Day 104: “They seek the holy, quiet square by quiet square.”

DAY 104

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic

A series of daily reflections for people of faith

by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland

WEEK FIFTEEN: FRIDAY 26 JUNE 2020

“They seek the holy, quiet square by quiet square.”

“People have worshiped in the Brooklyn Quaker Meetinghouse on Schermerhorn Street since 1857. The room’s walls are bare and white, and when you look up to check the time, there is no clock. When the meeting could no longer continue because of the pandemic, some felt unmoored. Then the Quaker ministry and council came up with a plan: the meetings would resume over zoom. ‘In order to foster stillness and quiet, you’ve been automatically muted upon joining this meeting,’ the worship host now announces.” - From a recent newspaper article by the same title

We began with one minute, then each month increased the time by a minute until five months after we began we were sitting still, quiet, silent for five minutes each Sunday in the middle of the worship service. When we first began the experiment some of us felt like one minute was an eternity. By the time we got to the five minute mark we were beginning to feel comfortable with, even appreciate, the break from noise, from talking, from singing, from movement. Then one Sunday at the end of the silence a person rose and quietly shared an amazing experience they just had during our time of ‘doing nothing.’ Then several others rose to share similar inner  experiences, ‘awakenings,’ insights that came to them through the inner working of the Holy Spirit during the silence. Such times became the norm, moving and memorable.

This is the Quaker tradition, except that for them it isn’t a matter of five minutes but of the entire ‘service’ with the only voices those of individuals sharing what has come to them from ‘the Spirit’ during the silence. Opposite the Quaker tradition are software programs that allow churches to schedule down to the minute every single thing that happens in a sixty-minute worship service. God help us – our belief that church should last no more than an hour and be filled from start to finish with our singing ad praying and speaking and…when does God get His time slot? Silence is one of the primary ways He uses to speak to us – perhaps that is why we avoid it, as we don’t know how to handle such encounters. Absent a time of silence in worship, we never will.   

Reflective question: Are you willing to sit in silence and see what God wants to say to you? If not, you’ll never know.

Reflective Scripture: Psalm 46:10 – “Be still and know that I am God.”

Reflective hymn:

“Be Still, for the Presence of the Lord” – David Evans © 1968

Be still, for the presence of the Lord, the Holy One is here;

Come bow before him now with reverence and fear.

In him no sin is found, we stand on holy ground.

Be still, for the presence of the Lord, the holy One, is here.