Events

Please join us either in person or on Zoom on August 25th, 2024 for a special Meeting for Worship with a concern for learning. This is Quakerspeak for an opportunity to learn more about an old Quaker method known as “Worship Sharing”. We will have a special guest host with us. Barb Leedy, one of our regular attenders from Portland will host this session in person. The Zoom information for this session is:

Zoom Link 867 9256 3988 If asked, the Password is 450163

Please find below a basic instruction set and rough agenda for this event.

 From the Friends General Conference website (fgcquaker.org). 

Worship sharing focuses on a particular question and helps us to explore our own
experience and share with each other more deeply than we would in normal
conversation. It seeks to draw us into sacred space, where we can take down our usual
defenses, and encounter each other in “that which is eternal.”
The guidelines for worship sharing have been evolving among Friends for the past half
century, drawing on a number of different sources. They can be summarized as follows:

1. The convener or leader should define a question as the focus for sharing which is
simple, open ended, and oriented toward individual experience. It might be a question
about the spiritual journey. (How is God moving in my life today? Where do I experience
beauty most intensely?) It might relate to a book you have been reading together. (What
touched me most deeply? Which character seems most like me when I was a child?)
The question should be chosen prayerfully.  There are no stock questions.

2. The convener then explains the basic rules for sharing:
a. Reach as deeply as you can into the sacred center of your life.
b. Speak out of the silence, and leave a period of silence between speakers.
c. Speak from your own experience, about your own experience. Concentrate on
feelings and changes rather than on thoughts or theories.
d. Do not respond to what anyone else has said, either to praise or to refute.
e. Listen carefully and deeply to what is spoken.
f. Expect to speak only once, until everyone has had a chance to speak.
g. Respect the confidentiality of what is shared.

3. Some leaders feel that going around the circle makes it easier for everyone to speak.
Others prefer to ask people to speak as they are ready. Explain which practice you
would like to follow. In either case, participants should know that they have the option of
“passing” or not speaking.

4. Allow at least half an hour for a group of five or six to share their responses to a single
question, and at least an hour for a larger group. If you have more than a dozen people,
it would be better to divide into smaller groups to make sure that everyone has a chance
to participate.

5. Enter into worshipful silence, and begin.

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