Statistically, it’s hard to wrap your head around the number: The 350th meeting of New England Yearly Meeting.
For three and a half centuries the Religious Society of Friends have been gathering summers in New England, for many years in Newport’s large and still-standing Meeting House.
In recent years, it’s been in the more space-age settings of Bryant University, with its Unistructure and other modern buildings and which changed its identity from Bryant College during the years we’ve been coming.
In a way it’s a throwback to those summer revival meetings you can see remnants of in places like Martha’s Vineyard – escapes from the day to day life in cities or towns into little cabins and makeshift quarters, yet structured for education, fellowship or worship. Or to let the kids run around a bit.
In New England, it’s served as a large family reunion – seeing faces from the other corners of the region with regularity, sharing meals and standing at the SoftServ dispenser in the cafeteria with them, wearing fanciful homemade crowns and lingering at a Quaker bookshop whose titles aren’t easily found at the local Barnes & Nobel.
As with other large family gatherings, there are dysfunctional aspects. This year was designated as “jubilee,” and so the regular reports and action (and inaction) of business meeting was waived for this special occasion.
Business meetings arise out of silent worship, and so did jubilee. People gathered in a large round room next to the modernist library (where Quaker children belied their heritage by playing hours of war games on the Internet). And in silence they were all awaiting a call from God, though it seemed like most people were using AT&T and service was spotty.
A good Quaker meeting is mostly silence with only intermittent messages, but Yearly Meeting, featuring the experienced vocal ministers (as they are called) from the individual meetings in the region were raring to go and awaiting to be heard, can be as packed with anxious speakers as Congressional town hall meetings last summer.
Microphones are needed in such large gatherings to ensure everyone hear a message, but in this setting, it gave a lot of power to the volunteers who bestowed the microphone to whom they chose. It was a crap shoot; a person who looked like he would deliver a succinct, calming message might very well launch into a 10-minute tirade about the earth’s ills and what Quakers should immediately do to remedy it.
And the microphone wielders had to choose from up to a half dozen people, standing at the same time, each awaiting their turn. Not all could possibly be called, who would left without a voice? This may be why those who were finally chosen sounded angry and frustrated.
Quakers without an agenda can be a dangerous group. There was plenty of urgent calls to action on a number of fronts, and just as many calls to retreat to another direction. Some wondered why something needed to be “decided” at all. Wasn’t this supposed to be jubilee?
The respected elder charged with writing and reading aloud an instant summary of the proceedings used phrases like “in a rut” and “lost in the desert” and other poetic imagery that, while vivid, may have been overstating the desperation.
Such angst made it easy to leave the hours-long meetings early. There was no way I was going to miss the annual Coffeehouse put on by the younger people. Anybody can sign up, sing a song, do a skit or tell a story.
This is where Yearly Meeting becomes a extended family camping trip, with everyone encouraging every talent on stage. Even the mom with the weird dance number. Or the dad who hushes the audience by reciting acapella the song from “Hair,” “Frank Mills.” I was more charmed by the kids who seemed to know ancient songs. A teen with a guitar led the room on Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and knew every verse.
A gang of 10-year-old boys thwarted from singing Ke$ha (“his mom took his iPod away”) instead led the group on the gospel standard “Wade in the Water.”
And a shy girl accompanied by her dad on guitar led the crowd who joined in on “The Circle Game,” which said more about the rituals of every year than anything that would come up at business meeting.