Open Worship

Sunday brought a magnificent blessing: Jana closed worship! For a Friend who was very, very banged up in the ICU bare weeks ago, it was so wonderful to hear her voice clear and articulate and focused.Probably all of the many post-holiday visitors unfamiliar with how she has spent her fall hardly noticed anything unusual.

RantWoman notes that frequently post-holiday worship includes many Friends visiting from out of town. Often introductions will include quite a range of home monthly and yearly meeting connections. RantWoman is amused about what she is going to call the Quaker begats, an account at the beginning of the NPYM Faith and Practice about the provenance of Friends on the West Coast. When RantWoman hears visitors' introductions, she sometimes wonders what the visitors think of our Meeting, what sticks out compared to practices they are used to.

RantWoman also realizes the greater or lesser presence of truly open worship in different Friends' meetings is deeply interwoven with strands of the Quaker family tree, a topic about which RantWoman feels less than easily able to comment about at will.

On the other hand, RantWoman deeply appreciates the sense of dialogue with and through the divine in this discussion of open worship:

http://gatheringinlight.com/2009/12/22/one-take-on-the-importance-of-quakers-open-worship/

RantWoman notes that this is part of a thread on QuakerQuaker

http://www.quakerquaker.org/forum/topics/open-worship?xg_source=msg_forum_disc




RantWoman means to write more in a focused way about this topic, but she has been surprised recently reading some other religion-themed commentary about how clearly her adult self has internalized specifically Quaker forms of dialogue with God, both in corporate worship and sometimes when presented with needs for worshipful attention in other life circumstances.