s the only one with a pedicure. Though I couldn’t vouch for the woman wearing striped socks under her sandals, I’d be willing to bet that she didn’t have painted toenails.
I wished that I could take out my notebook. I didn’t think that pencil against paper would really be that disruptive. What about the woman next to me with the dodgy stomach? That wasn’t distracting? It positively screamed. And the woman who kept flipping maniacally through the pages of the Bible. What was she looking for?
I closed my eyes and tried to enter the silence, or the light, or whatever. My mind followed the sounds of a dog barking down the street, birds singing, distant traffic sounds, there goes that stomach again. What could she have eaten? And then the neighbor next door began to play the piano. Loudly, with the windows open. What Kind of Fool am I. Anthony Newly. I recognized it right away, having appeared in the play in high school. I could still remember the words as it turned out.
I started to relax. To sit in silence for an hour is actually not as boring as one might think. Parents would probably find a Quaker meeting heaven.
The silence of a meeting can be broken should someone be “moved by the spirit” to speak. Early Quakers were considered radical in that women had the same right to speak during meetings as men, something that might still be considered alarming in many churches.
During the Seven Oaks meeting, a few people were moved to speak. One mentioned the recent death of a friend, and she asked us to “hold his family in the light.” Another spoke of her response to a work of art that she had recently seen, and the third read a very moving passage from a an essay written by that most famous of American Quakers, William Penn. It was something beautifully profound about how Quakers view death. But I can’t quote it here because I was not allowed to take notes.
It did take a lot of work to sit in silence for an hour. You couldn’t just nod off. Though I have heard that people do fall asleep. And sometimes, yes, they snore. The rule of thumb is to simply ignore them, unless they are accompanied by a spouse, who usually takes care of the problem in their own private way.
The end of the hour was signified by the assigned leader (not a priest) taking her neighbor’s hand. And then everyone joined hands for a silent moment of camaraderie.
I wondered how Quakers worked as a group without a priest? Who makes the decisions? It turns out that everything is run by committee. If you have ever been on a committee or needed anything from a committee, you can appreciate just how alarmed I was. And it got worse.
Business is conducted with silence. An appointed clerk records the “sense of the meeting.” Can you imagine? They don’t vote. They simply have quiet time and get a sense of what is right. So there is no debate, no arguments, no threats. Do these people really understand the meaning of the word “meeting?”
When asked if they agree with a point, the positive Friend response is “I hope so” as opposed to a simple “yes,” and this is shorthand for “I hope that this is God’s will.”
A decision is made when everyone in the meeting hopes that a “way forward” or “coming to unity” has occurred. If someone at the meeting disagrees the issue will not be considered resolved and they will return to silence. They maintain that every decision is determined by God’s will and, if everyone is listening to God, then the correct decision will eventually become evident.
I questioned whether those who thought that Quakers belonged to another time weren’t right after all. This seemed no way to run a religion. Where did they find the time to do all of their charity service? What does the Quaker Oats man know that we don’t?
The American artist James Turrell is a Friend friend. He once told me about being at an exhibition where an Italian gallerist approached him and coolly asked, “So, eez eet true that zou are a Quacker?” He never did correct him.
Some other famous folk who you probably wouldn’t have guessed were Friends include singer Bonnie Raitt, Dame Judi Dench, Sir 