Speaking in Quaker Meeting

 At meeting this morning: “Since moving from the farm into town I’ve been hoping for a new purpose, a project, a cause.  In this morning’s silence  I am reminded that simply the way we live our lives sets a tone a reverberation through the world.  The way we breathe, the way we frame our stories, our openness to new ideas, people, perspectives, and how we notice the Divine in everything around us and in ourselves. The way we live sets a tone that ripples out into the world.    Rilke quote. “Spirit wants only that there BE SINGING; as to who does it? in that He has only a passing interest”.  And Blake  “they also serve who only stand and wait”

I have such ambivalence re speaking in meeting.  Of course I love the ideas that pop into my mind and feel like of course Everyone would want to hear them!  But I also am aware that I can tend to be a “sage on the stage rather than a guide on the side” which I am slightly embarrassed about.    

The silence in Quaker meeting has a quality that is different than everyday silence when alone.  There is the suppressed energy of a room full of people with clear hearts and minds listening for The Divine, almost a hum.    It is a particularly delicious Silence and hard to break.  

 So when I feel moved to speak in the silence I go through several levels.  First I note the impulse but then move back into the silence. I ask myself is this insight for me alone or the whole meeting?  If it comes again, I distill it,  what exactly is the essence of the idea?  And then I let it go again. If it rises again I face the fact that it wants to be spoken but I still don’t stand  I may distill it some more. And then wait for the urge to overcome the surface tension of the silence and almost make me stand.  Having been propelled into the air I’m sort of obligated to follow through.  The whole sensation is oddly like needing to have a bowel movement.  There’s the initial sensation and then if suppressed many times it subsides and goes away.  But if it keeps coming back i need to face the fact that its going to come out so lets make it as short and nondistruptive as I can.    The few times that I haven’t done the final step of speaking , there is a definite uncomfortable almost constipated feeling.        

Today’s meeting needed to remind me that though I’m not doing anything dramatic to further the action of the world, that my being does set a tone that contributes to The Song, whether or not I ever know it.