Yesterday was quite the day for me. I went to three different “worship” services of three different groups of Christians. It was great to be surrounded by so many people seeking to become connected to the divine. Each experience was beautiful in its own way, but I want to talk about the one that affected me most yesterday, and that was my experience at the Friends Meeting, a group commonly known as the Quakers.
What was so amazing? Firstly, I really felt the Holy Spirit’s presence there. There were no scripture readings, no music, and no pastor or sermon, but there were two amazing things of beauty.
First, there was silence. And lots of it! How often do you sit in silence for 20 minutes, as we did to begin the Meeting? How often do you sit in silence to reflect on what has just been spoken? In many churches, you are lucky to receive 30 seconds to contemplate a sermon after it is delivered. Having a chance to be totally present is something I haven’t done in a long, long time, if ever.
Second, there were beautiful words of testimony and hope that made me think on and contemplate God. One man spoke of Quaker children who went (were forced to go) to Meeting growing up but never came back, mentioning his own son, now 41, as well as people like Dan Boone and Annie Oakley. But within that, he found hope, and that was something special for me to think about and chew on.
He found his hope in the realization that what he and others in the Society of Friends want most is for each to be led by the Spirit. For some that might mean going to Meeting, but maybe for many others it means something else. How does the Spirit move? Where will the Spirit lead? Must it always be continued participation in one’s current/first religious/faith tradition?
I’m close to finishing the book Living Buddha, Living Christ, in which the author, Thich Nhat Hanh does some comparative study of Buddhism and Christianity and how they overlap in many ways. Can one be both Christian and Buddhist? Is the same Spirit leading both Buddhist and Christians? Thich Nhat Hanh believes himself a follower of both the Buddha and of Christ. Is this possibile?
I think in our quest to label everything, we sometimes disregard the fact that different people do the same things differently. Does this happen in religion, too? I think one might be able to say that within a certain religion, such as Christianity, enough is similar to make things pretty much the same, but how much “overlap” or “similarity” must one find to make things “pretty much the same?” As I seek to be led by the Spirit, these are some of the questions I ask.