Our Stories: Mike

How I came to, and back to, Quaker Meeting.

I wasn't 'brought up religious' although I was sent to Sunday school, mostly to get me out from under my parents' feet on a Sunday afternoon I think. In my teens I started attending Crusaders with a friend instead and then chose to attend a very active Baptist church in Bristol, and was baptised. My first job after university was with the British Antarctic Survey. Away from the social environment of the church, in the relative isolation of a beautiful, natural, frozen wilderness there was time for silent contemplation.

When I returned to the UK I found the routine and kerfuffle of organised religion no longer sat well with me. I also began to acknowledge that I was gay and at that time more than now most churches took the view as Monty Python put it: God hates poofs. A Methodist uncle had mentioned that he held Quakers in high regard and then I stumbled on the Friends Meeting House in Tunbridge Wells, where I had moved to work. I turned up one Sunday and was made most welcome. I joined a study group and was rather surprised when no one seemed to care at all when I said I was gay.

I moved into London for a while, met my husband, and joined Friends House Meeting, and then to Edinburgh where we both attended Meeting. When we moved back to Kent he found he didn't get on so well at Tunbridge Wells meeting. I was also finding that my understanding of God was changing and for some reason I felt a bit of a fraud turning up to a meeting of a religious society. So for a long time I was a name on the members list without often going to meeting.

Aged fifty I stumbled across Thai massage whilst passing through Thailand and decided to study it. The massage school also gave some instruction on meditation and encouraged morning and evening meditation sessions. I found these a great help and returned to a sense of awe for the welling of love which arises in us when we give it the opportunity. On returning to the UK I started attending Meeting at Tunbridge Wells again. It turns out that Quakers don't care about how I conceive of God any more than they do about my being gay.

What keeps me at Meeting is the unspoken contract we have to sit with each other and to support each other as we discover what some would call the Holy Spirit in ourselves. To allow that love to surface and find practical outworking.

Our Stories: Noel

Disillusionment with the Anglican Church probably started around the time the poetic King James Bible was abandoned and replaced with a modernised version in the vernacular. Readings from the Bible, which I had been brought up with, had lost that sense of awe. The Creed was rewritten and even the Lord's Prayer was modernised so that these now had to be read rather than 'recited' in an attempt to try and popularise the services.

It is my belief that if we are to grow spiritually there needs to be a shift in consciousness which can only be achieved through silence.... .and structured religion seemed to completely miss the point.

It didn't much help when guitars were introduced and the services started to feel more like a cabaret act with entertainment seemingly being the main purpose. There was no room for any quiet reflection and contemplation.

I then stumbled upon Buddhism and liked the emphasis placed on silent meditation and the logical teachings which were always open to discussion. The spiritual journey was inward and did not require hymns and long winded and often pointless sermons. However, the teachings ceased when the teacher moved away. My mother, who had attended Quaker meetings, suggested this as an option and I found what I had been looking for.

I believe that creative ability comes out of quiet reflection and in these days of increased secularism, where time appears to have speeded up, it is refreshing to have the opportunity at the beginning of the week to be able to sit and reflect with like minded people for one uninterrupted hour .... where time appears to stand still!