Worship and Ritual and the Evocation of Participation in an Event

I have attended many meetings for Worship, both prior to the fieldwork period and approximately fifty during 2009-2010. During the fieldwork my presence could be paradoxically described as covert (Nesbit, 2002 and Dandelion,

1996) in the sense that I was present at an event open to the public. My status was as an attender not a member of the Society of Friends. I was indistinguishable from other participants and not identifiable by any distinctive feature pertaining to my research. My approach was mimetic in engaging with Quaker practice. During the fieldwork I attended many discussion groups about Quaker worship practice and found my practice to be within the spectrum of the descriptions I heard. Like Quakers I have learned worship practices through conformity and imitation. I note in my account some personal predilections from my previous experiences of worship in other churches and this I also found to be common amongst Quakers. I therefore submit that my use of myself and my experience in this context is a sound source of ethnographic material.

The products of this participation were ‘headnotes’ (memory and reconstruction) and fieldnotes which enabled me to write an ‘evocation of participation’ in a single, selected, reconstructed ritual event. I considered the possibility of producing a composite description of a ‘typical’ Meeting for Worship from fieldnotes. This may have enabled me to construct an account

for later analysis. One example of such analysis would be a taxonomy 42 _of

features of meetings. However I rejected this approach as constructing the

42 _{For example, Davies, (1988) Talking in Silence: Ministry in Quaker Meetings in}

Coupland (1988), Styles of Discourse in The Liturgies of Quakerism Dandelion (2005). In the latter source seven elements of normative ministry are identified; ‘length, style, frequency, (aspects of vocal ministry which Elders are sanctioned to police), timing, content, thematic association, and linguistic construction’. My approach does not attempt to produce such descriptions of systemic patterns but rather explores key themes and practices that arise from the ethnographic evocation.

ethnographic data too closely in terms of a structural analytical framework.43 _I

have chosen to describe a particular Meeting and to evoke the feeling of integrity of one particular event supplemented by some fieldnotes and footnotes. The very many other meetings I attended influenced the attention that I was able to adopt and the grounded confidence that I bring to my description. These other participations assisted me in identifying and bringing to the fore the elements of meeting for worship ritual. This is a reflection also of Quaker experience. Participation in worship is a recursive process over time. In a sense, all meetings and the history of participation are implicated in any one event.

This intense focus on a single event also enabled me to assess the potency of the event as heterotopic (Pilgrim, 2008:54-67). I am thus better able to show how the ritual worship emerges as a potential key characteristic, indeed as a

possible sine qua non of Quakerism (as the tradition asserts) and that all

Quaker practices are anchored in and flow from participation in this event as the exemplary source of disciplines, assumed inspiration, and the basis of group discernment. This material is the basis of my phenomenological description in Chapter 3, Section 1.

Here I create an ethnography both from the perspective of a participant committed to attending the act of worship and as an anthropologist committed to exploring the possible meanings of these practices in a discursive mode.

43 _{I considered that it would reify a series of components, themes and features. My}

approach is to retain the embodied and experiential quality of description. This epistemology I regard as closer to Quakers’ embodied understanding of tacit knowledge and of inspiration through ‘leadings’.

This evocation is an interpretive act based upon the experience of participation in the event. This ethnography is not, therefore, the result of ‘participant-observation’ (Clifford & Marcus, 1986:13, 183-4.) but a description and an evocation of participation followed by an analytical discussion. The

ethnography is a post hoc reconstruction of what happened as I understand it.

The ethical correlate of this methodology is important in that I did not set out or intend to observe this event and experience, it presented itself as a memory in the context of my general anthropological orientation to reflect upon Quaker worship. I experienced and heard it as a worshipper and remembered it as an anthropologist. Since it fell during the fieldwork period I was predisposed to the possibility that such a process might unfold. The nature of engagement that I am describing here therefore relies on the memory of what happened, recorded in fieldnotes soon afterwards, rather than on the note-taking practices associated with participant-observation well documented by Collins, (2002a:82) and Warner (1990:67ff).

Writing an ethnography of the experience of a Quaker meeting poses certain problems. Participating in worship entails a number of practice modes and different registers of awareness. Sentience, cognition, concentration, imagination, reverie, and a willing suspension of conscious activity are all part of worship practice. There are practices of, for example: getting there; moving into the worship space; being there; being still and silent; listening and these contribute to different registers of awareness, which might include, being aware of others; thinking, meditating or contemplating; having thoughts, feelings and imagination; emptying the mind as in the practice of ‘centering-down’; listening

to spoken ministry; being prompted to speak or speaking; feeling part of the group or not; or being aware of time, place and space. But these are neither bounded, mutually exclusive nor linear. Practices like being ‘still’ are themselves interrupted and distractions occur, so I attempt to capture this iterative aspect of worship. The practice modes co-exist with the registers of awareness.

Most practices are iterative, one can go back or start again, as with the practice of centering-down. There are practices that interpenetrate each other like personal stillness in relation to the group silence. Other features such as the room, or others’ faces may be constantly present but may change their hue or quality during worship. Some qualities of worship have a gestalt; elements of place, space, group composition, and silence may flow into focus at different times. There may be moments in the flow and tempo of the event whereby a mood or atmosphere emerges that seems to be shared by those present. Worship time is subject to a lived distinction between linear lapsed time and a sense of duration. These temporalities co-exist in relation to a further

chronology, namely that of the eternal.44 _{Worshippers are acting, the situation is}

acting upon them, and something happens, and there are both intended and unintended consequences. The unintended consequences are in some sense expected within the nature of disclosures or promptings. The very notion of inspiration requires a breaking into intention and expectation.

44 _{QF&P 1.02 A&Qs 18 ‘Seek to know one another in the things that are eternal…..’}

Also see discussions on Quaker views on time, realised eschatology ‘end-time’ in Dandelion, Gwyn & Peat (1998) Heaven on Earth. Quakers and the Second Coming.

The first ethnographic challenge is, therefore, to evoke the dynamic in the spatio-temporal flow of participation in the event. I attempt to capture registers of emptiness, reverie, focal attention, inattention, comfort, speaking and listening, both as an interior state and as a co-sentient being with others. I describe the

preparation for the meeting, Doorkeeping, 45 at length because I want to evoke

the processes by which prospective participants shape their expectations. I later theorise this period as a process of ‘sacralisation’ and ‘ritualisation’ (as do Heelas and Woodhead, 2005:968) which is accomplished by making small things matter and paving the way for them to carry import and significance. I consider that Quakers are both making a ritual and going to a ritual.

The ethnographic approach I adopt is a phenomenological one:

For anthropology this implies a practical relativism; the suspension of inquiry into the divine or objective truth of particular customs, beliefs or worldviews in order to explore them as modalities or moments of experience, to trace out their implications and uses. Ideas are not so much discounted as deconstructed; they are seen as approximate expressions rather than exact explanations of experience. The phenomenological method involves ‘placing in brackets’ or ‘setting aside’ questions concerning the rational ontological or objective status of ideas and beliefs in order to fully describe and do justice to the ways in which people actually live, experience and use them - the ways in which they appear to consciousness (Jackson (1996:10).

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This is a duty at all Quaker Meetings of all types. The Doorkeeper greets all arrivals to the meeting with a handshake. This contact is seen as an important welcome and aspect of Quaker hospitality. The Doorkeeper will also explain aspects of the meeting to any new attenders. The Doorkeeper ensures that the space for the meeting is managed in terms of it boundaries. Late-comers are let in at certain times. The Door- keeper sits by the door during the meeting and deals with any arrivals. The Door- keeper has other duties and these vary from local meeting to local meeting. In St Andrews Meeting the doorkeeper arranges the refreshments after the meeting for worship and ensures that the building is in good order after he event. A full description of Doorkeeping is provided in the ethnography.

However, in Chapters 3 and 4, I use the ethnographic material within a particular analytical perspective.

Describing and evoking ethnographically a single ‘event’ called worship raises a number of theoretical problems (Ardener, 1989:88). A single contemporary Meeting for Worship may not always exemplify all traditional practices, yet they are all in some sense present possibilities. For example, a reported sense amongst worshippers that a particular meeting was ‘settled’ or ‘gathered’ does not always occur. Also the extension of the worship event to include doorkeeping, coffee, and the prior existence of a community with associations and memories make the event’s boundaries porous in other ways. The very nature of inspired speech and worship may be thought to create a unique creative act of the moment such that generalisations appear illegitimate. These issues can be addressed ethnographically. Quaker worship can be described as having a regular form but not a programmed template, and as having predictable and unpredictable aspects. Links with the Quaker tradition can be noted and I attempt to do this.

In Chapter 3. Section 1, I provide a basic narrative of the worship event in time place and space. The narrative is a first person account in the present tense. The elements of the ethnography are:

(a) a running narrative ;

(b) silence and its imagined qualities;

(d) speech, ministry, quotation by speakers; (e) extracts from fieldnotes on specific practices; (f) quotations from Quaker texts;

(g) footnotes for explanations of specific Quaker terms and practices; (h) footnotes which flag key issues taken up in later chapters;

(i) footnotes which cross-reference other data in transcripts of tapes.

I represent the backdrop of silence by gaps in the text. Speech, ministry, and

quotations read from a text are indented in bold italic. My thoughts are

represented by indented non-bold italics. Quotations from fieldnotes or Quaker

texts are represented by indented normal font. Participants have fictitious names. In real time, the ethnography covers 2 hours 35 minutes, 09.55 to 12.30 on a Sunday in May 2009 at St Andrews Quaker Meeting House.