Still Small Voice meetings are an evolving practice. Here are some of the values and protocols we’ve settled on so far:
1. Remember to silence our devices.
2. Meetings are gathered in the format of a traditional (unprogrammed) Quaker meeting. About 12-15 minutes into the meeting, the day’s query will be spoken aloud.
3. Refrain from mentioning specific political figures or parties. We should frame our reflections in as broad a context as possible…
4. Try to refrain from using the word / name “God” in ways that assume everyone is on the same page. We bring an extremely wide range of meanings and associations to this word, and it easily becomes more a tool for othering than for gathering, for confusing rather than for communicating. Try to engage this word poetically, or find alternate ways to get to the same place. Secular, materialist, non-theist and atheist participants bring too much to the table for it to be worthwhile creating a space that is not radically invitational to all. Phrases like “The idea of God” or “the possibility of God” might be useful if the language does not otherwise present itself.
5. Everyone is invited to speak and no one is expected to speak. Completely silent meetings are among the most fulfilling.
6. If you do feel moved to speak, attend to that transition between inward orientation and outward. It is an interesting moment. It is not usually natural to switch smoothly between deep inwardness and the purely practical requirement to project your voice across a room so that others may hear you. But this is what you will need to do, so attend to that transition with care and purpose.
7. Late-comers are always welcome. Participants are encouraged to incorporate the sounds of others approaching after the start of meeting as an integral part of our reflection, rather than a disruption. We are encouraged to shape our experience in imaginative terms, as if it were the approach of some mood or insight.
8. Participants are encouraged to imagine spoken testimonies, one’s own or those of other, as emerging from the silence, and then returning to the silence. We should allow almost a cocoon of silence to surround the words of others, and refrain from cross-talk. This is not conversation. We are rearranging our relationship with spoken language. In a very noisy, wordy world, we are imagining spoken words as precious and amazing. We are, after all, performing a miraculous act, communicating telepathically using an organ in our throats to generate vibrations in the air that telegraph nuanced thoughts and experiences.
9. There will be time after the meeting to speak more freely about reflections that may have come to us during meeting, but about which we did not feel the gravity or coherence of something that needed to be spoken during the meeting. We can also comment more directly on the spoken testimonies of others at this point, retaining a more modest mood of reflection…
10. Some of us bring conditions that make it impossible to remain silent. “Ask me about the mystery of God, and I will tell you about the mystery of the human body,” Brazilian theologian Rubem Alves once said. If an infant cries in meeting, then that is the poetic testimony we should attend to. Some of us are gassy, ahem. Listen closely. There is deep tragic humor at play. Every body is a mystery.