I DIDN’T GO to Quaker meeting this morning. I wanted the fellowship but the grumpy old man in me won out and instead I emptied out all the potting soil from last year’s pots and did some other puttering.

            I had a couple of reasons for not going. One has been weighing on me a lot lately. I don’t believe in God and never really have. That’s a long story for another day that goes back to the blood-thirsty monsters that lived in my closet and dresser drawers when I was a wee lad and were waiting for me to get up in the night so they could grab me by the ankles and drag me into a living hell where I would be torn apart so I wet my bed into an unacceptable age for such night-time dribbles.

            At any rate, most Quakers believe in God and particularly in the New Testament, which features Jesus, the son of God and man of peace and peace is central to Quaker theology. Quakers accept non-believers so long as they sign onto the other Quaker values, and I do.

            I was born a Quaker and on my mother’s side I come from a long line of Quakers going back to the ancestor who came on one of William Penn’s voyages to the small village of Philadelphia and who lived and died not far from where I now live. I attended a programmed meeting as a child in Wilmington, Ohio. A programmed meeting has a minister. An unprogrammed one doesn’t. I prefer the latter.

I believe whole-heartedly in the Quaker values of allowing a person to seek God in his or her own fashion, in rejecting violence as a solution to anything, of accepting all people as an extension of us regardless of color, ethnicity and the like and taking care of the planet. Quakers seek to create community by not voting on issues within the community but rather talking them out until a consensus is reached. I admit to being driven crazy by that, which too often is taken to the extreme of confusing consensus with unanimity, but overall I approve of it.

            So, what’s my problem? I guess it’s that I know I am surrounded for the most part by people who believe in God and whose faith is central to their lives. I respect that but I often feel set apart by it. I feel, I guess, like a hypocrite. I know my fellow Friends would hasten to tell me that’s not so, but still, I feel it.

            I ALSO AM very selfish in how I approach meeting. (That is what Quakers call a “service.”) I like to walk into silence, sit in silence and end in silence. I am fine with fellow Friends standing up and sharing a move in spirit. We are, after all, our own ministers. But lately we have been introducing sound into our meeting and this is where I feel selfish and grouchy.

            Quakers, as a bunch, are not growing. We lack the entertainment value that is a part of the draw of most other denominations. There are no rituals to hold you up and guide you, no communion, no hymns. Just silence as each seeks, or does not seek, with God or whatever spirit world he or she exists in.

            Lately we’ve talked a lot about how to attract new members to, and I will use the formal name, The Religious Society of Friends. One of the ideas is that we need more young people and young families, but what do with children? We have childcare but how do you get youth to participate in meeting? And, keep in mind, “youth” can be anywhere from toddler to high school. 

            One way is to have a meeting  – we do it monthly  – where there is a programmed portion where all the children gather with a teacher in the front of the room and participate in a lesson – sometimes a story, sometimes music, sometimes art. If you are a churchgoer, I am betting your church does the same thing. Some do it every Sunday.

            But this morning was one of those mornings at our meeting. I don’t have kids. I don’t even have young kids, so it doesn’t speak to me, even though I see the need and am not opposed to trying it if it means expanding our meeting. But, it’s not for me, and then there is the whole don’t-believe-in-God-thing.

            So, I opted to stay home, to fiddle around out on the patio cleaning up after the apartment complex’s landscapers leaf-blew a winter’s worth of junk up against my door and wall. I chose to mess with dirt, to feel the breeze on a cool, overcast morning promising a later rain.

            Nest week, we’ll see. As for God and those monsters in my childhood closet, maybe that’s for next time.

                  Rich Heiland is a retired journalist and semi-retired consultant, trainer and public speaker. During his journalism career he was a reporter, editor, publisher, college instructor, part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team and a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year honoree. He also writes the intodementia.com blog about his family’s experience with dementia. He lives in West Chester, PA and can be reached at [email protected].