Especially for Newcomers
Meeting for Worship – a description
“Silent Worship and Quaker Values” – a pamphlet
Introducing Olympia Friends Meeting
Meeting for Worship
The spiritual center of Olympia Friends Meeting is in its Meeting for Worship. Meeting for Worship takes place on the basis of silence, and is unprogrammed. We gather, still our minds, open our hearts, and settle into a reverent and expectant silence to wait upon the Light. We believe that in this opening of our hearts to the Spirit, we are contributing to the common worship of all present, as well as to our own renewal. We have no minister, as we believe the Light is directly available to all, and all may minister. This time may pass in silence, or individuals may be moved to speak briefly out of the silence. Leaving a space of time between each person speaking allows the ministry of each to be respectfully heard.
Meeting ends after an hour, when a designated Friend shakes hands with a neighbor. Introductions and announcements are followed by a social time with refreshments.
Children
Our children are an important part of Friends Meeting. They join us for the first fifteen minutes of Meeting for Worship, then are led out for the children’s program, with childcare for the youngest.
Who attends?
Olympia Friends Meeting is part of the liberal, unprogrammed branch of Quakerism. All who might find the Quaker Meeting for Worship helpful in their spiritual search are welcome. We come from a wide variety of religious backgrounds; most of us were not raised as Quakers. Although the roots of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) are in Christianity, some individual Friends do not call themselves Christians. Today’s Friends are very comfortable with the wide range of beliefs in any one Quaker meeting.
The Meeting welcomes lesbians, gay men, and non-traditional families.
If you have never been to a Quaker meeting before, do not expect to find women wearing bonnets or men dressed like the guy on the Quaker Oats box!
What are Quaker testimonies?
The emphasis in Quaker spiritual life is on service and concern for others rather than salvation. Instead of a creed, Quakers write queries that help us reflect on our values and actions. Rather than emphasizing beliefs, Friends seek truth through experience throughout their lifetimes. Friends speak of “that of God” in everyone, and strive to reach it. Quaker testimonies of peace, equality, simplicity, integrity flow from our faith. Thus Quakers respect the sanctity of all human beings and the equality of women and men, value diversity in opinions and lifestyles, and oppose all kinds of violence while seeking non-violent solutions to conflict.
Meeting events
On the first Sunday of the month, the meeting holds a potluck breakfast at 9 a.m. at the meetinghouse. Local Quaker meetings are called “monthly meetings” because they gather once a month to conduct business. The second Sunday of each month, Meeting for Business is held starting around 11:30 a.m., guided by the meeting’s clerk.
On the third Sunday of each month, a query is read that stimulates sharing during Meeting for Worship.
Periodically, there are special presentations or discussions held after Meeting for Worship. One of the better ways to come to know the Quakers is to join one of the many small discussion groups. Dates and times are announced in the Newsletter, and all are welcome.
Meetinghouse
Olympia Friends Meeting’s meetinghouse is at the corner of 2nd Ave. and B St. in Tumwater, where we have been since 1991. The building housed other denominations previously, and is one of the oldest church buildings in the state of Washington. Built in 1872, it is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Meeting for Worship - A Description
Here is how one Quaker meeting describes Meeting for Worship:
We welcome you to Meeting for Worship and trust that you may find here a source of help and strength, just as your presence will strengthen us.
To those not familiar with Quakerism or with our manner of worship, it may at first seem strange that upon gathering at the appointed time we sit in silence, that there is no appointed minister or programmed service, and that we take no offering.
We have no sacraments or rituals because all living is to us a sacrament. We have no paid ministers because each of us should share in the responsibility of ministry. We have no prepared prayers because our unspoken prayers are a direct communion with the infinite. We worship in a living silence where dwells the eternal presence of God.
God is, to us, not a far-off, unapproachable being, but a loving presence. Every human soul is akin to the Divine and therefore every person may in some degree understand Divine Will and respond to it as Jesus, the prophets and devout men and women of all times have done. But to attain this understanding calls for definite action on our part.
Therefore, we gather in silence to seek together a fuller knowledge of that Will and an understanding of its practical outcome for our lives. In silence we wait that God may speak; we endeavor to yield ourselves up to the Divine Will and to come into harmony with the great spiritual force of the Universe. Worship is not dependent on the outward actions on any one person, but flows through the meeting from the time the group settles into silence.
A handshake terminates the period of worship.
Effective worship requires an earnest effort from all of us to bring a sense of oneness into the Meeting. We should all explore the “inner chambers” of our own souls. Frequently we become conscious of a Presence pervading the meeting. The silence may become eloquent or the impulse to share a thought may compel one of us to rise and express a message or a vocal prayer.
In a Friends Meeting anyone who feels called to speak may do so. It is well to remember, however, that the basis of our worship is silence, and that the spoken messages should be brief and of a spiritual nature, not deliberately argumentative or contentious. It is not uncommon for a meeting for worship to be completely silent, and such a meeting may give worshippers a special feeling of participation and spiritual uplift.
In this bustling world of ours, there are far too few chances for calm meditation, for sane thinking or for attaining a spiritual vantage point from which to view life in a better perspective. We are reminded of the words of the Quaker poet, Whittier:
And so, I find it well to come
For deeper rest to this still room,
For here the habit of the soul
Feels less the outer world’s control;
The strength of mutual purpose pleads
More earnestly our common needs
And from the silence multiplied
By these still forms on either side,
The world that time and sense have known
Falls off and leaves us God alone.
--from “Quaker Worship, An Introduction”, State College Friends Meeting, Pennsylvania
