1. Do you go to worship expecting to share the fruits of the week’s spiritual labors, or in hopes of finding a drop of moisture for parched sands?
2. What do you do to nurture your spirit? How regular are you in this practice?
3. Please practice a spiritually nurturing activity for 20 minutes or more each day.  If you do not find the time to do so, what was a greater priority?  How does the week’s spiritual practice correlate with your experience of worship each Sunday?

“Around the circle” we briefly shared our names, meetings, what we’d put aside to come to this retreat, and our hopes for the day.   With a partner we considered, “What nurtures your spirit?” and “How often do you do what nurtures you?”   Then in small groups we discussed “How do you prepare for meeting for worship?”   Brief worship followed.  From out of the silence the sharing was rich; “preparations” included listening to a Christian music station, devotional reading, and beginning each morning with the intention of living this day as if it were life’s last.

After a break we centered briefly and then shared our “noticings” about ways of preparing for meeting for worship.  Some of the ideas shared were:  preparation is not so much specific acts to do, but more a shedding or clearing space to receive; I prepare emotionally and spiritually with the intention to “do my best” when worship begins; corporate preparation is important (at Amawalk Meeting some go early for Buddhist sitting before worship begins); one Friend observed that her deepest and most satisfying worship has been in meeting for worship with a concern for business because here she is able to put herself aside.

Christopher spoke about three elements necessary for gathered worship - community, integrity, and preparation – and distributed hand-outs containing readings, poems and quotes, from a variety of sources and centuries, which spoke to these elements.

Integrity is not necessarily one level of truthfulness for all of life. Rather, from a Quaker perspective, integrity embraces worship as integral to all aspects of our lives.  Our intent is to “live” worship every moment with open hearts and minds. 

In speaking of the importance of community, Christopher, who for years practiced Buddhist meditation before coming to Friends, reminded us that meeting for worship with others is very different from private, individual meditation, prayer, etc.  Community is integral to our meeting for worship; the level of community affects the level of worship.   A community at odds with itself is neither conducive to the opening of individual hearts nor the gift of gathered worship.  It is like when the sea anemone resides in tidal pools where waves move constantly and water swirls and batters; it is a tight, ugly ball.  However, when the pool calms, the anemone opens into a beautiful, flower-like creature.

The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.  To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.  More than that it is cooperation in violence.  The frenzy of the activist destroys the fruitfulness of her/his work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

To give a new perspective about how this unloving self-violence affects our relationship with God, Christopher read these well-known words of Jesus (Matt. 22-36-40): “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, ...mind, and ... soul... And the second [commandment] is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ”  When we consider the probable Aramaic words that Jesus spoke in giving this commandment (Jesus’ words were written down in Greek), we see another meaning.  One rendering from the Aramaic is: “Love God, in other words, love your neighbor as yourself.”

Deep love of God, neighbor, and self (both the giving and receiving) is both a discipline and a fruit of “living the worship life.”   How do we come to do this kind of loving?   Christopher read and commented on three passages by Pema Chodron from her book, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times:

Christopher commented that if we allow our hearts to crack open to our pain and sorrow, we can open to the wellspring within us.  The result is a tendering, and we connect with bodhichitta, i.e. “a softening heart.”  He reminded us to pay attention and ask ourselves:  Is my heart open, and how much?

It was now time to practice what we’d been discussing.  With a partner we engaged in several non-verbal exercises of giving and receiving love, with partners sharing after each exercise.  Before beginning Christopher observed that giving love = opening a crack in the heart and letting love pour out.

1.       With a partner, facing one another: one person gave love, the other received. We switched roles.

2.       With same partner: one gave love, the other purposely did not receive.  We switched roles.

3.       With same partner: each person both gave and received love at the same time.

In the whole group we shared our experiences of giving and receiving love.  One person observed that love is a verb, not a substance.  Christopher’s experiential belief is that there is almost a material basis to what we do in worship – it is real and palpable on an empathic level.  He explained that we expand our experiential vocabulary by doing exercises like these.  We all have the innate capacity to give and receive love (energy), but for most of us, it is damped down.  We need practice in opening our hearts to both give and receive. 

What does this have to do with worship?  Christopher commented that sometimes we pray for someone and it feels right; other times, it doesn’t feel right.  It may be not our prayer that is off the mark, but rather that the other is not ready to receive.  We need to become familiar with what it’s like to offer love and not have it be received.  In worship, if the room is hard, i.e. not open-hearted or receptive, is this the time to give spoken ministry?  This is why we did exercise two: sometimes the worshipping group is not receptive.

One person shared that during exercise two she became angry when she was asked to not receive love because in real life she was just beginning to be able to open her heart.  Christopher replied that if we are in harsh circumstances, we need the capacity to be close-hearted, and then later on to be open-hearted again.  We need to be able to go back and forth with ease.   If we do choose to be open-hearted in a harsh situation, a shield doesn’t work.  Rather, we need to be so filled with Light/Christ/Power/etc. that we are protected and nothing can get in and harm us.

The first quote on Christopher’s hand out provided a moving summary about the quality of love we are challenged to live.  Wendell Berry wrote these words in his novel, Jayber Crow:

We are called to love the world as God loves the world.  Loving this deeply, this openly, will break our hearts.  When our hearts are broken wide-open, if we are willing to remain anchored in love, we find our capacity to love magnified.   It is a cycle of life and brokenness and life renewed perpetually.  Our calling is nothing less than this.

Vocal Ministry

In the large circle we practiced giving love to the whole group and receiving love from the group.  In silence we each identified what was the most powerful spoken ministry we had given or heard.  We then shared in small groups about our experiences and what made them powerful.  Reconvening in the large group, we shared suggestions about spoken ministry:  be brief, don’t go beyond your leading, be helpful, remember simplicity, be uncertain, i.e. not dogmatic.

A deepening centeredness was the container in which our sharing continued.  Christopher, referring to a pamphlet by Bill Tabor, said it is the prophetic stream that gives us powerful vocal ministry.  There is a structural metaphysical reality of substance to this stream, a non-physical but material reality.  Early Friends understood that they were animated by the same Spirit as the early Christians and they sought to revive this Spirit.  (In his Pendle Hill pamphlet, The Prophetic Stream, William Taber speaks of "divine contagion": the idea that "the willingness and the ability to be a prophet can at least be caught, and perhaps even taught, so long as we remember that the fact of prophecy remains with God alone.")

A prophet is one who speaks for the Divine.  In vocal ministry we are allowing God to speak through us; we can be the voice of God.  God uses our individual minds and spirits to speak to the condition of another.  This lays a heavy responsibility on those who would speak.  The speaker needs to be a clear conduit for God’s message, allowing his or her own perceptions and desires to fall away.  Early Friends used to say, “having very little taste of the pipes” when a message was 95% God and 5% the person speaking.  Christopher illustrated this idea by reading a poem by Hafiz:

Hole in a Flute

I am

A hole in a flute

That the Christ’s breath moves through.

Listen to this

Music.

I am the concert

From the mouth of every

Creature

Singing with myriad

Chords.

                                    - Hafiz [Daniel Ladinsky, tr.]

Referring to the Zen proverb,  “Enlightenment is an accident.  Practice makes us accident prone,” Christopher left us with this question: How can we practice so that we become more accident prone to prophetic ministry?  He invited us, as we anticipated the hour’s worship we were about to share, to get out of the old deep ruts of worship and try new practices to enter worship.

As our final session drew to a close, Christopher observed that during the past 45 minutes we had found ourselves in an “opportunity,” an expression early Friends used when a group’s spirit began moving toward worship.   Afterwards one Friend shared that she focused on the image of hearts being tendered by worship and that the quality of worship experienced was much deeper than usual.

Our day was truly blessed.