Blob Thing Gets Creative With A Simple Quaker Lunch

Blob Thing says:

Oh yes, I was having a very good time at the Quaker place.  Much as I like a good sing and even a dance sometimes I do like the quiet and the worship there had certainly been quiet.  I was glad that my person had given me something to read so I would have a better idea what was going on and that the whole thing wasn't just a bunch of people in a room having a nap or thinking about what to have for lunch or whether they should give Henrietta some flowers or some chocolates for her birthday.  Knowing that something meaningful might be happening within each of the people there was excellent.  And perhaps too there was something happening between them, even though it was so quiet.

Only three people spoke.  The first one got it wrong.  She started off by saying that she was sure that at that time everyone was thinking about a particular subject.  Well I wasn't thinking about it at that time.  I was thinking about what I was reading and then I'd looked at people's faces and then I'd started wondering why the worship room contained a piano when the worship didn't include any music.  My person told me later that she hadn't been thinking about that particular subject at that time either.  Maybe lots of people hadn't been.  At that moment she was still thinking about the two words she had spotted in the book I was reading.

It's true that the subject was worth thinking about.  A few days previously a Member of Parliament had been murdered and that had touched people.  I wonder how much it still touches people.  It seems to me that humans are quick to forget and any promises they make to change things are soon left behind when the next event happens.  Each tragedy becomes an excuse to not do anything as a result of the previous tragedy.  And then very little changes most of the time.  And some of those people in parliament even use a tragedy for their own purposes.  When everyone is distracted they quietly make a law that would cause an outcry if anyone noticed.

Now, I am autistic but I am quite happy to sit quite still for an hour.  I just can.  But I know autistic people for whom it would be very difficult.  I think my sister Winefride might have a lot of difficulty with it.  She would want to get up and enjoy the flowers and the light and the way the pieces of dust play in that light which is something I find intricately beautiful too.  Winefride can spend ages watching the light and I know she enjoys it so much.  She tells me so in her face and in the manner even though she can't tell me in spoken words.  I love my sister.  My person says she knows autistic people who say that they wouldn't be able to sit still for the hour, at least not without it becoming majorly painful in their head.  They would have to get up and pace around or get really flappy.  Or just not be there.  And I wonder whether the inclusiveness of Quaker worship could cope with someone pacing and flapping and being gloriously who they are.

Anyway, worship was over and someone said there would be lunch downstairs.  We were nearly last to get down to the lunch because my person wanted to take some pictures first.  I wanted to go and look at the art work too.  I like art work.  I like it that there was art scattered around the building.  Not just that colour wheel, but tapestries, paintings and lots more.  There were even some poems someone had written.  They were all sitting on a table as if that person had written their verses and made one copy of each to be picked up by whoever saw them.

I like that Quakers like creativity.  The book I was reading was just the first chapter of a big book called Quaker Faith and Practice.  It's a good book.  Some of it is a bit boring I think, just dull information on how the different meetings happen and how the organisation functions.  I don't need to know any of that but I guess it's all very useful and interesting if you are a Quaker - or a Friend as they are really called.  The book has an entire section called Creativity.  It contains lots of good writing from different people.

I am happy to learn that the Quakers have been able to change.  One of the writers tells how the Quaker founder was against all kinds of music because it "burdened the pure life, and stirred people's minds to vanity."  Now they see music as important and that for some people it is an essential part of their spiritual lives.  I am glad.  Another writer in the book says he believes in the "absolute necessity of the arts."  If anyone has the book, he's writing in paragraph 21.36.  It's pretty glorious.  He says the arts "make possible the impossible and reconcile the irreconcilable."  Isn't that special?

Gosh I do like this book.  It's so much more full of life than other church things I've read.  In comparison, Calvin comes across as the dead man he is, the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England seem devoid of the life of God, and even the Catechism of The Catholic Church feels very bland, no matter how well written it is and how well it explains Catholic belief.

Enough about the book.  It was time for lunch.  Lunch.  I like lunch.  As we walked down the stairs my person explained that lunch would be simple.  Quakers believe in simplicity - at least in their lunches.  We would be having bread and soup and cheese and fruit.  I liked the sound of that.  It was great.  We had three different soups to choose from, all of them home made.  I chose this one and it was very, very tasty.

And after my bowl of soup and some bread and some cheese I was satisfied.  But there was soup to spare and I decided that a second bowl would be very nice indeed and I'd try one of the others.  And it was very, very tasty too.

We were sitting with some interesting people.  Creative people.  One of them did a lot of music performing and some writing.  One of the others said that she runs a theatre company for young people and is involved in other theatre things too.  My person says that there are quite a few creative people who go to worship in that place.  I think everyone is creative.  Everyone has the spirit of creation within them and can meet with it, harness it and become creation in the world.  It might not necessarily be writing or dancing or painting or music.  It might be the creativity of science or the creativity of relationship building or the creativity of running a beautiful social project.  But everyone is creative.  Everyone.  You.  Yes, you.

And so I sat with the people around me and I joined my person in chatting with them.  It was very nice.  I liked it that the silent people upstairs were not silent people downstairs.

After lunch, when it was time to go, I had a little walk round the building.  There were lots of pretty things to look and, and a library of interesting books too.  There was also a visitor book.  I must try to remember to get my person to sign it for me if we go again.  The Quakers have a regular magazine.  Here it is.  the Friend.

I think the advice in this picture is advice that we could all do with hearing, listening to and heeding.

Make time for the friend.  Or at least make time for a friend.  Friendship is very important.  I don't know what I would do without my friends.  It would be very lonely.  I know that some people haven't got friends and there might be lots of different reasons for that.  It makes me sad.  So make time for a friend.  Maybe make time for someone who is without friends.

One last picture.  My person has got lots of pictures to share too but she's a bit lazy and has hardly written anything for her blog in ages so I don't know when or even if she will manage to share her pictures of the meeting house.  Outside the back of the house is a little garden.  The flowers were so pretty.  Once a month they have something called Meeting for Worship for Gardening.  Gardening is worship.  Meeting is worship.  I like that.  I like it a lot.

I was really glad that my person had taken me to the Friends' Meeting House.  It had been a super, super experience.  I don't know that I'd want to go there every week or even join them.  But I'd like to visit again sometimes and be among these good people and their religious service that doesn't have sermons.  Yes, I'd like to go again.

And at that point Blob stopped talking and fell into silence.




[1544 words]

Blob Thing Visits The Quakers of Newcastle

Blob Thing has more to tell you about his sister.  He is looking forward to going on some adventures with her soon too and they can have fun together exploring and experiencing all the good things that they can find.

But today and tomorrow he wants to tell you about somewhere he visited last month with his person.  He must have quite liked it - he's been back again,

It was a Sunday morning.  Blob's person used to go to church every Sunday.  Sometimes she would go several times, to several different churches.  She was quite enthusiastic about it all.  When she moved to Newcastle she had been a faithful Catholic and would go to Mass every Sunday morning - and sometimes on a Saturday evening too though that wasn't compulsory.  She would never miss that Sunday Mass without good reason.  Oh yes, she knew the rules too well.  She knew that the threat of Hell hung over her if she missed that Mass.  What if she were to die between missing Mass and receiving sacramental absolution through the Sacrament of Confession?  What then?  She would be doomed.  The rules of the Roman Catholic Church said so even though some Catholics tried to pretend otherwise.  Blob's person hadn't minded because, for a time, she had loved being at Mass.  She even went to Mass during the week.  Sometimes every single day.  And at home she would pray and pray and pray and read Catholic books and the Catholic faith was her safe space.

But that all changed and much to her surprise she left the Catholic Church.  And joined another church.  Half an hour later.  She was liked there and it wasn't long before she was given responsibilities.  To lead liturgy.  To preach sermons.  But that came to an end too when she told the world about her being transgender.  An ordained minister of the Church of England told her this:  "I'm sure you will agree that it would be inappropriate for you to continue to preach or lead anything in case anyone is ever worried."  Those were the exact words.  It made Blob's person very sad indeed.  Sad enough to leave the church.  They were happy to have her preach when she was still pretending to be a man.  They loved her sermons and she had been told quite a few times by people that they thought she was the best preacher in the place.  But now she was living honestly, they didn't want her.  Oh yes, she could sit in a pew and be told she was loved.  But love and rejection don't go together too well.

Blob's person had explored other churches.  She had been visiting them even when she was preaching and now she visited lots.  She settled in one of them too.  It was a place of love and acceptance.  The kind of love that is actually love.  That became her spiritual home for a while until she took the step of leaving it at the beginning of Lent this year.  Blob was proud of her for that.  It was a big step towards freedom and towards becoming fully herself.  He knows it was hard for her to leave because church and God and Christianity were the core of her life for twenty-five years.  They were her main reason for getting up in the morning.  They were the source of her hope and the meaning she gave to everything.  Quitting meant all of that was gone.  The core was removed.  And as Blob knows, without the core the warp engines won't go.

On this Sunday, Blob's person had decided to go back and visit one of the places she had explored already.  She invited Blob Thing to come with her and see the place.  She told him that he would be fine.  Where they were going was also a place of love and acceptance.  It was a place filled with people who like to seek peace, social justice, inclusion and who can usually disagree about the details of a spiritual journey.  Blob agreed to attend after he was reassured that nobody would be trying to convert him and nobody there would ever warn him about the dangers of Hell if he didn't go.  Nobody would say that their way was the only way and that anyone who didn't follow it was doomed.  They wouldn't even say that their way was the best way, that they were closer to some form of sky god than the outsiders.

There would be people there who had a strong, quite conservative Christian faith.  And there would be others who didn't believe in the sky god at all.  There might be a Buddhist, a Sufi, and there would be people who meditate in different ways.  Lots of variety.  Blob decided that it might be safe to be among such people.  He quite liked the sound of them.

So Blob and his person set out and walked to the place where the people met.  Here it is.

Blob spent a moment reading the sign.  Quakers.  Blob wasn't sure he wanted to do any Quaking.  He thought it a very strange name.  Blob's person told him that the word came about when the King of England insulted someone in the early days of the movement.  She also said that around the world there were lots of different kinds of Quaker.  Most of them have services that include singing and a kind of sermon based on the Bible.  But the ones here wouldn't be doing anything like that.  He would just have to see for himself what would happen.

Blob and his person were greeted at the door.  Everyone was smiling and very welcoming.  Perhaps the sign was true when it said "All welcome."  Perhaps everyone would be welcomed there and seen as equally wonderful too.  Lots of churches had signs up claiming that everyone was welcome there but in many of them Blob knew that you weren't really encouraged to be yourself.  You were encouraged only to conform and to be a sheep - and not a sheep living free in the fields either, cared for and encouraged to be the best sheep possible, but a sheep in a tiny pen in a dark barn, constrained in the way you were told to live.

Blob's person took him upstairs to where the main meeting room is.  It felt peaceful and all the chairs were arranged in a circle round a central table.  Blob Thing sat himself on the table for a while before deciding where he wanted to sit for the service.  Blob's Person told him that she had a copy of the book on the table and that there was much in it that he would enjoy reading.  She had picked up a little book at the bottom of the stairs.  It was called "Advices and Queries" and contained chapter one of the book on the table.

Blob sat down and waited for the service to start.  People kept coming into the room and sitting down and nobody was talking.  And then someone came in and shut the door.  But still nobody spoke.  Nobody introduced a service.  Nobody started to sing or said a prayer or did anything else.  They just sat in quiet.

Blob didn't quite know what to do.  What was happening?  Were people enjoying this and what were they all thinking about?  He hadn't realised that anything with the word "religious" in the name might have a meeting like this.  His person made signs and opened up Advices and Queries for him and that told him what he wanted to know about what was going on.  He stopped reading and settled into Quaker worship.  Blob likes it that everyone there is called to expectant waiting and that there is a belief that Spirit will speak in the heart of each person.  He likes that anyone can stand up and speak.  Certainly the "gathered stillness" he had just been reading about seemed to be evident.  During the whole meeting only three people spoke at all.  And none of them spoke for more than a minute.

Blob's person told him that when he had been reading her eyes fell on two words and they stayed with her through that meeting and - as we're typing this - she's told him that the words stay with her still and she wants to write about them one day.  Blob Thing says that she shouldn't say what the words were here.  It's his blog and he's already allowed too much talk about his person for one day.  He didn't mind including it.  Blob and his person have talked about faith quite a lot and her story interests him.  It's the story that led up to today.  It's the story that led up to her life including Blob in such a meaningful manner.

After the meeting there were some announcements and then a piece of art was unveiled.  Blob Thing thought it was beautiful.  Everyone in the meeting some months before had been asked to write words to describe their experiences of Quaker worship and of being a Quaker - a Friend - or someone who spends time with them.  The words were all printed onto crayons and made into this wonderful colour wheel.

It's lovely.  Blob wanted his person to take lots of pictures.  And when they went back a month later he wanted her to take lots more pictures.  She will blog about them one day, just as she blogged about her very first visit to the Quakers.  Blob Thing thinks it's funny.  He's blogging about his first visit.  And she did too.  He wonders how many other people have written about their first visits.

Blob Thing sat himself down on the table again.  It had been a marvellous meeting.  He had enjoyed it and he hadn't been forced to listen to a sermon either.  Nobody had told him what to believe or how his spiritual life should develop.  He was happy that he had worshiped with Quakers that morning.

It wasn't over either.  During the announcements someone had said that downstairs there would be a lunch available.  Blob decided he wanted to stay for lunch.  To spend a little more time with these people.  It had been nice to sit in silence with them.  Now he would get the chance to meet them properly.  He was looking forward to it and wants to tell you about what happened.  Tomorrow.  Not today.

[1750 words]