High Church, Low Church

This last Sunday I experienced the extremes of the high/low church spectrum. I went to an Episcopal church and a Quaker meeting. It was an enlightening experience on both counts, but one that left me saddened.

The service I went to at St. Luke's was small. Very small. We sat in this beautiful sanctuary and while the liturgy was reverent and I felt peace, I also felt like I was participating in the end of something. An era of stained glass windows and white-robed ministering servants seemed to be fading away. There were maybe 30 people in the congregation, most white-haired and in the waning years of their own lives.

Unlike the later service I had attended at St. Luke's the previous week, this service followed Rite I in the Book of Common Prayer and had no majestic organ, chanting, or singing. The readings were solemn, the homily short, and mood less joyful. Of course, I love how communion is done in high churches. We knelt before the altar, shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters. Humbly, we accepted the bread with two hands and ate. We were served the wine from a communal cup and in submission we drank from the hands of the ministering servant. In this particular expression of communion, there exists so much meaningful symbolism of humility, submission, servanthood, unity, and...communion! If I could take only one thing from the high church, I would probably take the method of communion. But for the rest, somehow this great, high church with its soaring arches is crumbling beneath the relentless onslaught of the entertainment mindset of [post]modernity.

After St. Luke's, I went to the Quaker Meeting House. From the extreme high church to the extreme low church, this was an entirely new experience for me. I had been invited to come to Meeting after attending a Peace benefit meal earlier in the week.

Excuse this digression, but the peace benefit reminded me that although I am pacifist, I do not have the same "fuzzy feelings" about pacifism that so many present seemed to have. This is not the community in which I fit. I care about peace and nonviolence, but I do not see my role in this process as picketing, signing petitions, or talking down aggressors. There is a place for those, but I do not see myself as joining in this way. But back to the Quakers.

Before the beginning of the "service," there was a time of instruction. This particular one was about "clearness committees," a Quaker concept from the 1660s used for personal discernment. Perhaps I will write another post on this, but for now my observation was merely that I find it interesting that although there are no homilies (no shepherd implies no homily!), the Quakers have gotten around this by having these talks beforehand.

I noticed another thing. Quakers do not have a creed and are against such statements of belief and yet similar to the distinction between the American and the Canadian constitutions, it seems that the Quakers have merely a collection of documents and ideas which do form a somewhat informal creed. Pamphlets on clearness committees, books on community, posters on the "rules" of living a Quaker life. It seems it is still not possible to have a body of people join together without some consensus on purpose, beliefs, and rules.

The meeting itself was characterized by silence. At times, someone would stand up with some insight to share. Most often it was an observation on what had happened during the week. Other times, it was a reflection on something that struck them. This is where I realized that Quakers are not all Christocentric. No Scripture was shared, but a story from Gandhi's life was and the thoughts of a "universalist" Quaker author. Although we were all sitting together, it was such a lonely experience. The silence was not a communal silence, but an individual silence. The words shared seemed like merely words ringing into the silence. I wondered if people were even listening to each other.

Had I not had a wealth of my Protestant experiences to draw on, I'm not sure how I would have made it through an hour of almost entirely unbroken silence and certainly not week after week. I spent this time praying, singing songs (in my head), and quoting Scripture (again, silently), but without the reservoir of songs, Scripture, and an active relationship with God to draw on, it would have been a very empty time for me.

My experience after the meeting was very good though. Ironically, of all the churches I have visited, this one was the only one to really get it "right." I was invited to join them for a potluck and one of the women took me under her wing and talked with me at length. We discussed the history of the Quakers and the various branches (there are some more Christocentric branches), the beauty of liturgical services, and various other topics. It was most enjoyable and if this had been a Christocentric church, this would have been enough to make this place my home, but... alas, I am still left to continue my quest for a spiritual home in Kalamazoo.