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> Why don’t we describe the last religious service
> we attended and then explain what was religious
> about it?

For those of you who have been reading along, you know I’m a Quaker. Yesterday at meeting for worship, I was a greeter. We meet in an old mansion on Beacon Hill, just around the corner from the UUA offices. (The house was given to “the Quakers” by a stranger in the forties or fifties. It’s now a residential community of about 20 as well as housing Beacon Hill Friends Meeting.) Because of the nature of the building, greeters stay near the (locked) door to open it in addition to welcoming people as they come in.

I propped the door open and sat on the sill to welcome late arrivals. Two couples came, and with whispered greetings I directed them to the parlor to wait for the second seating. (We ask late arrivals to wait and go in 15 minutes into meeting for worship, when the children and young people come out for First Day School.) When they went in to meeting, I continued to sit on the doorsill in case there were any really late arrivals (there was one). Even with interior doors open, it was impossible to hear any spoken messages, although I could tell there were two or three very near the end of the hour.

So on a beautiful, sunny day with a light breeze, I sat in the doorway sharing a sense of stillness and purpose with those gathered inside, until the meeting ended (with a traditional handshake for those inside), when I stepped inside for announcements and introductions.

I’d like to make a distinction between a “religious service” and an occasion when worship occurs. Friends would say that you can have a meeting for worship but that doesn’t guarantee that worship will occur; likewise, Quakers believe worship can occur anywhere, at any time.

It was religious in the sense of a religious service:
–by definition (an appointed meeting for worship within the Quaker tradition)
–by intention (those present aspired to an experience of the divine)
–by practice (it was rooted in and fostered a sense of connection; the service I was providing, though mundane, was essential in allowing people to connect).

My actual experience was also religious in the sense of worshiping (which I was not sure would be the case):
–by intent (I hoped that even sitting on the stoop I would feel a sense of connection to God and to the worshipers inside)
–by achievement (It was lovely. What a reminder of the goodness and fullness of life to sit quietly in enjoyment and to truly see a slice of the world. It was an occasion of feeling the numinous. It was atypical of my experience of Quaker worship in that the stimulus of the feeling was the external loveliness; usually, sitting in the meeting room, my attention is inwardly focused unless someone speaks. I felt a modest connection to those inside.)

One of the ways I think about spiritual autobiography is in terms of spiritual formation: what has shaped the person I am, and what has shaped my spiritual life?

Only in the last couple of years have I come to realize how a particular aspect of my early life has shaped my spirituality: *Where* has shaped me.

I was born and raised in an agricultural area created from and surrounded by desert. (For inquiring minds, that would be Brawley, in Imperial County, California, about 100 miles east of San Diego and about 30 miles north of Mexico. It’s been in the news in the last year as part of a water dispute over the Colorado River involving several Western states and the federal government.)

From my upbringing, I learned that the world is a beautiful and harsh place. I learned the beauty of spareness and silence. I learned that there are certain realities of the world that must be accommodated, or there will be repercussions, up to and including death. I learned that human existence is created and made possible by hard work, cooperation, and large-scale manipulation of the natural world.

Wow! Ever since I moved to Pennsylvania, I’ve realized the desert still lives in me as an aesthetic. (Oh, those nasty, quaint country lanes in spring, overhung by that dense, brilliant green! You can’t see the bones of anything; you can’t see the contours of the landscape; you can’t see the sky!) New England countrysides are sometimes better, because the woods are less dense.

But I’m shocked to consider the other ways in which my early life shapes my response to the world in unseen ways. For instance, the desert, which is beautiful and loved as my native home, is utterly indifferent, indeed hostile, to human life. Is it any wonder that I don’t have any deep struggle to accept metaphors of the divine that are violent to human life or capricious? Do I actually believe in a God like that? Not really. (I think.... maybe I’ll find out by doing BYOT!) I certainly don’t *want* to believe in a God like that.

But it’s become clear that there may be things under the surface worth examining.

In a more traditional “spiritual autobiography” vein, here’s a link to something I’ve written to describe a particular part of my religious life. In the Religious Society of Friends, there was a traditional practice, now widely abandoned, of recognizing ministers and acknowledging elders. “Eldering” came to have the bad connotation of telling someone how they were doing something wrong. There’s a growing movement among liberal Friends to reclaim the role of elder as spiritual nurturer of ministers and of meeting communities.

eldering stories