Why the World Needs Quaker Meeting

Sometimes we hated it. Passing through the large white doors of the Assembly Hall, our restive, unruly class somehow transforms into an orderly single-file line. The late October sun streams through the windows under the vaulted ceiling. The air is dry and sweet-smelling from all the wood. The old floor feels almost soft under our feet.

We find seats on one of the long oak benches, which are hard enough to be an offense to many students’ buttocks. Because of our vim and vigor we sit spaced three to a bench, making it more of a challenge to get ourselves into trouble by "communicating" with a neighbor. The hall is filled, the stage holds our headmaster; a few faculty members; and four or five students. Get ready, get set, be silent!

The scraping of feet, the clearing of throats, and the fidgeting into a less uncomfortable position gradually tapers down. With bodies thus constrained, minds begin to work. The thoughts of the many participants might be going in the following directions: try to see if each toe can move individually inside its sneaker, work out mentally two to the 14th power, see if your fingers can tap your knee in three beats while your toe beats a solid four, how I can get (fill in name here) to laugh, can I sleep with my eyes open, these pants are too short, if I fart I will die, it’s beautiful outside—I could be playing frisbee golf right now. . . .

The creak of a chair and a voice abruptly halts the mental flow. It is often a faculty member who speaks first at meeting, not to lecture but to say a certain something that has emerged from beneath the stew that inhabits our brains at any given moment. This time it might have been Mr. Scattergood. A warm and open teacher, I had always liked his name, which seemed to be taken directly from the pages of Hawthorne, in whose stories names imply characteristics. One could say he "scatters good things," broadcasting content. He probably never spoke these exact words, but any speech emerging from the silence hits the ear at once distantly and intimately:
"Peace is smelling flowers and eating hot dogs. War is losing a loved one and living in darkness."

The armless wooden chair confirms the return of its occupant. The room becomes even more quiet. Now is when the minds begin to change.

A hundred thoughts race in a hundred different directions: What kind of flowers? Daisies? Lilacs? Like: "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed?" I ran over Mrs. Wilson’s flowers with the lawnmower last summer, and I must admit they smelled good! I could sure use a hot dog right now. I used to like ketchup but now I like mustard. Relish, mmm, that’s what I call giving peace a chance! Darkness. Like what, a power outage? That storm last year took out the power and we ran out of matches so we had to touch a rolled-up paper towel to the stove burner to light the candles. I was sad when Maddie had to be put down. She was a great dog and a good friend. But a real loved one? I was too young when Grandma died. War, no one wants.

Weapons. What is that stuff they use, napalm? Jellied gasoline. They napalmed the village of that screaming, naked girl running toward us in that Life magazine photo. My God, what are we doing!

Outside the world rolls on. Our planet is increasingly burdened with over-crowding, animal species dying out, and chemicals released from fossil fuels. We people stare at screens: computers, TVs, and phones; listen to iPods, stroll with dogs and babies, ear buds in place. The tumultuous whirl of visual and mental stimuli puts us into a soothing state of having fewer thoughts and fewer ideas. We do not think thoughts from reflection, but those thoughts that arise come from incursions into our lives. We—and I include myself—are practicing a pattern of terminal avoidance. The result is less connection with the human community. Without active and participatory reflection, the screen becomes an option over a human face, war becomes an option over peace, and riches become a more attractive option over good instruction.

The world desperately needs Quaker meeting. Group meditation and thoughtful reflection can help to change our minds and reconnect with the community of humans. Quaker meeting facilitates a sensitivity to deeper levels of consciousness and opens a way to interact harmoniously with the world, and even outwardly express personal perspectives. A world summit featuring a meeting like Quaker meeting would certainly open more dialogue, help find more solutions.

I know there is a Light within all of us, and I am pretty sure there are certain things all we humans agree on, yet which we are not currently equipped to see. We simply need to find the space where minds begin to change. It all begins with the silence.

David Hahn

David Hahn, a composer, lives in Seattle, Wash. He wrote this essay while reminiscing about his school days at William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia.