Letters - 16 January 2015

From ministry to sadness

Ministry

In their article ‘Secret worshippers’ (12 December 2014), Tony and Jane Robinson seem to decry Meetings in which there is no spoken ministry. ‘Some Meetings we left after hearing no ministry at all.’ Surely that should be ‘after hearing no spoken ministry at all’. Did they not hear the silent ministry? ‘What would a newcomer go away feeling?’ I hope they would go away feeling the power of that silent ministry.

Many of us came to Quakers to get away from words, which can often get in the way of spiritual enlightenment. This is why many of us prefer the smaller Meeting. Sometimes in larger Meetings too much spoken ministry can crowd out the silence.

This is not to denigrate spoken ministry. It can be very powerful, but lack of it is not because there is ‘nothing spiritual we want to share’. Spoken ministry is not about wanting to share something spiritual – it is about the Spirit speaking through us, as and when the Spirit moves. If, in some Meetings, that is a rare occurrence, it will be all the more powerful when it happens.

In my own Local Meeting, sometimes there is spoken ministry and sometimes there is an hour of silent ministry. Both ‘types’ of Meeting can be very powerful, and both are equally valid. Surely, we should not set one above the other. It saddens me when Friends say of a Meeting that there was no ministry because no-one spoke. Silence ‘speaks’ to many of us and leads us to enlightenment. There can be no more powerful ministry than this.

Gordon Smith

Quakers and Christmas

Reading ‘Quakers and Christmas’ by Raymond Mgadzah (19 & 26 December 2014) made me realise how fortunate I am to have been able, for over twenty-five years, to worship with a Meeting which deliberately chooses to meet on Christmas Day. It opens up an historic and picturesque Meeting house four miles away for its only morning Meeting for Worship in the year and has usually attracted fifty to a hundred per cent more worshippers than on an average Sunday.

I understand the position of early Friends and would, if their situation now pertained, act similarly. However, as several Friends commented, our circumstance is that the religious or spiritual content of the festival gets swamped by the commercial opportunity for traders to make their best profits of the year. How much more necessary is it then for those not liking this trend to offer opportunities for spiritual reflection and refreshment? I know that should my Meeting ever get grumpy enough to cancel its current practice I would seek out some other group more ready to remember and rejoice in the spiritual essence of the occasion.

Christopher Thomas

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