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#3 Minneapolis Friends Meeting

12/17/2014

Quakers keep it simple. After talking with a parishioner at St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church who mentioned he thought Quakers and Orthodox had much in common as they both place high value on the light of God, I figured I might as well check out the Minneapolis Friends Meeting. I had heard Quakers had simple services and so I thought it might also be a nice contrast to the complexity of Orthodox liturgy.

The Religious Society of Friends was founded in the 1650's and its members were originally known as "Children of Light" and "Friends of Truth." Friends seek to know God through the Inner Light present in each of us. The Religious Society of Friends teaches no official dogma and Quakers hold a wide range of convictions about God, Jesus, the afterlife, and many other issues. Quakers' individual way of seeking God within each of us seriously challenged the prevailing religious notions in England of the day. This resulted in persecution, and many Quakers moved to places in the Americas like Pennsylvania.

So what's in the name "Quaker"? When brought before a judge on account of his unorthodox beliefs, George Fox, the movement's founder, informed the judge he must "quake before the Word of the Lord." The judge apparently asked Fox if he were a quaker, and the name stuck.

Today there are about 100,000 Quakers within the US. Their lives are characterized by simplicity, pacifism, and a strong commitment to social justice and work building the Kingdom of God here on earth. Quakers, along with Mennonites and Church of the Brethren, are considered the three historic peace churches, and Quakers today are active in many non-violence and social justice movements. Their worship is characterized by silence. Members only speak when moved to do so.

I decided to attend an unprogrammed meeting for worship. I arrived about 15 minutes before the meeting began and, chatting with the Friends who had gathered (largely 60-somethings), we slowly drifted into the sanctuary. The sanctuary space was originally a Catholic church which had been sold to Lutherans and is now home to the Minneapolis Friends Meeting. The space was unadorned, with simple wooden ceiling, walls, and floor, and plain windows with no stained glass. There were no pews but common meeting room chairs arranged in a semi-circular-ish pattern. Two chairs were place facing the semi-circle. This formed the "facing bench" where the elders (spiritually respected community members, not ministers) who led the meeting sat. As we gathered there was some chatter as people found seats, but eventually everyone settled themselves and fell into silence and listened to the Inner Light.

I tried my best to do likewise, and found it incredibly difficult. I had attended "Mindfulness for Students" meetings semi-regularly for a while and half-expected the Quakers' meeting to feel like a meditation session. It did not. No one led the meeting. No one said "follow your breath" or "listen to the light within." No one was guiding us through the silence, we were listening to our own inner light in our way. No one announced the beginning of the meeting, or what was to happen. No hymns were sung. Nothing was read from the bible. No one said anything in fact. If so moved, those present are supposed to break the silence and share what insight they have received (but only after seriously considering whether they truly are being called to share their insight). I suppose either God wasn't calling anyone to speak that day, or perhaps everyone was saving their insights for the meeting for business which followed the unprogrammed meeting for worship.

The close of the meeting was signaled when two gentlemen, the elders leading the meeting, shook hands. We then all shook hands with those next to us, and greeted each other with "good morning" or "nice to meet you." We then each introduced ourselves to the other 30 or so in attendance, and that was that. The entire meeting lasted 45 minutes. I was struck by how this Christian experience featured no spoken or written references to God or any religious themes at all. The language used by the members at the end of the meeting was secular sounding. Perhaps there is no need for religious language when your life is infused by the Inner Light?

I left the meeting and went out into the world of everyday commotion. A world which seems so much more hectic, distracting, and noisy than the world of George Fox and William Penn. One might wonder how anyone today could listen to the Inner Light when everyone else is listening to Siri. But a tradition that has inspired the likes of Jane Adams, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Fry surely has a powerful message for today's injustices. Perhaps, if anything, the Quakers can help us learn the power of silence.

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#2 St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church

12/16/2014

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As the name implies, Orthodox Christians like their tradition. While Catholics trace the history of their Mass (Sunday service) back to the early days of Christianity, ask any Catholic who remembers Vatican II and they will tell you the Catholic Mass today is much different than it was 50 years ago. Orthodox Christians however, have not undertaken any major revamping of their liturgy, and a tremendous amount of the Divine Liturgy (Sunday service) I attended would look familiar to an Orthodox Christian centuries ago. While the Divine Liturgy I attended was certainly steeped in tradition, there were signs that even Orthodox Christians change the way they do things.

You've probably heard of Greek Orthodox, and Russian Orthodox, and perhaps Serbian, Romanian, or Ukrainian Orthodox. All these traditions (and quite a few others) are all part of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Back in the 11th century the Eastern and Western churches could not come to an agreement about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father or from the Father and the Son (google filioque). So instead of engaging in dialogue, they split, with the eastern churches forming what is now called the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the western churches forming what is now called the Catholic Church. Honestly the split was much more about how power should be distributed in the church than it was about anything theological. And still today, if the eastern and western churches, should ever get serious about joining back together, the biggest issue would be the distribution of power.

To my pleasant surprise, the liturgy I attended was not In Greek and so I managed to follow along. I asked someone about this afterwards and she said liturgies in Orthodox Christianity should be said in the congregation's native language, English in this case. Apparently when holy days fall during the week and the majority of people in attendance are the older Greek-speaking parishioners, the liturgy is said in Greek instead. The general vibe I got was that most of the differences between Greek, Russian, and Antiochian Orthodox liturgies are the language and culture of the church's community.

But no matter who attends the church, or where it's located, there will be a few things that will make it apparent that you are in an Orthodox church. Most noticeably there will be icons and lots of them. Icons, holy paintings or mosaics of saints, angels, or acts of Jesus, are a key part of Orthodox spiritual life. Icons are NOT worshiped. By viewing icons and praying in front of them (not to them) we direct our mind toward God. The icon serves as a gateway for God's light to reach us. The way icons are distributed around the church is designed around the idea of God's light reaching down to us. Up top in the middle of the big dome of the church there is an image of Jesus, "our light and salvation". Behind the altar will be an enormous image of the Theotokos (Mary the Mother of God) symbolizing the way Mary brought the Light (Jesus) into the world. Along the altar wall there will be six icons with the two closest to the altar being Jesus (on the right) and the Theotokos (on the left). Besides this there will be icons pretty much everywhere. The physical beauty of the church only accented the beauty of the liturgy itself.

I expected the liturgy to feel more familiar to me than it did. After all, Catholics and Orthodox Christians share similar histories and loves for tradition. While the order of the liturgy was the same as the Catholic Mass I'm used to, each step was far more intricate and each movement dripped with tradition. To give a sense of the importance of tradition, there were no hymnals in my pew (no hymns were sung during the liturgy), instead there were books outlining the several liturgies used in Orthodox churches. This book featured the sung responses for all the prayers etc. used throughout the Divine Liturgy in both Greek and English. The liturgy I attended (Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom a.k.a. "the usual one") took up 90 pages of about 500.

There was no announcement that the liturgy was beginning. The woman who had been chanting the Orthros (the sunrise segment of the daily cycle of prayers often said by priest and monastic communities) simply walked off the altar, the priest began saying the Divine Liturgy (instead of processing around the church with incense as he was doing during parts of the Orthros), and the choir began leading responses. People continued to file into the church for about the first 30 minutes of the Liturgy which lasted nearly two hours in all, and many left following communion (with about 20 minutes left in the liturgy). The liturgy seemed to melt out of and back into the congregants' daily lives. As a Catholic I'm used to beginning Mass with a big Sign of the Cross and ending it the same way, creating a sense that the Mass is a single prayer. Instead, in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy congregants made the Sign of the Cross many, many times (often three times in a row). This made me think the Sign of the Cross is just something Orthodox Christians do often throughout their daily lives, which in turn led me to feel as though the liturgy, with its countless Signs of the Cross, was an experience the congregants would continue to live out and carry with them throughout the week.

And while the Divine Liturgy was incredibly traditional and, well, orthodox, there were signs that "the times, they are a changin'." I attended on St. Nicholas Day (St. Nick was Greek by the way) and so the children in the congregation joined the procession before communion carrying gifts for a Christmas gift drive. It was interesting to see a procession featuring incense and traditional priestly robes include barbie dolls, legos, and Disney coloring books. Certainly the old and the new are meant to be together. More importantly though was the fact that, while not being a Chrismated Orthodox I couldn't receive communion, I was allowed to remain in the church during the entire Divine Liturgy. Shortly before the consecration (when the bread and wine are transubstantiated (literally turned into the body and blood of Jesus) the priest announced that the "doors were closed." Traditionally this meant non Orthodox had to leave at this point and remain outside the doors of the church as they were not welcomed during the highest part of the liturgy. But nobody threw me out. Afterwards someone explained to me how they viewed this statement more figuratively as a way of holding the holiness of the holiest moment inside the church. Clearly, the Orthodox tradition is not unchangeable.

The thing that struck me most of all about my experience was that, although the liturgy I attended was ancient, it felt relevant. In Orthodox churches the priest faces away from the congregation during the consecration and I expected this would make me feel like a spectator watching a complex ritual. Perhaps it was the wonderful choir who led the responses during the liturgy, or maybe it was the fact that I could follow along in the liturgy book , but I found my self enveloped by the liturgy and swept up in the act of coming together to celebrate the Divine Liturgy. I don't recall much of what was said during the sermon, or what bible verses were read, but I do remember the sense that something holy and sacred was occurring, and that all these people had come together to share in that experience. And I am very grateful to have been one of them.

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Of course, since I'm Catholic, my visit to St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church got my mental wheels turning about the prospect of eventual reunification between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

Much talk has been made recently about whether or not the Catholic and Orthodox Churches will ever reunite. Recently Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople (the "first among equals" of Orthodox archbishops and the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians) caused a bit of a media flurry by making a joint statement about religious freedom. I'm no expert, but my understanding is that the theological divides between the two churches are orders of magnitude smaller than the political and cultural divides. With 1.2 billion Catholics and 300 million Orthodox Christians, there are certainly many Catholics who would like their church to be more like the Orthodox Church, and vice versa. At St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church I sensed a love for the (global) Church present in hearts of the parishioners. I encounter that same love in Catholic churches including those which openly question official Church teachings. And I was reminded how the Catholic Church in fact consists of the Roman Catholic Church as well as several smaller Eastern Catholic Churches, in some ways similar to the structure of the Orthodox Church. Certainly, both Catholics and Orthodox need to recognize that we both have great ritual, cultural, and theological diversity within our Churches.

I doubt many Christians of any variety are terribly concerned whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father or from the Father and the Son. And given the theological diversity present in each church, and the fact that not every Orthodox or Catholic believes every single official tenet of their Church, we must recognize the divide between Orthodox and Catholic churches as the result of the political schism it was. If the higher ups in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are to get serious about re-unification, my suspicion is that love of tradition and unwillingness to part with the current political status quo will weigh far more heavily than coming to an agreement on the filioque. In the meantime, those of us who make up the body of our Churches should reflect on how our shared love for tradition and the Church (even though our Churches and traditions are slightly different) can serve as a bridge to deeper understanding of our own and others' traditions. True unity (which doesn't mean uniformity) between Catholics and Orthodox will not come if their respective heads sign some agreement, but when the bodies of their Churches recognize the beauty and truth present in each others' traditions.

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#3 Minneapolis Friends Meeting

#2 St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church

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