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February 26, 1989
On Silent Worship
Martin Cobin, in his important Pendle Hill pamphlet entitled "From
Convincement to Conversion," relates an anecdote concerning Rufus Jones
and another Friend. It seems that Jones rose one morning in meeting for
worship and prefaced his message by saying that he'd been thinking about
something and wanted to share his thoughts. After meeting, an elderly
British Friend approached Jones and chided him, saying, "Rufus, during
meeting for worship thee should not have been thinking." If we do not at
least see the point of the elderly Friend's statement, says Cobin, we
probably have not yet moved from convincement to conversion.
My desire to understand the British Friend's remark, and better to
understand what it is that we're about in meeting for worship, has led me
to consider the nature and meaning of our worship. What is it that we
should be doing there? Do the Friend's words indicate that we should be
emptying our minds of thought, in order to be more receptive to divine
leadings? Is our silence to be, at least ideally, the absence of thought?
These considerations bring to mind some sayings from Zen Buddhism, a
tradition which, like ours, has long experience with contemplation in
silence but which has more carefully cultivated the art of meditation.
"You cannot get it by taking thought," announces one saying, "nor can you
get it by not taking thought." Similarly, the great Chinese master
Hui-Neng said that "To command all thoughts immediately to cease is to be
tied in a knot by a method, and is called an obtuse view." According to
the expert testimony of Zen, attempting to achieve a state of having no
thought is not the way to liberation and conversion. And if we acknowledge
a similarity of experience among contemplatives of different traditions,
we understand that the elderly Friend probably was not speaking of such an
effort--or such a state.
What, then, is the point of his statement? What are we doing in worship?
Pondering these questions, I am reminded of a definition of Quaker worship
that I have long found appealing--the idea of "waiting in silence." But
that phrase has always seemed too vague, in need of further definition. As
I begin to consider its possible meanings, I recall the words of a man who
must seem an unlikely source for insight into Quaker worship--a man who,
in fact, said that the inner light is the most dangerous and unreliable
guide ever to be followed by human beings, yet whose work reveals a deep
familiarity with waiting in the silence of the heart. I have in mind, of
course, T. S. Eliot. Eliot's description of the process of contemplation
in the silence can provide us with important insights into the potential
of our own way of worship. In the long work The Four Quartets, Eliot
speaks of being "At the still point of the turning world." And he asserts
that "Except for the point, the still point,/There would be no dance, and
there is only the dance." This image of the dance recurs in a later
passage which speaks to our quest for a deeper appreciation of our
worship.
To wait without hope, without love, without faith--those three crucial
virtues called "supernatural" by theology--can only be to wait in that
true and complete silence which, if we let it, will bring us to what Eliot
calls "A condition of complete simplicity/(Costing not less than
everything)." For silence is an emptiness, but it is an emptiness that
makes fullness possible, a darkness that is light, a stillness that is the
cosmic dance. In the emptiness of complete spiritual poverty, we see
through and thereby become detached from everything, even our very
thoughts. As master Hui-Neng says, "Thoughts come and go of themselves,
for through the use of wisdom there is no blockage. ...Such is the [true]
practice of 'no-thought.'" We wait without thought in the sense that we
have gone beyond thought to a deeper level, to the emptiness in which
nothing remains to separate us from ourselves or from others--in which,
therefore, love becomes real. And love, too, leads us to the fullness of
emptiness, for in love we find ourselves in the very act of giving
ourselves away.
Recently I read an in-depth review, by Douglas Gwyn, of a book on speaking
and silence among 17th-century Friends. In that review, Gwyn pointed out
that for early Friends silence was not an end in itself. Silence
functioned for them like a Zen koan, to crucify natural thought in order
that they might come to a new, pure, spiritual language through the
transformation of their fundamental way of experiencing themselves and
their world. As George Fox indicated in his journal, this pure speech
would be the expression of one's experience of the "true nature"--as Zen
would put it--of all things. Early Friends knew that they were "not ready
for thought" until they had let the silence take them apart and re-create
them in its own image as persons who possessed nothing and who were
therefore free to love. Only when they had entered that "condition of
complete simplicity" could they begin to speak truly, and then their
speech would be directed to bringing their hearers into the same
experience. "Silence," says Gwyn, "was seen as not only the state from
which one must speak, if moved, but also the right outcome of speaking.
Vocal ministry sought to achieve silence in the hearer, to enhance the
crucifixion of natural thought and language within."
If, then, we should not be thinking during worship, it is because only
true silence can center us in that emptiness in which our thought and
speech are purified and made new. Then we shall know all things from
within, not through the mediation of words, so that our language will be
no longer an obstacle to love but a true and natural expression of it.
This is the great potential of our silent worship, that it can empty us of
delusion, purify our thought, and lead us from convincement to conversion.
So the phrase that seemed "too vague" turns out to be sufficient after
all: worship is simply a matter of waiting in silence. Anything more is
something less.
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December 17, 1989
The teacher, says Chogyam Trungpa, does not impart information to the
disciple; the teacher simply creates the necessary situation, the
appropriate environment, in which the student can awaken. The Buddha-mind
is transmitted not through the passing of concepts from one to another,
but directly; the Buddha-nature of the teacher calls to the Buddha-nature
of the disciple. The teacher "answers that of God" in the disciple; he or
she sets up a situation of depth and openness in which there are no
barriers to the recognition and expression of the true nature of both
parties. Buddha speaks to Buddha, sometimes to the astonishment of the
disciple.
For us as Quakers, the meeting for worship is our teacher. It provides an
atmosphere in which we, whether through silence or vocal ministry (which
should be, as it were, an expression of the silence), transmit the
Christ-mind one to another. The silence of worship is the voice of "the
Inward Teacher," leading us into its own rich and transforming emptiness.
As Trungpa says, "...the whole point is that we stop collecting any more
things, and we just manage to empty out whatever we have. ...in reality
the transmission is not, as we said, something given to you, it is simply
discovered within oneself." The silence of worship teaches not by
imparting information, but by emptying us of everything false until all
that remains is our true nature. And since our true nature is ineffable,
we can say that silence is the beginning and end of worship, that in fact
silence and worship are one.
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January 21, 1990
In meeting for worship this morning, I gave the following message.
Gently and gracefully, the Christ-nature opens out within us in the
silence like a seed growing up through empty space to become a tree. The
silence of worship is the space in which the Christ-seed, rooted in our
hearts, grows. This silence means no impediments, freedom from forms,
poverty of spirit, profound emptiness. The work of worship is that we help
each other enter deeply into this emptiness, that we are baptized here
together, dying into the silence in order to live as Christ for ourselves,
for each other, and for the world. For this is the Incarnation, that the
Spirit of Christ blossoms within and among us. This is the salvation of
the world, that the Inward Light of that Spirit leads us to lay ourselves
open, to bear the pain and evil of the world in suffering love. And this
is the Resurrection, that we bear witness to the living reality of the
Christ-nature in these bodies--and in this body, the gathered community of
Friends.
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September 1, 1991
I've sometimes heard it said that our objective in worship is to find a
place of peace within ourselves to which to retreat and from which to draw
strength. I agree that this may be a necessary stage for some of us, but I
submit that the peace we discover in the silence must ultimately be the
peace that "passes understanding" because it subsists in the midst of
conflict--that true peace, in other words, is not determined by the
absence of conflict within ourselves but by the dynamic presence of
justice in our relationships. I say this because I, by being confronted
too many times by the damage I've done in my self-centered ignorance, am
learning the difficult lesson that there is no love without justice and no
peace without love.
I would say, rather, that our objective in worship is not finding peace,
as if peace were just another commodity that we could possess, but, in the
words of Thich Nhat Hanh, being peace, so that we will, as George
Fox urged us, "[answer] that of God in every one, whereby in them ye may
be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you...."
Learning this art will, I think, require that we descend, not to a more or
less self-absorbed stillness within ourselves, but deeper, to what Joseph
Conrad described as that "lonely region of stress and strife" where we
discover "the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits
together the loneliness of innumerable hearts, ...the solidarity in
dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear,
which binds men to each other, which binds together all of humanity--the
dead to the living and the living to the unborn." For we are all members
of the one Body of Christ, and the whole Body suffers as long as one of
its members is in pain. In the poetry of Paul's mystical theology, we are
re-created in the Body of Christ only by being baptized into Christ's
suffering and death. I think this means that we find the joy of true peace
only by entering into the suffering of the world, for it is only then that
our thoughts and deeds are informed with justice and are, therefore,
guided by love.
May the silence of worship be, then, our spiritual baptism. May it tear us
away from the familiar and the comfortable and plunge us into the darkness
of faith. May it be for us a sacrament--a sign that effects what it
signifies--of crucifixion and resurrection in that Body in which all are
one. May we, following the exhortation of George Fox, "be still a while
from [our] own thoughts, searching, seeking, desires, and imaginations,
and be staid in the principle of God in [us]," and, learning thereby the
meaning of justice, know the peace that comes from that humbling
experience--"the true peace of God," which, in Conrad's marvelous image,
"begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land." Sailing forth
then, as Whitman urged, steering "for the deep waters only" and risking
"ourselves and all," we can without fear explore the deep and tumultuous
seas of silence: after all, "are they not all the seas of God?"
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October 3, 1991
Last night, I gave this message in worship during our Ministry and Counsel
meeting.
Sometimes when I enter the silence of worship, I feel as if I lay my head
upon God's breast, and she gently places her hand on my head and soothes
me, and eases my pain, and takes my burden from me, and strengthens me
with the gift of her love. But there are also times when I go to the
silence, needing her comfort, that I lay my head upon her breast and feel
her shaken with sobs, when she is like Rachel, weeping inconsolably for
her children, and I am washed in her tears. Then the love she has given me
is stirred, and I want to comfort her as she has comforted me. "What can I
do?" I ask, and in the depths of my heart I hear her unfailing reply, "Let
my Son be born in thee." But I count the cost and turn away in sadness,
like the rich young man in the gospel, not daring to risk all on a Kingdom
that may never be. Yet her anguish tears my heart, and now I want to turn
away no more; I must be rid of whatever in me makes me fear the risk. So I
beg of the silence, and of you, my Friends who minister to the captive
Spirit: minister to me, empty me, take everything from me and free the
Spirit that lives in me, that when next I go to my Beloved in her need, I
go in the form of her Son, Who alone can dry the tears from her eyes.
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December 6, 1992
A Friend rose during worship at Homewood this morning and paraphrased a
verse (I don't know which) from the Bible. The verse included the phrase
"stayed in God." Some time later, I gave the following message.
The verse quoted by the Friend has reminded me of George Fox's letter to
Lady Claypole, in which he urged her to "Be still a while... and be staid
in the principle of God in thee," and I am led to offer a similar
exhortation.
Be inwardly still, Friends, and wait patiently upon the revelation of the
living flame of love that burns in the hidden depths of our hearts. Place
your hope in the purifying, enlightening, and liberating working of that
occult flame, and rest in that hope, and trust that the secret life of
love within us is itself the answer, ineffable but sure, to the
unutterable longing of our souls.
Be at peace, Friends. The hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, is
ours: love lives in our hearts now and always. In fact, that divine flame
is our true heart. And our Quaker tradition is not alone in testifying
that we can know this experientially, that we can be transformed and learn
to live from our true center, the compassionate and just heart of Christ.
For if it seems that love reveals herself in her own time and in her own
way, it is nonetheless true that in waiting faithfully and attentively
upon her self-disclosure we discover that our waiting and her revelation
are not two. When we wait with devotion, discipline, and singleness of
mind, our waiting becomes pure silence, and in pure silence the delusion
that gives rise to our habitual, unconsciously self-centered and
self-absorbed mode of being in the world is dissolved, and love alone
remains, for only love, being self-sufficient, can abide in pure silence.
Therefore, let us wait together earnestly and confidently upon the
unfolding of the loveliness of our souls, that we may be in the world as
the divine flame of love is within us, a seemingly small and obscure, yet
irrepressible, enduring, and, indeed, essential, power for transformation,
liberation, and peace.
The message's derivations of which I am aware are these: (1) the idea of
waiting upon revelation is from Romans 8:19; (2) "the living flame of
love" is the title of a poem by John of the Cross; (3) I believe that
Merton is quoted somewhere in Silent Lamp: The Thomas Merton Story,
by William H. Shannon, using the phrase "the secret working of love in the
soul," a phrase that I have woven into the message; (4) "hidden treasure"
and "pearl of great price" are well-known metaphors of the Kingdom used by
Jesus; (5) the description "not two," which connotes a unity that is not
identity, is from the Zen scripture "Shinjin-no-Mei"; (6) the idea, which
I have adapted, of love being silent because it needs nothing is also from
Shannon's book on Merton, but I can't recall where in that book I read it;
(6) the use of "loveliness" in its archaic sense of "loving," which I
intended to combine with the contemporary meaning of "spiritual beauty,"
goes back to the words of William Penn that I quoted in a previous message
(9/6/92); (7) one basis of this message is a passage used by Mendelssohn
in his oratorio "Elijah": "O rest in the Lord, wait patiently for him, and
he will give thee thy heart's desire."
Return to the table of contents.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought;
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.