it an authority, an inevitable series of consequences and results – again, I’ll come to these shortly – which only serve to emphasise that comparisons don’t work. There are a lot of Quakers who find meditation to be an important part of their lives, but few who mistake it for their meeting for worship.

It can also be a temptation to assume that silence is the purpose of a Quaker meeting, that thinking your own thoughts and not saying anything for an hour is going to constitute a religious experience. That may happen, of course, and it may turn out to be a refreshing change and, who knows, you may be delighted by the opportunity to enjoy the mental space it affords, but most people agree, I think, that it isn’t really what a Quaker meeting is for. After all, as with meditation, you could do it on your own at home. One of the joys of sitting with others is the simple fact of their presence and their active participation. Silence is certainly an important ingredient in what is going on, but it isn’t the point. I see it as an aid to what a Quaker meeting is really about, which is the mutual realisation of a collective stillness. When that is felt by everyone in the room, truths may be revealed to them.

Silence is not the only aid to the stillness. There is another, and that, ironically, is speech. Sometimes a person attending the meeting – it can be anybody, not necessarily a Quaker – is moved to speak from a deep, unfamiliar place inside them. Their words may be incisive or uncertain, but however they emerge they will pierce the silence and give new direction to the worship. As long as there is no self-regard in the person’s decision to speak – that has to be a given – what they say will contribute to the communal stillness. It is never a prepared speech and is always intended for the meeting as a whole; an insight is unlikely to hit home if it means something only to the person who has had it. Often, it will be followed in time by one or more spoken offerings from other people in the room. Sometimes they form a pattern, so that the occasion begins to acquire a thematic shape of its own.

When someone is moved to stand and speak in a meeting, what they say is called ‘ministry’. It is a rare gift that does not come often to most of us. Some people minister once in a lifetime, others a few times a year at most. It is not usual to come across a person who makes a regular habit of getting to their feet, and it would be worrying if it were, because discipline is an important part of a meeting for worship. Three established customs are worth bearing in mind. Firstly, Quakers suggest that spoken contributions are kept short, if possible. Secondly, they ask for a period of silence after someone has ministered, so that everyone can properly absorb what has just been said. (There are few things more cheerless than hearing someone rise to speak as soon as another person has sat down: not only has the meeting not had a chance to digest the last contribution, but the new speaker hasn’t either, so things are certain to become disjointed.) Thirdly, people are requested not to speak more than once in a meeting – two or three times, and it starts to feel like preaching. And Quakers have a strong dislike of preaching.

The combination of silence and speech makes each Quaker meeting unique. And if an hour turns out to be totally silent, it will also have an atmosphere, character and depth all its own: the spiritual teaching absorbed in a meeting for worship does not necessarily come from the mouths of other people. Since meetings are by their nature unpredictable, some will inevitably be more satisfying than others, and all Quakers treasure memories of the gatherings that have resonated most deeply for them personally, the ones through which they have learnt and grown. The best Quaker meetings have a formidable power, often engendered by a sense that the spirit of each person is melding into a communal stillness that is so intense, so deep-reaching it can almost be touched. Quakers have an expression for these most highly charged encounters. They call them ‘gathered meetings’. They regard them as an essential part of their religious experience. An American Quaker, Thomas Kelly, wrote in 1940, ‘What is the ground and foundation of the gathered meeting? In the last analysis, it is, I am convinced, the Real Presence of God.’ If he is right – and I think he is – then what Quakers are doing in their meetings is waiting on the Divine.

Most meetings close after about an hour, though lunchtime and evening meetings are often shorter. Two Quakers, appointed in advance by the group, shake hands when they feel the time has come to bring the meeting to a conclusion. Their handshake is a signal for everyone to follow suit and in a matter of seconds the whole room has become wreathed in smiles and greetings. It can be quite a responsibility to know the right moment to finish. The clock plays a big part in the decision, of course, but so do good sense, discernment and sensitivity to the needs of those present, so if a meeting doesn’t end exactly when you thought it might, you shouldn’t necessarily be surprised. Three centuries ago, Quaker meetings were open-ended, often lasting three hours and more. It is rare to encounter such extensive devotions now, but some groups hold quiet days with longer meetings. If you enjoy the power of Quaker worship, you might like to try one. They can achieve great depth.

Led by the Spirit

Gathered meetings are an essential part of Quakerism and the reason that I and so many others have found ourselves unable to stay away. They offer the possibility of deep religious experiences, of encounters with the Spirit that other denominations use symbols to express. They have the capacity to transform those who attend them. There is a mystical quality to a gathered meeting which makes it appear to be untouched by time. People’s selfish thoughts dematerialise. They are able to listen. They give thanks. They discover clear ways forward. Decisions can be taken. Projects become feasible. From the outside, gathered meetings appear to be no different from any other Quaker event; for those taking part, they can be the impetus for spiritual renewal and lasting change.

In a magazine article quoted in Quaker faith and practice, Thomas R. Bodine wrote:

As a meeting ‘gathers’ … there gradually develops a feeling of belonging to a group who are together seeking a sense of the Presence. The ‘I’ in us begins to feel like ‘we’. At some point – it may be early in the meeting or it may be later, or it may never occur at all – we suddenly feel a sense of unity, a sense of togetherness with one another and with that something outside ourselves that we call God.

It is impossible to know which meetings will gather and which will not: there seem to be few, if any, common factors. It certainly helps if those attending arrive in a spirit of preparedness, because they will need to be open to the unexpected. As they stare out the issues in their lives, worshippers are surprised by perceptions that arrive unbidden. Ideas bubble up into the mind like spring water, exhilarating and fresh. They may be religious insights or impulses to take action. Often, they are both at once. They can be difficult to grasp at the time, but they prove equally hard to resist and soon become firm and unstoppable. Quakers have a word for their spiritually inspired resolutions. They call them ‘leadings’. Leadings can bring about a big project for social justice, an alteration in a person’s family dynamic, or a private decision to change one’s behaviour. Large-scale or small, they are a fact of Quaker life.

Obeying the promptings of the Spirit in this way is a key part of the Quaker experience – and ‘experience’ is the vital word. Everything in Quakerism is based on it. If you don’t have a list of set beliefs, if you turn your back on dogma, all you have to give is what you know in your heart. And the process is circular: it is because you have had insights as a direct result of your religious experience that you are able to discern that someone else’s doctrine may not be for you. That is why Quakers refuse to entertain the idea of a leader handing down creeds or imperatives: they believe only what has been shown to them in practice. Gathered meetings play a crucial role in this. They awaken perception. They offer intense spiritual encounters in which people can see who they are and in which they are inspired to become who they can be.

Being Part of a Meeting for Worship

So, I sit on my chair in silence with, say, ten, twenty, two hundred other people. There is no altar to look at, no crucifix, no statue, no star, no stained glass. What do I do?

It took me a while to establish my own little ways in a Quaker meeting. When I started, I found it difficult to banish the mundane thoughts of a man with a family, a worrier with a job. But I practised and it slowly became easier to focus on what I was there for. In the early days, I had no idea what to do with my hands. Should they be palm up, thumb touching second finger? Or perhaps they would be better facing downwards, relaxed in a loose fist, gently resting on my knees? And what of my feet – square to the floor? And my eyes? Open, shut? It was all for me to decide, because there are no rules or recommended best practice.

After a month or two, I began to notice that many experienced Quakers vary what they do and I tried it. I started the meeting by looking round to see who was there, enjoying their presence and allowing it to calm me. I closed my eyes and began, as Quakers put it, to centre down. I found it helpful to say the same thing, slowly and repeatedly to myself. I chose the word ‘maranatha’, because it was used by one or two Christian meditators of my acquaintance who found it worked for them. It is a phrase in the ancient Aramaic language, meaning ‘Oh Lord, come’. I simply borrowed it from my friends on the principle that if it was good enough for them, it was good enough for me. It helped me to clear my mind and take my brain away from the focus of my own thinking. I also liked what it meant. After a while, though, I began to feel foolish speaking a language I had no knowledge of, so I changed my mantra. I began to say the Christian ‘Our Father’ prayer, which I had been taught in my childhood. I recited it to myself slowly, one phrase at a time. It was a good development, because now I knew what I was saying.

Sometimes I failed to reach the end of my prayer and it didn’t matter. The mantra guided my spirit to another place and I was able to let go of my own ego. If thoughts rushed in, I was usually able to set them gently to one side without allowing them to get on top of me. And what I did then, though I realise it sounds undisciplined and irreligious, was daydream. I allowed my mind to drift. There was a difference, though, between contemplation in a Quaker meeting and thinking pretty thoughts. My Quaker reverie was grounded in where I was, and why I was there. And, crucially, it wasn’t going to continue for the whole hour; because if it worked I was going to be able to move on to a place of spiritual safety in which I could see myself as I really was, with humility and understanding. I was going to reach a point at which I might be open to the Spirit.

The first Quakers used to call this process ‘standing in the Light’. George Fox, the pioneer of Quakerism whose works I now prize so much, wrote about it frequently. ‘Stand still in that which shows and discovers,’ he said – ‘discovers’ having the meaning of ‘uncovers’ in the English of the seventeenth century – and I have indeed found that the process of being still and opening myself to God has changed me. It has shown me to myself, uncovered me, and allowed me to take on challenges of a kind that I would not have been able to manage before. In the gathered stillness of Quaker meetings, I have become capable of understanding simple truths about my behaviour, and I have been shown ways to take life-changing decisions.

Perhaps the most useful thing to say about how to ‘be’ in a Quaker meeting is that it can change over time. After many months of sitting with my eyes firmly shut I found that I no longer always needed to do that. I could begin to engage in my spiritual practice with the conscious help of those around me. And in a similar way, I found after a year or two that I didn’t always want to use the mantra. So I have gradually developed a way of going straight into my daydream of the spirit. I sit on the chair with both feet on the floor, hands loosely on my lap, and I open myself to whatever may come. I am a little better at avoiding distractions now. That has come through acknowledging that it is not an ‘anything goes’ process for me. There has to be a procedure to the way I behave in a Quaker meeting, a discipline; if there isn’t, I can easily get into a habit of wondering what’s for lunch.

There are as many ways of being in a Quaker meeting as there are Quakers. Mine may not be right for you. So I have asked some friends to jot down a few words about their experience. This is what they have written.

I like to be well grounded with both feet on the floor, back well supported by the chair and hands lying gently in my lap. I close my eyes and try to move my attention from head to ‘heart’, which I envisage as centrally placed within my ribcage. I let all thoughts and words flutter away. They fly back, of course, but I try not to pay attention to them. Sometimes I achieve complete stillness, often I don’t. When thoughts are troublesome I find any passage from Advices and queries helps me to focus again.

I find that it is the senses which tend to distract, so to start with I concentrate on one sense – listening. I listen to the tummy rumbles, the coughs and the creaks. I am aware of the meeting. I let the listening be wide. It spreads around me reaching farther and farther outward like water on a flat surface. Eventually, sometimes, it partakes of that silence from which all sound emanates.

I like to sit facing sunlight through the high window and settle myself in the chair in an upright comfortable position. I look around the circle and offer a smile of greeting to those I know and to those I have not yet met. Mindful of these people present I give attention to inner awareness, of being attentive and becoming open to promptings, insights or guidance.

I find it impossible to really clear my mind of everything. I am aware of the ticking of the clock, the grain of the wood in the benches, the stillness of the room. In Advices and queries I find some words which seem to blend with my thoughts and focus me, and then I find myself going into a deeper place where I am no longer aware of the noise of the traffic outside, but become a part of the tranquillity inside.

Arriving at the meeting house in good time, preferably without the distractions of conversation with others, driving in an unhurried way, is a great help. I often use a mantra to help me to centre down, coupled with careful breathing. It’s the verse from Psalm 46, ‘be still and know that I am God’, which then develops into ‘be still’, with ‘be’ in my mind as I breathe in, and ‘still’ as I exhale.

When I sit down I immediately start to focus on things that have been on my mind – mostly trivial little tasks or worries – and then mentally peel them away, like the layers of an onion, and push them away from me, until I reach a space that is empty and quiet. At that point, I begin to ‘hear’ the silence and feel the stillness, and then I wait to see what will happen. It doesn’t always work.

It feels like the kinks coming out of the cable on an appliance like a Hoover. I never seem to get fast at it. I am fairly philosophical about how long it takes, and regard the sifting of what comes up as a form of worship. Struggling really doesn’t help. The nearest I have to a tip is that I sometimes try to minimise the occurrence of the word ‘I’ in my thoughts. What sometimes happens is that a thought starts as a strictly private preoccupation. As the meeting goes on it becomes less personal, it seems also to come from a version of myself in which brain and heart and insight unite.

I’ve given up trying not to think – so I let the thoughts ramble gently without trying to think them through – and in time they die out and I sometimes become truly ‘still’ and I later come out of a phase of what felt like timelessness, yet a connection to God and to those present. Sometimes the thoughts become a serious thread that seems to go somewhere before dying away. Then may come back later with force demanding to be considered as ministry – especially if it seems to belong in the pattern of other ministry. 

The last friend mentions ministry and hints at a private decision-making process that may engage her as she turns over the messages entering her mind. It happens sooner or later to everyone who attends meetings. ‘This idea in my head – is it ministry? Is it for me alone to enjoy and learn from, or is it for the whole meeting? Why is it for the whole meeting? Should I stand up and say it? Will I be able to? Will I remember what it was? Does it have any relevance to what has already been said?’

As we have already seen, Quakers are quite clear that ego must never be involved in the impulse to speak in a meeting for worship. In fact, if you find yourself with a strong desire to say something, it might be worth looking carefully at your motives: wanting to minister and actually finding yourself on your feet with words coming out of your mouth are different experiences. Almost everyone who has spoken in a Quaker meeting reports a sensation of simply having to get up. Often, there is a feeling that this is against one’s will, that there is no option but to stand and say what has to be said in order to be able to sit down again. Ministering in a meeting for worship is not always a comfortable experience.

Receiving ministry, hearing it, can sometimes present a challenge if what is being said appears not to fit with what is already in the listener’s mind. When I can’t appreciate or understand a spoken message, I’ve found that the best thing I can do is simply to lay the ministry aside in my mind for the moment, not to allow it to bug me, and to accept instead that I may understand it in time. It helps me to remember not to judge each piece of ministry in isolation, but to recognise that there may be a pattern emerging that I have yet to absorb. If it was meant for somebody else in the meeting, all may become clear when they rise to speak a few minutes later.

Usually, ministry consists of an inspired observation, a thought, a memory or perhaps a reading. Sometimes the speaker will knit together the apparently unconnected ideas from two or three previous offerings. And it is not always speech. Quakers are clear that often the most important ministry is that of the participants who remain faithfully silent throughout the meeting.

Some of the most valuable contributions I have heard have been musical. I remember vividly a meeting held in a centuries-old meeting house in a small Yorkshire town. I was fairly new and visiting this group of Quakers for the first time. The gathering was silent for forty minutes. The glow of morning light through the small, high windows cast long, golden patterns onto the stone floor. The place felt hallowed. A woman stood. In a bluesy contralto, she improvised a soaring anthem of adoration to her god. No one made a sound for the rest of the hour. I’ll remember those goose bumps for ever.

Nor shall I forget the two-year-old boy who walked into a less than fruitful meeting – oh, they happen – twenty minutes before its end, found a pile of Advices and queries by the door and wove his way unsteadily around the chairs, handing each of us a copy. He took the trouble to open them all at the centre pages (live adventurously) and unknowingly quickened an occasion that was in danger of sinking. He wasn’t aware of what he was doing. His primary motive was play. But I can’t escape the thoughts that no one ever plans good ministry, that laughter is a fine antidote to solemnity and, crucially, that a message can and will come from any of the participants in a meeting, however much they may appear to lack experience.

Handle with Care

Anybody can walk into a meeting of Quakers and join them. Anybody can stand up in the stillness and say something. It might surprise you – it amazes me – how few newcomers use the occasion to deliver a sermon, a speech or a rant. It happens, of course, but rarely. When it does, Quakers have effective ways of dealing with it and I’ll go on to explain some of those a little later. Much more common than a meeting being hijacked by a first-timer is the subtle damage that can sometimes be caused by someone who attends regularly and unwittingly makes an error of judgement. So in this section, I hope to explain one or two of the more familiar pitfalls. And I’ll start with my own behaviour.

When I had been attending Quaker meetings for about a year and a half, I spent six weeks working in a town a few hundred miles from my home. I visited the meeting there every Sunday. These new Quakers were warm and welcoming. It took forty minutes to drive to the meeting house and I enjoyed the unhurried journeys. I used the time to prepare myself mentally for the silent worship that was to come. I sometimes allowed my mind to wander as I drove. One day, my daydreaming led to a thought that struck me as possibly original. It doesn’t matter now what the idea was, but I found a form of words that seemed to me to express it well. I felt that my little aphorism had an element of wisdom about it and I was pleased. I even allowed myself to wonder whether, if the subject of it did ever happen to come up in a meeting for worship, it might possibly be suitable as ministry.

I arrived. I went into the meeting. I sat with my thought, my perceptive little insight, and let it work in my brain. The silence deepened. Nobody spoke. I asked myself if I should perhaps stand and say what was in my mind. It was well shaped now, my piece of spiritual self-help, a neat and original form of words that gave me an understanding that I hadn’t had before. I wondered if it might be of use to others. I knew that Quakers went through a brief mental process to ascertain whether or not the message they had was just for themselves or for the meeting as a whole and I asked myself that question. I decided this was for the meeting. After all, it was helping me, so logically it might be of interest to them. I decided to stand. And as I prepared to rise to my feet, a woman on the other side of the room got up, paused and delivered a helpful piece of ministry.

I felt thwarted. My plan hadn’t worked. I tried to get calm again. My heart began to slow down. And as I relaxed once more, I had a further thought. My piece of ministry was not that different from hers. The themes were similar. With a little adaptation, my contribution could add something to what had already been spoken. Perhaps I should say it. I should leave it a few minutes, though, because that’s what Quakers do. I worked out my new delivery and prepared to stand. And as I was about to rise, it happened again. It was a man this time. He stood up slowly and what he said followed the theme of the first ministry, taking it into a new realm altogether. He closed with a short quotation from Quaker faith and practice. He sat. Ten minutes went by. Nobody said anything. I wondered whether to speak. After all, what I had to say was still along the same lines. In fact, the subject matter was almost identical and it made sense with what had gone before.

For the third time, I prepared to speak. And of course you’re ahead of me now, you know what’s coming. But I didn’t. I was oblivious. I felt a deep need to say what I had to say to these people, because I thought it might help. I was sincere. And as I got ready to speak, the third contributor rose. Deftly and inspiringly, she tied together the last two pieces of ministry in a short statement that combined perceptiveness with discernment. No more needed to be said. No more was said. I had been silenced, but nobody had known. And at last I got the message. In my head, I had been holding one meeting; in the room, the Quakers had been holding another. The two had been on parallel lines, thematically similar, but utterly separate in spirit. My problem was that I wanted to say something. But what I want has no contribution to make to a Quaker meeting, however public-spirited I may feel. What I want will get in the way. Meetings are unpredictable. They are moved by something inside people and yet at the same time mystically beyond them. And it was, I’m sure, something outside me that made certain that I didn’t speak that day.

The problem I had, of course, was with my ego: I wanted to speak from a misguided need to prove to myself and others that I was wise. But it isn’t only those kinds of damaging impulse that can be troublesome to Quaker worship: the simple desire for self-esteem can be just as disconcerting if, as I’ve seen happen, meetings for worship get confused in people’s minds with psychoanalytic techniques. I once knew a man who had long been a patient in the kind of group therapy that encourages participants to talk about their problems in a safe environment. He began to worship with Quakers and felt at home. The two practices seemed similar to him (in both, after all, he was sitting in a circle with people who were free to speak without any apparent direction or programme), so he understandably found it difficult to distinguish between them. Week after week, he stood up in the stillness, expounding at length about problems he was having in his life, difficulties in his marriage, trouble at work. It helped him, but the religious life of those silent meetings began to suffer. They were being used as something for which they weren’t intended. They lacked spiritual energy. They became mundane, predictable and flat.

In this case the crisis, I’m pleased to say, was short-lived. Our friend had the insight and humility to realise that his views of Quaker meetings were mistaken. He began to appreciate that ministry is, to quote Marrianne McMullen in Quaker faith and practice, ‘what is on one’s soul, and it can be in direct contradiction to what is on one’s mind’. He started to enjoy silent meetings for the deep spiritual insights that they offer and eventually found a life for himself among Quakers, seeking help for his psychological difficulties elsewhere. It was a fortunate outcome. There are people, of course, who lack that kind of self-awareness, perhaps as a result of illness, and who find themselves overwhelmed by a pressing need to express publicly what is going on for them. When this happens, Quakers are sympathetic and do what they can to respond with care, tenderness and love.

Another danger is that a worshipping group may latch onto an idea and minister it into the ground. Early in my Quaker life, I attended a meeting in which twelve people out of about fifty, standing in quick succession, spoke about their individual conceptions of God. Many of them had fascinating things to report, but they were telling, not responding. They were delivering their own spirit, rather than being open to a greater one. And there were just too many of them. Afterwards, I was at a loss to know how to take this overblown mixture of conjecture and conviction. I asked an experienced Quaker what he had thought. ‘It was certainly a problem,’ he said, ‘but don’t worry about it unduly. It happens sometimes – rather like the sales force suddenly being given the opportunity to talk about the product.’

Quaker groups respond to the needs of individuals for self-expression, self-care and self-esteem and they actively support them. However, if meetings for worship look at first sight like forums, or discussion groups, or opportunities for spiritual opinions to be expressed, it is an illusion. Those kinds of event are often programmed by Quaker groups and frequently prove to be helpful, but they don’t have a part to play in a meeting for worship. If I am reading a book, or remembering something I heard on the radio last week, or admiring the flowers on the table, I am doing something entirely understandable that many people do in a Quaker meeting, but I am not listening. I am not doing what the meeting is for, which is opening myself to the promptings of love and truth in my heart, hearing them and responding to the challenges they present to me. Quaker meetings are about listening and waiting. They are about finding a response together.

I am often asked what happens to someone for whom ‘finding a response together’ is anathema. After all, Quakers are a peace-loving fellowship with many shared concerns about violence, prejudice and conflict resolution: supposing a racist turns up, or a member of a fascist group, or a homophobe, what then? The answer is that it is unlikely to be an easy time for anyone, but that people who can’t accept Quakers’ understanding of equality as a religious principle are simply not going to stay long. No one will ask them to leave, but they will gain nothing by hanging around. They will not be able to railroad or force through business decisions, because the ways in which Quakers go about their affairs are slow, deliberate and thoughtful, valuing the conscience of everyone present. And so they will have to make a choice. Some things in Quakerism are not negotiable: one is the knowledge that each of us is unique, precious and a child of God.

Worship and Words

There are words that put people off. ‘Worship’ can be a tough one for some people. I’ve heard many say that it reminds them of church, that it sounds old-fashioned, that it’s disconcerting. ‘It feels like I’m supposed to be bowing down to an idol,’ a woman said to me recently and I saw her point. But I did also wonder where this imaginary graven image had come from and it occurred to me that bowing down isn’t necessarily such a bad thing. It depends what you’re bowing down to. Personally, I can’t be reminded often enough that I need to find humility in the presence of a life force I don’t understand. Then again, I recall a conversation with an elderly Quaker, all his working life a peacemaker with the United Nations: ‘Try thinking of yourself and God as colleagues, as partners in the same enterprise.’ For him, I think, worship was a way of being in the world: it gave him the strength to hold his ground, to handle complexity, to see both sides.

The truth is that Quakers call it ‘meeting for worship’ because they always have; but the word now has special significance for them. In the seventeenth century, when Quakerism began, ‘worship’ had more of a sense of its original meaning: acknowledging the worth of something, giving ‘worthship’ to it. So if we take the word literally today, we go to a Quaker meeting to give ‘worthship’ to the Divine. That seems to me to be a good definition. It certainly helps me: it encompasses my need to be humble, to give thanks, to pray. And it is a two way process – I can listen, be guided and remember that I am loved unconditionally. What’s more, Quaker worship is communal: the ‘worthship’ reaches others. We share our blessing in a spirit of gratefulness. As we leave the meeting house, we may feel subtly changed. We may, as with my friend the peacemaker, have been given strength.

These might not be the right words for you. Your experience of Quaker worship may be entirely different. And it doesn’t ultimately matter. A quotation much loved by Quakers (it is from Paul’s second epistle to the Christians in Corinth) is ‘The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life’. We shouldn’t be getting hung up on an exact terminology to suit everybody, because the only relevant consideration is what happens as a result of your being part of a meeting for worship. Does it help you? Is it making a difference? If, after practising it a few times, you find that it is, you will want to be part of it for longer. If you find it that it is not beneficial, you will understandably want to pursue your spiritual journey elsewhere.

Here is a question that strikes me as particularly unhelpful: ‘Do you believe in God?’ We hear it all the time, often in relation to the kind of fundamentalist atheism which takes more interest in the theory of religion than the practice of it. The implication of the enquiry is that I might be putting my trust in a fairy tale. I don’t do things like that and I’ve never yet met a reasonable person who does. I prefer questions that are more specific, more related to personal experience. Do you encounter anything that you might call God, and if so, how? Have you experienced an overwhelming feeling of gratefulness for your existence? Do you ever have a sensation of being pushed, nudged by something outside yourself into courses of action that you might not have thought of? Do you know a happiness that comes only from the need to offer love to people?

It is the last question that seems to me to matter most. It recalls the first of the Advices and queries: ‘Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life.’ If I listen to the promptings of love and truth in my heart, if I rely on them and allow them to dictate what I do with my life, I shan’t be running things on the need for greater recognition or a bigger bank balance. I shall, as Quakers often say, be led by the Spirit. I shall allow myself to be guided. I shall know myself better. The result will be that what I do will become more significant, both to me and others, than what I say. ‘Do you believe in God?’ can easily become an invitation to talk about religious theory. It is not a question I have ever heard asked by Quakers.

‘How do you encounter God?’, on the other hand, is a practical query that I have known to be the starting point for countless fascinating discussions. Everyone’s answer is different. Some of the most absorbing have come from those Quakers who prefer not to use the word ‘God’ at all. (You may recall from the Prologue that they often describe themselves as ‘nontheists’.) Here is part of a piece by one such Quaker, David Boulton:

Nontheist Quakers use the term to include a variety of understandings, including those of atheists, humanists, agnostics, theological nonrealists, and those who experience God not as a supernatural power but as ‘the ground of our being’, or life itself, or nature, or the supreme symbol and imagined embodiment of our highest human values. With William Blake we want to say that, for us, God is ‘mercy, pity, peace and love’ in action and ‘all deities reside in the human breast’.

Speaking for myself, I have had spiritual experiences – I call them my ‘hot flashes’ – which convince me that something potent and elemental has become an active force in my life. I don’t think they are imaginary. As a result of these encounters, I often feel drawn unavoidably towards a commitment to personal change that seems to lie beyond what I want for myself, but also fulfils me spiritually. I have found these moments difficult to predict and hard to explain. So I may perhaps be one of those who experience God as what David calls ‘a supernatural power’. Yet I also find much of his description of the nontheist position to be an entirely faithful reflection of my own. It has become clear to me that differences in our perceptions of God – the Light, the Seed, the Ground Of Our Being, call it what you will – don’t matter a jot if we are able to meet and ‘know one another in the things that are eternal’ (to quote Advice 18 of Advices and queries) and at the same time gain strength and impetus from the encounter. That is what happens in a Quaker meeting for worship.

David quotes Blake’s ‘All deities reside in the human breast’. It is a perfect paraphrase of another saying much loved by Quakers: ‘that of God in everyone’. I have sometimes heard it expressed in the form of a creed, but that is not how it originally appeared. It comes from a letter written by George Fox in the late seventeenth century:

Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them. Then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.

Fox takes it as read that there is that of God in us all. He suggests that the job of a faithful Quaker is to find it in other people. That means discovering love and truth in the hearts of our neighbours, colleagues, friends and, crucially, our adversaries. It means connecting with it. It can be a formidable challenge to answer that of God in people who want to do us harm, but Fox’s injunction gives a practical prompt to anyone who may see it as important to try to love their enemies. He suggests that we look for, find and address the truth in the hearts of those who dislike us. Attempt to reach it. Enjoy any minuscule change it might bring. It can, after all, be a stepping stone to peace. And the impetus for this ‘walking cheerfully’ is the gathered meeting for worship.

‘That of God in everyone’ leads to another important facet of twenty-first century Quakerism: a noticeable lack of interest in talking about sin. Most Quakers of my acquaintance are clear that the doctrine of original sin – the idea that we are all born into a general condition of sinfulness that we have to lead our lives trying to expunge – is an unhelpful piece of dogma that often leads to feelings of guilt and self-hatred. Some Quakers have been inspired by the expression ‘original blessing’, used widely as a result of the work of the American theologian Matthew Fox, because it chimes so well with their beliefs. If we spend our lives looking for the good in people, it follows that we must believe they were born with goodness already there. Quakers don’t deny that people can be corrupted. Many are convinced of the existence of evil. But they don’t assume sin in others and remain convinced, as Desmond Tutu has put it, that we are ‘hard-wired for goodness’.

A large number of Quakers describe themselves as Christian. Quaker faith and practice characterises them in a memorable phrase: ‘humble learners in the school of Christ’. It is probably the case that most of these Christian Quakers don’t take a literal view of certain parts of the Bible, tending to consider some of its narrative to be symbolic of the human search for God rather than actual truth. Yet, I also know Quakers for whom particular episodes – the physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead is an example – are a literal truth, a living reality on which they base their lives. And the point is that no one is arguing about it. People’s beliefs are personal to them: often shared, sometimes questioned, but never decried. Quakers learn from each other.

When I first walked into a Quaker meeting, I brought with me a deep, unyielding scepticism towards the figure of Jesus. It was a reaction to a Christian upbringing that had taught me that this man was the only son of God. I wanted no part of it. Yet, in the stillness of my first Quaker meeting, I felt a wound beginning to heal. Slowly, over the years, that recovery has continued and my attitudes are not the same as they were. I still fail to understand the divinity of Jesus, but I am relaxed in the company of many Quakers for whom it is a given. And I have come to accept him as a spiritual master who is part of my life. His teaching and example have helped me to know who I am. His nonviolence, in particular, has enabled me to discover a capacity to turn my back on old ways of coping with conflict. These changes have come to me in the quiet of Quaker worship. They are not the result of dogma or indoctrination, but of offering my heart and mind to God in the stillness. They have been given to me. And I am astonished to find myself acknowledging today that I am a Christian Quaker.

I have been particularly interested in talking to Quakers, some from Christian traditions and some not, who are attracted to the practices of eastern religions. Among those who come from a Buddhist tradition, I have known some who call themselves ‘Buddhist Quakers’, others who describe themselves as ‘Quaker Buddhists’ and still more who are ‘Buddhists who are also Quakers’. I confess I can never quite see the distinction, but it really is up to them. It’s not my place or that of any other Quaker to dispute what people hold dear when they are trying to express their most closely held convictions. As we have seen, what matters to Quakers is not what you say or think, but what you do. And I have never met one, whatever his or her religious background, who would want to change anything in a phrase from the Quaker peace declaration of 1660: ‘The spirit of Christ, by which we are guided’. It is that spirit and that guide from which the wellspring of Quakerism derives.

Quakers as a body belong to the Inter Faith Network for the UK, which brings together members of the Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist communities as well as many others, and also Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. That organisation represents a large number of Christian denominations, including Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Methodists and the Salvation Army. CTBI has permitted a special arrangement whereby Quakers do not have to sign up to its membership’s statement of faith (known as ‘The Basis’), recognising them as a religious group with no creed or corporate doctrine. Members of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain hope always to be ‘open to new light from whatever source it may come’ (see Advice 7).

So in a Quaker meeting for worship these people, with their differing traditions, witness, backgrounds and beliefs come together in a communal practice that gives them meaning and purpose. The word ‘worship’ means a great deal to them, because it has acquired particular significance as a result of the transforming effect it can have on those who attend. It may not have the precise connotations it has for members of other faith traditions, but it is none the worse for that. I shall close this section with one last definition. It is, for me, the most resonant of all. It is found in Advice 8 of Advices and queries. Here it is in full.

Worship is our response to an awareness of God. We can worship alone, but when we join with others in expectant waiting we may discover a deeper sense of God’s presence. We seek a gathered stillness in our meetings for worship so that all may feel the power of God’s love drawing us together and leading us.

I am helped by the word ‘awareness’ in this context. The advice is not about ‘knowledge’, or ‘understanding’ of God. It accepts that we may only have the occasional glimpse of something outside ourselves, and it is careful not to be specific until the last sentence. There it describes with certainty the process of spiritual examination that is central to Quaker worship: seeking, being drawn together and becoming ready to be led. They are the essentials of all Quaker practice and they enable people to leave the meeting with the willingness and strength to do what love requires of them.

What Do the Children and Young People Do?

Many Quaker groups hold a children’s meeting at the same time that the adults are holding theirs. Usually, everyone comes together for part of the silent worship. It is impossible to generalise about what the arrangements will be at the meeting you visit. Not all meetings have regular provision for children, so you may want to check things out first. Everything depends on the circumstances of each individual group. You can see the facilities of all the meetings in Britain by going to www.quaker.org.uk and following the ‘Find a Quaker Meeting’ links. It may sometimes also be a good idea to contact a meeting directly.

The nature of the activities in the children’s meeting will depend on the skills and personalities of the adults who lead them, so, again, it isn’t possible to be specific. It is safe to say, though, that the emphasis will always be on encouraging the participants to find their own way. Energy, creativity, talking, listening and friendliness top the list of priorities of every facilitator. Dull is not an option.

If you are interested in the kinds of thing that may take place, it might be worth your while to check www.quaker.org.uk/journeyschildren. There you will find some of the resources and advice published to help volunteers who work in children’s meetings and you’ll be able to gauge the tone of the work they do.

As their children get older, Quaker parents tend to leave the decisions about whether or not to attend meeting to the young people themselves. Many meetings hold sessions for people aged twelve and above, though they may not always be weekly. My own holds monthly discussion groups which are attended by young members of other local meetings and also young people who may have never been part of a Quaker group before.

Inevitably, some find that in time their interests take them elsewhere on Sunday mornings, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want to lose touch with Quakers. So they may want to attend one or more of the large number of activities, programmes and opportunities for friendship organised at a national or regional level for people in their teens. They don’t have to be attenders of meetings to go. You will find more information in Appendix 2.

Children and young people add to the rich blend of personalities and experience that characterises each Quaker community. Quakers regard everyone as of equal importance, regardless of their experience. Children and young people of every age have the same rights and opportunities. They can minister in a meeting for worship in just the same way as adults. Their voices are as valuable.

After the Meeting

When the meeting is over, someone will stand and deliver a few notices about future events. They may even greet you as a welcome visitor. After that, if you want to do as I did for my first tentative weeks and hurry away with your own thoughts and reflections, no one will stand in your way. If you decide to hang on a little, there will be a cup of tea or coffee, and you will have the opportunity to chat with the men, women and children you have been worshipping with. These people are the Quaker meeting you are visiting. Nobody leads them, no one takes decisions on their behalf, every person is of equal value. They operate without a hierarchy. The mix of personalities is different from group to group, so no two meetings are the same. Each has its own texture and identity.

It may be that you want to ask advice or check things out. If you have found the silence a struggle – not at all uncommon at a first visit – it could help to mull things over with a sympathetic and experienced Quaker: there will always be someone who is happy to talk to you. Or you might want to ask something more practical. Perhaps you have a disability and would value some help getting to the meeting house in future weeks: assistance could well be available. Or maybe you have children and want to know what arrangements are made for them. The best person to ask about those kinds of issue is the one who has just read out the notices. He or she will point you to the right person to talk to.

If you want to ask more general questions, don’t hesitate. Quakers are there to help you. Do remember, however, that they have no creed or formal list of beliefs, so if you want to know whether Quakers believe in life after death, or if you’re keen to ascertain their collective attitude to conscientious objection, you won’t get an answer that speaks for the whole community. On the other hand, I’m sure you’ll have a fascinating conversation. And as you continue to go back week after week, you’ll begin to realise which of these Quakers are the ones who have experience and beliefs that are close to your own. And who knows, you may gradually start to align yourself with people whose views you previously discounted. Quakerism, after all, is about listening.

Most groups have discussions after meeting at least once a month. Some combine them with a visiting speaker. If you happen to arrive on one of those days, you will be welcome to stay. There is often a simple meal served on such occasions and you can be part of that too. Quakers make a point of being inclusive, and the very fact that you are with them makes you an integral part of the proceedings. You are valued. You may feel diffident, perhaps a trifle shy, and it could be that your welcomers are experiencing something similar, but you will be seen as an essential participant for as long as you want to be.

If there is more than one Quaker meeting near your home, you may want to try out the others. I was lucky enough to live close to three other meetings when I first started and I gave each of them an experimental visit before finally ending up back where I had begun. All kinds of mundane things will contribute to your decision: the time the meeting starts, the parking, the architecture of the building, the quality of the biscuits. But the most important factor, of course, is rapport. If you find it uncomfortable to be with these people, you won’t want to stay long.

The meeting where you do start to feel at home, on the other hand, is likely to become important to you. You will enjoy the company of the people there and get to recognise their little ways. They will look forward to greeting you. Friendships will form. And before long you will need the answer to a common question for which I’ve so far only hinted at a response: ‘If I want to keep coming to meetings, do I have to join the Religious Society of Friends?’ Or, in other words: what is the difference between what Quakers call a ‘member’ and what they term an ‘attender’?

As soon as you show up for the first time, you are an attender. If you keep coming, you are a regular attender and you will become a valued presence in your local meeting simply by being there. You can play a part in the meeting’s affairs, you can help with the everyday work of keeping the meeting going, you can become a valued contributor to the life of this small group of people and still never join the Religious Society of Friends. If you do decide to apply for membership after a year or two, the decision will be yours alone. Your meeting will none the less be delighted and will support you in any way it can. The process of joining is simple and nurturing. I shall explain it in detail in the Epilogue.

If you join, you will be a member not only of your meeting, but of the Religious Society of Friends as a whole. You will be an integral part of the way Quakers in Britain are run. It is often said that Quakers have not so much abolished the priesthood as got rid of the laity. Every Quaker is a priest. Each one has a responsibility through this ‘priesthood of all believers’ to give energy to the work Quakers do, whether at a local or national level. For most Quakers, membership of the Society becomes a way of life. It is part of their DNA. Quakerism is not a Sunday religion. It runs right through the lives of those who practise it.

How Local Meetings are Organised

I have said that Quakers have no hierarchy and that they take decisions in a unique way that does away with majority voting, so I’m guessing that you now need the answers to some pertinent questions. How, for example, can Quakers run an organisation with no one in charge? Don’t some people have to be given responsibilities? Who takes on the responsibility of handing out the responsibilities? And how can you take group decisions without listening to the will of the majority?

In this section, I shall explain a little of how a local Quaker meeting works and hope to answer all these queries in the process. It is not sensible to go into scrupulous detail: much of what goes on in a Quaker meeting is best understood by experiencing it and there is a lot that you won’t need to know until you have been attending for a year or two at least. But I shall attempt to cover the ground by listing some of the most important jobs in any Quaker community and showing how vacancies are filled without requiring the services of a director of operations. I shall also explore the unique method by which Quakers take their policy decisions.

The meeting for worship for business lies at the heart of the Quaker way and is explained in full in its own section a little later. For the moment, it is enough to say that Quakers’ search for the Divine is as much a part of their decision making as it is of their regular worship. Business meetings are based on silence and stillness. The participants put prejudgements out of their minds and allow themselves to be guided by the Spirit. Nobody tries to prove anything. As the meeting gathers, they find a collective way forward, rather than arguing points or taking sides. Because of its spiritual dimension, the outcome of a Quaker business meeting may prove to be entirely different from what might reasonably have been expected at the beginning.

In British meetings there is no pastor and, except in the very largest groups, no administrative officer, so when there are tasks to be fulfilled, members of the meeting who feel able to help are asked to take them on. Ambition has no part to play. When people are invited to carry out a role in the meeting, they are being requested to give thoughtful service, not further a Quaker career. Some of the duties carry a heavy time commitment or a high level of responsibility, often both: they are normally done by experienced members of the Society. Many other roles are less onerous.

Quaker meetings need to bring in a small income in order to survive: this normally comes from a combination of money earned from the letting of their building, if they have one, and financial contributions from their members and attenders. So, one or two people from each meeting are appointed to be treasurers. As we have seen, many groups set up a children and young people’s committee. There may also be a library committee and an outreach group. And every meeting needs people to publish the newsletter, make the coffee and do the other numerous roles that help any organisation to tick along from week to week.

The length of each appointment is fixed, and people are given a clear date when it will end. Usually, it is suggested that a person takes on a role for three years at a time and then stops. Two consecutive triennia in any given capacity are generally considered to be the absolute maximum. After that, they are asked to ‘lay down their service’, a Quaker expression implying a careful, unselfish release from a valued contribution. Frequently, they consider taking on another responsibility instead, but they don’t continue in the area they have become used to.

This is a good way of ensuring that a person gives service, rather than hanging on for dear life to a particular area of expertise. We are all familiar with the scenario in which someone continues to fulfil a function on behalf of a community because they turn out to be good at it. In a short time, it becomes natural for them to regard themselves as indispensable and, who knows, others may begin to agree. Before long, everyone thinks they are uniquely gifted and they end up staying for years. Not only that, but a hierarchy has developed, because other people defer to them. Quakers find this problematical and take pains to ensure it doesn’t happen. Members of the Society undertake roles, sometimes involving qualities of leadership, often bearing great responsibility, always entailing hard work and a deep understanding of the task. And then, after three or sometimes six years, they move on and do something else. They are happy to do it because they understand that they are giving service, not promoting their own interests.

Visitors and new attenders are not requested to do jobs, so don’t worry that you’ll be pounced on: no one takes on anything until they are ready for it. After a few months or years of attending the meeting, you may be asked to try a light task, perhaps coordinating the leaflets in the entrance hall or helping with the refreshments, to find out how you take to it. If it is the wrong time for you or you don’t yet feel committed enough to Quakers, you only have to say so – though you may think it’s worth taking the approach seriously, since it was made after careful consideration.

So now we come to the important question: if there is no hierarchy, who gives out these jobs? The answer is that the whole community does it, by holding a business meeting during which they appoint a small group called a nominations committee, who are asked to make recommendations. The committee meets regularly and looks at the various three-year terms that may be drawing to a close, thinking of new people who could be prepared to take on the work. This is a prayerful process, in which the names of possible candidates can arise unexpectedly and without planning. Members of the committee go on to have conversations with the people who are being suggested, so that they can discuss the implications of taking on the job.

Often, the role put forward to a person is the last one they might have envisaged for themselves. But they take the proposition seriously, because it was part of a meeting for worship and as a result has the ring of truth about it. So Quakers become used to what they call ‘the tap on the shoulder’: being asked to take on an appointment that they aren’t at all sure they can do and saying yes to it anyway. It is part of living adventurously.

When the nominations committee has assembled a list of candidates for the roles that need to be filled, they come back to the whole group in a meeting for worship for business. Each name is carefully considered. If the members of that meeting agree to the nominations, they appoint the people to their new roles, letting them know that the job is theirs for the next three years. After which time, of course, they will be asked to stop.

It is not democracy. Yet everybody is part of it, and – since it all happens during gathered meetings for worship for business – it is a process that results in unexpected affirmations and unlooked-for outcomes. Quakers get used to it. It is part of being open to the Spirit.

Three Key Roles

Most nominations committees have a considerable number of appointments to make. There are inevitably fewer opportunities for service in small meetings than large ones, but some key roles are essential in all of them. One, as we have seen, is that of treasurer, a job which is the same as it would be in any organisation. Another is convenor of the premises committee, the body in charge of the upkeep of the meeting house, assuming there is one. And there are a further three without which a Quaker meeting cannot function successfully: the clerk, the overseers and the elders. And, since they are not common in non-Quaker groups, I shall spend the next few paragraphs explaining each of them briefly in turn.

All Quaker bodies, from the smallest committee to a thousand-strong annual gathering, have a clerk. If you have ever attended a meeting for worship, the chances are that you will have seen the clerk at work. The local meeting’s clerk is the human channel through whom all the administrative work flows. Some meetings have two or three who share the responsibility (usually called ‘co-clerks’), but it is more usual for it to be a solo job, so I shall assume that we are only talking about one.

The clerk is normally the person who reads out the notices at the end of the meeting, so newcomers often think understandably that she or he is some kind of figurehead. You know enough about Quakers by now to realise that isn’t so. Certainly, for the three years the clerk is in the post, his or her personality becomes well known to everyone: letters are addressed to the clerk and often read out; she or he will almost certainly be the person announcing births, marriages and deaths; it is part of the clerk’s job to answer enquiries from the public; and so on. The clerk also has responsibilities within the meeting for worship for business, which you can read about in the next section. But no one is in charge, of course, so the clerk is simply giving service, carrying out decisions made by the group as a whole.

Every month or two, there is a meeting for worship for business: it is hoped that everyone who is a member will attend if they can. Those who have yet to join are also welcome, so long as they have first checked it out with the clerk. The clerk’s role is to draw up the agenda, listen, discern a possible outcome and write the minute. Groups and individuals may report to this wider body and bring their concerns to it. Thus, Premises Committee may ask the opinion of the meeting on a specific piece of renovation work that needs to be done; or Outreach Committee may request money for a public event. And, as with any meeting for worship, the procedure is subject to the welcome reversals and happy surprises that bubble up when any group of people open themselves to the leadings of the Spirit.

Overseers are the people responsible for the pastoral care of everyone at the local meeting. For example, it will be an overseer you will get in touch with if your disability makes it difficult to get to meeting by public transport, or if you are thinking of joining the Religious Society of Friends. Overseers send birthday cards to the meeting’s children, support members and attenders who are ill and do all they can to ensure that visitors are well looked after. When conflicts arise, it is the job of overseers to work privately with the people involved to help them to find an understanding. They ensure that people working away from their local area know they are not forgotten. They keep in touch with the parents of newborn children.

Most but not all meetings assign a small number of their regulars to a specific overseer. This way, you get to know the person whose job it is to be available to you in times of need. If my friend in group therapy – the one who saw meeting for worship as a place to unburden himself – had known who his overseer was, he might have found help more quickly.

‘Elder’ is a word first coined by members of the early Christian churches. It has been commandeered by many Protestant groups since, so it may come with unwelcome associations for you, depending on your background. It is worth being clear about what it means in a specifically Quaker context.

Elders can be of any age – I know one in his twenties – and they are always members of the Religious Society of Friends. Their job is to look after the spiritual life of the meeting, particularly supporting the right holding of worship. Inevitably, much of their work overlaps with that of overseers. One or two brief examples: both groups work together to ensure that regulars of the meeting who are ill get a meeting for worship in their homes; they help to arrange funerals with the families of those who have died; and they give help and support to people who are considering joining the Religious Society of Friends.

They are most visible to you in the meeting room as the Quakers who shake hands first at the end of a meeting for worship. If you are new, it may be a good idea to find out who the elders are: there may well be more than one or two and they can often be the best people to talk to if you are encountering difficulties in meeting. Perhaps it is hard for you to centre down? Or maybe you thought a particular piece of ministry was baffling or inappropriate? The elders should be able to offer useful advice.

And they may agree with you, of course. When I had been going to Quaker meetings for about six months, I heard a piece of ministry that struck me as inappropriate. A man stood up in the stillness and broke the silence. ‘Apropos of nothing at all . . . ’ he began, and continued to talk about, well, nothing at all, for five minutes and more. He told us a joke he had heard last week and a jovial item on a radio programme from the day before. Nothing connected. I found it difficult to reconcile this with anything I had read or heard about Quaker meetings and I failed to understand what I was supposed to do with it. How on earth could I incorporate it into my worship? I felt strangely hurt. So afterwards I found an elder and spoke to her. She said that she was as dismayed as I was and that, to my surprised delight, she was going to do something about it.

It was only then that I discovered another of the responsibilities of an elder. If a meeting is disturbed by someone ministering or behaving unhelpfully, it is the elder’s duty to speak about it kindly and in love. It can be done during the meeting for worship by standing and saying what needs to be said (‘our Friend has given us a lot to think about…’), or it may be delayed until a suitable time afterwards, when the elder can have a quiet conversation with the person. It is not a rebuke and still less a punishment. But sometimes the job of ensuring that the meeting’s worship is held properly requires a little plain speaking.

Meeting for Worship for Business

Quakers hold their business meetings in an unusual way. People call it the Quaker Business Method, but that implies a formula. It leaves out the essential and unpredictable element of the process, the aspect that makes it work, which is that Quaker business is undertaken in the context of a meeting for worship. In essence it is held in exactly the same way as a normal silent meeting.

One person is appointed to be the clerk. It is a role rather like a combination of chair and secretary in a regular business setting: she or he prepares the agenda and writes down the minutes, reflecting what has been agreed. There, however, the comparisons stop, because the detail of how the clerk goes about the task is different.

The meeting begins with a short period, perhaps ten minutes, of silent worship. The clerk explains the first item on the agenda and waits for spoken contributions, usually with the words, ‘The matter is before you, Friends.’ The job of the participants is to abandon any preconceived notions and to listen not just to each other, but crucially to the promptings of love and truth, to the leadings of God, in their hearts. The job of the clerk is to listen for the working of the Spirit as it is manifested in the meeting.

Members of the group who have something to say stand one by one and, in the stillness, express their thoughts on the subject in hand. There is a short period of silence between contributions as the meeting reflects on what has been put forward. It may be that individuals begin to change their stance as a result, but no one uses rhetoric in an attempt to convince. What is spoken is ministry. This, I repeat, is a meeting for worship.

The clerk may take notes, but what he or she is really listening for is a unity, a oneness, in what is offered by members of the meeting, because there will be no votes. The job of the clerk is to discern the sense of the meeting and only move to the next stage when she or he is sure that unity has been reached. Often, a long period of silence may be a factor in helping the clerk to understand that the last spoken ministry has become the feeling of everybody present.

That feeling may not necessarily reflect what we might call ‘agreement’. What frequently happens in the Quaker silence is that participants who are not of the same mind none the less recognise clearly what must be done. So what they have established in their decision is unity, as distinct from unanimity. And anyway, whose decision is it? Some would say that in the silence they are seeking the will of God. If that is right, their job is not to bandy opinions, but to unearth an outcome that has to happen. Decisions taken in a Quaker business meeting can be touched by a divine alchemy that is easier to experience than it is to explain.

When the meeting has achieved a way forward, the clerk writes a minute of what he or she believes to be the feeling of those present. If the matter is complex this may take some time. The group waits in the stillness of worship while the minute is being written (this is called ‘upholding the clerk’) and when it is complete, the clerk reads it out. At this stage, members of the meeting suggest amendments and the clerk notes them. The meeting and the minute must reflect each other accurately before everyone moves to the next agenda item. Very occasionally, a decision can’t be reached and the matter is held over to another meeting. However, Quakers are aware that this can be a lazy option and avoid it if they can.

The result is often described as ‘consensus’, but I think that is a careless word to use. Consensus is secular. It implies general accord and, as we have seen, that may not necessarily be the outcome of a successful Quaker business meeting. Nor can this be called ‘majority rule’: no one takes sides, no one can bully, they simply make decisions together and remain loyal to them. Seen purely as a business method, it may perhaps be considered a little slow, but it is, by the same token, also thorough and inclusive. And because the minutes are read out carefully at the time, they can’t be changed afterwards. What is decided has been decided: it is there in black and white, agreed by everyone present.

The responsibility borne by the clerk is considerable, but when the job is done well it transforms the proceedings. A good clerk can tell when members of the meeting are in unity long before they know it themselves. An experienced clerk may call for a period of silence when Quakers are in conflicted positions, knowing that it can allow them the space they need for prayer and reflection. A sensitive clerk remembers that this is not a talking shop but a spirit-led meeting for worship and understands that, because of its religious weight, a gathered meeting can deliver unexpected and revelatory outcomes. One person’s quiet observation can imperceptibly become the intention of everyone.

I have asked two friends for a little of their experience of Quaker business meetings.

I recall a powerful example of a meeting reaching unity on a controversial matter. When the question came before us, half who spoke were in favour and half against. The clerk suggested an extended period of silence. When people spoke again, a few had changed their views but we were still deeply divided. Again we sat in silence. A Friend rose. He said, ‘It is now clear to me that we should do what is proposed’. And sat down. It had been said many times before in similar words, but this time nobody else stood up to speak. In due course the clerk presented a minute. What had changed? Only the perception of us all in the silence that the decision was right at that time, however strongly many of us might have felt to the contrary. We were in unity.

I remember a time when a matter was presented to the meeting and I had an immediate sense that the action proposed was wrong. I was gratified when others stood to say they found it unacceptable and after a short while the clerk prepared to write a minute. Then one person rose and spoke with thoughtful, stumbling words, to suggest that the proposed action was one that we were being invited to take in a spirit of openness and inclusiveness; and one that could enrich our community if we embraced it. The silence deepened. Words were voiced: ‘I hope that we can accept this proposal.’ There was a clear sense that we had been taken up by the scruff of our necks and put down in a different place from our sensible selves. And the outcome felt right.

These stories are good examples of the kind of unexpected realisations that can take place in a gathered meeting for worship for business. I hope you experience them one day, even if other aspects of the Quaker path prove not to be for you. Each has its own particular beauty.

The Wider Quaker Community

Quakers in Britain are a bottom-up, not a top-down organisation. In other words, the people who initiate action are individuals and committees at local level. They bring their concerns to their meeting for worship for business. If that meeting decides that a matter is of wider importance to the Quaker community, it is brought to the attention of their area meeting.

Area meetings are clusters of local meetings, usually between five and ten in each, who meet together regularly to discuss their business and any concerns they may have. They don’t have separate buildings of their own, preferring to hold their events in one or other of their constituent meeting places. As their name implies, geography is what links them to each other, but like local meetings, each celebrates rich and lasting personal friendships and a strong sense of community. Area meetings are a source of cohesion among Quakers, offering mutual support and accountability, enabling a local meeting of, say, ten people to be as resonant as one of two hundred.

For these reasons, people who become members of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain join their area meeting, rather than the smaller local meeting where they actually worship. Area meetings receive money from local meetings, and it is pooled so that they are able, for instance, to send members and attenders on weekend courses they might not otherwise be able to afford. They also appoint the elders, overseers, and those Quakers whose responsibility it is to look after property. They act as facilitators and co-ordinators, ensuring that all the Quakers in the area, including children and young people, have opportunities for fellowship, spiritual development and pastoral care. They also support Quakers in their concerns, ensuring that, if possible, important matters are raised at the larger Yearly Meeting.

Yearly Meeting brings together Quakers from all the area meetings in Britain. Its sessions are held in the same way as local business meetings and in the same spirit of gathered worship, the only difference being that they consist of a larger number of people. It is an education to attend one, to see Quaker business working at its best with hundreds of participants and no rhetoric. The sessions are, for obvious reasons, normally restricted to members of the Religious Society of Friends, but if you have a word with an elder or the clerk of your meeting, they can ensure that you are able to go. If you find you are interested in Quakerism, I recommend a visit. Two notable sessions worth highlighting have been the one in 1994, at which the entire text of Quaker faith and practice was approved section by section by over a thousand people in a meeting for worship; and another in 2009, when a similar number agreed to express support for same sex marriages and to lobby government for changes in the law.

Yearly Meeting is the voice of Britain Yearly Meeting, which is the name given to the whole British organisation of Quakers. In the same way that your neighbourhood Quaker meeting is the Quakers who make it up, Britain Yearly Meeting is all the Quakers in Britain. It is known colloquially as BYM and represents the Society’s ultimate authority. It runs the building I first entered, Friends House, and employs the people who work there. It is the channel through which Quaker policy is decided and expressed. Between its annual sessions, BYM’s affairs are handled by a representative body called Meeting for Sufferings. It has held that name for around three hundred and fifty years, because it was originally constituted to help Quakers who were being thrown into jail and tortured for their beliefs. Modern Quakers have chosen to retain its original title rather than allow those early troubles to be forgotten. It now consists of representatives from the seventy or so area meetings in the UK, who bring reports of its deliberations back to their local Quaker communities.

The fact that individual Quakers take their concerns to a local meeting, which may take it to an area meeting, which may in time take it to BYM, means that they are running something akin to a hierarchy here. Certainly, some groups hold more authority than others. I might argue, though, that because everyone is a member of everything, and since Quaker worship is at the heart of it all, it is a pecking order with the best of consultative credentials. It is undoubtedly the closest I have ever felt to being at the heart of a decision making process. And it is a system in which the divine spirit is a driving force that can literally change everything, sweeping away bias and prejudice, to guide Quakers towards conclusions that were never seen before.

The hierarchy, if hierarchy it is, has proved historically to be a good testing ground for fresh ideas. If I feel led to do something new in the name of Quakerism – perhaps I want to set up a mobile library for the homeless, or run a shelter at Christmas – I don’t just go ahead and do it. I take the idea to my local meeting. They look at it carefully and decide just how sensible, practical or, who knows, divinely inspired it may be. This is called ‘testing the concern’. Their way of giving it the go-ahead, if they think that is the right thing to do, is to recognise it formally as ‘religiously valid’ and then to adopt it as a concern of their own. So they not only support me in the project, but they also take it on themselves. It may remain a neighbourhood affair, but if it needs to be tested more widely my meeting brings it to a larger Quaker body for testing there – and so on. It means that mavericks can’t pursue their own agenda, pretending that they do it in the name of Quakerism. And it ensures that Quaker integrity is maintained each time new ground is broken.

Silence and Sacrament

When Robert Barclay, a seventeenth century theologian, described his first Quaker encounter, he said ‘I found the evil weakening in me, and the good raised up’. It is perhaps the first description in print of a gathered meeting and tells a familiar story reflected in the experience of many first-timers since. After a few visits, they discover that the silence gets easier, the stillness more agreeable. When they start to be familiar with the practice, it seems natural to lapse into silence in the way that Quakers often do before discussions, as a prelude to meals, at the close of business. Quiet and stillness have become an everyday blessing.

Gathered worship is the way Quakers do things. If I have a moral dilemma – perhaps I feel torn by conflicting loyalties, or maybe I’m not sure whether I should move to another area or accept a job offer – I can request what Quakers call a ‘meeting for clearness’. This may take a number of forms, but is essentially a discussion between me and some selected friends, to help me come to a decision. Notes are often taken, but there is no clerk and no formal minute. Meetings for clearness may be held when someone is thinking of joining the Society. They are frequently used when Quakers find themselves in conflict. Couples who are considering marriage or civil partnership sometimes find them a help in reaching their decision together. Gathered worship can be a tool for reaching understanding and helping change.

Quaker weddings are often beautiful events and they too are meetings for worship. The guests are welcomed by an elder who explains the Quaker way – for many, this may be their first experience of it – and the room slowly fills with the deep, familiar silence. When they feel ready, the people who are marrying stand and, using a specifically Quaker form of words (‘Friends, I take this my friend…’), they make their declarations. The meeting falls into silence again. During the stillness, guests may minister in loving support. As the proceedings draw to a close, each person who was present when the pair first spoke signs a certificate proclaiming the marriage they have witnessed and recording the pledge that was made. Every name is there: men, women, children, babies, all play a part in the finished document, which becomes one of the couple’s most treasured possessions.

Quaker funerals and memorial meetings (often called meetings of ‘thanksgiving for the grace of God as shown in the life’ of the person who has died) are frequently happy and fulfilling occasions, held in the silence of worship. They usually take place in crematoria or local meeting houses; sometimes both – first one and then the other. They tend to be as much Quaker as family affairs: indeed, I’ve attended some which have been bursting with people jammed into corners, sitting on the floor between the seats, perched on window sills, all expressing through the stillness of a Quaker meeting their feelings for someone who has been dear to them. Spontaneous ministry, spoken or sung by friends, gradually bestows on the occasion a unique form, shape and character. The unvarnished nature of Quaker worship gives everyone the space to respond to the promptings of love and truth in their hearts.

In Quaker faith and practice, there is a chapter entitled ‘Varieties of Religious Service’. Newcomers might expect to pick it up and find details there of further forms of corporate worship. A baptism maybe? Or a Quaker version of the eucharist? If they do, they will not get far, because that is not what Quakers mean by ‘service’. Instead, the chapter is about obeying the promptings of the Spirit, giving service as a religious person to the world at large: prison visiting perhaps, or being a college chaplain. Quakers sometimes call this work their ‘faith in action’, and you can read more about it in Part Three. Services, as held in churches, both Christian and not, have never been part of the Quaker way.

Quaker parents do not hold naming ceremonies: mother and father simply bring their newborn to the meeting house, where the assembled company welcomes the baby with enthusiasm and joy. Nor do they take part in religious practices in which people make promises on behalf of their children. They do not vow to bring them up in a particular way. Indeed, Quakers never swear oaths of any kind, because to do so implies for them a double standard: ‘I’m not lying now, because I’m under oath, but it was different yesterday and I might have second thoughts tomorrow.’ So Quakers will have no truck with the idea of swearing to be truthful: in courts of law they ‘affirm’, an alternative that was initiated in the eighteenth century specifically to help them and other religious groups who felt the same way.

Quakers’ commitment to truth and integrity is a consequence of their religious lives, not an aspiration. It is part of what they call ‘sacramental living’. I shall have more to say about this in Part Three, but it is worth mentioning now in order to understand why Quakers do not take part in a communion service, eucharist or mass. I have known visitors from Christian backgrounds to find this shocking, even irreligious. For them, the allegory implicit in the rituals of the sacraments has become a living reality. While Quakers have no desire to deny them their beliefs, they do not share a love of symbol. Quakers believe in an unmediated relationship with God and they hold that the sacred is to be found in life’s everyday realities. If all of life is holy, we do not need to sanctify it. What we can choose instead is to live sacramentally.

A sacrament, the dictionary tells us, is ‘a religious act which is seen as an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace’. The Quaker response is to say yes – and not to stop there. Why not make living itself the religious act? Why not do everything in that same sacramental spirit? Why not seek and find that of God in everyone? Religious people are sometimes thought to be ‘holier than thou’ – Quakers say that we are all as holy as each other. Back at the beginning of Part One, I remarked that there is no difference between the sacred and the secular. If that is not to be just a well-meaning sound bite, it changes everything: how we live, what we do and why we do it. And it has been the Quaker way for over three hundred and sixty years.