It was a signal of transcendence that pointed beyond itself to the source of all life and love.ĭaniel Wheeler (1771–1840) went to St Petersburg as agricultural adviser to tsar Alexander I and helped with the draining of marshes he later spent four years sailing the South Seas as a missionary. Yet I knew that the love that held me could not be limited to the mutual love and care we had for each other. For my journey was not solitary, but one undertaken with my friends as we moved towards each other and together travelled inwards. This love was mediated to me, in the first place, by those with whom I worshipped. It was in that uncomfortable room that I discovered the way to the interior side of my life, at the deep centre of which I knew that I was not alone, but was held by a love that passes all understanding. However, it was in this unlikely setting that I came to know what I can only describe as the amazing fact of Quaker worship. It was in stark contrast to the splendour of the Anglican churches to which I had been accustomed, where through dignified ritual the beauty of holiness was vividly portrayed. The whole place gave little hope that those who worshipped there might catch a glimpse of the vision of God. We sat on rickety chairs that creaked at the slightest movement. It was held in a rather hideous building: the meeting room was dingy. While I cannot remember when or where I did so, I do have a vivid recollection of the meeting which I began to attend regularly. Some Friends are able to recall with clarity the first occasion on which they attended a Quaker meeting. And, since that day, now more than seventeen years ago, Friends’ meetings have indeed been to me the greatest of outward helps to a fuller and fuller entrance into the spirit from which they have sprung the place of the most soul-subduing, faith-restoring, strengthening, and peaceful communion, in feeding upon the bread of life, that I have ever known. To sit down in silence could at the least pledge me to nothing it might open to me (as it did that morning) the very gate of heaven. My whole soul was filled with the unutterable peace of the undisturbed opportunity for communion with God, with the sense that at last I had found a place where I might, without the faintest suspicion of insincerity, join with others in simply seeking His presence. I did not pay much attention to the words he spoke, and I have no recollection of their purport. Utterance I knew was free, should the words be given and, before the meeting was over, a sentence or two were uttered in great simplicity by an old and apparently untaught man, rising in his place amongst the rest of us. On one never-to-be-forgotten Sunday morning, I found myself one of a small company of silent worshippers who were content to sit down together without words, that each one might feel after and draw near to the Divine Presence, unhindered at least, if not helped, by any human utterance. As, together, we enter the depths of a living silence, the stillness of God, we find one another in ‘the things that are eternal’, upholding and strengthening one another. The ministry of silence demands the faithful activity of every member in the meeting. Silent worship and the spoken word are both parts of Quaker ministry. The sense of wonder and awe of the finite before the infinite leads naturally to thanksgiving and adoration. Worship is the response of the human spirit to the presence of the divine and eternal, to the God who first seeks us. Chapter 2 Approaches to God – worship and prayer
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