Hello Friends, I’m testing an experiment in engaging with Advices & Queries using recorded audio, something which might turn into a Podcast, or maybe something else instead. Below are some notes on & what and why, some sample files, and how to get in touch with me to provide feedback. I am not a fan of comment sections unless they are well-tended, which I am not inclined towards, but I would love to hear from you - contact@jsuttonmorse.me if you have any thoughts about this experiment, or find life in it.
What is the experiment? Briefly, I’m basically stealing from Pádraig Ó Tuama over at Poetry Unbound, where he reads a poem, offers some reflections on the poem, and then reads it again. It’s a way that I’ve found helpful for engaging with poetry, which I don’t read a lot of. What I’d like to try is have me or others read a short, meaningful, Quaker passage (most obviously an Advice or Query), then reflect on it (maybe even something like “verbalize the promptings of the Spirit that arise from the Advice/Query”), then read it again. Then I would take that audio and make it available to share with others.
Why? There’s probably a bunch of reasons, but two have been speaking most strongly to me. First, a common thing I hear online as people are considering attending a Meeting, but even among those of us who do attend an (unprogrammed) Quaker meeting is “what do you do while you’re sitting there quietly? Am I doing it wrong?” and second, responding to the Advice to “seek to know each other in that which is eternal.”
More on both of those, and some other reflections, after the audio. Below are some files I’ve already recorded. I’d love feedback on them, and have some prompts after them.
Friends, after you’ve listened to these, I would love to know if you feel any life in this experiment. Does it seem worth pursuing? As a podcast that appears every week or two in a feed? (This might be easier to answer if you listen to podcasts?). As something else? Could you imagine yourself recording something for this? If it were shared with the world? What if it were shared with a smaller community? Could this be a useful way to connect within a community like a monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly Meeting? What other scaffolding might be needed to make it useful for that? A transcript? An explanation? An invitation?
Where is there life in the format? What is missing from it? The audio itself is just the excerpt/promptings/excerpt. Should it have credits? An explanation? Reference to a “what and why”? A transcript, or other resources in notes?
What about the audio itself? I do not have an audio editing background or great equipment, I’m just fumbling through. Is that an obstacle? Some of these have complete silence other than the words, one has some background sounds. Thoughts?
How can you imagine engaging with this? What if it was a regular podcast? Would you want to engage with other listeners? Would you listen with other Quakers? Would you rather hear voices you didn’t recognize, or those you did?
“Am I doing it wrong?” - one of the two impulses that led to this is the frequent anxiety I hear as an Online Quaker with new attenders wondering what to do while sitting in silence. Even among more seasoned Quakers, I think I’ve felt similar concerns. One thing that sometimes happens for me when I sit in Worship is that I either bring Advices & Queries with me and thumb through it, or an excerpt will come to me as I’m sitting. Sometimes as I examine that, a Message or an Afterthought arises, sometimes not. Sometimes one query will prompt me to consider something else (and sometimes I have heard ministry build from one to the next). So it seems to me that a way to “do” waiting worship is to begin (or catch on?) something that has been valuable for Quakers, and see where the Light leads at that point. This experiment has the potential to both build familiarity with some of those Advices & Queries that have been useful, and also to model that tracing of the leading of Spirit.
“Seek to know each other in that which is eternal” - another thing I’ve heard from many Quakers (particularly many more familiar with Unprogrammed Liberal Meetings, is that while we may be good at “doing”, we’re not good at talking about what we believe. In my own experience, the Quakers I’ve encountered whose roots of faith I feel I can best “see” in the ministry they’ve given and the conversations we’ve had are Christ-centered Quakers. Or to say more plainly - people who quote the bible or reference the biblical story and “weighty Friends” seem to have a close overlap in their Venn diagram (at least among my limited exposures). I’ve also participated in a few different activities intended to lower the barrier to entry of vocal ministry. “Worship Sharing” where a prompt is given and a group each shares responses to that prompt, or “Nurturing Faithfulness” groups, where one person brings a concern, and others who are focused on that person bring queries intended to deepen engagement are things we can do to make it easier to model and talk about how and why we “do” Quakerism without feeling the need to say “is this Ministry”. I am hungry for more Friends to share “that which is eternal”, and particularly from strands of tradition other than Biblical, and this seems to me to to be an opportunity for that.
Next steps -
Really, I’d like feedback. Is there life in this? Are there other things to consider? What makes it inviting or off-putting … creating something that isn’t appealing isn’t all that useful, no matter how valuable the thing itself is. What makes it valuable … creating something appealing and inviting that doesn’t actually help deepen relationship with Spirit or Community isn’t all that useful, no matter how easy it is to start or find. I’m used to listening to podcasts, so that’s what I think of, but are there ways to make this a practice useful to smaller groups than “available to anyone with an RSS reader and audio player” that would make it more likely people would share? If people are sharing the promptings of Spirit, which can be deep and unpredictable, how to make sure that the audio that results is shared appropriately? Quakers are pretty big on community and testing leadings in a group. There are ways to make collecting audio a collective experience, but it’d pretty easy to do this solo. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each. Probably a lot more I haven’t considered.
I’d love to hear something you do with this format! And I’d be happy to clean up a few minutes of audio either for your own use or to put hear as a sample with a different voice (this would inevitably need other voices to be useful). I would recommend having a space with relatively few background noises, find a favorite Advice/Query/Passage (it will take longer to read than you expect!) and have it in front of you. Record on your device of choice - having your mouth close to the microphone is good, and speaking a bit more slowly/clearly than you normally would (as though you were doing public speaking) is good. Read the passage. Wait and see what arises, and say those words. Pausing for reflection a few times is probably good. Then read the passage again. (Is that easy? Hard? If doing this for real, better directions would be needed). We could also join a Zoom call and I could record you, if you’d like.
I’m available by email at contact@jsuttonmorse.me. I’m fairly comfortable with some other more social medias (I have a presence on Mastodon at Quakers.Social, and am on some Discord servers), but not Facebook, and happy to talk via Zoom or phone. I’m going to be trying to get together some kind of committee for clearness to understand this a bit more, but also wanted to throw out the basic idea wide to see what fetches up.