This is a live draft of a workshop on preparation for worship that was offered at Toronto Monthly Meeting on 2024-12-15. Comments welcome!
One of the greatest Christians I ever knew was Henry T. Hodgkin, an English Friend, medical doctor, a Christian scholar, and the first Director of Pendle Hill. He read widely and deeply and each morning of his adult life he spent an hour in religious concern — a third given to religious reading, a third to the exercise of prayer, and a third to writing in a journal or daybook. He did not simply record the simple events that happened the previous day but rather used the book to write his mind out on things that had come up in his prayer or reading or situations in which he was involved.
— Douglas Steere, On Speaking Out of The Silence: Vocal Ministry in the Unprogrammed Meeting for Worship (Pendle Hill Pamphet #182 p. 19)
For the last ten years, I’ve been playing with this discipline on-and-off. You see, I’m a bookish person. I have kept a journal for a little over twenty-five years. It’s no surprise then that this form of personal religious discipline appeals to me.
In this note, I’m going to share some thoughts about this discipline. I’ll give some suggestions about how to do practice it. Finally, I’ll end off with a bunch of ways of varying the discipline.
It is worth considering the ideal mindset, place, and time for this discipline. You can do this anywhere: at home, in nature, or on the ride to work.
For several years, I had an hour and a half commute to work on the TTC. This gave me a lot of time with little space and little privacy. To my surprise, I found that the commute was a great setting for Hodgkin’s discipline. The “exercise of prayer”, which I would rather call worship, was greatly facilitated by having a bunch of people around on the train. I could hold my fellow passengers in Light and seek that of God.
All I needed was my pen, notebook, and little booklet of prayers. Initially, I used the timer on my phone, but eventually got used to the length of the commute and could switch from practice-to-practice in roughly equal amounts without interruption. The discipline really does require very little.
Regarding mindset, try to stay curious. This is an evolving practice. Try out different variations. Try to find the readings which nurture your soul. In this kind of sacred reflective writing, you’ll find that your “voice” comes out different. Play with different sorts of writing. You can be rambly, poetic, stream of consciousness, factual, etc. You create the ritual.
People love ritual; it answers a deep need in us. Creating an intentional means of starting and stopping the discipline can help to establish right mindset. When I was commuting on the TTC, I would recite this little prayer card to open the discipline.
If you choose to do the discipline at home, then you might want to set aside a comfortable place. In the periods when I’ve primarily practiced this at home, I tend to reserve a nice arm chair for the practice. A small bookshelf, or side table, serves to hold the books I’m reading, notebook, writing implements, and a warm cup of tea. For a while, I even used a little bell for opening and closing the discipline.
Steere’s description of Hodgkin notes that he “read widely and deeply”. The Hodgkin discipline creates a space to read widely and deeply. If you read for twenty minutes a day, then you can read a lot. Think about it this way: if this became a daily habit, then you would spend a bit over a hundred hours reading per year.
If this discipline become an establish part of your life, then you can pour literature in to it. You know that you will always make slow and steady progress on reading. Do you want to read the Quran? How about Faith and Practice? Then you have a place and time to do so.
It is worth keeping a list of things you might want to read. That way, you can queue things up by seasons or mood. Reading breeds more reading. If someone in your Meeting recommends something, you can add it to the queue.
You should have a variety of literature on hand. Anything that speaks to the depths of your heart. Poetry, literature, history, philosophy, and religious writing would all fit the bill. You want works that will stand up to slow careful reading. The sort of thing that you can think about for the rest of the day, or the rest of your life.
We search the world for truth; we cull
The good, the pure, the beautiful,
From graven stone and written scroll,
From all old flower-fields of the soul;And, weary seekers of the best,
We come back laden from the quest,
To find that all the sages said
Is in the Book our mothers read.— Quoted from Miriam by John Greenleaf Whittier (1870)
Try reading the Bible. I know: it is big and scary. I’ve probably lost your serious consideration by even mentioning it. You can skip below for reading suggestions other than the Bible. However, I think that the Bible is a uniquely important document for Quakers. It is foundational to so much of our literature.
The early Quakers, whom we are not obliged to revere or imitate, were steeped in its language. If you try to read the writings of Elizabeth Fry, Margaret Fell, Mary Fisher, Isaac Penninton, or George Fox, etc., at any length you will inevitably hit a wall beyond which you cannot pass, because their writing is so Biblical. This is exactly what happened to me, and it is the reason why I started reading the Bible: I wanted to make sense of early Quaker’s writings. (For the record: I don’t consider the Bible to be special or magical. It’s a book among books.)
The Bible is a library, bound up as one book. It has a lot of poetry, legal documents, stories, and histories. You’re definitely not supposed to read it cover to cover. Our late Friend Sandra MacCallum said in a religious education talk on her daily Bible reading practice: “You learn the Bible like you learn about your own life: bit by bit, day by day.”
Here’s one way to read the Bible that’s compatible with the small time
allotment of Hodgkin practice: Get two to four bookmarks.
Put a bookmark in the Psalms, and one in a Gospel.
After that, you can distribute some more bookmarks according to your tastes.
I like the distribution: Wisdom, History, Gospel, and Prophets.
In any case, no matter how many bookmarks you have, you go to each bookmark, read a chapter there, and then advance the bookmark to the next chapter.
This keeps the readings varied.
Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life.
— Advice and Queries (Britain Yearly Meeting)
Another great document worth reading is Advice and Queries (A&Q). This is a foundational collection of Quaker writing that was originally used as a census or survey of Monthly Meetings. It began with questions like: “How many of your members are in jail? Who is being persecuted for the Truth’s sake?”
Some Meeting still use it corporately. Over time it has evolved in to a document suitable for personal use. In recent editions, from BYM, the advices and queries are intermingled. The BYM edition is small, compact, easy to slip in to the cover of a notebook. I like to think that A&Q is a core message of Quakerism, handed down from generation to generation, and revised for the relevance to the current times.
The thing with reading A&Q privately is that it is tempting to nod along and feel content with your answers. Take this one, which feels especially relevant to Hodgkin:
Do you try to set aside times of quiet for openness to the Holy Spirit? All of us need to find a way into silence which allows us to deepen our awareness of the divine and to find the inward source of our strength. Seek to know an inward stillness, even amid the activities of daily life. Do you encourage in yourself and in others a habit of dependence on God’s guidance for each day? Hold yourself and others in the Light, knowing that all are cherished by God.
Reading this, I say inwardly to myself: “Yeah, yeah. Sure I do! I set aside time. And I love God’s guidance. Of course. Of course. I’m such a good little Quaker.” And then I quickly move along with my busy life. The text washes over me, and I’m left feeling smug and happy.
To be really concrete and honest our answers to the queries, it really helps to write things down. An American computer scientist, Leslie Lamport, has a great quote about this phenomena: “If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.”
When I advertised this workshop at my Meeting, I described it as being about reading, writing, and prayer. Several weeks later, a few Friends asked me when I would be holding my “journaling” workshop. One Friend in particular was excited about the mental health benefits of journaling. This part of Hodgkin’s discipline appeals to people. I think that it’s helpful to frame the writing aspect of Hodgkin practice as a form of journalling. How should we understand journalling?
Let’s look back at Steere’s description of Hodgkin’s practice for a moment:
He did not simply record the simple events that happened the previous day but rather used the book to write his mind out on things that had come up in his prayer or reading or situations in which he was involved.
I love the way that Steere describes the use of a journal: Hodgkin used his journal to write his mind out. We can use writing to see our minds more clearly. Writing allows us to make plain, in black and white, the secret labours of our hearts. Moreover, we can write about things that came up in reading and prayer. And so, writing provides a mechanism for reflection on the other parts of the process.
If we’re journalling about our concerns, about the situations in which we find ourselves, then we have a way of living life twice. We can literally re-write our experiences. We can turn the situation around on the page and ask how other people might experience it. I find that journalling helps me to notice things. If I know that I might write about something later, I experience it differently. There seems to be more to notice.
The writing aspect of this discipline doesn’t have to be complicated. Recently, I gave the following advice to my students, but it seems generally applicable to anyone starting a writing practice:
Get a cheap notebook and a pen, write down the date, and then write a bit about your life. Do this as often as you like. Taking time to reflect on your life, acknowledge the hardships, and write about the things that bring you joy is powerful.
Your journal is a place where you can do anything. You can write until you are out of ideas, and then you’ll find that you have even more ideas beyond the usual ones. You can re-visit an experience in writing, and gain a new perspective on it. You can write a list of all the things that you’re thankful for. You can write about your life goals. Revisiting your life goals in writing can give a strong sense of purpose.
Eventually, if you keep on writing, you’ll find the life has an incredibly rich and varied texture. You will start to appreciate things more and more by paying attention to them. And, rather subtly, you’ll be more grateful.
To be fair to history, I should acknowledge a bit of precedent. Quakers have kept journals for a long time. Howard Brinton wrote the definitive work on Quaker journals. He noted that Quaker journals almost never record the mundane day-to-day events of the authors. The contents are primarily, almost exclusively, religious. Even the birth and death of the author’s children get scarce mention. The journal are mostly records of travels in the ministry, the preaching of Truth, trials and tribulations. We aren’t obliged to keep our writing to the narrowly religious but it’s worth trying from time to time.
I think that the word “prayer” rubs many liberal unprogrammed Quakers the wrong way. As I note above, I would replace the “exercise of prayer” with the word “worship”. However, this would switch the point of the exercise, and so we ought to think a bit about prayer.
We can pray for many things: our world, other people, ourselves. When I pray, I’m usually seeking insight or clarity about a situation. “Why is this happening? What could this possibly mean?” I ask, frankly and directly, in hopes of receiving some message. To anyone who hasn’t experienced it, the following will sound totally ridiculous, but it’s true: God answers.
One thing that greatly changed my prayer life was addressing God in tone that I’d use with a normal down-to-earth friend. A sort of “Umm, hey. Could you keep an eye on my friend? I’m worried about her.” Dropping “O God” from my vocabulary has improved my communication with God a hundred fold. You’ll need to find the language that works best for you.
Years ago, I learned a deep lesson about prayer from a stranger
— who has since become a friend.
I was picking through some furniture left on the curb, a little old lady came out and exclaimed:
“Yay! I’d been praying that a strong young man would come and pick some of this stuff. There is a lot more inside. Come on in, and you’ll have first pick.”
At the time, I thought this was just a way of talking, a little rhetorical flourish.
But I later learned that my friend, Christine, constantly prays for small specific asks.
And, often, her prayers are granted.
Living in an honest and direct relationship to God doesn’t be hard. Ask, and it really will be granted. If you pray for reasonable things, with an honest heart, then you will be surprised by how often they will often happen.
It is worth exploring variations on the basic practice.
The last variation that I would like to suggest deviates rather significantly from Hodgkin’s practice, but it is worth considering. In my own practice of this this discipline, I’ve found it helpful to get physically active. I approach the other aspects of Hodgkin’s discipline in a radically different way if I’ve been moving my body. As Steere describes it, Hodgkin’s practice was 100% cerebral. We are asked to come to Meeting with “heart and mind prepared”. I would encourage you to prepare your body as well: move, explore, stretch like a cat, tire yourself out. You’ll hear the small still voice much clearer afterwards.
Published: Dec 6, 2024
Last Modified: Dec 21, 2024
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