Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man By Dave Jaffe.. Chapter Seven Part Three. My Religious Odyssey.

   My Religious Odyssey by Dave Jaffe. Part Three.




    When the United States and the British armies invaded Iraq in March 2003 I was going regularly to the Unitarian Church in Vancouver. By this time I'd left the New Democratic Party and no longer called myself a socialist. Still, I remained a progressive and the invasion of Iraq appalled me. Yet in the Unitarian Church the minister didn't mention the invasion at all - or at least didn't say a word about it when I came to church.
     Not only this, many church members supported the invasion. This last fact didn't surprise me. Yet I did expect the minister of the time to say something about the war. "This is far out," I told a woman who taught biology at the University of British Columbia. "Aren't some Unitarians against this war?"
    "Dave," this woman replied, "you may have come to the wrong church. Go 20 blocks down Oak Street. to the Quakers. You'll find a lot of people there who're against this war." So I journeyed 20 blocks south along Oak street and ended up at the Quakers of the Society of Friends as they refer to themselves. Here I made the right move.
    I was now into my third religion. The Quaker worship space is tiny. You sit in a former Baptist church that really looks like a compact living room. All worshippers sit on benches or rows of chairs that are ranged in a square that surrounds a sacred object placed on a low table. The Quakers or Friends' congregation in Vancouver doesn't total more than 100 members . The meeting house in Vancouver never held more than 30 or so worshippers when I went there.
     Unlike all other churches I've been to, there's no hymns, no sermons or any minister in the meeting house. Quakers worship in silence. A service lasts about an hour. " It's like waiting for a dentist's appointment," one observer said about Quaker worship. A young man I met at the worship service liked the silence. "It's cool," he said. "Really cool." In this hour of silence Quakers are worshipping. They're not meditating, though some Buddhists do show up with prayer mats and meditate. Quakers are focusing on God or the divine spirit.
    The founder of the Society of Friends was George Fox who lived in England during the Civil War. in the 17th century. He believed that each person carried the light of God within them. Big churches or churches period were unnecessary, Fox said. To worship God all one needed was a small space and a belief in the divine.