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.