Entering the Experience Worship at Quaker Meadow
Entering the Experience
Worship at Quaker Meadow
of God’s people, I felt a secret power among them, which touched my heart. And as I gave way to it, I found the evil in me weakening, and the good lifted up. Thus it was that I was knit into them and united with them. And I hungered more and more for the increase of this power and life until I could feel myself perfectly redeemed.
Robert Barclay
While experiences of meditation often come to the individual, they can also be experienced in communal worship. The power of Christ in a gathered community can be an awesome thing. A quickening Presence somehow breaks down the isolation of our individual lives and unites us together in ways we could never imagine nor create on our own. This is the story of one such gathering.
I had been asked to be the speaker for a college weekend gathering in California’s high Sierra Mountains. The camp name was “Quaker Meadow,” a place preserving nature’s alpine beauty—rustic by intention and all the more charming because of it.
I had been there before. My conversion (“convincement” is the Quaker term) to the way of Christ and early Christian nurture was in an evangelical Quaker context. My parents came from an eclectic background of Baptist and Church of Christ, but when they both became seriously ill and eventually died, it was the Quakers who surrounded my brothers and me with Christian concern and care. They helped me even more in an unexpected way. When the money I had so carefully tucked away for a hoped-for college education had, little by little, been used up for my mother’s medical needs, this Quaker group determined to send me to college. And they did—four years of college and three years of graduate school. As you can imagine, my debt to them was huge.
As a teenager I had gone to Quaker Meadow each July, enjoying the mountain hikes and chapel services and all-over activities of camp. Each day we had a one-hour “discipline of silence,” and it was there I learned by experience the prayer of stillness.
Oh, and something else which was not part of the regular camp program. Early each morning I would hike up a little hill overlooking the camp and a small alpine lake. It was dubbed the “Garden of Prayer” and had on one end a rough-hewn cross and on the other a sturdy, hand-built stand with a log book for any who desired to write comments or prayers. In the “garden” itself were a scattering of small boulders half buried in the earth and a covering of pine needles on the ground. Red and white firs surrounded the area. Each morning, bundled in a warm hooded parka, I would seat myself on a cold boulder and make my first stumbling efforts at prayer. I asked for my parents’ healing—it wasn’t to be. And I memorized 1 Peter 1:7: “That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (KJV). Quaker Meadow was a special place for a teenager whose parents were dying. One more thing: it was at Quaker Meadow, some forty-plus years ago now, at Inspiration Point that I asked Carolynn to be my bride.
So when the request came to speak at Quaker Meadow, I was honored to be sure. Right then I was also in the final throes of graduate doctoral work. The timing could not have been worse. Still . . . in the end I accepted the invitation. I felt enormous pressure—all of my own making—to accept. Even though I knew the feeling was unnecessary, still I felt pressured into speaking.
I kept my feelings to myself and proceeded to prepare for my speaking assignment as best I could. Several months before the retreat itself, the leaders for the gathering met together to make detailed plans. I brought outlines of my talks, determined to show those in charge how seriously I was taking my responsibilities. The leader for the evening observed that often before a planning meeting people would have a perfunctory prayer for guidance. “Instead,” he said, “I suggest that we really pray for guidance.” So this group, perhaps a dozen in number, entered into a most amazing time of worship. The entire time—perhaps an hour—was pervaded by a living silence. Scriptures were read. Prayers were offered. Songs arose spontaneously. There was a sweet spirit among us, and we knew we were experiencing “the Presence in the midst.”
Just then Bill Cathers, a veteran missionary of many years, looked directly at me (perhaps I should say he looked right through me) and asked, “Richard, are you feeling pressured to speak at this retreat?” There it was, the exact feelings I had harbored since accepting the invitation. I had been found out. Bill had seen into my soul. Perhaps more accurately, Bill had been shown the condition of my soul. His question was simple and direct and carried not a hint of condemnation or ridicule. Spoken so gently, it opened up new possibilities for me and for the entire group. In the end I was still to be the appointed speaker, but a fresh openness had seeped into my feelings about the event itself. We ended the planning meeting with a holy expectancy for what God would give us at the retreat.
Anytime a hundred and fifty college students gather together there is plenty of excitement. Soon they would be scattered in colleges and universities across the country. But for these few days they had come together for worship and fellowship. This was long before the Internet revolution, so we really were cut off from the outside world. Oh, I guess there was a telephone in the small camp office, but it was used only for emergencies. Gear was quickly tossed into rustic cabins. Greetings were given and old friendships were renewed. Dinner was served.
As evening came on we all headed over to the Quaker Meadow chapel, a building of simple beauty. The entire structure was built of lumber harvested from the campsite. The shake roof was in a steep inverted V shape in order to withstand the heavy snows of winter. The cement floor stair-stepped down to the front, which contained a large floor-to-ceiling arched window that looked out onto a pristine alpine meadow tightly surrounded by redwoods and firs. The benches were rough logs split in half so that one half of the log was for sitting and the other half served as a backrest. Quite comfortable in a hard sort of way! The chapel accommodated approximately one hundred fifty souls, so as we streamed in we filled the room comfortably. From all over we had at last come together. But we were not yet gathered together. That was yet to come.
Thomas Kelly notes that for a group to experience the Shekinah of God there needs to be some individuals who are already “. . . . In them, and from them, begins the work of worship. The spiritual devotion of a few persons . . . is needed to kindle the rest, to help those others who enter the service with tangled, harried, distraught thoughts to be melted and quieted and released and made pliant, ready for the work of God and His Real Presence.” Those planning leaders who had gathered a few months earlier were just such individuals. They came with kindled hearts, opening for all of us the gates of worship, adoration, submission and confession.
The leader for our time together was a college professor and a good friend of many years. After giving greetings he shared three words of instruction for our worship. One, that we would “center down.” Two, that we would together seek to be “gathered” into the power of God. Three, that we would not run ahead nor lag behind the guiding of the Holy Spirit, the true Leader of our worship. These three words need a little unpacking.
To center down in a Quaker context means to let go of all distractions and feelings; to become fully present to what is happening here, now; to silence our mind, which is askew with meandering thoughts, and our mouth, which is full of many words.
To be “gathered” means a breaking down of the wall between our separate personalities; a blending of our spirits and hearts together; an experiencing of the language of worship as “we” rather than “me.” George Fox counseled, “, which gathers your hearts together up to the Lord, and lets you see that ye are written on one another’s heart.”
To keep from running ahead or lagging behind the Spirit’s leading sounds straightforward enough. But it is an essential counsel if we are to balance our all-too-human tendencies toward the extremes of unbridled enthusiasm or backward reticence. In the seventeenth century William Penn admonished the friends of Jesus, “ neither to run out ahead of our guide, nor loiter behind him; since he that makes haste may miss his way, and he that stays behind may lose his guide.”
This is a desperately needed admonition for our contemporary culture. Besides, for us to truly follow such an admonition we need a spiritual attentiveness that is seldom seen today. Nor even asked of us. Robert Barclay wrote, “ the great task of one and all to wait upon God . . . in order to feel the presence of the Lord in the midst and to know a true gathering in his name according to his promise.”
The worship and planning session in preparation for this gathering gave me the freedom to have no predetermination either to speak or to remain silent. Rather, I was to be “baptized into a sense of the meeting,” as Quakers sometimes put it.
One wonderful gift of a setting such as Quaker Meadow was that time was our friend. No one had some meeting to run off to or a time clock to punch. Hence, what transpired in our worship went on through the evening. I had no watch to check the time, but today, thinking back on our experience, I imagine our worship lasted three or four hours. I was not aware of the time, but I was keenly aware of three distinct movements of the Spirit in our worship experience. I will do my best to describe these movements, but I am very much aware that in these matters words are only fragmentary approximations of the reality. The experience was ineffable and cannot be completely captured in human language.
After an initial period of uninterrupted silence, different ones from various places in the room would break out in a hymn of worship. We would all join in as best we could. I particularly noted that these were not the choruses of personal experience so popular even in that day. Rather, they were stately hymns extolling the wonder-filled goodness of God. God’s character. God’s mercy. God’s faithfulness. And more. I could see that everyone was covered in an immense sense of adoration. I watched this, astonished that college students would be so drawn in and filled with a sense of the Presence in the midst. I too was taken up into a sense of a new Life and Power covering us all. I suppose that this worship-filled singing of hymns extolling the resplendent glory of God went on for perhaps an hour or so.
Then the tenor of the worship experience changed completely. A hush fell over the group as we waited upon the Lord. Then, without human prompting of any kind, different ones would stand and speak words of confession. One after another. At times someone would rise and move over to another person in the room. Together they would speak words of forgiveness and acceptance to one another. Tears flowed. The rest of us sat quietly, reverently as this work of reconciliation went forward. We all sensed an abiding in grace and an overcoming of the spirit and power of darkness. Again, I imagine this process continued on for another hour or so, but I could not tell for time seemed suspended. Robert Barclay explains that in worship there is “ . . . while each is seeking to overcome the evil in themselves.” This we felt and this we experienced.
Then a third distinct experience began to flow over the group. Songs of praise and thanksgiving began to erupt spontaneously. We had been caught up into a vaster Life and Power, and deep joy seemed to burst forth among us. This time the songs were completely different from the first part of the worship experience. A group experience of joy and exultation and jubilation pervaded everything. As I watched the group, I considered how inappropriate these songs would have been at the beginning of our worship and how very appropriate they were now. We continued on in this way for another hour or so, and then the glory receded and the meeting was closed.
Have other experiences of this nature occurred to me since? Yes, but each time they were original and unlike the former experience. In Jesus we have a living Teacher who comes to us each time in a new and living way. Also, such experiences have been few and far between.
It is not wise for us to hanker after such heights. Worship can be fully valid when there are no thrills or flights of ecstasy. The group, just like the individual, must learn to endure spiritual weather of all kinds with serenity of soul. The heights are full of wonder, but in between those heights we may well travel together through shadow and valley and desert for months and even years. That is all part of what it means to walk with God.
Our prayers, whether individual or corporate, may seldom be filled with ecstasy. No matter. The heart oriented toward God is what is required. Karl Rahner said it well: “ of the heart and mind to God in constantly renewed acts of love.” If we do that, we will have done enough.