Experimenting with Meeting for Worship this School Year

With Google Searches, AI, and ChatGPT, we are used to getting answers to questions quickly. It is special to have time set aside every Monday to think our own thoughts, to not have questions answered right away. At meeting for worship, we often have big questions that can't be answered. We call them queries. It is a gift to have this time to be with one another and sit without answers, but to wonder.

As one middle school student shared, “When I was younger, I hadn’t thought about how special the time is to sit quietly. When you are told to sit quietly, it can be because you are in trouble. But sitting in meeting [for worship] is not because you are in trouble, but because you are learning how to sit with yourself. It is special.”  

 Meeting for worship always comes up when we talk about what makes a Quaker School different. At Friends School of Portland, this often looks like our entire school, preschool through eighth-grade students, sitting together learning how to try to be silent with one’s own thoughts for about 20 minutes on a Monday afternoon. On any given afternoon, we might have a theme, a question, or an object to focus on.    

Over the course of this school year, our weekly meeting for worship has looked different on the first Monday of each month. We intentionally set aside time to experiment in smaller groups. This has looked like fifth and sixth-grade students holding meeting with their first and second-grade buddy class. Older students helping younger students settle. And it also looked like first and second-grade students sharing a story from the Faith and Play curriculum with their older buddies.   

Kindergarten students have looked forward excitedly to playing the game Still Water. Children find a space to sit by themselves around the classroom with the challenge of keeping their bodies still. Each child sits and tries not to move. One Monday afternoon, kindergarten teacher Carie began Stillwater with a timer…. 9 seconds, and movement started. Timer stopped.  

“This is so hard!” came the exclamations from students.  

Carie asked: “What could we try to help our bodies find stillness?” 

Students responded: 

“We could lay down.”

“I could look at the ceiling.”

“I’m not going to look at my friend who makes me laugh.”

Putting strategies into place, students continued to practice how to keep their bodies still. They noticed that it takes effort to help their body find stillness. When the timer stopped again, they found 38 seconds, and then almost 1-minute.  

“Can we practice our stillness again?” 

As the school year ends, our Quaker Life Committee reflected on the ways that we have spent more time noticing what helped, what to try again, and how we grow into this skill. It isn't about getting it right away or having the answers. It's about returning, week after week, to that quiet space and slowly building the capacity to sit and listen to our own still small voice.