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The following excerpts are from Whispers of Faith: Young Friends Share Their Experience of Quakerism, which was written and edited by young Friends. The photos, from the book, are also by young Friends. It is published by Quaker Press of FGC and Quaker Books of Britain Yearly Meeting. © 2005 Quakers Uniting in Publications
by Lily Press, age 16
New York Yearly Meeting, USA
always sit in the same spot during meeting for worship. Nestled in the corner of the cherry bench my father refinished, I sit quietly, my head turned slightly to the left, where 200-year-old moldings frame a 12-paned window. Since I was a tiny baby, my family has occupied that bench. As I've grown older and my little sister also started attending meeting, I have fought for and won the corner seat by the window. The view I have seen outside of that window has changed only slightly over the past 16 years. I have changed though, and as I grow, how I see the view outside the window has changed as well.
I'm five years old and it's springtime. A bluebird hops from branch to branch of the leafy oak outside the window. I squirm on the bench, wishing I, too, could be out in the gentle sunshine, hopping and skipping and yelling. The heavy silence in the meeting room pounds in my ears. Impatiently, I look at our First-day school teacher. She looks at me sternly, admonishing me to be still. It is not time to leave yet. I again turn my attention to the window. As I look at the bird more closely, I see a little nest filled with baby birds. I can no longer contain my excitement. I stand up, ready to proclaim to the silent meeting room the miracle of life outside the window, when the First-day school teacher, ascertaining my intention, hurriedly ushers me from the room.
It's the Sunday before Christmas, and I am eight years old. Greens hang on the window, giving off the fresh winter scent of pine and snow. My friend Gina and my sister Madeline sit on the bench next to me. The three of us have recently learned the sign language alphabet in First-day school, and we use our new knowledge to painstakingly spell out messages to one another. I eventually turn away in frustration, and study the bow tied around the evergreen on the window. Its intricate curls and gold trimming remind me of my own life, which has become more and more complex over the years. In school my math workbook is now filled with multiplication and my class is reading longer books with bigger words; I'm a big girl now, and I no longer have time to color and paste. I look past the ribbon to the outside where it is beginning to snow. I hope that there won't be school tomorrow. And since it is near Christmas, I say a little prayer for the well-being of my family and friends and the speedy arrival of the gifts I want. I don't know if God can hear me, but in the silence of the meeting room, I feel more listened to than anywhere else.
he summer sun pours in through the window and beats heavily on my 13-year-old head. I sit, my eyes closed, trying almost too hard to find God in the swirl of thoughts that throng my brain. Finally, I give up and open my eyes in exasperation. Resorting to my favorite meetinghouse pastime, I look out the window and begin to dream about my future life. Rather than the quiet simplicity of Quakerism, my daydreams involve elaborate mansions and movie stars. While I watch the adults silently worshiping, I keep my mind busy, making plans for when I'm "grown up" and philosophizing about the nature of God. My Lutheran teachers have told me that God is in the Bible. My Quaker family tells me to look for God inside myself. I defy them both and look for God outside the window. The summer wind in the oak tree and the sound of cars on the nearby highway combine to create a siren song of reality. I don't need to find any God-force right now. First I have to find me.
I'm 16 years old this autumn, and this is my first full-length meeting for worship. I do not try to think this time, and I do not try to plan anything. Instead I sit quietly, my eyes slightly closed, and allow my mind to slowly empty. Any thought that pops into my head meets a whisper of "thinking" and then dies away. Before I close my eyes completely, I glance out the window at the thin fall sunlight. I allow this light to fill me, washing away everything else, and then, with a silent thanks to the window, I sit waiting for God. I do not find a miracle, no bright lights or angels. Instead, I find a deep cleansing peace, and I realize that life is just that simple. Theology and religion aside, I find in the sunlight from the window a simple feeling of pleasure at being alive and being me, and for now, that is all I need.
hen I open my eyes after 30 minutes of silent worship, I find that I cannot quite recapture the peace I had found. Perhaps next week I'll be able to last a little longer. For now I simply turn my head a little to the left and allow my thoughts to drift up and out. And for a moment I think I hear God singing within me as together we float up into the vaulting blue sky outside my window. 
by Hayo Daniella, age 15
Burundi Yearly Meeting
y name is Hayo Daniella. I am an African Quaker. I have recently found out that there are about 140,000 African Quakers, which is more than the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom combined. My father was born a Quaker, and my grandfather was one of the very first Quakers in central Africa. My home is in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. Burundi is one of the smallest countries in Africa, but it has a population of about six million.
I go to school in Uganda, which is two countries away from home. I take a bus to Uganda, and it takes two days to reach there. I started studying in Uganda when I was only 13. It was hard at first because I was homesick but eventually I got used to it. Right now I am 15 years old in the third year of secondary school. I get to go home three times a year. I don't spend lots of days at home but I really like it. Burundi is a fine country even though it has been at war for my entire life, and you can't go a week without some shootings and rebels stealing things from people.
In Burundi, our church is known as Eglise Evangelique des Amis because French is the official language. My father is the pastor of the church. The church has seven choirs and they all sing on Sundays, it is always fabulous. I sing in a big choir named Zaburi, which means "psalms." It's a choir made of 45 teens and adults. There are choirs for women, and children, and college students. Each choir is a spiritual group and has their own discipline. In Zaburi, girls put scarves on their heads to show respect to God. Everybody fasts at the same time whenever God tells us to do so. On Saturday we all spend the night praying and sometimes fasting. Being in a choir is about community and commitment.
orship service always takes place for three hours, from nine until noon. It starts with everyone singing a song that everyone knows, and then the person leading on that Sunday comes up front and calls each choir to sing. After that it is a worship time where everyone sings. Then they pray for the pastor as he prepares himself to preach. The pastor often preaches for an hour. After that someone will put down a straw mat in the front of the church and the pastor will pray for the ill people and the people who have changed their lives and want to follow Christ. Two choirs will come again and sing when it's offering time. At last every one holds hands and they pray for the coming week and their way home. All Quakers in Burundi, Rwanda, Congo and Kenya worship in this way.
I do personally experience the presence of Christ. Usually when I am singing. And sometimes when I am praying or even occasionally during the preaching. I feel the presence in my body but it's not like any other feeling I ever have. I feel closer to God and close to other members of the choir. We often all feel the feeling at once but in different ways. I forget the rest of the world in that moment. It is just me and the choir and God. It is good that we forget the world at these times. Often members of my choir lead hard lives. Some have been chased out of their house at night by war. But they come to church and sing. Singing heals us. I have recently learned that some Friends call this "being gathered," and that they experience it in the silence. It amazes me that you can have this without singing.
The first time that I really experienced God for myself came through prayer. I started praying on my own when I was nine years old. One day I prayed for protection and I really saw a response from God. Since then, prayer has become important in so many ways. I feel good and peaceful after talking to God. God always puts feelings in my heart to warn me of danger.
n Africa there are pastors and others who claim to be prophets and sometimes when you go and speak to them, they tell you crazy things and at other times good things that can help you. Often they will try and scare you with what will happen to you if you do not believe them. It is challenging to try and decide if they are telling you a truth from God, or something of their own mind. Praying for myself has helped me because I believe God can speak to each of us. I am learning to test what I hear from others by what Christ says to my very own heart. I also let God's Spirit open Scripture to me, to test what I am told by others.
This spring I have been visiting in the United States attending a Quaker meeting called Freedom Friends Church. At first I thought it was strange because they sing a little, but then they sit in silence and it seemed to me like they were doing nothing, because no one was preaching. I wondered what you learn from sitting in silence. One thing that Freedom Friends has is a box with little cards in it that have questions, or advices, or Scripture verses on them. So each Sunday I pick one. And that is what I ask Christ to teach me about during the silence. I like this—it is a way for God to speak to me in the silence.
I am learning a lot about Quakers. I am learning that we all listen to God—that we can all feel the presence of Christ, even without a pastor or a prophet. I am learning that we feel this presence in different ways. I am glad that I am a Quaker.
Caitlin Caulfield, age 17,
Alaska Yearly Meeting,
USA, written in Shanghai, China
ell, I've been doing a lot of thinking. Meditating, more like it. Today in my first class, it came to me that what I should be doing is making origami cranes for Mumma. And now, after having made 100, I know why. It's partly for the cranes, partly for Mumma. But mostly, the folding allows me time to go inward.
My life has been amazingly uncomplicated until this year. This year, I have left home to live in China, a land foreign in every way. This year, the two worst things in the world have happened to me: my best friend died, and my beloved mother was diagnosed with cancer. Yet I am still here. I am strong. I am stronger.
This I realized: I have no control over things like this. No matter where I am, no matter what I do, there are some things that are out of my control. I have to believe that there's a reason. I know now that I believe in God, because I don't just think that this is a coincidence. I don't believe it's coincidence that these things happen while I'm so far away from home. I guess I believe that somehow, there is a reason for all this. Not a good one, maybe. I certainly don't believe that God meant for my friend to die, or for Mumma to get cancer. It's more a feeling that since these things happened, there is an outcome ... and that outcome, that result, is God.
aybe when people are faced with huge stuff like this, they either "get religion" or lose it, depending on where they started. For me, it's neither. I haven't "got religion." But I felt God while I was folding cranes.
I also had an epiphany of sorts about the concept of "holding in the Light." I always had this vague idea that it was praying, asking, "Please, let Mumma get better" (for example). As I was folding, I realized that I was truly holding Mumma, and my friend who died, in the Light. I started out by thinking, "Please, let Mumma be well and don't let anything else bad happen while I'm away!" Then I realized that I didn't want to say that. The events of this year have been horrible and full of grief, but they've made me think and feel and grow. Would I not want that? Well, I'd rather have my friend alive and Mumma perfectly healthy. But three months ago when my friend died, I wrote in my journal that I couldn't stand it if anything bad happened to Mumma. I wrote that specifically. Now it's happened, and I'm still here.
s for holding in the Light, it's not about praying. It's about saying, "Look here, God. This stuff is devastating. Right now, the world doesn't make sense. But I can't make it make sense. I wouldn't even know where to begin. So whatever needs to happen is what should happen." Holding in the Light is an act of complete surrender, completely letting go and just trusting. Just trusting.
I often refer to a poem given to me when I became a member of my monthly meeting. It is by Denise Levertov, entitled "The Avowal":
As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so I would learn to attain
freefall and float
into Creator Spirit's deep
embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all surrounding grace.
It would be glorious if we could forget religion and remember God. I have found God. Not Jesus, not Yahweh, not Allah, not Buddha—none of these. Instead, God is what I choose to call sublime love and trust. God is found in the reasons. It is a positive creative force in the world.
Note: I wrote this in December 2003. I'm happy to report that my mother is currently in perfect health, the diagnosis being a false alarm of sorts. At least it made me consider my beliefs, and I got some good inner reflections out of it!
W. Geoffrey Black, age 17
Northern Yearly Meeting, USA
t is strange to think that a single piece of paper has had such a large influence on my spiritual development; but when I look back, I am quite confident that without the schism chart, I would not be who I am today.
I first remember seeing the chart around the time I was 12. It had lived at our meetinghouse for years, inconspicuously rolled up in a corner, but that day someone spread it out on the floor to look at, and it instantly captivated me. I sat there and pored over it for at least half an hour, fascinated, even though it was a work day and I should have been helping clean the meeting room or take down the storm windows.
It was three-and-a-half feet tall, two-and-a-half feet wide, and printed in brown ink. Across the top it was labeled "The Society of Friends in North America, 1661–1989," and beneath that was a tangled, confusing mass of diverging and rejoining lines, making roughly the shape of a tree. Around and between the lines, in every available space, were notes, explanations, statistics, and comments.
ach line was labeled with the name of a yearly meeting. At the bottom of the page, in the 1600s, there were just a handful of lines; as they made their way up the page, they branched, and branched, and branched again. Some lines wandered off to the side and fizzled out into nothing; others formed spontaneously partway up the page, unconnected to anything before. Sometimes when a line split in two, there was a little bulge with an X in it. That meant there had been a schism; if there was no X, it had been a peaceful separation.
It was an astonishing, overwhelming thing to look at. It was full of words I had never heard before: Wilburite, Gurneyite, Hicksite, Beanite, Otisite, Updegraffite, Keithian, just to name a few. The notes were brief and terse, but they hinted tantalisingly at layers of complexity I had never suspected lurked beneath the surface of my quiet, peaceful religion. A whole new world opened up for me that day. I think I had heard it vaguely mentioned, before this, that there were Quakers somewhere who called their meetings churches, and had pastors who stood up and gave sermons instead of simply worshiping in silence. But seeing it on the chart—seeing that Friends General Conference, which I had assumed included every yearly meeting in the country, was just one little cluster on one side of this very large piece of paper—gave the diversity of Friends a reality it had not had before in my mind. I had always thought of Quakerism as a small, comfortable family of like-minded people; but now, suddenly, it was something much bigger and more complicated, and I was full of questions about it.
That started me on a quest to learn more about Quakerism. Our house had always been full of Quaker books; now, for the first time, I began reading them. Here I found smaller, simpler charts, stripped down to a few lines: Hicksites, Gurneyites, Wilburites. I learned new acronyms—FUM (Friends United Meeting), EFI (Evangelical Friends International)—to add to the alphabet soup of Quakerism already stored in my head. And I learned the stories that went along with some of those little Xs on the chart.
They were sad stories. Stories of communities torn apart because Friends—on all sides—were too impatient to look for truth in one another. Every time I looked at the chart after that, all those Xs, all those marks of strife and disagreement, made me angry and sad and confused. I couldn't understand why Quakers, who have been witnesses for peace in the world for 350 years, should have so much conflict and division in our own history. I wanted to single-handedly bring about healing and reconciliation everywhere there had ever been a split among Friends. I knew that I couldn't, but it is still what I wanted. At some point I learned that there was an organization—Friends World Committee for Consultaton—that included representation and participation from every branch of Quakerism. It gave me hope to know such an organization existed, and when their newsletter arrived in the mail every few months, I read it eagerly. Like the schism chart, it helped open my eyes to the diversity of Quakerism, but raised as many questions as it answered.
ver the course of several years, though, by picking up little scraps of information from lots of different sources, I memorized enough names and dates and amusing anecdotes to become the family authority on Quaker schisms. I even named my chickens after them—Hicks, Orthodox, Gurney, Wilbur, and Bean. But for all the facts I knew, I could clearly feel that something was missing. Eventually I realised that I wasn't going to find that missing piece in books or newsletters. I wanted experiences. I wanted personal connections. I didn't want the "other" Quakers to be simply lines on a chart to me anymore. I wanted to know them as people.
When I was 16, I made a choice. I decided to overcome my fear of the unknown, and go out and experience the diversity of Friends firsthand. This decision became clear in my mind over several months, but the first time I officially acted on it was in January, 2004, when I put my forms in the mail to apply for the Quaker Youth Pilgrimage the next summer.
I did go on the pilgrimage, and it was a wonderful experience; but when I look back over the steps I have taken since I set out to explore Quakerism, there is another step that stands out more for me. Not because it was big, but because it was small, and tentative, and undertaken with great trepidation.
n March 2004, before I knew if I was accepted for the Pilgrimage or not, I attended a small teen retreat in Indiana. It was meant to bring together teens from all branches of Quakerism in the midwest, but I ended up being the only teen there from an FGC-affiliated yearly meeting. It was the first time I had met any programmed Quakers face to face, so I was rather shy, and I think the other young Friends there weren't quite sure what to make of me. I had taken the bus all the way from Wisconsin (about 12 hours) to be with a group of people I had never met before in my life, all from Indiana; and I think it was that act of peculiar dedication, more than the fact that I was from an unprogrammed meeting, that made me seem strange in their eyes. I spent the weekend watching, and listening, and not saying much. On Sunday morning I attended my first ever programmed meeting, but had to leave to catch my bus home just before the sermon started. I learned a lot, but I came home still full of questions.
I look back on that weekend now and smile, remembering how fearful and uncomfortable I was. It was an awkward, difficult first step on a journey that has grown more beautiful with each step since. That first step has led me to some of the richest moments of my spiritual life. As a result of it, my experience of Quakerism is broader, deeper, and more varied. I have still experienced only a tiny fraction of the full range of Quakerism, but even that little bit has made a huge difference in my life. A few weeks ago, I sat and worshipped with about 100 Friends from a large evangelical Friends church in Oregon. I had no idea what to expect when I walked in. I only knew one person in the room; the songs they sang were all unfamiliar to me; the form of worship was not the one I am used to. Yet the spirit I felt in that room—the love, the trust, the spirit of seeking together as a community—was the same spirit I feel in my own small, unprogrammed meeting. It brought me great joy to be there, lifting my voice along with others in those unfamiliar songs, and knowing that although this was not my home, I was welcome here.
Each time I step outside my own branch, I learn more, not just about Quakerism, but about myself. I gain more self-confidence, I become more comfortable talking to those with different beliefs, and I am filled, every time, with a renewed sense of gratitude that I am a Quaker. I will always come home to my own branch of Quakerism; I will always come home to silent worship; but I am glad to know that I can venture out into the wider Society of Friends and be greeted in the spirit of love. I still hope for healing of our broken, fragmented Society. But instead of hoping our disagreements will all go away someday, as I did when I first learned about our history of schisms, now I hope we'll learn how to learn from those disagreements. I have learned that if we are willing to talk about them, and listen to each other, our differences can be a strength as well as a weakness; and if we enter every experience with an open heart, there is as much joy in the unfamiliar as in what we have grown up with.
his August, I will represent my yearly meeting at the 2005 World Gathering of Young Friends, in England. This event will bring together about 300 young adult Friends, from all over the world and from every branch of Quakerism. Nothing like it has happened since 1985. I look forward to this gathering with excitement and trepidation, and the expectation that it will be one of the most important things I've ever done. I have great hopes for the effect it will have on Quakerism, and I feel honored that I will be a part of it. My expectations have changed, though, since last fall when I applied to go. Then, I saw it as a way to finally fulfill my desire to build bridges among Friends. I realize now, that desire will never be completely fulfilled. It doesn't want to be fulfilled; it just wants to be followed. And as long as there are more Quakers in the world that I haven't met yet, it will always be there, leading me on in new directions that I can only imagine right now. I might never have woken up to that desire at all, though, if one big, dusty piece of paper hadn't sparked my interest and curiosity one warm Sunday afternoon a few years ago. A dusty piece of paper with a complicated, powerful picture on it. Truly, God works in mysterious ways.
Note: What I call "the schism chart" is The Society of Friends in North America, by Geoffrey D. Kaiser [with help from Bruce G. Grimes]; 14th revised edition, 1989. The current version, a 30- by 42-inch wall chart, is available from FGC Bookstore for $10. -Eds.
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This is a feature article from the
November 2005 issue of Friends Journal.
