Our Stories: Madelyn

Looking back over my spiritual journey so far, it looks like quite a kaleidoscope.

My first faith school was a Carmelite Convent, run by Italian nuns, in Tripoli Lebanon. My parents were living in the Iraqi desert, with my engineer father working for Iraq Petroleum, so I had to board at the age of 8. There I learnt to write beautifully, to embroider well, and to start learning French - sadly I also came away with a gigantic guilt burden which stayed with me for many years.

The second faith school was a CMS school in Surrey, where I was blissfully happy. Anglican missionaries were our heroes and heroines, and we were taught that it was our duty to serve. We had an excellent music education, and many happy hours were spent in the lovely Victorian chapel, with its high vaulted ceiling echoing to our anthems. A favourite time was Compline, on winter evenings, with just one hymn, a homily and quiet time.

Summer holidays were spent in Nigeria, where my father was now working. Our friends there were, almost without exception, Methodist medical missionaries who worked in the leper colonies - villages out in the bush, where leprosy sufferers who were exiled from their own villages were treated with the most up-to-date medicines available at that time. Our friends had no possessions, and lived their faith in simplicity. The highlight of the week was the church service in the adobe-type church building. This was a time of joy, with loud praise-singing, sometimes accompanied by rattles and drums.

On the Sundays when we did not go the colony, we would go to the local church which we all shared - one week Anglican, one week Roman Catholic, one week Methodist, one week Presbyterian and so on…so I had plenty of variety there.

Time nursing at St.Thomas’ Hospital was if anything back to Anglicanism, but my days were so full of work, with split duties the norm, that I cannot remember much about that time from a spiritual point of view, except for carol singing around the wards wearing our dark blue cloaks lined with pillar-box red, and our goffered high lace caps. I did attend Holy Trinity, Brompton for Bible classes.

After marrying at Holy Trinity Church, Brompton (where the ALPHA courses originated), and while we had our three boys, we attended the local Anglican church in Surrey, where they were all baptised.

This continued after our move to Kent. But it was a this point that I became unsettled with my adherence to the Anglican church. It began to seem as if the wranglings going on in the Church were not conducted in a loving way. Everything in our services seemed too repetitive and formulaic. Sermons did not inspire. There was too much busyness and not enough thinking and quiet. I did not feel in communion with my neighbours at the altar rail.

I started to look for another place to continue my journey, and discovered the Quaker Meeting at Sevenoaks. So many people say they just felt ‘at home’ in Quaker meeting, that it sounds like a truism. But there you are…I did feel instantly that I should have been there all my life.

That was over 18 years ago, and the perfect story would assume that I joined Quakers then, and here I am now.

In fact it took another good many years to extricate myself from my Anglican background, attending MfW at Sevenoaks, then Tunbridge Wells as well as local church services. Slowly but surely the deep corporate peace achieved in many Quaker meetings took hold of me, and I would have gone on attending MfW as an attender for ever…until I developed cancer.

That does make you sit up and take audit. In my case one of the questions I asked myself was “ Why am I not a fully committed member ? ” This led to me asking for guidance, and an Elder took me in hand, until I felt able to ask to be admitted as a full member.

That was just four years ago, and I am grateful to be surrounded by friends and Friends. Each offering mutual support at a time when our meeting is in a period of quiet.

I look forward to the time when we can live adventurously again, and share with others from our surrounding communities the wonderful gift of corporate silent worship, allied to loving care for one another.

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.