‘It is my feeling that prayer still encompasses the feeling of “in touch-ness” that surpasses any other description.’ Photo: Milada Vigerova on Unsplash.
‘There is a great need to nurture all Friends into a way of being.’
In a theologically diverse Society, asks Derrick Whitehouse, what would it mean to be a people of prayer?
Brian Speedy was a well-respected Friend and treasurer to Friends Home Service (now Quaker Life). He liked to talk about ‘having money in the kitty’ and often had us in stitches with his delivery on the Home Service financial position. But Brian, who was a senior figure in Lloyds of London, was more than that. He had a passion that Quakers should become a ‘people of prayer’. I always understood that he meant everyone who is Quaker should feel that way. So where are we today on that notion?
Since then, some fifty years ago, we have become even more liberal and diverse in our theology. We have theists, non-theists and agnostics among our membership. So where does prayer figure in our worship and way of thinking? What are Friends up to during the inward stillness of Quaker worship? If being and doing Quaker is an integral part of the rhythm of our daily lives, does prayer feature as we become involved with the wider world?
‘The place of prayer is a precious habitation: … I saw this habitation to be safe, to be inwardly quiet, when there was great stirrings and commotions in the world’ (John Woolman, Quaker faith & practice 20.10). If we rush to the dictionary for help, then prayer is simply related to God. But for those not persuaded towards this line, is there still a ‘prayerful beyondness’ that is an integral feature of our faith? This state then becomes the devotional consultation which we so desperately need to complete our spiritual stance.
We need to ask if the word ‘prayer’ embraces more than God, to be an integral constituent that describes all that is beyond and relates and is helpful to our way of worship. Or would some other description be more in keeping with what we personally believe and know? Could words like ‘entreaty’, ‘request’, ‘hope’, ‘wish’, or ‘supplication’ do a better job? It is my feeling that prayer still encompasses the feeling of ‘in touch-ness’ that surpasses any other description.
When I started worshipping with Friends, sixty years ago, I found the one prayer I could not let go of after my time with the Church of England was the General Thanksgiving. It became, for a while, the silent refrain I used to help me settle into waiting and listening. Over the years there have been many other intonations to help me settle. Friends, it is never, ever ‘Let us have a bit of silence and stillness’. Also, in my view, spoken ministry should always emerge from our waiting and listening.
The real consideration now is if waiting and listening is there to represent the beyondness of everything. If so, then how useful is it to enhance our Quaker way? Is it this which potential attenders need to grapple with in order to continue with us, as well as to benefit from what we understand to be our way of worship?
Praying could be interpreted as communication with that which is beyond. But meditation, as I understand it, is about listening and waiting. Is that what Quakers have traditionally tried to do, or do they do both? This is something newcomers, who come along for a while and then leave, sadly do not always comprehend. Was there no one around to explain and nurture them into our stillness and mysterious worshipful ways? Prayer is communicating within ourselves and with the beyondness; meditation (an associate of prayer) is waiting and listening.
This combination is certainly why our ‘programmed tradition’, in the wider Quaker world, continues to prosper and grow numerically. Those Meetings for Worship start with a hymn, then some prayers, and round off with a section termed ‘the message’ before moving into a time of meditation and inward worship. We could think about doing this; but we do not have to become programmed, it would be simply that people know and feel this to be the way.
There is a great need to nurture all Friends into a way of being. It is not new – there has always been a term ‘centring down’, but do we use that expression these days? It seems to me that when newcomers join us we need to provide them with the ‘knowhow’ to settle into our way of worship. Namely, the prayerful part of centring down, which can take a while, before leading us on to wait and listen for a leading that comes from our meditative response, to use our former expression ‘wait on the Lord’.
Wherever we are now with the variation of belief in the Society, this is the bedrock of our way of worship. It becomes an integral part of the rhythm of our daily life. I feel that enquirers are not being given this essential guidance and, consequently, after a while of wallowing in attempted worship, many are seen no more. Does this mean that the rest of us are familiar with this way of worship, or maybe some folk are with us for some other valid reason, profound for each of them? What is the ‘superglue’ that holds regular worshipers together?
‘Thus I began to realise that prayer was not a formality, or an obligation, it was a place which was there all the time and always available’ (Elfrida Vipont Foulds, Quaker faith & practice 2.21).
