Fairfield, Iowa’s Meditator Quakers..
A history of Ff’s contemporary silent Quaker meetings.
Quaker, TM & Eastern thought— integrated
Published in the
Friends Journal
Dear Editors;
Your July 2003 'Welcome to Newcomers' article in Friends Journal
came in good timing as good food for thought. I live in a community
where several of us have sat on occasion and worshipped as Friends.
In our town we have several experienced Quakers. Some Earlham
College grads. Some Eastern birth-rights who went to Friends schools
out there. Some Midwest birth-rights. Some Scattergood Friends.
Also a few convinced Friends who were in Meetings elsewhere at other
times. In the last 25-30 years in our little town occasionally we
have met but nothing as far as having a regular Friends
Meeting.
Following after the vocations of our different lives we
are 'fallen between-the-cracks-friends' as Teddy Milne describes in
her Friends Journal article on membership. I believe that all of us
here, whether formerly affiliated as Quakers or not, would claim our
religious or spiritual affiliation as Quaker, regardless. Though none of us are
members of organized formal Friends Meetings otherwise.
Hence, when we do meet it is truly as friends pursuing a
corporate practice of sitting together in a powerful silence. When
we do meet it is in common as with the Quaker Practice
suggested by Esther Greenleaf Murer in the Friends Journal on 'Why
Come to Meeting' on time? Coming to Meeting, as in the corporate
nature of our peculiar Quaker worship.
For those of us as Friends living here in this little
Iowa town known for its thousands of Transcendental Meditators,
mostly our Quaker practice as Friends we have absorbed into a larger
testimony of a group practice of meditation with a larger activist
endeavor. In itself that is an endeavor of corporate practice of
sitting in cultivated silence towards a so called 'Field Effect' of a collective world spiritual
peace. Living in our 'meditating' community here as Friends we each
recognize it experientially as Quaker in form though it has been part
of another larger experiment incorporating aspects of Quaker method
of sitting in group, on large scale.
For years and now for decades in Fairfield, Iowa we have had group
meditations of many hundreds people everyday and sometimes thousands,
with many of us spending an hour and a half to three or four or five
hours a day silently meditating in group. It has been a very
powerful corporate experience spiritually for the many of those who
have pursued it. The 'weight' of it I think any of the founding
Quakers would have recognized as part of their own experience.
The experience, while I experience it as similar, does
not exactly transpose over in the terms of definitions that Quaker
authors like Davies or Knowles in their Journal article would like.
It is much more simple and powerful in nature; more like Marty Grundy
in her 'Sit Thee Here' article in the Journal . I know weighty
Friends in the same way that I know weighty 'meditators' from our
community here. Weighty in the 'throw-power' of their cultivated
silence. I really appreciate the way that Marty Grundy catches the
gravity of this weight in her words. It is a very abstract thing but
Marty catches it:
[snip] " But the older Friend did much more. As she settled into
worship, slipping into that familiar deep openness to God's Spirit,
she silently drew the visitor with her.
Many Friends have had the precious experience of sitting
near a weighty Friend and being drawn by that Friend's experience
into a deeper, more prayerful place." And then the next two
paragraphs enlarging on this.
This weightiness comes in time from just doing it through
time in practice. It becomes its own standard of weight in
experience.
Now, recently as aspects of the larger Transcendental Meditation (TM) group
participation here in this town have become less inclusive, the
larger group meditation practice has dwindled in scope. The several
of us old-Quakers who have been active in the larger community group
meditations have been exploring a refuge in the tradition of our old
Quaker practice that is without the exclusive trappings of our
community 'meditation' TM organization.
Separations are nothing new even to Quaker Meetings also
along the same lines: cultivated experiential practitioners
(conservatives) on the one hand and then those dogmatic cultist mood-
makers of faith (evangelicals) on the other. I see this even still within
the range of so-called conservatives in your pages of the Friends Journal.
There seems an evident split of idea about Quakerism. Whether
Friends exclusively are those who must also believe in all the
testimonies or if they are first Quakers who worship in meeting and then
maybe are lead to testimonies, or not. Is it all or nothing to be a member
Quaker? Can there be a place for those who just come for worship and
possibly have an intense experience at that without having to also
become an activist on every social issue also? What is minimally
fundamental here? Myself, I look to the words of the primitive
Quakers for those answers, for original intent. That is always
clarifying and tempering.
Where I live, in a quiet reaction which seeks a refuge
from forming dogma, poor administration, and bad behavior in the TM
organization several of us as old Friends have begun to sit together again
more regularly in Quaker Meeting. As we have gathered month by month
for the last half year or more, we have come simply as worshipping
Friends, without agenda and without burden of other Quaker testimony
other than to sit together in worship as method, primitive in form.
We have gathered some appropriate quotes from founding Quakers for
reference to lead us in our practice. Then too we draw on our
experience as Friends.
Together in a corporate practice it has been very
satisfying spiritually in experience. We pick a Sunday every month
that works and meet in homes for Quaker worship without a clerk. The
meetings have easily happened between friends. For some time now,
The corporate practice has progressed in to weekly Friends Meeting as
Quakers.
Following your July Friend’s Journal Issue about membership, I felt you
might enjoy learning of these experiences. We live in an area of
Iowa where there were once many un-programmed Quaker Meetings in the
19th Century. As near as I can figure there probably have not been
un-programmed meetings in the Southeast corner of Iowa since around
the turn of the 20th Century.
I do not see that we will form a Meeting though we will
continue to meet in practice of worship as Quakers. In time there
may be the possibility of forming a Meeting. For now there is not a
large affinity with everything else that is Society of Friends that
might also not also be necessarily relevant to us as individuals for now.
In many ways we are already working on our own activisms of issues and testimony.
I would say that this generally is a pretty 'activist' group of
people, each in their own right. However, for now, First things
first. The first thing here seems to be more about turning on the
light.
Sincerely,
Doug Hamilton
Fairfield, Iowa
The Quaker Group Meditation:
Meeting for Worship, 17th Century. Entering into this form of worship.
“… the first that enters into the place of your meeting, be not careless, nor wander up and down either in body or mind, but innocently sit down in some place and turn in thy mind to the Light, and wait upon God simply, as if none were present but the Lord, and here thou art strong. When the next that come in, let them in simplicity and heart sit down and turn to the same Light, and wait in the Spirit, and so all the rest coming in fear of the Lord sit down in pure stillness and silence of all flesh, and wait in the Light. A few that are thus gathered by the arm of the Lord into the unity of the Spirit, this is a sweet and precious meeting in which all are met with the Lord…. Those who are brought to a pure, still waiting on God in the Spirit are come nearer to God than words are… though not a word be spoken to the hearing of the ear. In such a meeting where the presence and power of God is felt, there will be an unwillingness to part asunder, being ready to say in yourselves, it is good to be here, and this is the end of all words and writings, to bring people to the eternal living word.” -1660
-Alexander Parker, Letters of Early Friends, ed. A.R. Barclay (London; Darton and Harvey, 1841), pp. 365-66. Alexander Parker was a close companion of George Fox.
Creating Opportunity..
Sharing the Silent Meeting, 2016
'The 5pm Weekday Quaker Meeting',
in the 2016 Presidential Election Cycle:
As a type of report this was shared as publishing with a larger Facebook Quaker group..
As a service project back in the months of the 2016 presidential election whence people were so generally aggravated
we featured a daily Quaker ‘opportunity meeting’ in a downtown commercial location where people could just come in and sit. As those months went by we were getting 20 and 30 people coming at 5pm to sit with the group.
By that experience several weekday attenders became convinced and are attending at the weekly Quaker Meeting that includes a rich potluck lunch following the silent meeting.
Both by email invite and taped On the door to the daily meeting where people entered this poster was posted as a simple heads-up to this practice…
The 5pm Weekday Group Meditation
This is an open unprogrammed silence-based meditative experience
that will last for about an hour.
At 51 North Court Street, Fairfield, Iowa
For Weekdays 5pm unto Election Day.
Like the Quaker method
of practicing meditation,
as Quakers we have
no formal creed
no paid ministers
no preaching
no rites
and,
speaking during this collective practice only as to where
speaking out improves upon the silence of the meeting.
Ours is a silence-based
corporate spiritual practice.
This is an old practice.
Ours is a quiet practice,
you are welcome to come in and sit down in silence with us and practice your meditation method as your practice is not disruptive of our own silent practice.
The 5pm Weekday Group Meditation
is a service project of a Fairfield Iowa Society of Meditating Friends (Quakers)
Facebook Replies...
amazing! Thanks for sharing. The moniker "opportunity meeting " is ideal and encapsulates so much!
Was the location inside a store or restaurant, or outside?
Answering:
Our town has a traditional downtown square with commercial buildings facing. We arranged with a friendly building owner for use of his building for this project. He liked the idea and was supportive. It was a street level direct sidewalk entry space that we arranged with chairs to our use.
I appreciate that some legalistic minded Friends can get anxious in a proprietary way about instruction as to what Friends may ‘do’ as Quaker meeting - that its not ‘meditation’ but a waiting practice, etc.- but we wrote the notice to be open handed and clear for people to just come in and experience the stillness of the meeting as it was ongoing, but also in particular that this time was not just a Berkley free-speech corner. (Of course conversation, leadings, testimony, and politics would follow happening after the time as people would leave).
A long time ago I visited in the town of Encinitas, California where there is a center of the Yogananda SRF group. While out there I went to their scheduled group meditations. Theirs was a large group of silent practiced meditators who live in their area. These are deep meditators, theirs is clearly a ‘gathered’ meeting in that old Quaker way..
In their brochure they had a simple inviting statement clearly welcoming that said while theirs was a silent practice that others were welcome there to also practice their own silent meditations so long as the practice was not interrupting to the larger group.
For our own eclectic town we went with that open welcome also in a direct simple kind of statement too. It worked quite well in clearly guiding a public space. You can see above how we crafted the notice.
We used the statement simply on the door and with promoting the time on social media and buying some classified ad space about the “Weekday 5pm Silent Meditation”.
The exercise was very much in the tradition of calling ‘opportunity meetings’ of our Quaker elders traveling around sitting with folks.
We will probably make a run at this again (in 2020) as a project after winter goes and in the summer whence the political parties make their conventions.
/
Of historic moment..
14 March 2020
No Quaker meeting dear Friends…
Hi Friends,
Well, the time has come to suspend our weekly meetings for a while. It really pains me…deeply…to admit the necessity of this. But now it seems the most responsible thing to do to now stay close to home and take care of our health. Even though these are the early days of this situation…it is the time we have most power to effect its course! Most of us are in the ‘vulnerable demographic’ for a severe response to this disease…and some of us especially so. Protection is an act of love. Let’s be sure to keep tabs on each other…phone, email, text…even Facebook serves a greater purpose now…to keep the connections flowing.
As we learn more about this virus it does seem to be super infectious and be so even if the ‘carrier’ is asymptomatic. Everyone is potentially an unwitting vector for this sort of disease… Minimize your social exposures to the most necessary, wash your hands, stay hydrated and rest deeply. Go for walks/spend time in Nature…She is the great balm and healer. Do those projects you have ‘longed to have time for’.
This is the ‘golden opportunity’ in this time. Settle deeply into your Self and align your awareness to that which abides in all things. As Friends we know this so well.
Doug and I will be sitting at 10:30am on Sunday and will be connecting to all of you in Love, Appreciation and Confidence in Divine. Please join us in Spirit!
Again, the more attentive we are to this sort of self-limiting social movement/exposure the greater the chance this virus will run its course with lesser impact!
In love and all blessings to each of you and all the world, Jennifer and Doug
//
“The Peace of Wild Things”
Listen
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
/
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/385494
/
'Corporate': pertaining to a united group, as of persons: the corporate good. united or combined into one. corporative.