One of the most difficult things about being a Quaker is you really can’t take a back seat -- at least not all of the time.  If the Society of Friends got rid of the laity, that makes us all ministers and ministers should minister.  David and I attended Twin Cities Friends Meeting in St. Paul last Sunday.  There are some meetings that are habitually quiet.  This must be one of them.  Not one of the nearly thirty persons present spoke until, at five minutes to the hour, the presiding clerk invited anyone to share a message whose thoughts had not reached the level of utterance during worship.  Messages were then delivered for another 15 minutes.

On the other hand, Friends who have attended large meetings report that the messages never seem to cease and that often on First Day Morning, at a Quaker Meeting, they long for silence!  Some at Twin Cities assured us that if we came to the 11 o’clock service instead of the earlier one, the room would be filled and the messages would be numerous.  Both Cambridge Meeting in Massachusetts and Atlanta Meeting here in SAYMA have been described to me as “popcorn” meetings – that is once the messages begin, they come thick and fast without stopping until the clerk breaks meeting.

Caught between these two poles, it is amazing that Friends so often seem to get the mix of silence and messages just right.  In fact, Memphis Meeting typically seems to strike a happy mean – a lengthy period of silence followed by four to five messages on an often discernable theme – just the sort of thing to produce a satisfied sense of a gathered meeting. How is a feat like this accomplished in an unprogrammed meeting?  I think it requires two things: being able to apply the gas and knowing when to put on the brakes.

Applying the gas means that someone must get over the hump of speaking into the unbroken silence.  I myself seldom find I can do that.  I do not know about thee, but for me the problem is that my thoughts start out too unfocused.  Then when the germ of a message stirs within me it must get past my own censorship: is it important enough, is it universal enough, does it arrive somewhere, is it too didactic?  Many of my messages are repressed because I decide they are too much like what I would say to my students in class. Sometimes I’m still working up the courage when someone else begins speaking. Whoever does speak first often sets the theme for the messages that follow.

It is so much easier to speak once that first message has been voiced. It’s like following the car ahead of you through the yellow light.  Step on the gas and you’re through, pulled along as if by a magic thread.  But whether in cars or in meeting, this is just the time to apply the brakes instead.  Our first reactions to a spoken message are almost certainly just our own; only when they are seasoned with silence are they likely to be spirit-led.  That is why Quakers recommend an envelope of silence around each spoken message.  It allows everyone to hear the message in his or her own way before another message interrupts each individual train of thought.

Since we seem to do it so well here in Memphis Meeting, however, perhaps we shouldn’t think about it too much.  Like the caterpillar who was unable to walk when someoneasked how she knew which leg to move first, we might minister better when we leave it to the simple Quaker process: let your message be spirit-led and season each message in an envelope of silence.  I am always impressed how such simple guidelines can lead to such a satisfactory outcome.