Thought for the Week: A quiet power
Jonathan Doering reflects on the silent power within, beneath, around and between us
It is my first Quaker Meeting. Driven by a need that requires that I look elsewhere than conventional church services, I have spoken to relatives who have attended Meetings over the years. ‘It’s really peaceful,’ comments my brother, ‘But you need to have your own reserves. It can be quite dry, sitting so quietly for such a long time’. Having located my Local Meeting, I know that next Sunday I will take the plunge.
Come Sunday morning, my confidence is in danger of evaporating altogether. What will happen? What will one whole hour of silence feel like? I walk through the lobby, the pillars and low ceiling forming a tunnel running towards the door of the Meeting room. The doorkeeper on duty nods ‘good morning’ and opens the door, as if sitting silently in a room full of people for an hour is the most natural thing to do on a Sunday morning. I step into the room, realising that there is no prescribed place to sit: no pews, no seat for the priests, no benches for a choir.
Sit where you like.
That first morning I choose the very corner of the room, between the door and a window, and spend a lot of the time trying not to fidget or even breathe too loudly. No one ministers. There is as near to absolute silence for the full hour as there could be. Afterwards, I chat to one or two Friends, who will become friends as well, and return home feeling as if I have been sitting beside a vast lake of – peace? Love? God? I can’t quite put it into words. Or rather, I can frame many words that might catch a sense of it, or part of a sense – but never the full spirit of what is going on. All I can say for the moment is that it feels as if I am dropping my hand into a mighty river, a sea, an ocean.
Grab at this spirit and it twists and melts away like smoke. Sometimes it is strong, other times fainter, but always there, immanent.
As I sit in Meeting years later, I leaf through A World Religions Bible and find these words from Taoism: ‘The Way is broad; you can move far to the right and to the left, and still remain on it. It is so broad that every living being on earth could move along it together.’
This silent power is within, beneath, around and between us. Woven into us like DNA, like the sun on our faces, like the air in our lungs. Sparking insights, emotions, ministry emerging like wind from a night sky.
I’m reminded of a summer’s evening as a boy growing up in Scotland, walking along sand dunes with my family, watching the sun set over the Firth of Forth. The blood-red glory lit the sea and set the sand on fire. The sun turned its face from one side of the earth to the other, drawing down the inky black, cool sheet of night, scattered with stars. The Spirit was there for anyone to reach towards.
And then, towards the end of one Meeting for Worship, a voice speaking out of the silence:
So you have heard God. Now what are you going to do about it?
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