The Parable of the Table

Ten of us worshiped in the stillness. We had gathered in a close circle in the small library in a neighborhood Friends church.

It was early, 8 a.m.

A much larger congregation would be meeting later in the church sanctuary proper for singing, a short reading from the Bible, a pastor’s sermon, a period of silent worship and ministry and announcements from pews.

But in the little library, our small group practiced what Quakers call “unprogramed” worship, so called because it has no program of worship. Nearly all of our time together is spent in silence. Or as Quakers say, “in expectant waiting.”

In the silence I felt unusually attuned of our numbers. This was only the second time we had met.

I saw our new worship group as an experiment planned to last only three Sundays – the first Sundays of October, November and December. After that, we would decide whether to meet again, and, if so, where and when. 

To me, the little Quaker gathering, if it continued, would serve Friends in our immediate part of Portland: Hillsdale, Multnomah Village, Bridlemile, Hayhurst and Maplewood. The latter is where the church – West Hills Friends Church – is.

The first month, there had been five of us. So our numbers had doubled. The little library was nearly full.

In the middle, someone from the Church had placed a small table. Some of our knees nearly touched it.

Tables in the middle of a Quaker place of unprogramed worship are not unfamiliar in many meeting houses. In England they are almost a given. They usually bear  a single flower or a flickering candle. In some congregations, they hold Bibles. But here in the Western United States, I’ve rarely seen such a table. Quaker worship is an interior waiting, a ‘listening’ for the spirit that resides within us all. The deepening silence is what we share. The certerpiece is within. Occasionally, sometimes, someone will be moved to speak.

Oddly, in this circle of 10, I felt an eleventh presence. I was moved to acknowledge it “out of the silence.”

Some must have thought I was going to recognize God’s presence. But  “God,” the word, for me, is a barrier. I rarely use it. At best I refer to ‘the spirit’ knowing full well that my words fail. “Is-ness” or silence is the best I can come up with for the ineffable.

No, the eleventh presence I felt in the room was the small, bare table.

My eyes kept opening and going to its surface. I described my attraction to the table top in my short ministry. The table seemed to invite me to empty my spiritual pockets and place joys and concerns there. It asked me to be free of life’s attachments and to simply “hold them in the Light.”

Perhaps the little table was inviting others to do the same. I suggested as much before I fell back into stillness. No one else spoke.

Slowly in the silence, I felt the table fill.

*********   *********    ********   ********

There’s a post-script to this little “parable of the table.”

At the close of our silent worship, we wondered what this table was doing in the middle of an already cramped library. One member of our group, a part of the church’s congregation, said she had never seen the table in the library before.

The explanation of its presence turned out to be simple and far from mystical.

A pipe had broken in the Church the day before and someone moved the table to get it out of the way of the mopping up.

It was where it didn’t belong.

Or was it? 

    How often “where something doesn’t belong,” is exactly where it needs to be.

Practical Spirituality

At the heart of Quaker life — and potentially everyone's life —is connecting with our spiritual leadings and putting them into practice.

With this in mind, the imminent annual session of Northwest Friends (the North Pacific Yearly Meeting) is focusing on the topic “Being Practically Spiritual: The Integration of Inward Life and Outward Action”

As part of the four-day proceeding in Tacoma beginning Wednesday, Friends will meet in worship groups devoted to various aspects of the topic. Quakers call this “worship sharing.” The small groups of roughly ten always begin their sessions in silent worship. Out of the depths of silence, the participants are invited to speak to the topic. Between each speaker’s words, we return to contemplate what has been said in the silence before another person speaks.

The shared words are inspired by pre-selected quotations and focused through questions, or “queries.”

Much thought goes into the selection of the quotations and the framing of the accompanying queries.

Those for this year's topic cry out to be shared with readers of The Red Electric, whether you are a Quaker or not.

The quotations and the queries for the four sessions may lead you to ask how you integrate your inward spiritual life with “outward action.”

There is much to ponder here. Consider, reading one and responding to it first before moving on. Indeed, the reading of these might well be done in four “sessions” with yourself and perhaps others.


Session 1, Thursday

Being practically spiritual in relation to myself.

The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.
--Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

For God can be found…There is a Divine Center into which your life can slip, a new and absolute orientation in God, a center where you live with him and out of which you see all life through new and radiant vision, tinged with new sorrows and pangs, new joys unspeakable and full of glory.
--Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion

Queries to consider:

What does living within the Divine Center mean for me in ‘the noise and clatter’ of my everyday life?

Which practices help me become--and which hinder me from becoming--more mindful of, more attuned to the workings of the Spirit in my daily life?

Do I center my life in the awareness of the presence of God so that all things take their rightful place? (Adapted from Faith and Practice, North Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends)


Session 2, Friday

Being practically spiritual in relation to those I touch in daily life.

(I was) convinced in my mind that true religion consisted in an inward life, wherein the heart doth love and reverence God the Creator and learn to exercise true justice and goodness, not only toward all men but also toward the brute creatures.
--John Woolman

What do I mean by growing into wholeness? It is working at being all we were meant to be. (Most of us only live partial lives.) It is seeking integrity, striving to be what William Penn called George Fox, “an original and no one’s copy.” It is not wearing a mask. It is acknowledging our strengths and gifts without false modesty, and accepting our weaknesses and limitations as part of us. It is springtime and winter. It is light, and it is also darkness. It is being present where we are, seeing the personhood of others, saying “thou” to them. It is being at home in our bodies, aware of their needs, and it is being in touch with that of God in us.
--Elizabeth Watson

Queries to consider:

When have I experienced the integration of the inward life and outward action in my own life and the lives of those I relate to most intimately (including the ‘creatures’ I may share my life with)?

What nurtures my growth into wholeness? How do I nurture that growth in others?

How do I make my home and Meeting places of friendliness, peace and renewal, where God is real for those who live there and those who visit? (Adapted from Faith and Practice)

Session 3, Saturday

Being practically spiritual in relation to my community.

Jesus said… ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second one is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
--Matthew 22.37:39

There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human Mind, which in different Places and Ages hath had different Names; it is, however, pure, and proceeds from God. It is deep, and inward, confined to no Forms of Religion, nor excluded from any, where the Heart stands in perfect Sincerity. In whomsoever this takes Root and grows, of what Nation soever, they become Brethren.
--John Woolman

Queries to consider:

What am I doing to build “the beloved community?”

Who do I envision as embodying the pure principle that John Woolman testifies to? What have their lives meant to me? What are the fruits of such embodiment?

Do I practice the art of listening to my neighbor, even beyond words? (Adapted from Faith and Practice)


Session 4, Sunday

Being practically spiritual in relation to our world.

When we confront injustice, when we engage in Spirit-led service, when we speak prophetically to the world we live in and witness to the world we know is possible (and already here among us), when we are instruments of the Spirit for reconciliation, healing, and mutual understanding, we are testifying to the Truth through our experience of that Life and Love and Power that takes away the occasion of all war. That is remaking the world in far more effective ways than we can through our anger, grief, passion, and social action—no matter how well-intentioned.
--Noah Baker Merrill

I know more firmly than ever that the way of Jesus—of Gandhi and Woolman and Fox and Penn—is the only way worth traveling. But I also have some inkling of the discipline required if we are truly to enter into God’s way. The needle’s eye is closed to those of us who hold wealth to ourselves, to the self-interested, or the self-indulgent. Our lives can be of good use in this world only if we dwell in the Spirit that was in Christ Jesus, stay in the Light, and walk firmly in the way he showed us: the way of love, truth, identification with the poor and oppressed, poverty, non-possession, purity and humility.
--Carol Reilly Urner, from The Needle’s Eye: A Philippine Experience

Queries to consider:

When has the “Life and Love and Power that takes away the occasion of all war” broken into my life?

What does dwelling in the Spirit look like in my daily life?

Do I search diligently for ways of assuring the right of every individual to live in dignity? (Adapted from Faith and Practice)

Silent Light

Some visitors will immediately recognize this place. Others will find it a mystery.

To me, it is like life itself — known yet mysterious.

The Silent Gateway

As a Quaker, I’m well acquainted with the silence of worship.

Not surprisingly, silence takes strange forms when we try to describe it, when we break our silence about it and use words to define its content.

We talk about the “depth” of silence. But why not the “height” of silence? Do we not transcend in the silence? Or, as Quakers say, do we “settle” into silence?

As someone who is hearing impaired, in the world of noise and speech, I’m at a clear disadvantage. But in silence, my “hearing” is as good as anyone’s.

Silence is the great equalizer.

I find that my “silent hearing” takes place at various levels. I try not to think of the levels as “up” or “down” although they do have a spiritual hierarchy.

The first level is “thought hearing.” The thoughts are similar to those that get me through the day except that they aren’t stimulated by my immediate surroundings. What I “hear” are reflections. Reflections on my life.

The next level is “feeling hearing.” That’s something akin to “getting in touch” with my feelings, or the feelings of others. The phrase links the sensation of touch/feeling with that of hearing. Clearly, when we get beyond words and thoughts, we begin to do more than “hear.” Indeed we are often “touched” by what we “hear” when we allow ourselves to feel. It might frighten us at first, but we should be open to being touched by what we hear/feel in the silence. It may move us to tears of sadness or joy.

Beyond feeling, is “being hearing.” It can be defined in terms of the opposite of the first two kinds of hearing. It is utterly free of both thoughts and feelings. Practitioners of Zen will recognize it immediately. It is the “hearing” of “is-ness.” It is all and nothing at the same time. And it, too, expands from the single sense of hearing. At this level our entire beings become one, all-encompassing sense organ.

I could stop there, because I know these levels and have, to a greater or lesser extent, experienced them.

But as I grow older and ponder what might lie beyond this existence, it seems to me there is a realm of “hearing” beyond thinking, feeling and being. For lack of a better word, let’s call it “non-being hearing.” Put that way, it seems to be simple “egoless-ness,” but I think (and feel and “be”) that it is more than that. It is all-encompassing. It beyond all and nothing. It is out of time and out of place. It is perceived by a “sense” beyond any senses that we know or conceive of.

Can we experience this last form of “hearing” while we are alive? Does it require the death of “being”? Can we experience that “death” while still alive?

I am certain there are those who believe they have had such an experience. It may have been drug induced. It may have been during a near-death episode. Or it may have been the result of a mystical experience.

Whatever or however it has happened — or will happen — its gateway is silence.

A friend's thoughts on silence

In response to my musings about Quaker silence, my old friend Richard Wood, who lives in the village of Husthwaite in North Yorkshire, writes about his own explorations of silence.

(His reference to “molehills” is a running joke of ours. The hills in question are rolling and gentle, just south of the Yorkshire Moors. He has jokingly disparaged them ever since witnessing our Cascades.)


I enjoyed your exploration of the depths of silence, especially your search for what might lie beyond the depths.

My mind went in search of the same point made by one of the 19th century novelists. I had to use the Oxford Book of Quotations to track it down: George Eliot, “Middlemarch”: she refers to "that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

Most of us (even those who have "retired" and should have time to do it other ways) spend our lives moving on in search of the next thing to do. When there's not much to do right now I find myself going up and down the stairs in search of something I have just put down — a pen, a piece of paper, anything.

This is straightforward running away from the clamour of one's own silence.

I enjoyed my few visits to the Quakers' silent hours, especially those I did with you, but I find my own silence in the countryside. People say it's impossible to escape the sound of fast roads and aeroplanes, but fortunately it's not true. I take to to molehills behind our house and meditate on silence itself. Or I shut out all thoughts other than the sound of the skylark. Then I think "depth" is the right word for where the mind goes — not downward depth, as in the bottom of the sea, but depth as in the place a great picture might take you.

I'm not as brave as you then in thinking that I might be where God is. Maybe that's because I live in a society that has turned its back on God.

A silent exploration of silence

I may devote these Sunday posts to “day of rest” reflections in general, and Quaker reflections in particular.

I always come away from our Sunday morning’s hour of silent worship with something I want to share.

This morning, in the silence, I found myself exploring the phrase “the depths of silence.”

For some reason, our culture assigns “depth” to silence.

I’m not sure why. Why not breadth or height?

Indeed, why must silence have any single dimension at all? Why not free silence from three or even four dimensions?

But exploring the depth of silence did lead me to consider “digging deeper” into the silence of my worship.

Is there a silence beneath silence? Another deeper layer of silence?

So often my silence is full of voices. So it really isn't silence at all even though no one in the meeting room is speaking. These are my own inner voices rushing to fill the void.

I need a much deeper silence. Or is it higher silence? Or a broader silence? Or just a greater silence — a silent silence?

The more I got into it — deeper, wider, greater — the more I realized that silence is truly a manifestation of an infinite presence.

Some might choose to call it "God," but the silence was telling me that God has no-name.

All creation started with — still starts with — silence.

Unblogging

I took a day off from blogging yesterday and survived.

No serious withdrawals. No tossing and turning in the night. The cat didn’t notice any difference. The earth turned on its axis. A day passed. I spared you, dear reader, more thoughts about Eliot Spitzer and race and gender issues in the presidential campaign.

I did think of some unwritten words about a day the clocks stopped everywhere. No one went to work — or to war. We all slept in and were better for it.

A promising topic, for another time.

This blogging can all become a bit much. It too can be better for “sleeping in.” The blogger's mind, along with the world, can use a little rest and renewal.

Silence.

So I’m using these breaks to define a new relationship with, or to be exact, a new rhythm for The Red Electric. Name and logo to the contrary, this site is not an interurban train tied to a timetable. If you show up here for a ride, you may find the Red Electric at rest on the siding. The engineer is off somewhere ruminating, plotting new destinations or just contemplating the silence.

The disappearance of story

Ron Marson, tall, thin, intent, serene, rose for his chair in the silence of our Quaker meeting last Sunday and spoke his truth.

He had just returned from a 10-day hike in the mountains, he told us. In the course of his trek, he said, he became one with the forest, the trail and the moments.

His entire being reduced itself to stepping around a rock or root, or grasping a branch, or hearing wind in the fir or feeling the cool of the shadows.

“My own story disappeared!” he exclaimed.

He invoked the phrase several times. “My own story disappeared.” It was almost as if he were in awe, still a bit stunned.

“My own story disappeared!”

Now that he was back, his story had returned. Society, friends, responsibilities called upon him to be “him.” The forest and the mountains made no such demand. Instead, they absorbed him.

When Ron rises to speak in our meeting for worship, as he often does, I am always struck by the depth of his words. It isn’t a depth of complexity, but — in the manner of seasoned Friends —the depth of simplicity, integrity and peace.

In the silence that followed his brief “ministry,” it occurred to me that Ron had just shared his experience of losing his story by telling one. Some stories are like that.

It’s a bit like the conundrum I share with my journalism students about the day there was no news. It would be the biggest news day ever. No news? And why might that be? Were all audiences vaporized along with all journalists? Would it be the day humanity disappeared, destroying itself perhaps, leaving fleas and worms to decide what was “news.”

But more to the point, Ron’s story about the loss of story speaks to how Quakerism cleaves to Zen and mysticism in general. They rely on stories, and on the non-story called silence, which in turn resounds with everything — and nothing.

Rewind to a manger

Now obsolete audio and video tape technology has given the language a transforming one-word metaphor: Rewind.

On this Christmas Day, I'd like a spiritual, historical rewinding.

Rewind the tape 2000 years.

Rewind Christianity, past the wars, past the Middle East, past Northern Ireland. Go past preachers, pastors and popes. Past saints, bishops and cardinals.

Past schisms, sects and denominations.

Past works, good and bad. Past charity. Past devotion. Past hypocrisy. Past hatred.

Past dogma and ritual, sin and salvation.

Roll on past Salem and witch burnings, Indulgences and The Inquisition. Rewind by Meister Eckhart and Saint Francis, past the Crusades, past martyrs, past Paul and Peter, and Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and Thomas.

Go past The Resurrection and The Crucifixion, The Stations of The Cross and the Last Supper.

Leave behind the miracles and metaphors, the Sermon on the Mount and the parables on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Roll past the shepherds, the Wise Men and the guiding star.

Roll past them all.

Stop.

Stop at the manger in Bethlehem.

Pause on a frozen frame.

Pause and be still.

Wait and prepare to witness.

Press "play."

Watch —watch closely— what happens.