
Authorship attributed to Joyce Munro.
“Am I a Quaker? I don’t know what I should be doing in worship. I don’t know what I would be signing up for if I wanted to be a member here.”
Allison Ramsey-Henry echoes the energy that draws 25 older folks and 12 younger ones on a rainy Saturday, April 12, to crowd the Unami Monthly meetinghouse for a four-hour intensive called Quakerism 101.
Other questions flow out. “I’m interested in quaking,” Chris Fantozzi says.
“What are the rules, often unspoken about worship, decisions, truth?”
“What if I’m a non-theist?”
“What about Quakers and kids?”
“What’s the meaning of Life?”
Melanie Douty-Snipes and Jonathan Snipes, friends of Mo Nolan and Friends from Falsington Monthly Meeting, have come to field our questions.
Why do you come to Unami?
The day begins with “This little light of mine.” Then we sing “This Pretty Planet” by Tom Chapin. “Your garden, your harbor, your holy place” circles round and round in voices mostly unused to singing here. We sound nice together.
The younger ones leave for their own Quakerism 101 led by Kristin Simmons and Daniel Doan, leaders from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Youth program. Who are here free of charge! From the expansive resources that are that larger Quaker structure. Colton Musselman, a local high school senior, is here as big bro.
“We’re all on a spiritual journey together,” Melanie says to introduce the first exercise in the meeting room: “Why do you come to Unami Meeting?”
Individuals gather in twos to answer that. Allie Herb—mother and student and former yoga instructor—tells her partner that she comes to hold the pieces of her life together. “It’s almost like a drink of water. I am so thirsty for the quiet.”
“We live in trying times,” Jonathan says reassuringly. “But that’s always been true for us. From our earliest beginnings, there’s been dissent, and wrestling with questions of power and structure.” He smiles. “And we Quakers have a history of periods of ease and periods of struggle.”
The burning and the bright
Who were they—those earliest Friends?
Answer: George Fox was a depressed young man seeking something to ground himself, Jonathan says. Fox disrupted religious services in churches with his outspokenness and actions until it dawned on him one day: The Jesus Christ of the Bible is a mirror for what courses in him,
what these early Friends began to call the Inward Christ. That spirit and power lives among us, that power and spirit is available to us all the time, to everyone. Mo pipes up: “We’re all apostles!”
It was a trying time full of creative energy. An energy that created equals. Elizabeth Bathurst, in her 20’s in the 1670s reading the Bible, came to a complementary conclusion: The Bible is not the Truth but rather a record of the Truth, written in Time by human beings. It points to the Truth.
That bit of history recalls what hangs in Unami’s library: the poster of a knotty tree made by Geoffrey Kaiser, one of Unami’s founders. The tree shows the splits that happened in the 19th century in the United States and that still caricature Quaker groups today.
These are mainly two groups: “unprogrammed” and “programmed.” Historically the unprogrammed tended to be country mice sitting in silent worship, waiting on messages spoken and unspoken. The programmed were the “more overtly Bible-oriented,” Jonathan says, and the city mice. To this, Nadeen McShane observes: “If Quakers are seekers seeking and seeking, and if you disagree with another seeker seeking and seeking, then you can see that there would be splits!”
So what’s the why and how of silent worship?
Melanie presents a list of our unexpressed hopes for what we want to experience when we gather together. Love. Peace. Awe and Wonder. Wholeness. Connection. Humility. Healing. Clarity. Grounding. “It’s not a meeting for thinking,” she says (and some of us inwardly sigh for we are thinkers).
“Worship can start with shifting our attention, with every breath, remembering we are alive.”
How to do that?
A few acknowledge that they begin by repeating the Hail Marys of their former religious tradition.
“I’m happy to be here. I begin to count my blessings,” says Cheryl Knight. One by one. Nancy Donnelly uses visual images such as a river or a garden.
Meredith Walters starts with the Beetles song, “I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in” and follows the hole down to the wet place and there, asks herself: Is this Fate/God or Free Will? Wow.
Russell Frey says that learning silent worship is “almost like developing a muscle.”
Melanie leads the group in a meditation that she’s been using recently. Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10. She says each word slowly aloud and then retracts a word one by one. In this way, each phrase becomes a distinctly different doorway. Be still and know that I am. . . a moment to look into the face of the I outside or the I inside. Be still and know that. . . a moment to experience the spaciousness of stillness. Be. . . .
Sometimes, the shift of attention doesn’t occur. But it may be happening to someone else and result in a message that brings about a dawning in the moment, a week later, another time.
Jonathan adds another bit of Quaker history. Silent worship was not the invention of George Fox. He came to it through Elizabeth Hutten, who in her 50s or 60s was leading a group gathering in silence. They called themselves the Seekers. Jonathan holds up a Faith and Practice and reads from it. To believe that there is Light in every person paved the way for so many social movements, he says.
And then there’s lunch.
Sumptuous collation. Vegan cream of cauliflower soup by Rob Herb, who always brings enough to feed a biblical 5000! Pea shoot with watermelon radish salad by Becca Munro. So much high decibel conversation. So much weaving in and out of children, helping themselves to sweetness.
How to know if you have something to say in worship?
“I’ve been attending Quaker meeting for 18 years,” Jenn Reimels says, “and I’ve had the thought: ‘you should say that,’ but physically I couldn’t say it.” She’s just back from a retreat at Pendle Hill and is finding her voice!
Jonathan nods and says, “In the old days, if you’d been given a message and didn’t share it, you were being selfish and wasting the spirit!”
Individuals offer up their experiences of having a message: “I don’t know how I know, except that I have to say what I have to say.”
“There is nothing like you. Worship is an opportunity for you to experience and nurture your unique spirit,” Melanie says. “And being Friends is also an opportunity to practice spiritual friendship.”
At the end of the day, one person thanking Worship and Ministry committee (Jenn, Mo, Becca, and Nadeen) for planning this event says, “I learned so much. I didn’t think you could speak in meeting unless you were a member.” Ouch.
What’s next?
There’s Joyce Moore’s story of her young son long ago in silent meeting shouting out that he wanted to go home; embarrassed, she left the meeting, and what followed were messages rich in the meaning of home. Children have messages: let us hear them.
Quakerism suggests a dance of process. To stand or not to stand when speaking? What about voices that crack or want to sing? How do we live the fracturing and the pounding of he who shall not be named? And in spite of and because, create “a garden. . . a harbor. . .a holy place” for each other? In a world of so many needs?
–Joyce Munro, April 16, 2025