Welcome to Pennsdale Meeting – a Quaker spiritual community that has been a presence in this part of Pennsylvania since the late 1700s.
We come from a variety of backgrounds and have a diversity of beliefs. We share a practice of silent worship.
In Quaker terms, this is an “unprogrammed” meeting. This means silent worship is the core of our gathering here.
You may have heard that Quakers don’t have ministers. Actually, we don’t have laity. Ministry is everyone’s responsibility — and joy — whether you are a member of the Religious Society of Friends or attending for the first time.
Ministry, to us, is not a “spectator sport.” You are participating in ministry simply by being with us.
We sit in silence in order to listen inwardly for that divine voice that has spoken through the sages in many times, places, and spiritual traditions. Inward listening is possible in solitude, but becomes powerful and even palpable when we gather.
Here’s what you will experience with us.
- Meeting for worship lasts about one hour.
- During that hour, some may speak briefly and then return to silence.
- Meeting is over when someone sitting nearby shakes your hand and says, “good morning.”
That’s it, but that’s not all of it.
Faith and Practice, a book you will find on the benches, explains much more about unprogrammed worship. In it, we are advised to come to meeting neither determined to speak nor determined not to speak. This is a delicate balance all Quakers have found profoundly challenging.
If someone speaks during worship, you may wonder:
“How is that a spiritual message?”
That’s a very good question.
After meeting ends, please feel free to approach the speaker about this. We may worship in silence, but we do love to talk!
At times the silence of worship becomes a container that invites some to pour out their pain and concerns about circumstances in the world around us. Such outpourings of concerns can serve as catalysts for actions – an invitation to craft spiritually-inspired responses to real-world suffering.
An hour in which no one speaks can be spiritually powerful, too. At its best, it will connect you with an inner stillness you can return to at any time. At the very least, it will be a shared respite from a culture rooted in experiences valued for being “brighter, louder, and faster.”
— Jim Birt, Pennsdale Monthly Meeting