Thursday, May 31, 2007

chairs


chairs
Originally uploaded by jez s
Technically, in a Quaker meeting, is it really important for all the chairs to face into the centre? Would there be a fundamental difference to our worship if we faced outwards, as though reaching out to our community beyond our walls.

The British Friends appear to have a table and flowers at every Meeting for Worship session. Why is that? Is it now a part of the ritual? At Quaker Quest at Friends House on 21 May, the central speaker said that this is a standard part of the Meeting. Is it?
Posted by jez at 3:26 PM

6 comments:

forrest said...

Not out here in the colonies (US). No tables, though a member of my meeting says they had a table w Bible in the area she came from. Sometimes the facing-bench arrangement, especially in older meeting houses. Sometimes in a circle. In one meeting, everyone facing front like a traditional classroom with the Teacher not there yet...

On April 1st this year, I set up (The woman He gave me made me do it!) the chairs in the arrangement you suggest, and the first Friend through the door was a serious old guy, the local authority on Proper Quaker Process and Tradition, who was Not Amused.

I later gave a message where I put some words in his mouth, that he'd explained how all days were equal and therefore, for a Friend, every day was April Fools Day. (& then I did have to confess that my message had stretched things a bit.)

6:12 PM
A tenative Quaker said...

Be interesting to know when these rituals kicked in. When I was a warden of a historic meeting house, pictures of a Young Friends working party from the 30's show the traditional row of benches facing the raised elders bench with the overseers benches on the sides. Yet pictures of the 60's show the inner rows gone and a circle of seats within the historic benches that could not be removed.

One root may have been the opening up of meetings to community use, as the meeting space having removable chairs freed up the space in the week. Hence having movable chairs freed up how to arrange them. This is perhaps the opportunity but not the motive.

This may be that circles reflect equality and that we are all leaders of the worship. But this feels like an explanation in search of fact.

7:47 PM
MaryM said...

I suspect each monthly meeting over time has arranged seating for the convenience of those in attendance. So that the meetings that formed when members could make benches, had benches that fit the room. Very small meetings, like my own, sit around a patio table on lovely first day mornings. My yearly meeting arranges chairs in the room according to the business to be attended to. A facing table for clerks changes to circular for worship, or no table and facing seats.

10:16 PM
Liz Opp said...

This post and the various comments remind me of an article I wrote, about how sitting on benches during one annual session changed my understanding of what it means to worship in the manner of Friends.

I find it is important to revisit these questions from time to time, so that we can let go of empty rituals and forms and seek to incorporate those things in which there is Life and which bring about a sense of God's presence in our midst.

Blessings,
Liz Opp, The Good Raised Up

1:47 PM
Anna said...

This is interesting. I've thought a lot about the physical arrangement of a Meeting. My home Meeting sets the chairs up in a circle. The worship group at my college sets the benches up in a small square. The Meeting at my college has the traditional set up with a facing bench. I personally prefer tradition with a facing bench rather then a more "inclusive" set up but that's just me.
The flowers are interesting. I've never seen that before. My home Meeting has a table for mail the Meeting gets up that's it.

Very though provoking post.

Peace and Joy,
Anna.

5:28 PM
Marshall Massey (Iowa YM [C]) said...

The arrangement of seats in a traditional Quaker meetinghouse (the kind with facing benches) is derived from the arrangement in a mediæval Roman Catholic cathedral -- which was always, always built so that the main body of worshippers were facing Jerusalem, facing the Cross and the Resurrection.

Friends didn't build their meetinghouses so that the main body of their worshippers would be facing Jerusalem. In a way, this is a shame; but it is consistent with their overall spiritualization of Christianity, their conviction that the physical thing, in this case the physical Jerusalem, was not the real thing, the real Jerusalem, the real Cross and Resurrection.

The facing benches, in a traditional meetinghouse, replaced the position of the priest in a Roman Catholic cathedral, or the minister in a Puritan church. Putting the ministers and elders up there, instead of a priest or a paid minister, was a highly meaningful symbolic act: it was a statement about what sort of person Friends wanted to entrust with the oversight of the meeting's spiritual health.

Abolishing the facing benches, and placing the seats in a square or a circle, as was done in the 1960s and 1970s, was a statement about the absolute equality of all Friends. But I'm not sure it was a valid statement -- some people are more weighty, and deserve a greater degree of influence in shaping the life of the meeting -- and I'm not sure it was healthy.

I personally would not be willing to worship in a meeting where the seats faced outward. That would be appointing the world, in place of Jerusalem or the ministers and elders, as the chief authority. If the world were my chief authority, I'd never have involved myself with Friends in the first place.

10:35 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)