04.22.06
Waiting Worship as Form
Kwakersaur: …it is not the form of waiting worship but the attitude we bring to it.
True, true (and Kwakersaur’s whole post is excellent.)
I like to see the phrase “waiting worship.” It’s the preferred phrase among some of the renewal activists in OYM(C). I like it mostly because I’ve seen it used by people who are denoting by it a different attitude from that of many people who prefer to say “unprogrammed” or “silent.” The “waiting” attitude is certainly humbler, perhaps more reverent. Among those who use it, the focus is not on the form, but on-and-for whom it is we wait.
But if that attitude changes, the phrase will (and already may, in circles in which I don’t travel) be no more meaningful than any other, and the form will be as hollow as the hollowest mass, or puritan lecture, or silent worship, or political potluck.
david (aka kwakersaur) said,
April 22, 2006 at 5:29 pm
Thanks for dropping by my blog. And I’m glad my reflections on things Friendly are seen as helpful and not merely antiquarian. Even if I do have links to trilobite fossils all over my website.
One aspect of “waiting worship” I like is that it implies we wait for something or someone. it distinguishes what we do from meditation — although the term meditation also is shifting in use and now sometimes and for some people denotes connecting up to that which transcends the individual spirit.
This is teh trouble with making arguments from word meanings — especially from etymologies — the meanings of words are slippery critters.
ryan said,
April 24, 2006 at 3:51 am
I have only recently attended my first meeting and am new to the whole experience. However this post struck a chord with me. I strongly advocate people using whatever term seems the most logical or most comfortable to themselves, however this particular post brings up an issue I struggled with before my first meeting. Theological non-cognitivism. For those unfamiliar with this term, the short explanation is that it is a view that religous language is inheriently meaningless because it does not have coherent meaning to back it up.
I feel that this is a good example of the issue. Multitpul phrases simulatenously convey very disparate, or indentical ideas depending on who is speaking and who is listening.
Language is important because we must define ourselves in a way that makes sense to us and is truthfull. However when it comes to others actions become more imortant then words. The meaning of words is transitory and subject to intrepretation, however action speaks for itself.
Max Hansen said,
April 25, 2006 at 10:29 am
David, I’ll go a mite farther and mention that etymologies aren’t meanings. A lot of scholars get into lots of trouble by confusing the two.
And Ryan, you are so right. For many of us, our word choices, when we are talking about things of the spirit, are often predicated on what we don’t want to say. I’m pretty sure there are many closet Christians in Quakerism, and they remain closeted because the word “Christian” has connotations with which they don’t want to be associated.
Even when it’s otherwise, words often require more clarification than they provide. For several years now, I’ve described myself as a conservative Friend, because I find it’s the least deceptive short descriptor I can use. But I’m not part of a conservative MM or YM, and I always have to explain to people that they shouldn’t hear conservative in a political sense, but in a Quaker sense. To those who know Quakerism, I can explain that conservative means my theology is 98% that of Barclay’s apology. To those who don’t, I have a good deal of explaining to do.
Of course, this isn’t only about words, but about the fact that Quakerism is a far-from-mainstream paradigm, and Quakerdom is a far-from-homogeneous body.
Lloyd Lee Wilson said,
May 3, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Not just OYM - “waiting worship” is the default description in NCYMC, as one can see by checking out the Discipline, at ncymc.org. Thy post and the other comments are right on - it is important to remember for Whom we wait in worship.
–llw
Martin Kelley said,
June 14, 2006 at 10:42 am
I too have long preferred more open-ended terms like waiting worship (what a surprise, hmm?). I have noticed that the more secular leaning Friends in Philadelphia will end a meeting “with a moment of silence,” which is clearly meant to be just that. Even a relatively pro forma moment of worship and prayer should be open to the possibility of vocal ministry.