All is Meeting

Weekly Musings – “All is Meeting”
J. Sweeney
03/31/08

Yesterday I went to Meeting again. This morning, at work, I attended our school weekly chapel service. Chapel service, with its strong similarity to the Catholic mass, has been a challenge for me to attend in recent months without strong feelings of anger. Today was easier.

The difference today was that I treated the man on the stage (altar) as a Friend rising to speak in what is becoming my broader meeting. I am not an expert on the Friends Meeting, but I am the expert on my experience of the Friends Meeting. Therefore, I will describe it a bit and perhaps you will find it useful in your own journey.

A Meeting is a time for communal worship characterized by a period of silent contemplation often followed by one or several of those attending rising to speak. Speakers are not restricted by topic though they usually offer some personal anecdote or insight related to the values of tolerance, simplicity, peace, or compassion. There is no priest, or clergy. There is now formal recitation of faith. If you have never been, the closest analogy from our culture is the circle around a fire with people sitting quietly and sometimes saying something and then sitting quietly again.

I sat yesterday by a window and gazed out upon the pasture behind the Meetinghouse. While my eyes and mind were soothed by this bucolic view of nature, my spirit expanded to consider forgiveness and gentleness of spirit. In my meditations, I lingered on the challenge of self versus unity. In our culture, the rugged individual is celebrated. That the concept of individual is mainly an illusion is not celebrated. However, when we let go of the illusion of self, our divine selves emerge and this more expansive self, who can be neither harmed nor helped, has nothing to offer but perfect love.

Various Friends rose to speak. One asked for a specific poem to be read at his memorial service.

“Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I did not die.” – Mary Frye

I had something to contribute, but I held back and did not stand. I am always a bit too ready to add my two cents and Meeting has become a place that challenges me to stay silent and listen to others. So, I passed on speaking.

The poem coincided beautifully with what I was contemplating. It is about the expanding of self into the ego-less reality of our deep unity.

Next, another Friend arose and spoke about holistic thinking and peace. The Friends are firmly committed to non-violence. Perhaps some day I will join them in this belief, but I am not there yet.

I am committed to forgiveness, at least to learning how.

Whether real or imagined there are wrongs from my past that I have yet to forgive. People that the memory of whom wound me.

Yet, I found in my meditation that by letting go of Joe, and taking on the larger nature of the divine, the difference between them and I melted and forgiveness became easier. We are all broken vessels for the light within. Imperfect dancers of a perfect mover. By meditating on this, broken quality and our deeper nature my mind moved toward forgiveness. I am finding this is different from the say of “I forgive”. It is different from the forgetting of grievances.

Forgiveness is a return to the state of compassion and love temporarily lost when we perceive harm from another.

I left the Meeting yesterday calm and at peace. I was not finished my journey but had made another step in the long walk toward who I would like to be.

I debated going to Chapel this morning. The last time I attended, the good state from Meeting was disrupted and since I take turns watching the girls on Sunday mornings so that Ali can attend her service for worship I knew I would not be back to the Friends for two weeks. So, I was reluctant to go this time and lose what had taken me several hours of work to gain.

I went to Chapel because I am a part of this community at the school. I went because I want to be at ease once more with the symbols and rituals of my youth. I went with trepidation.

The priest gave a homily calling us back to the Acts of the Apostles and especially to the call for community. It was hard not to see him as a man on an altar lecturing to followers. But, I chose to see him as a friend rising to speak as the spirit moved him.

This choice to see the world as a broader meeting is enticing. Each person we meet becomes a brother or sister, a distinct broken vessel for the divine light. Hidden within each of them is that deeper reality, our unity. Forgiveness is our challenge. We must forgive us and them our broken-ness. We must sit quietly with the challenge of the truth that all is meeting.