Being a Quaker?

I think I’m a Quaker? It’s the best way I can describe my relationship to my faith. I say I ‘think’ I’m a Quaker because I’m not a member of any meeting. I’ve worshipped (sporadically) for the last few years in an online meeting organised by Woodbrooke, but even that isn’t a ‘real’ meeting. Technically, it is a worship sharing group.

But I’m not sure that matters quite as much as it maybe once did. My faith guides me in my daily life, helping me discern what seems to be the right path forward. In times of crisis or grief, it is a comfort and a compass to safer or steadier ground. The worship sharing on Wednesday mornings allows a space to share a connection with the Spirit with a group of familiar faces. I’ve experienced something like what other Quakers describe when they talk of hearing the Spirit during these meetings.

Any yet, I still feel a disconnect or sense of being an impostor in my absence from a true meeting. I rely on a partial excuse that the only meeting in Belgium is in another city and is logistically inconvenient to get to on a Sunday morning. But again, I’m not certain that my absence from a physical meeting is, or should be, a barrier to the spiritual journey that Quakerism convenes.

I am extremely far from being an expert on the early Quakers, but I sense their derogatory use of the term, ‘steeple-house’ to refer to churches said a lot about how they saw the institution of religion in relation to the practice of religion. I feel like the search for an answer on whether online-only Meetings are a legitimate form of worship falls into a similar division. There is immense value to the community, both of Friends and beyond, in the maintenance of Meeting Houses, but is the essence of Quaker worship and faith a particular architectural arrangement, or a shared practice? I might be selfish in leaning towards the ephemeral answer of shared practice over physical institutions, but I feel there is more space for Quakers to continue the journey of understanding our relationship with the Spirit if we open the option of both physical and virtual Meetings.

I had doubts about writing this post at all; I usually see my faith as a private element of who I am, but reading Quaker Renewal’s post, ‘Nurturing the life of the Spirit‘, I felt like sharing what this very dynamic moment in Quakerism means to me.