Rock On, Friends

"So where are we going to church?" My parents, visiting for the weekend in a flurry of Trader Joe's bags and suitcases, wanted to go to church. We did, too. We just didn't know where.

We've been doing some more reading on the Quakers. The Inner Light dwells in everyone; humans all have an inherent potential for good. We listen in silence. We hear God in silence.

Quakers have marked history with their moral and spiritual courage. Richard Foster is a Quaker, as are many other insightful writers, contemporary and historical. Because Quaker missionaries believed in the presence of God in every person, they were among few outsiders who treated Native Americans with respect. They spoke out against slavery. They solidified the concept of conscientious objection. They suffered greatly.

I love everything about the Quakers, I told Martin, Except the suffering part. I admit: I voice my convictions strongly, but I do not want to suffer.

Simplicity. Silence. Social justice.

Rock on, Friends.

So Martin and I drove through a day so beautiful you could tongue the air and savor each taste of spring.

Thirty minutes and countless twisting curves later, we pulled into the parking lot of the Friends Meeting House. "During the week the meeting house is a yoga studio," I told my parents. Imm, hmm. I could tell my parents had their reservations. My mother, who is highly suspicious of any seed that might grow and bloom into self-absorption, was most hesitant about the idea of an hour spent in utter silence without the grounding of Scripture or other text.

The members of my family disappeared into the room of silence and I took the girls into the big sunny room across the hall. Merry was skeptical. "This isn't church," she said, looking around at the old easy chairs, the rows of books, the toys on the floor.

"We'll have our own church," I told her, hunting through the books on peace and Quakerism for a Bible. (Did see Richard Foster, by the way). Finally I located a row of Bibles and pulled one out. "It doesn't look as if there are any other kids here, though," I said. Elspeth toddled around finding bottles of carpet cleaner, a container of seashells, everything but the toys she was supposed to play with.

Merry sat down and I conducted "Jesus Loves Me." Maybe it was the odd formality of her chair and my waving my hands in time to the song, but she seemed to adjust immediately to the idea that she was the only person in Sunday School. I found some markers and some construction paper and we adjourned to the table, where I flipped through the Bible.

Let's see. Today, we'll talk about the parable of the lost sheep. I began to read the story out of the Bible until I realized it was King James' version. So I told Merry the story and followed the lost sheep with the parable of the lost coin. Merry wanted to know what the stories meant, and though I tried to explain what I had always been given to understand the meanings were, I did a bad job. Merry didn't seem to mind, and just then the oldest members of the Meeting entered the room.

In Welsh accents, they explained that Meeting didn't always start exactly on time. "It keeps getting later and later," they said. This resonated with me in a way they could never have predicted. I am fond of blaming my time challenges on my growing-up years in Kenya, where nothing ever started on time and nobody was ever late. I ran breathlessly to classes in college and slunk into endless church services, often taking a seat in the balcony or the back row.

The Welsh friends chatted with Merry and me for a few moments and then they plucked a book off a bookshelf for Merry. The parables were over, and the Quaker education was beginning. The book was about a bonnetted girl and a breeched boy in Nantucket. Early Quaker fry, and how they lived by the ocean.

Just then my mother, bastion of Christian education, entered and offered to watch the girls while I went into Meeting. The Welsh Friend had begun reading Merry the book and at her suggestion, Merry was drawing with markers while she read. Later Merry would choose a book about cats and the woman would read her that book, too. Nothing in the way of Christian education, as my mother would tell me later. Though God made cats, I said to my mother in a joking way. Half joking way.

The room was silent, of course, as I entered. I did not know whether to nod at people before I sat down and so I looked at the textured carpet instead. Eventually I shifted my gaze to the huge panel of windows that looked out to a blue sky, sunlight, the bare branches of warming trees outside. And then I closed my eyes.

I am unaccustomed to spending an hour of focused silence. At first my mind was filled with endless scraps, like a washing machine tumbling a load of clothes. Bang, bang, bang, the contents of my mind swirled and smashed against each other. Contained there were mostly scraps of Christian songs. . .and then after all this chaos, and after looking out the window and at the man with big bare feet sitting across the circle, I closed my eyes.

Slowly the chaos of my mind whittled itself down into one bare phrase, and that phrase began scrolling through my imagination. "THE WONDER OF EACH HOUR." That was it. FOR THE WONDER OF EACH HOUR.

After a while that phrase gave birth to an image. Mary was sitting at Jesus' feet and Martha was in a chaos of bustle behind them. Mary was listening to Jesus, taking in his words, and Jesus was affirming her listening. Martha, you are troubled with many things. But Mary has chosen the best thing. FOR THE WONDER OF EACH HOUR. FOR THE WONDER OF EACH HOUR.

Then two friends shook hands, and the hour was over. People began speaking.

In the space of the hour, my father had thought over and over Jesus' last meals before his death, and what those meals meant about community, suffering, and service. His reflections opened me to new ways of thinking about Jesus, his personhood, the way he would have wanted one last year with his friends before death.

Martin's mind, too, had struggled through the bustle of thoughts to grasp one phrase, from Julianne of Norwich: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

For the wonder of each hour. Jesus eating with his friends. All shall be well.

After Meeting all the Friends wandered into the other room and we drank tea and ate pastry. One fellow who had just returned from Venezuela where he studied harp and sustainable agriculture plucked a beautiful melody on a colorful harp. The chap with bare feet let Elspeth toddle around with his flashlight while he explained his work to us--how he refurbishes bikes for the poor and works toward alternative, renewable transportation. Also there was talk of college English, the venerable Bede and the concept of time in the Middle Ages. . .The fellow put on tire-scrap sandals and took off on his recumbent bike. We watched him pedal down the road and then we piled back in our car and drove the long way back through the green hills.

I think we'll go back.

All shall be well.