QUERIES IN THE SOCIAL HOUR

Some of the most profound and lasting messages I’ve received among Friends have come outside of the Meeting for Worship – and often as questions. It may surprise many of you to learn that in my first years with Quakers, I was generally pretty hostile to anything smacking of Christianity. And yet seeds were planted. I recall, for instance, Norris Wentworth’s observation while giving me a lift in his car – something to the effect that because America has an underlying Christian mindset, Eastern religions would have trouble taking root here.

Or “What do you think of Jesus?” during my clearness session for membership in what turns out to be one of the most universalist meetings in America. (Our preparative meeting was about 150 miles away in the desert of Washington state.) Followed by a remark to me, “I fear that we’re losing our Christian connection.”

A few years later: “What do you think of the Bible?” as an elderly Wilburite Friend in Whittier, Iowa, drilled her eyes in my direction. I doubt my analogy of a sharpening-stone wheel satisfied her.

Or, a year or two later: “And just what spirit was thee speaking of?” Mary Hawkins, an elder at Middleton Meeting in Ohio, before adding. “there are many spirits – anger, envy …” Since then, I have since been careful to say, Holy Spirit or Spirit of Christ.

The most influential Friend, though, was Myrtle Bailey, a recorded minister at Winona, Ohio. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about her asking me what I considered the perfect meeting, and my response, which seemed to surprise both of us. Rather than looking at meeting as the experience of worship, I looked at it as a community – a woodpile, in fact. We need good pieces of seasoned wood, as well as kindling; but also green wood, to begin seasoning. Here at Dover, we seem to be falling behind on the green wood supply. Which leads us to the next question.