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!

Our Stories: Imogen

I had an experience of the presence of God as a child, walking along the lane to primary school with the dog-roses flowering in the hedge beside me.  Someone once asked me, why should I have this experience when others don't?  Maybe it was just the quiet of a country lane in summer, maybe it was because it was a time of need and unhappiness, and that often opens us up to the spiritual in a way that times of peace and content do not.  As a result of this, I was christened and confirmed into the Church of England, but in my early teens I suddenly realised that I was affirming a creed in which I did not believe.  

Truthfulness has always seemed to me to matter, and indeed it is at the core and centre of Quakerism.  Three or four years later I attended my first Quaker meeting and had that sense of coming home which so many experience, though it was another seven or eight years before I fitted it into the pattern of my life and began to attend regularly and finally to come into membership.  

That was nearly forty years ago, and of course it proved to be the beginning of a journey, not the destination.  Periods of spiritual detachment or 'dryness' followed, periods of  doubt or downright disaffection, and many periods of disappointment when I felt I had failed to accomplish God's will, failed to follow the Quaker way, failed in the most basic fundamentals to be a Christian.  What upholds me is silent worship and that experience of holding the light in the centre, inviting the presence of God, of listening rather than speaking, so different from meditation and worship as experienced elsewhere.  What inspires me is that unique combination of practical with mystical, of social conscience with spirituality, which is represented in the Quaker way; if I cannot achieve it I can aspire to it.

Our Stories: Sonja

I grew up in Denmark as a Lutheran and my lovely mother was a regular church goer so it was a natural environment for me. As I became an adult I slipped a bit - too busy to keep up with going to church.

Eventually I ended up in Withyham and I was very attached to the church there. It happens to be very beautiful - the twins were baptised and confirmed there.

After 21 years we moved to Crowborough and my local church was All Saints which is near to my home. It was busy - a lot of music - so it should have been just the right place for me but I never felt
comfortable there.

The vicar was actually very charismatic but his view of Christianity was miles away from mine. He refused to bless a newly married couple because the wife was divorced (no fault of hers) and she actually worked as a youth leader at the church.

Then the war in Iraq broke out - I had done everything in my power to stop it (demonstrations etc) and walked down to the church on a Sunday morning in absolute despair and the war was not mentioned.

That was the last straw! I called up my Quaker Friend, Henry Bernstein, who had told me for years that I really was a Quaker. At that time Henry was an Elder at TW and I went with him to the meeting
the following Sunday and never looked back.

I had found my spiritual home and I am very grateful.

Coming Up: "Why I Became A Quaker"

Recently I attended a Quaker Outreach conference, which was as much fun as you'd expect - or possibly more... ;)

It's always interesting to be in a room with eighty or so other Friends - the nice thing is that they feel like friends as well as Friends - and it was great to get a lot of input about the best ways to Reach Out. We would like to do more reaching out, frankly, so I was frantically taking notes. You'll be glad to know that I'm not going to summarise an entire weekend in this blog post, but one of the themes that came through most strongly was the need for us all to share our stories. Because, after all, most of us come to Quakerism because our lives have somehow led us to it - and those stories, personal and specific as they are, sometimes speak more strongly to other people than all sorts of theological debates.

So I have asked members (and attenders, of course) of Tunbridge Wells Meeting to share their stories of how they came to Meeting. At the conference, telling and listening to stories face-to-face, I realised how much of a privilege it was to hear people talk frankly about their spiritual journeys - so thank you in advance to everyone who contributes.

That's a bit of an introduction - call it a trailer... And coming soon, to a screen near you...

Clerk B Goes To A Book Swap

From this...

 I'd never been to a book swap before, so I was wondering whether I'd be sitting in the cafe on my own for an hour and a half, before sheepishly packing up my four contributions to take them home again....

...but after ten minutes of feeling like a billy-no-mates (having bagged the biggest table in the place, I felt slightly conspicuous), I was delighted as a slow but steady trickle of Friends started to come through the door. With books.

Lots of books.

...to this.

Oddly enough, I seemed to be the only person who was happy to go home with more books than I'd brought - so I spent a very happy hour going through the pile, while everyone else sighed and averted their faces like people on a diet trying to resist cake. But I am glad to say that hardly anyone left entirely empty-handed. At the end, though, it seemed that I was the main beneficiary (unless you count guilt-free decluttering as a benefit, which maybe we should) - apart from Oxfam, who received the leftover spoils.

I am now looking forward to being a Great Spiritual Authority. Well, once I've actually read all my new books, anyway!

But my overall favourite moment of the day was when a Friend said (and I quote): 'I just don't know how I've managed to get to my age without having read any Teilhard de Chardin.' I know exactly how you feel, Lorraine. ;)

Tunbridge Wells Lantern Parade

Last Sunday I heard that this had happened... and felt very irritated with myself that I'd missed it! Next year I am definitely going to take part. Making lanterns and then parading with them (along with making lots of noise in a non-anti-social way) - what's not to like? 

Several people from our Meeting were at the parade, anyway, so I thought that was enough excuse to share this video (and thanks to Helen Martin for letting me use it):

I don't want to hijack this for Quakerism, as from what I can see on the Internet this is a creative community event, nothing to do with religion of any kind... But then I wondered what religion is, if not the shared creation and celebration of light?*

*Not to mention the hijacking of suitable metaphors wherever they happen to turn up... ;)