Louisville Process Theology Network

About Quaker Prayer

"Worship is the wrong word. With its definition of 'homage or service paid to a deity ... adoration',  it is alien to what I experience in a Meeting for Worship, where I open my sefl to the living spirit, that of God, which dwells within me, as well as within everyone else.

This is an exercise not in homage but in waiting and listening, allowing the good to rise up, overwhelming that which is unworthy. A good Meeting for Worship is a triumph of love over evil, of light over darkness, of illumination over confusion. My ability to worship comes and goes. When I am going through a good phase, I find that I can drop quickly into the stillness, reaching a deep place of sensitive waiting within minutes.

This is more likely to occur when I am engaged in a discipline of worship, with frequent practice of inner stillness as well as regular attendance at Meeting for Worship. Worship, like most things, benefits from regular practice. When I find myself not moving quickly into depth in this way, I often find words and phrases from poetry or from the Bible through my mind. 'Be still, and know, that I am God... Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God... Teach me strong and teach me true, what to say and what to do...'

I am also helped at these times by a sense of what I would call witness rather than worship, where I experience a strong sense fo continuity with those Quakers throughout the centuries who have gone before me, and those Christians in the millennia before that, all striving for knowledge of and an obedience to the will of God.

I feel caught up in this stream and compelled to play my role in my time, however, small it may be. This can center me and lead me to a deep place of worship."

From page 19 of the pamphlet "Twelve Quakers and Worship" published by the Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.