Monday Mimisms ~ The View From My Pew (Praying For Peace On New Year's Eve)

Driving to the mall one day I noticed a Quaker Friends Meeting sign that said, "24 hr. Prayer For Peace - December 31, 2009 "
I am so there.

It was cold, raining and foggy. 11:30 pm on New Year's Eve. That did not stop around 50 individuals from walking into the Friends Meeting House and praying for peace as the new year began.

My seat. My pew. My view.You there over in Malaysia..... Would you share that hymnal, please?

I turned off the phone and the camera when the service started. I wish you could have heard the music. So simple. So peaceful. A harmonica played a Woodie Guthrie tune as the prelude. The rest we sang with only accordion accompaniment or a cappella. We sang three Community of Taize songs, "Let There Be Peace On Earth" and a Hebrew round.

Quakers have an amazing tradition of "waiting on the spirit to speak" as a portion of their worship service. It was my favorite part of the whole evening. Only one gentleman offered anything out loud - a brief comment on the power and purpose of prayer - other than that, no one else spoke for what seemed like a long time....but all were actively engaged in a reverence for peace in the moment. There was a comfortable stillness that came along around midnight. I thought of all of you and tried to bring your words and passions to my prayers.

Of the small crowd gathered in the larger than life sanctuary, many of whom you would find out marching in peace rallies and carrying signs on the streets of this city, I saw several older folks, a handful of long-haired ponytailed sixties flower power children, middle aged couples and one pencil skirt. All prayed silently.
But it was a loud, lovely stillness.

Lastly, we sang the traditional Hebrew round "Shalom Chaverim!" and the congregation improvised a round.
I scribbled a few notes on the bulletin.
This from the Gospel of Thomas:



"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

How appropriate for our world and for a community of peace bloggers who bring forth brilliant words of hope in a world filled with darkness.
We sang and it was time to walk out into a new decade.

As I left I snapped a photo of this sign on the door.
Yes, my bloggy friends, I got some strange looks. A lady jumped out (literally) and insisted I take one of the altar poinsettias home with me. Whew. I thought she was going to confiscate my camera, at which point I would have had to explain that there's this little thing called peace globes and I would be glad to show her a few of them if she liked and do you have a blog ma'am cause your church door is about to appear on the worldwide web as a beacon for peace on my blog and I just wanted to share my night with my friends who blog for peace cause they spin all 365 days of the year don't ya know well not the people but the globes and oh the cats are really something and we proudly host fifty groovy peace-lovin' countries but we're working on ....on....and anyway, would you like one too?

Instead she smiled and handed me the plant.
I decided to shut up and say thank you and leave.
We exchanged Happy New Year wishes.
It was around 12:40 am by then on the first day of a new decade in the year 2010.
There is no place I would have rather been.
I heard someone say as they walked outside that it was their first time coming to the service and how nice it was. Interesting. Although I was out of town and had never set foot in that church myself, I didn't feel at all out of place.
All of you were there.

I will share my poinsettia. See?

So I walked down the steps in a long black coat dodging fog trying not to trip carrying a camera, a large-leafed poisonous plant and a purse. Somehow my camera, practically buried in the leaves of the plant went off on its own as if possessed and flashed me right there in the peaceful Quaker rain. It came out all psychedelic in a funky groovy tie-dye style with so many varied shades of rich colors all blended together in a beautiful blur of brilliant rich light.

Psychedelic peace.

Perfect.