On Wednesday, May 18, for the first time as Upper Schoolers, the Class of 2024 had Meeting for Worship in the Meetinghouse. Returning to the Meetinghouse provided a solemn experience that, while not a complete return to normalcy, reminded me of the purpose and intent behind Meeting for Worship.
I have been fortunate enough to experience Meeting for Worship in the Meetinghouse from second grade until March of eighth grade. I initially found Meeting to be a quirk of the school. For a few years in Lower School, I used the space as a forum to share messages about the world. Looking back, I can say that it was less about me feeling compelled to speak and more about me wanting to give speeches for the plaudits they earned. After that phase ended, I found it a chore and waste to have to lose one period every week for Meeting For Worship. That feeling did not go away when COVID-19 hit and we went through the complicated process of attempting Meeting for Worship over Zoom. I credit Ms. McCourt for her valiant efforts to create a space for us to worship while quarantining. The school’s emails home reminding students that online Meeting for Worship was mandatory and cameras had to be on gave an idea of how successful those attempts were.
After walking into the Meetinghouse for the first time this year, I made my way to the very top of the facing benches. I spent a few minutes taking in the sights I had not seen in quite some time. The light of the bright spring day trickled in through the windows, dimmed in some respects by the half-open curtains it had to go through to reach us sitting in our benches. The sounds of the outside, of the chirping birds and the distant traffic, punctuated the silence.
The Meetinghouse felt noticeably different from spaces like the Red Gym or the Auditorium, where Meeting was held once everyone came back in-person for the 2021-2022 school year. These rooms were chosen for their ability to hold the entire Upper School while still allowing for safe distancing. They never felt like places for worship. You could feel it in the air, and see around you people staring off into nowhere, stuck in time, waiting for Meeting to be over. It seemed no one actually wanted to be there, and by extension, no one bought into the silence. People went in only because they had to and promptly left the moment they were excused. These spaces corrupted the importance of Meeting, and obscured the reason Quakers find importance in silence.
Once back in the Meetinghouse, I glanced down at my Apple Watch and saw a friend had texted me. I felt no compulsion to respond or to touch my watch at all. In other Meetings, I would have been more than happy to fiddle with my watch, to go into all the little apps because I was so disengaged. I felt no urge to do that then. While looking at my watch, I also realized that it was already 11:50. I was surprised because it felt like it had only been a few minutes since we had all settled into Meeting. Something about this space, about this moment, kept me engaged.
As I sat in Meeting, I realized what it was about the Meetinghouse space that allowed me to connect with the sense of meeting. The thought came to me as my eyes floated from the carpet to the white paint on the walls. I thought about the 220 years this Meetinghouse has been open. I thought about two centuries of Meeting; two centuries of hopes, celebrations, joys, sorrows, prayers, and other feelings brought from sitting in the silence of Meeting. It felt as though that it had all sunk into the walls, infusing the Meetinghouse with two centuries of human emotion. Sitting in the space was like tapping into that emotion, getting a sense of why anyone would choose to attend Meeting in the first place. This was something that all the other Meeting spaces over the past two years lacked, and that missing piece is what made that time back in the Meetinghouse feel so special.
I can’t say whether I’ll ever feel the original connection I felt to the Meetinghouse again, but I will still associate the space with our May Meeting, whether I return to it in two weeks or two years. I’m grateful to have had it, because even if I feel truly removed from the purpose of Meeting in the future, I can remember that for 45 minutes that week, I understood why people attend Meeting at all.
