Alt-Service Sunday: Friends Meeting at Cambridge

Some Alt-Service Sundays are a matter of convenience and happenstance.  Two of my friends invited me to attend a meeting with The Friends (aka The Society of Friends aka The Quakers) this morning, and since it was an hour before my regular sacrament meeting was scheduled and just across the lawn from where I normally have church, of course I was going to attend!

When the Longfellow Park Chapel burned down in 2009* the Quakers across the lawn were really great and helped throw us an open house when we were up and running again in 2011.  They're really nice people, and I'm glad I finally got to go to a service there.

Society of Friends Meetings are very interesting.  If you're Mormon, imagine them like a Testimony Meeting without the compulsion to fill the silence.  The meeting is 90% complete "worshipful silence," and Friends stand up and speak briefly when Spirit prompts them to.  It was actually really cool.  The meeting gave me time to meditate and write in my journal, and I had just completed a paragraph posing a rather depressing problem.  Not long after, someone stood up and said something that addressed the very same problem I had been pondering!  It was definitely a moment when I felt that the Spirit was there.

The following are quotes I wrote down from things that Friends said during the meeting that I found to be particularly inspirational:

"Be generous when you are hungry" 

and,

"Forgiveness and acceptance of what is opens the way to make what is, better."

So profound.

After the worship part, the meeting got very meeting-y with announcements and such, but this was generally a time to witness how Friendly (pun unavoidable) everyone was!  We introduced ourselves as visitors and lots of people came up to chat afterwards.  I don't think I could ever be a Quaker, as I'm nowhere near contemplative enough to sit and meditate every Sunday (and also I'm pretty set on the whole Mormon thing), but it was really great to learn about the Society of Friends.



*This was actually the very first time I ever went to Boston.  We were trying to go to church and kept getting rerouted by all the firetrucks.  Turned out church was where the fire was.

Alt-Service Sunday: All Saints Parish, Brookline, MA

Today, in lieu of Stake Conference, I went to an Anglican service at the All Saints Parish in Brookline.  Here were my observations:

• Anglicans seem to be a lot more organized than Mormons.  The service just kind of started and everyone seemed to know what they were doing.  There was also this part when they interrupt the service so that all the members can go around saying "peace" to each other.  They could never stop a Mormon sacrament meeting for mingling.  It would be like setting loose a jar full of butterflies and expecting them to all come back again in a reasonable amount of time.
• The music was beautiful.  I think this particular church was famous for its choir, but still, gorgeous.  The congregational singing was great, too.  The hymnal had over 600 hymns (the LDS hymnal has just shy of 325, for reference).  There was also this Gloria Introit that the choir and congregation sang together, and it was one of the coolest musical experiences that I've had in a very long time.
• There was a lot of standing and sitting and audience participation (call-and-response-type things).  Thankfully it was all outlined in the program.
• Women were in charge!  I guess they're between rectors at the moment, but the Intercessor and Celebrant were both women, and a woman gave the sermon. 
• The sermon was about gratitude.  It was very nice.  The speaker made a very interesting point about the distinction between gratitude and indebtedness, in that indebtedness makes us feel that we should withdraw from the giver, while gratitude makes us want to become closer to the giver.  There was also an emphasis on giving offerings to the church, and how offerings are a symbol of commitment.  
• There was one part called the Confession and the Absolution, where the congregation recited a prayer asking forgiveness for sins.  I actually really liked that part, because a lot of times as Mormons, unless we commit some major sin, the repentance process is pretty private.  And while the Anglican recitation is fairly generic, it's kind of an opportunity to take stock of things and think, hmm...maybe I haven't shown as much love for God and my neighbors as I should have this week.  

All in all, I liked it.  It was very different from an LDS Sacrament meeting, so there were obviously things that seemed weird, but I definitely learned some good things.  Also, people seemed very friendly and the building was beautiful.  

A New Tradition

I'm a Mormon.  I love being a Mormon and I'm always going to be a Mormon.  However, here's the problem with a lot of Mormons:  they're really into missionary work.  This isn't inherently a bad thing; if Mormons really believe they have the best stuff, why not share it?  The problem is that Mormons just kind of expect everyone to drop everything and come learn about the Mormon church, but Mormons aren't expected to even try to learn about the faiths of those whom they're trying to convert.

I want to change this.  I want to shed this insular reputation that Mormons have in regard to other faiths.

So I'm starting a new tradition:  Alt-Service Sunday!

Today is Stake Conference in my church (basically a gathering of all the smaller congregations to have one big meeting), and, for various reasons that don't really fit in this particular blog post, I don't really want to go.  And Stake Conference isn't like "real" church because there's no Sacrament* and that's really the only reason you're supposed to have church anyway.**  So I'm going to skip Stake Conference (and maybe all future Stake Conferences) to go to a non-LDS service.  I did this once in Honolulu when I hated my singles' branch and went to a Unitarian service for Easter and it was amazing, and people were so nice!  Boston has no shortage of diverse and interesting churches, and I'd like to see what they're like.***

I'm hoping to gain the following things from this tradition:

• Learn about the teachings of other religions.
• Find similarities between the teachings of other religions and mine.
• Strengthen my testimony of the Gospel of Christ by adding depth to it.
• Get involved in the community by meeting people outside of the Mormon Microcosm.

Even though Stake Conference is only twice a year, I'd like to do this more than twice a year.  This won't be too difficult because 1) other churches don't have three-hour-long services (ugh...Mormons), 2) other churches have Saturday services!  Anyone reading this (who lives in Boston, of course) is welcome to join me, or suggest places I should visit.  I also plan to blog about what I learned at each service, so stay tuned.

*Sacrament:  the Mormon term for Eucharist, Communion, etc.
**This is probably debatable, and probably going to get me yelled at by people who really enjoy all three hours of church, but I'm going to stand firm that Sacrament is the most important part of church.
***Not to mention a lot of them are in really awesome and beautiful old buildings, which is also kind of a secondary reason that I'm doing this.