Are our meetings for worship held in a spirit of expectant waiting and communion with the Holy Spirit? How do we prepare our hearts and minds for worship?
How do we refer to that which is divine? How does ascribing gender to the Holy Spirit affect our worship?
How do we integrate our daily lives with Meeting for Worship? Do we seek opportunities for worship outside of Meeting?
How does the vocal ministry of the meeting contribute to its spiritual life? In what ways do we recognize and nurture vocal ministry and other spiritual gifts?

As a group, we appreciate meetings for worship, even on those occasions when we individually aren’t able to go deeply into a state of waiting. This may explain the occasions when someone else perceives that we had a gathered meeting while another was preoccupied with a to-do list. We realize that worshiping together affects our spirits even when we don’t begin in a state of peace. We can have a gathered meeting whether or not there is vocal ministry, but in our meeting there usually is some. It often helps pull us back to the realization that there is a higher/deeper reality, and sometimes it inspires us to contribute.

The comment that in Judaism people go to services “in service to God,” which is often true in traditional Christian churches as well, reminded us that Quaker worship really is different. As a group, we felt that we search more to be in unity with the divine Spirit than to specifically serve or praise a deity.

The question of ascribing names or gender to the divine always provokes a lively discussion. Most of us, whether or not we were raised in a more traditionally Christian environment, have spent time questioning and experimenting with less specific and gender neutral ways to define Spirit, assuming that if the divine is by definition unknowable, we need to approach it that way. We are helped in this by the Bible’s different images of God, some of them female and some neutral. We are inspired by Islam’s 99 names for God and by a yoga/meditation book called 72 Names of God. We may use terms like Tao or Light. However, there are times when male and female images, such as those in Hebrew tradition or the Virgin Mary, who is especially strong in Latin American Catholic tradition, seem more personal and comforting. Many of us use a variety of names and images at different times, and we are comfortable with that.

Our daily worship often involves reading the spiritual writing of many different authors and sources, but we may also experience it in art and other creative activity. Any special moments of awareness – “ the structural giddiness of the universe” – can help us enter a state of being that encourages spiritual depth.

— Karin McAdams