Divine silence

I once had to plan a joint Mennonite-Quaker funeral for a couple at church who lost a son. They were faithful members both of our church, which met in the evening, and of the Friends meeting, which gathered for worship in the morning. For over a decade our Mennonite congregation rented meeting space from the Society of Friends, a sharing of material resources that provided opportunities for our two bodies of faith to grow toward one another. As a result, sometimes people became quite at home in both groups, attending both services, and this couple was among them.

To prepare the funeral service, I met with the clerk of the Friends meeting. Friends delegate to their clerk administrative duties, organizational responsibilities, facilitation of meetings, and discernment processes—all of which are understood as spiritual. Together we discussed how to incorporate meaningful parts of our worship traditions into a cohesive service. Central to Quakerism is collective attention to the quietude, the stillness that resounds with the mysterious silence of God’s presence.

As we outlined the funeral service, the clerk asked if I felt comfortable taking the lead on moving the gathered community from the Friends’ time of silence to the Mennonite congregational prayer. I nodded, nonchalantly agreeing to the task. I jotted a note to myself and moved on to another item on our agenda about the order of the service. But the clerk returned to the question of the conclusion of our time of silence: “Are you familiar with our attention to silence, about how we do it?” I responded enthusiastically that I had joined their meetings for worship several times and that I always found the time of stillness refreshing. Before moving on, I asked if she had a sense as to how long I should set the timer on my phone in order to know when to transition from the silence to the prayer.