On being a Quaker Today most Friends, also known as Quakers, entered the Society of Friends as young adults or in later life. The first visit to the silent meeting is, for some, a profound experience. It may be followed by a period, even of years, of coming to a decision to commit to membership. Membership involves duties, for there is no clergy, but this discipline is self-imposed and for most a light burden. Here are some messages from Quakers in our area or from long ago on what living as Quaker has meant to them.

Friends today understand what Robert Barclay described, writing three hundred years ago, around 1676: "For when I came into the silent assemblies of God's people I felt a secret power among them which touched my heart: and as I gave way unto it I found the evil weakening in me and the good raised up; and so I became thus knit and united unto them...."

A central outcome of the Quaker search for divine guidance may be social action seeking to "live in the life and power that taketh away the occasion of war" and to be ready to meet the needs of the sufferers and victims in our society. This writer responds to that call: I came into the Society of Friends a half century ago, in part because of my deep concerns for peace after the atomic bomb. I felt at home then, and still do now, with Friends' practical and optimistic view that human problems have solutions and that we had best seek divine guidance and then get right on with what needs to be done. Thus we address issues of our time such as peace, prisoners rights, race, violence, and other remediable meannesses.

There are four levels of community in Quaker organization: the weekly worship which includes Sunday school and discussion in most meeting, the Monthly Meeting which is the primary community of Friends in a place and which meets for its group decisions each month, the Quarterly Meeting, which is a regional association (here in north central Pennsylvania ours is the Upper Susquehanna Quarter), and the larger association which meets each year, for us the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting which hold major meetings each year. Here an experienced member speaks: "Over the years I've come to appreciate so much the Meeting as community, the group of local Quakers who have committed themselves to this calling and may spend half their lives together. Meetings are, ideally, intended to help each participant along in life-long spiritual development; indeed one cannot experience what it is to be a "Friend" without being a part of a meeting. Of course with no clergy we must try deliberately to take care of each other and be supportive in ministry to one another. We have fun together too, with deep discussions, singing, camping, and great potluck meals!

Friends believe so profoundly that some Voice speaks to each directly that many are wary of human teachings. Thus we have no creed and may not seem to be spending much time discussing theology. The message below is not an official statement of belief but reflects one Friend's insights: "About God: I have been thinking about God, and what that word means and does not mean. For a long time I avoided that Name altogether because I did not like to use a word with such serious implications unless I knew what it meant. Now, we Friends don't have a creed and we try not to impose a belief on anyone, so I'm not writing here about any official definitions, just what I know for me. Friends fear locking each other into someone else's belief, saying "The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life." .

"What I do know and believe is that I feel as certain as I'm certain that the sky is blue that there is that of the divine in every person. Sometimes it's well hidden, but its there, a "wee spark" one may fan to light, as in the children's story "Susan and the Witch." What I do also know and recognize is that there's an inner voice which speaks as clearly and briefly to me as a message on the answering machine, sort of giving me a silent shove -"Go and do...." Others describe the same and Quakers work under the assumption that this push or "leading" is essential when beginning a major task. Those leadings and that sense of the divine in others and myself, and certainly in nature, are about all I can even sense about the divine. And I try to remember that the concept of the divinity, God, is something we can probably never know..

I think of it as everywhere, a vast thought, invisible, and not to be measured, yet all around us and in us, in the complexity and wonder of life.