Two things today.<\/p>\n
Quaker meeting & Podcast.<\/p>\n
Guess which one had lot of loud music, swearing, and laughing, and which one put me in that weird place between being asleep and awake?<\/p>\n
Answer: Both.<\/p>\n
One of them was totally in my head though, while the other was recorded for posterity.\u00a0 You’ll have to check the postcast blog to hear the recorded one (and that’ll happen over next week, I think).<\/p>\n
Quaker meeting is odd, for someone like me who grew up in a (for Canada) bible belt.\u00a0 The question I heard when meeting kids I didn’t know wasn’t “Do you go to church?” but instead “Which church do you go to?”\u00a0 I’d tell people I didn’t go to a church, and they’d look like I’d just kicked a puppy, and then say “But, but, you’re going to Hell then…” and just kinda wander away from me.<\/p>\n
Quaker meeting is different.\u00a0 There’s silence.\u00a0 Just… silence.\u00a0 Left with your own thoughts.\u00a0 Think about the last time you were somewhere that left you thinking “Wow, it’s like, freaky-quiet here.”\u00a0 I hear\/feel that up at my mom’s place from time to time.\u00a0 Her place is just over the tip of the first layer of mountains in the Fraser Valley, and since there’s not a lot of dirtbikes or chainsaws running, it can get silent<\/em> out there.\u00a0 Like, “Oh, maybe I’ve gone deaf” silent.\u00a0 It was usually nice.\u00a0 Left you to your thoughts.\u00a0 Sometimes, it was a little freaky, ’cause you’d be left with nothing but<\/em> your thoughts.<\/p>\n Quaker meeting is like that, a little.\u00a0 You’re aware of the other dozen or so people in the room, but don’t know anything about them, except that they’re also enveloped in this silence.\u00a0 The folks in Chilliwack would probably have equated it with meditation, which would instantly mean satanic cult stuff.\u00a0 Amazing that I wasn’t eager to jump on the first bus\u00a0 to Who Would Jesus Judge Camp, huh?<\/p>\n This silence is just whatever it is.\u00a0 Sometimes people have things to say about things.\u00a0 Sometimes they don’t.\u00a0 Sometimes it’s about whatever’s happening in the world, or what’s happening to a particular individual, or just some philosophical point that happened to move the person to speak.\u00a0 Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes sad, corny is fine, too.\u00a0 Sometimes, like today, it’s just silence.<\/p>\n The idea is that there is “That of god in everyone.”\u00a0 There’s something very Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy<\/em> about that for me.\u00a0 The whole “Answer to life, the universe, and everything” was being determined by this supercomputer, which had a massively distributed program running on every human on the planet.\u00a0 The computer was called Earth.\u00a0 There’s part of me that likes the idea that the people who make me insane are just portions of “the answer” I just haven’t figured out how to interface with, yet.<\/p>\n