Jean Toomer

“ WORSHIP AND LOVE Worship is the action of the spirit. It springs up from our depths, as love does. It is a form of love, and just as desirable, and just as necessary to human life at its fullest and highest. To worship is an innate need of man. It is not imposed upon us from the outside, though the way we sometimes go about it may make it seem an imposition. ”

“ What moves us to pray and worship? Sometimes we are moved by a quickened sense of a sacred Presence. Prayer and worship are our spontaneous responses as we awaken to God's unutterable radiance and wonder. Sometimes we are moved by a realization that, left to ourselves, we are inadequate, that apart from God we are insufficient. Realizing that our knowledge is insufficient, we turn to God's light and wisdom. And there are those who pray and worship as a conscious means of growing up to God and becoming firmly established in His kingdom. ”

“ Or, we are but assuming the appearance of worship, there being no life, no yearning within, we being more dead than alive inside. Indeed it is dull and tedious to hold the posture, if it is not backed up by a quickening life of the spirit.
True worship is a living experience. By and through it we enter into a life so vital, so vivid, so large and glorious that, by comparison, our life of ordinary activities seems narrow, dull, dead. By bodily action the body comes alive. ”

“ If a meeting evokes only dullness in its members it is a dead meeting and ought to be laid down. A live meeting evokes life. Just the prospect of attending such a meeting should quicken us. It were better to come alive doing housework than to become deadened in a meeting house.
Come with the expectancy that, as you make effort to turn yourself Godwards, the life deep within you will arise, and meet you half-way, and call you, and draw you, gather you into God's presence. Come with the hope that the Teacher within will teach you of spiritual things. ”

“ Suppose we are approached by a person of inquiring mind who says, "You say that there is that of God in every man. All right, I am prepared to accept that as truth. But precisely where in us does the divine spark exist? Is it in our bodies? Is it in our ordinary minds and everyday thoughts and emotions? Do you mean to say that God exists in ignorance, in man's prejudices and hatreds, in human evil?" How will we reply? Obviously God does not exist in our trivial actions, nor in our godless thoughts and feelings. Certainly He does not exist in our ignorance and evil. ”

“ Friends have chosen the way of subduing the body-mind, of excluding it from worship except insofar as it may act as an organ of expression of the risen spirit. Having chosen this way, we are called upon to do it effectively, creatively. If we succeed—and we sometimes do—our inner life is resurrected, the whole man is regenerated, and a living worship connects man with God. But if we fail—and we often do—the spiritual nature remains as if dead, and, on top of this, we pile a deadened body-mind. What should be a meeting for worship, a place where man and God come together, becomes a void. ”

“ The words should rise like a shaggy crag upthrust from the surface of silence, under the pressure of river power and yearning, contrition and wonder. But on the other hand the words should not rise up like a shaggy crag. They should not break the silence, but continue it. For the Divine Life who was ministering through the medium of silence is the same Life as is now ministering through words. And when such words are truly spoken "in the Life," then when such words cease the uninterrupted silence and worship continue, for silence and words have been of one texture, one piece. ”

“ I call to him or them in my spirit, and suffer with them, and pray God that through their suffering they will be turned to Him, that by their very pain they may grow up to Him.
Hardly a meeting passes but what I pray that I and the members of the meeting and people everywhere may have this experience: that our wills be overcome by God's will, that our powers be overpowered by His light and love and wisdom. And sometimes, though again rarely, I find it possible to hold my attention, or, rather, to have my heart held, without wavering, upon the one supreme reality, the sheer fact of God. ”

“ Can we witness those we love, in their goodness to us, without being touched and moved? Can we hear the voice of our best friend on the phone without eagerly listening and eagerly replying? Be sure, then, that when we come into God's presence we will be touched and moved beyond our greatest expectation.
Nothing so deters us from wanting to worship as the notion that worship is unliving. If it is unliving it is not worship. If it seems dull, tedious or difficult, it is because we are not truly worshiping. We are, perhaps, preparing ourselves to worship. ”

“ No one has to tell you to eat. No one has to force you to take food. Suppose you are in love. Must you be told to think of the person you are in love with? Must you be forced to yearn for the loved one?
Worship is a hunger of the human soul for God. When it really occurs, it is as compelling as the hunger for food. It is as spontaneous as the love of boy for girl. If we feel it, no one needs tell us we should worship. ”

“ And I must confess, too, that during some meetings I have been buried under inertia and deadness and unable to overcome them. Having meant nothing to myself, it is not likely that my presence meant anything to the others. My body was but an object, unliving, filling space on a bench. It would have been better for others had I stayed away. A dead body gives off no life; it but absorbs life from others, reducing the life-level of the meeting. ”

“ We, as ordinary people, are not by inclination turned towards God, but, on the contrary, are turned away from Him. Day in and day out we do not even think of the possibility of loving God and doing His will, but think of ourselves, and are bent to enact our own wills, have our own way. Whether we, as earthly men, can truly pray and worship is a question about which there is likely to be disagreement. But who will deny that when we are absorbed in our affairs, as we are most of the time, we do not pray or worship? ”

“ I have in mind those meeting hours which are not dominated by a single sermon, a single twenty-minute address, well-rounded out, with all the edges tucked in so there is nothing more to say. In some of our meetings we may have too many polished examples of homiletic perfection which lead the rest to sit back and admire but which close the question considered, rather than open it. Participants are converted into spectators; active worship on the part of all drifts into passive reception of external instruction. ”

“ But I am thinking of the worship that spontaneously arose as I beheld the wonders of the world which God created. Young eyes are new eyes, and to new eyes all things are fresh, vivid, original.
It is sometimes asked if children and young people are capable of the religious life. Certainly they are not capable of sustained effort towards an unswerving aim. Certainly they cannot hold themselves to a consistent discipline. They cannot engage in the religious life as a conscious way of living. These abilities come only as we grow up and subject ourselves to training. ”

“ Immerse yourself in the life of the group. This is our chance to lose ourselves in a unified and greater life. It is our opportunity to die as separated individuals and be born anew in the life and power of the spirit. Seek, in the words of Thomas Kelly, to will your will into the will of God. ”

“ It is contrary to the mind's nature to be still. It is against its grain to turn Godwards. Left to itself it goes on and on under its own momentum, roaming, wandering. It thinks and pictures and dreams of everything on earth except God and the practice of His presence. Even those who developed great aptitude for taking hold of the mind and turning it to God found it difficult and even painful in the beginning. If we expect it to be easy and pleasant we shall be easily discouraged after a few trials. Brother Lawrence warns us that this practice may even seem repugnant to us at first. ”

“ Friends are by no means the only ones who realize that the body-mind presents a problem; that, in its usual state, it is an obstacle to worship and to all forms of the religious life. Friends are not alone in recognizing that when the separated self is uppermost and active, the spiritual self is submerged and passive, and that we are called upon to reverse this. All genuine religious people, whatever the religion, have recognized the problem and have endeavored to solve it in one way or another. ”

“ Jane Rushmore brought out this point in one of our meetings of Ministry and Counsel. She reminded us that the meeting for worship is based on the conviction that we can directly communicate with God, and He with us. Silence, we believe, is a necessary means to such communion. For if we are busy with our own talk, God will not speak to us. Stillness is a necessary condition for practicing the presence of God. For if we stir about in our own wills, God will not move us. In the meeting for worship we try to obey the command, "Be still, and know that I am God." God is the goal. ”

“ We are urged to try to sense God's presence, daily to practice His presence. By such practice, if we persevere, we shall surely come to have a convincing experience.
Worship is our response to God's reality, a reality which is, to be sure, within men, but which also is the radiant foundation of the entire universe. In trying to worship, we turn ourselves Godwards. We yearn for Him and endeavor to know His will. Our lives are pointed toward Him. If, and as we succeed, we make contact with God, and by this contact He is made real to us. When He becomes real to us we spontaneously love Him. ”

“ Why is there need of particular occasions for prayer and worship? Why need we gather together and sit quietly? Why practice waiting before God? If He is in us, why does He not manifest to us continually, why does His power not always motivate our actions? Why do we have to practice His presence, and why is this practice so difficult? ”

“ Our help to each other, even though we are gathered in a meeting [15] for worship or actively serving our fellow men outside of the meeting, may be and often is delayed as regards our kindling one another spiritually. What are we to do in this case? There is only one thing we can do—wait. Having done our part to overcome the separated self, we can but wait for the spiritual self to arise and take command of our lives. Having brought ourselves as close as we can to God, we can but hold ourselves in an attitude of waiting for Him to work His will in us, to draw us fully into His presence. ”

“ If the earthly man is dead to the things of the spirit, then, as long as he remains so, he obviously can neither truly pray nor truly worship. Nor can we, as long as we remain identified with him. Should he try to pray, he but prays according to his own ignorant and faulty notions. Should he try to worship, he but worships in his own will, not according to the will of God. Robert Barclay called this kind of worship "will-worship." ”

“ The mind of an adult is more restive and all over the place than the body of a child. How are we to curb its incessant restlessness and stay it upon prayer and worship? How restrain its wanderings and point it to the mark? How [23] take it away from its automatic stream of thoughts and focus it on God? Only by effort, practice, repeated effort, regular practice. It requires life-long preparation and training. We cannot hope to make much progress if we attempt to stay the mind only on First-days during meeting. We must make effort throughout the week, daily, hourly. ”

“ I think that we in this age of decreasing inner-action, of ever increasing outer activity, have a profound lesson to learn from the early Friends. We had best learn it now, and quickly, lest the faith and practices of the Friends become so watered that they lose their character and flow into the activities of which the world is full, and are absorbed by them, and Friends cease to be Friends. ”

“ The early Friends, while proclaiming the good news that [14] there is a spiritual man in each and all of us, that God dwells in this part of human beings and is, for this very reason, close even to the earthly man, regarded the earthly man as unregenerate, sinful, blind and dead to the things of the spirit. Only by rising above the earthly aspect of ourselves can we pass from sin into righteousness, from death to life, from that which exists apart from God into that which exists as part of God. Only by yielding to God's power can the earthly man be regenerated. ”

“ God is the sole object of genuine worship—God and His power which He manifests to us as love, light, and wisdom.
All forms of true worship arise from an experience of the fact of God, from the realization that God is. Men such as George Fox and John Woolman had their first experiences of God early in life. Most of us come to the experience gradually and later on, if at all. ”

“ It is reassuring because from it we may have sound hope that, if we rightly and faithfully engage in this and other inward practices, we may reach and [16] even surpass the high level of religious experience and service attained by Friends in the days when the Quaker movement really moved. In our present-day lives and meetings there can be soul-shaking events. The Light can invade us. Truth can take hold of us. Love may gather us. Above all, God himself may become real to us as the supreme Fact of the entire universe. ”

“ To be sure, people young and old need instruction. We need instruction in the Bible, in poetry, in all literature that contains truth and beauty. We need to be helped to struggle against our faults, to overcome our imperfections. And we need to be curbed on occasion, as the only way in which we may eventually become able to curb ourselves. But it should not be forgotten that all people, especially young people, have poetry in them. And, more than that, according to the faith of the Friends all people have within them something of the very spirit that created the scriptures. ”

“ What should we try to do in a meeting for worship? What do we hope to attain through it? Why is silence desirable? What is the main idea behind the Friends manner of worship? It is true that Quakers wait for the spirit to move them. Why wait? Wouldn't it be better just to go ahead? Besides waiting, what more is to be done? Can we not pray and worship when we are alone, or as we go about our daily affairs? Why is it necessary to meet together? What is worship? ”