All Together Worship

Three times a year, Friends across all four states in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting region have the opportunity to join together for an online meeting for worship for all ages. All Together Worship happens from 10-11am on the Sunday morning of every Continuing and Annual Sessions weekend. We come together from meetinghouses and homes for an intergenerational, semi-programmed worship held in care by the Yearly Meeting elders and Presiding Clerk.

The Zoom link to join All Together Worship will be the same one being used for that Sessions weekend; individuals and meetings will receive it when they register for Sessions.

On March 10, All Together Worship will begin with communal chanting, led by Paulette Meier, who is a member of Community Friends Meeting in Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting. Paulette’s songwriting and singing has stirred hearts and opened minds for over 30 years in the pursuit of a peaceful, just and sustainable world. She will open our time together with chants related to our Sessions theme, “Called to Healing.” From Paulette:

Thank you for this invitation to open your All Together Worship this Sunday with communal chanting! You may wonder how we will all sing together over Zoom, since everyone will need to have their mics muted if we are to avoid a cacophony of sound. While not actually hearing voices from the different meetinghouses,  you will hear a recording of other’s singing the chants with me, so that over Zoom you will be singing along with more than my solo voice.

I’d like to share a bit about what we will be singing and why.  These are not chants in the Hindu or Buddhist tradition, but brief songs we sing repetitively without need of written words or notation. We will sing chants composed of Quaker quotations that I initially set to melody as a way to remember and embody their profound spiritual wisdom. Chanting inspirational words has been part of contemplative traditions throughout time; the practice moves us out of our heads and into our hearts and bodies till the words become part of us in a much deeper way. As Cynthia Bourgeault, a contemporary teacher of the contemplative Christian Wisdom tradition says:   “Chanting is at the heart of all sacred traditions worldwide, and for a very good reason: it is fundamentally a deep-immersion experience in the creative power of the universe itself. Because to [chant] you must engage those three core elements out of which the earth was fashioned and through which all spiritual transformation happens —Breath, Vibration and Intentionality.  (Wisdom Jesus, p.161-162.)

Sufis say that chant is the bridge between sound and silence. I like the idea of starting meeting for worship in this way, as it can help us center down while drawing us into our gathered stillness together. It is also a healing practice; numerous studies show how chanting produces endorphins and has beneficial healing effects on the body. During our chanting on Sunday, I’d like to introduce several chants, which we will sing for about 3 minutes each, not the same chant for all fifteen minutes. But hopefully you will get a taste of what this practice is about and drink in the spiritual wisdom it offers in a different way!

And, finally, a word from Thomas Kelly:  “We sing, and yet not we, but the Eternal sings in us…The song is put into our mouths, for the Singer of all songs is singing within us… It is not we that sing; it is the Eternal Song of the Other, who sings in us, who sings unto us, and through us into the world.”