Thought for the Week: Patterns of Life
Jonathan Doering reflects on what makes a good Quaker Meeting
There is a possibly apocryphal story about a monastery where the monks honoured the sacredness of every human encounter by saying of visitors, ‘Jesus has arrived’. The monastery was a popular refuge for gentlemen of the road; one busy day, such a guest was received and a young monk called down to a harassed colleague who was desperately holding things together in the hot kitchen: ‘Brother, Jesus has arrived!’
‘Oh really, how wonderful,’ came the rejoinder. ‘Well he can just wait his turn like everyone else.’
The daily reality of living a good life can be wearing, and anyone can struggle to rise to the occasion. One frazzled elderly Friend, who gave a callow question from me well-deserved short shrift, sticks in the memory. All the more amazing, then, that the vast majority of my experiences at Meetings around the country have been so good.
What makes a good Quaker Meeting? As with the question ‘What is Quakerism?’, there is more than one possible answer, but here are some possible characteristics: inclusivity and warmth; openness of hearts and minds; energy; reaching inwards and outwards; mutual supportiveness; good humour; spontaneity; intellectual engagement; challenge; an immanent sense of the Spirit; constant seeking; and honesty.
How are they expressed? Well, through a warm welcome on a Sunday morning and throughout the week: when an overseer spends an hour chatting with a newcomer; when a Friend gently guides an enquirer towards Harvey Gillman’s A Light That is Shining, suggesting that George Fox’s Journal can be read later; or inviting a new attender home for lunch on the spur of the moment.
It is also expressed in less visible ways. Visiting Friends who are unable to come to Meeting; organising Food Bank collections; sitting in hospital corridors; or marching down streets shining with rain.
I have regularly attended Meetings in London, Oxfordshire and West Yorkshire, and have found these factors, in different forms, in all of them. I expect that many reading this will say that they have had similar experiences. These qualities form part of the web holding the Religious Society of Friends together.
Our Society, numerically, is a small one, but in the million daily instances where we seek to work with and within the energy of the Spirit, we follow an inspiring, enduring pattern of life.
As George Fox writes: ‘Be patterns, be examples… then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone…’ There is the sense of being the change you want to see, of owning your convictions. The resulting patterns may change across times and places, but are always beautiful.
Now, as my family and I prepare to move, it feels right to look back over the last eight years and be thankful for some of those moments of grace in Pontefract Meeting: that, as newcomers to the town, my wife and I were accommodated by a member of the Meeting whilst we house hunted; the Meeting’s annual support for a peace witness at RAF Fylingdales; our annual excursions to the East Coast; assistance offered to local asylum seekers; how the Meeting house was opened up to a peace pilgrimage, and then how, off the cuff, we stayed to have dinner and conversation.
My family’s move is poignant. Our looking back on the good things we are leaving is mingled with excitement at the next stage of our adventure. I feel a stab that I won’t share in Pontefract’s future problems and joys – my loss, not theirs. What saves it is that all of this, wrapped in another unique package, is waiting for me to join where we are going.
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