Personal reflections on Quaker retreat, community, and worship
Friends believe in peace, kindness, simplicity, listening, non-violence, emotional understanding, activism, continuous learning and revelation, silence, togetherness, the inner light within all people, silent togetherness, friendship, love, respect for life. You may know Friends as Quakers. Some of your children may attend Friends schools. Friends gather at Meeting for Worship. Meeting (unprogrammed) is quiet and contemplative; individual; punctuated by the voice of spirit (you and I); an opportunity to be heard, and not be judged, and to hear, and to not judge; to connect. It is thoughtful, and beautiful, and somber, and joyous. And unlike anything else in my life.
I attend meeting in a very old house. It is beautiful and smells of ancient wood, with benches far beyond the years of the bricks around them. History runs deep in such spaces. Death, too: it is a burial ground many generations over, but these days we find it to be a garden both literally and otherwise. For a time, this place had dwindled (so I am told), but now it seems fresh and full of life. We come and we sit and we stand and we speak and we sing. The little ones do their best to keep still, but we know they're moved to run about, for that is the way of things. I don't mind. They are our future.
I was grateful to have been invited by Friends to a retreat out in the country. The residence was rustic and the setting was scenic, calm, and I had been there once for another purpose. I could tell that it was full of meaning. There was space to adventure. I did so. My cohort, which you might broadly call young adult, does not often have space to reveal ourselves. After so many years of repression, we instinctively put up barriers and we forget what it means to really laugh and feel. The goal of the retreat was to provide an open forum for emotional communion, especially getting in touch with who we were (have been), are, and will be. It was not prescriptive. As time passed, our leaders invited two elders to share in and expand our thought with teachings, music, video, movement, objects. Some examples of tone:
- "Welcome."
- "Friend speaks my mind."
- "That of the spirit is within you and I."
- "You were once very small; smaller than this seed."
- "Spirit moves me to vocal ministry."
- "You are among Friends."
- "What do you think?"
- "We love you."
A few specific words stand out to me from the retreat: "BREATHE" "DELIGHT" "LISTEN" "MUSIC" "VISION" "SMALL" "GROW" "THANK YOU" "HELPING" "FRIEND" "FRIENDS" "WORSHIP" "MUSTARD" "LAUGHTER" "JOY" "COMMUNITY" "REVEALING" "HEART" "SING" "SPACE" "CLEAN" "LIGHT" "STARS" "PEACEFUL" "PASTORAL" "WOODPECKER" "SUPPORT" "GREEN" "IDYLLIC" "DOG" "SOCIAL" "WHOLE" "MELANCHOLY" "INTIMATE" "CRY" "HOLD" "BELIEVE" "SEE" "RENEW" "SHARE" "APPRECIATE."
It is not very often that you meet a group of strangers and in just a few days leave each other with such bright smiles and quite a few hugs. And it is quite a bit rarer for those hugs to be deep, meaningful embraces. To be realistic, you can only get to know fifteen people so well in a weekend, but the grace in which these Friends held each other eased my reservations more than I expected. I am learning to see the light within other people (and within myself) more clearly. I find this highly instructive as well as reassuring.
There's talk in our society about the absence of community, especially for young people. Economy, government, technology, culture itself seem to disconnect us. Children are pushed too hard and yet they are left behind. I had opportunity in retreat to think about what it means to be a child and what it means to be an adult. I think everyone in our group had a different and personal takeaway on that matter. I also had opportunity to spend time with people who I would verily call role models. They were (are) kind and considerate and it was a gift to be with them, and to be called Friend (and friend).
I take great comfort in knowing that I have a path of forward support here. I can see myself continue to nurture my emotional maturity among this community, something I think I've neglected until relatively recently. I am grateful that this is not the final time I will see my new friends. We have our entire lives to live. It can be together. Suddenly, I start to see a fullness in the world that I was missing before.
That's what I wanted to share. Forgive my esoteric sentences: it's challenging to express the feeling of emotional/internal dialogue in conventional language. I'm more than happy to expand on anything I wrote here. I also welcome your reactions and your own experiences with faith of any kind.
Hello! Nice to see another Quaker on Tildes. I grew up attending the Germantown meeting house in Philadelphia weekly. I think Quakerism, especially viewed in a secular light, would be a welcome addition to most people's lives. And thankfully most Quakers I know are either agnostic or perfectly happy sharing a meeting for worship with people who don't need to speak of a god to be a Quaker. Ironically, as much as I suspect Quakerism would be a net positive for most people, I was raised to believe that evangelizing your religion too strongly is wrong. Some religions go so far as to tell you that you'll burn in hell forever if you don't convert. I'd rather pull people in by having them see just how chill we all are.
I watched "The National Parks: America's Best Idea", the Ken Burns documentary, a few years ago. Quakerism feels similar to the religion that John Muir built for himself. Muir was raised by a cruel Christian man but found a god he preferred in the nature around him. Every Quaker retreat I've been on has a strong focus on nature. Meetings will be held on lichen covered wood benches that circle around under old trees. It's really very beautiful and hard to beat.
The Quaker history and influence on the abolition movement is something to be proud of.
Yes, although I can’t really take credit for it. But it’s a nice thing to have when thinking of my ancestors. My family has been Quaker, on both sides, for as long as 400 years.
Quakers have generally been ahead of their time on progressive values, but never perfect. In the early 20th century many Quakers did not want to have an integrated meeting with descendants of the slaves they helped to free. They also used to be pretty uptight about alcohol (fair enough I guess, it is bad for you). But most these days have taken on a bit of the hippie movement. I’m pretty sure a majority of the boomers at my old meeting house tried a psychedelic or two back in the day.
Pre FDA/USDA Quakers were often able to find wealth working in dairy. People trusted a Quaker’s word. And without government oversight it’s good to know your dairy farmer would sooner dump their spoiled goods on the ground than pawn them off. I try to maintain that integrity in my life. I saw my dad live that way.
Quaker influence is what makes Philly the city of brotherly love. Otherwise we'd just be another NYC.
Thank you for your insightful comment. There's power in finding one's own way into community: guidance without pressure. At my retreat, one of the phrases an elder used was to invite us to orient our thought or physical bodies in a particular way, but not demand anything.
When I entertain visitors over the weekend, I invite them to join me for meeting. Depending on who it is, I explain more about the silence and the interior contemplation versus the communion and the divine worship, with the understanding that it's low-stakes either way. Universally, those who have tagged along have found meeting to be grounding. Occasionally I have brought Friends who have not attended meeting in years and they've also appreciated the opportunity to return to their roots.
The interesting thing to me about Quakers is that their environmental perspective is, on the whole, concerned with personal and active change. Friends spoke about successful initiatives by the Earth Quaker Action Team to divest from fossil fuels/invest in greener technology; further about their own individual involvement in brownfield land restoration: soil decontamination, waterway cleanup for mussel habitats, land recognition and preservation work with tribal groups, and so on. And more people in this circle seem to be vegetarian than possibly any other group I interact with.
I'm better learning how Friends balance their interest in social, environmental, and political justice with personal care. It's so easy to become overwhelmed by it all. When I was studying, my peers and I had a lot of resentment toward society for destroying nature but little visible way to channel that energy, so we were angry and directionless, which was draining. To this end, a Friend shared this touching round from an artist in our area:
It's remarkable how inspired one feels around people with sincere and deep-as-the-heart beliefs. It's remarkable how comforted one feels when those people strive to graciously recognize the human experience. It's given me a lot to consider over the next few weeks.
Thank you for sharing. I would describe myself as agnostic-leaning-athiest and haven't attended church since I was young.
But, I've found myself lately contemplating the idea of "trying out" a more open, liberal place of worship, time permitting. I think mostly to see if maybe there's a community for me. Also because I've been described as living very thoughtfully/mindfully/intentionally and sometimes I think it would be nice to find a group focused similarly.
That said, I hold fairly strong liberal beliefs and try to be true to my morals, and many churches really don't sit well with me from that perspective. I've heard about and have contemplated checking out the local unitarian congression. Looks like there's an (unprogrammed) quaker meeting locally, too. I may add it as an option.
I had a few Unitarian Universalist friends in college. I've never attended a service, but their ethics are respectable. I know that some people attend Unitarian services and Quaker meetings and remain involved in both communities. I think they are pretty compatible.
My experience with these practices is that specific attitudes/environments can be a little congregation-dependent, so it may be worthwhile to try a few places to see which one feels the most like home. Whatever you decide, I'm sure you'll be able to find community. Good luck on your journey!
That was thoroughly enjoyable to read and brings back some memories of similar experiences and retreats in my past. Ive actually been to quite a few of those types of retreats with various groups, mostly from a conservative Mennonite background in a similar tradition but not quite the same as Quakers. I've also attended service at a Holdeman church where the congregation sang many hymns in harmony without music or instruments and thoroughly enjoyed it. Holdeman's prefer to sequester themselves from the rest of society but there is something to be said for the depth of support and community that one feels even just visiting such a tight knit community. Have also toured a Hutterite colony and saw how they live communally to build up their families and community in another way that is quite foreign to most westerners.
I appreciate the depth of friendship one can develop as you said, over a relatively short time, if you share that time in mutually enjoyed worship and sharing. There are very few opportunities in our society that allow us to sit in silence together or to share a word with all present. Its valuable, unique, and rare. I have had some very deep spiritual experiences in silent retreat that are a bit too personal to share on a public platform, but I think its fair to say that much of what can be gleaned in our lives, just doesnt happen because its much easier to fill our time with noise, distraction, entertainment... busyness. But you cant hear a still small voice in the midst of that busyness.
Im now curious to see if there is a Friends meeting near me. Id go to a meeting just to experience it.
The evangelical Christian school I attended as a kid was inside a Friends Church, but the church in question was definitely more like your standard evangelical Christians than what you describe here. This left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, but based on this post and doing a bit more research I'm intrigued by looking into more traditionally Quaker worship and doctrine.
Religious disagreement brought about multiple different paradigms of Quaker doctrine/practice since George Fox's leadings in the mid-1600s. 19th-century schisms include branches for the "Orthodox" (more focused on scripture, specifically the Bible), "Gurneyites" (evangelical influence), and "Hicksites" (theologically more focused on inner light; and in pursuing social movements like abolition), among others.
I'm associated with the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Most meetings around here are progressive/universalist and unprogrammed. That is all I'm personally familiar with. Quakers are vaguely divided into ideological conferences, some more formal than others. It sounds like you would want to look for something part of the Friends General Conference (such as PYM), but liberal meetings exist elsewhere too. I don't have enough experience with those groups to comment on their spiritual or political standing in depth.
Historians have written volumes about these schisms. Other than looking for something programmed/unprogrammed, it's probably more useful to visit meetings near you and see what the vibes are than to try to figure out the theology from afar. There is a German Yearly Meeting which may suit you.
This led me down a rabbit hole, leading me to this Wikipedia entry on Inward light. This sounds remarkably similar to the conception of Divine Spark within gnosticism/Catharism. Do Quakers engage in meditative/contemplative/mystical practices to get in touch this inner light? What does this theology look like? (also pinging u/ShamedSalmon)
I would tend to think that the divine spark and the inward/inner light refer to approximately the same thing.
Yes. Meeting for worship as I practice it is conducted in communal silence with the aspirational goal of observing the inner light and allowing the Spirit to guide your thought. An unprogrammed meeting in its resting state is literally a silent room (but for the noises of the human condition), which is eerie whether there are five or 75 people there. It is deeply profound, and this profundity is a space for meditation, connection, and revelation. From Robert Barclay (1678):
When Friends feel so moved by the Spirit (feeling that which "arises from the heart rather than the head") during meeting for worship, the suggestion is to break the silence to express their communion with the inner light, that which "manifests itself in the individual as a 'call', described as an uncomfortable quickening or a profound silence before speaking and a sense of relief or release afterward." In practice, this may come in the form of an explanation of a feeling, memory, or experience; a song or quotation; a disconnected and desperate thought; or something else. From John Woolman (1741):
I have been to hour-long or two-hour meetings where not a single word was said. Sometimes those are the most profound meetings. I have likewise been to meetings where five or ten people spoke. Sometimes those are deeply moving as well. In general, Friends aspire to leave space between messages so that they can better ponder the meaning of each one. Messages are not meant to be conventional dialogue, because vocal ministry is supposed to be mediated by the Spirit.
When I began attending meeting regularly, I was given a copy of the book Faith and Practice by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. It features a very short history, some principles of practice as it is done in this area, and a number of quotations (testimonials) which seek to demonstrate theological and moral principles. Other yearly meetings have their own collections of similar or different practices, but this is the one I know.
The entire book is available online in the link I provided, though it is nice to have a hard copy. The first section, "Experience and Faith," describes concepts like the inner light in conventional prose, with some quotations from renowned Quakers. The section on "Extracts from the Writings of Friends" contains spiritual and worldly remarks from Quakers across a variety of traditions and time periods. Each subsection is on its own web page, so you have to jump around to read it online, but the content is all there.
That's fascinating...
Would you be willing to expand more on what this experience is like? If you don't mind me asking, is this the sort of experience you've had firsthand? Is this some sort of ineffable encounter with the divine, an experience of emotion, or something else?
That's absolutely fascinating. I feel that I must attend one of these some day, and if you have recommendations on finding such a gathering, I'd be greatly appreciative. I assume these sorts of experiences are primarily if not entirely communal, rather than any sort of individual practice?
I know that Quakers are not a monolith, but what, if anything, do Quakers think about movements like the Cathars and the gnostics? I can't help but notice similarities between both the belief in a Divine Spark (or otherwise the existence of the divine logos existing within us) and specific meditative or contemplative practices being performed to tap into or know this spark or light.
I speak for myself only and don't wish to imply that my experience of inner light is universal. I welcome additional remarks from @teaearlgraycold and other Quakers. Also, my experience will change over time.
My sense is that human nature channels Spirit subjectively. Appreciation for what constitutes a "call" or a feeling of inner light is individual, a matter of perception and discretion.
Sure, but it is rare for me, and not consistent. Ineffable, yes and no. Latent. Emotional in that it builds on emotions I would have in daily and social life. There's an interior urge to do something: encompassing and hard to ignore. I wouldn't feel that I'm being spoken to, rather it is immanent. Partly physical. Restlessness, shivers, heat, core tension, some sort of acceleration (thought?), deceleration (time?). There is transformation as it churns. Imminence too. Confusing and easy to misidentify or let it slip away, or intentionally squash. For me, this all starts small (uncertainty) and becomes more obvious if I hear/examine it (certainty). It might take me a few seconds or a minute of attention to become unbearable. I agree with the quotation that acting on this feeling brings me an immediate release, but adrenaline simmers a while. Just my personal experience.
I don't think feelings of inner light have to be rare, but I'm naturally inattentive to that side of myself. My mind drifts constantly, including during meeting. When I'm tuned in, Spirit appears more visible. Sometimes/often I can't bring myself to get anywhere near settled enough in meeting. Other times there are hints right away.
I guess you can use the Friends General Conference meeting finder (the list; not the map, which seems to omit... almost every meeting). FGC will lean toward unprogrammed and more progressive groups. But you can probably find this kind of spiritual connection elsewhere. I don't go to programmed meetings, so I can't tell you about them. If you're doing research, Swarthmore recommends a search tool by Tom Hill.
I don't want to answer you too prescriptively. However, my edition of Faith and Practice states that "Friends find it necessary to be present with others in worship." To me, individual silence is meditative but not necessarily spiritual. I think that I am more passively attuned to Spirit while in community. Being around other people in worship is what unlocks my inward teacher. You can teach yourself through them, and them through yourself. Outside of meeting, I have felt a similar kind of presence at least once, alone, preceding a surreal experience, but that might have been something else. I don't know.
Quakers believe that any individual can have a direct relationship with the spirit. George Fox listened for "openings." Early Quakers were persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and killed for their rejection of conventional religious authority and their heretical worship. From what I know of Cathar and Gnostic history (extremely little), they all have that in common.
I think a decent number of Quakers who go to liberal, unprogrammed meetings have mixed elements of Christian/Buddhist/New Age influence (and more), so their spirituality can sometimes be more pantheistic than explicit and personified in the way it is Biblically. Some Quakers probably have a theology that resembles Cathar or Gnostic dualism. But "Quaker" is such a heterogeneous label that I can't call most theological beliefs universal in the slightest. (I'd also like to clarify that some Quakers aren't strictly theistic to begin with.) Even within a particular meeting, I think that the answer you will find is... mushy.
Except during vocal ministry Friends may not talk about their interior experiences proactively, but I'm sure some would enjoy a theological discussion at the rise of meeting. Depending on who you ask, they might need a few more sessions to think through your questions. They can be a little bit like Ents in that way. Other Friends would immediately have ten billion things to say to you. Like any group of people, they are all different.
Thank you greatly for your reply!
With your description of the divine as immanent, would you consider your own theological views to be pantheistic or maybe panentheistic? This may be a stretch but what, if anything, do Quakers make of Spinoza? And is this a generally heterodox position or is it well represented in the Quaker community?
I wouldn't be able to offer an academic thesis about spirituality. I can talk about themes:
If there is a dichotomy of earthly and divine, I'd speculate that its current state is unknowable or at least non-static. Bendable. To explain, I can attempt to give you a secular answer. I never read the entirety of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, but I have interest and belief in concepts of subject/object sublation, dynamic switching or inversion of roles, and translation of immaterial identity, some of which he discussed or alluded to in that text.
Perhaps in a similar light, Jean Baudrillard wrote in Simulacra and Simulation:
Of course, Jean Baudrillard never wrote that; he wrote in French. And that is not a sentence you will find in any collection of Ecclesiastes. But the trusting reader makes no such observations.
This treatise on postmodern signification takes greater interest in the implosion of truth or existential consistency in a socio-technological world than in the musings of ancient religion per se. But it speaks to [a|the] nature of our insight into the universe: an unstable impression of present "hyperreality" which I suspect has always existed in some form.
In essence, in a semiotic context where object and sign can exchange and subvert meaning to the point where ontological origin/destination are indistinguishable, we do not exist in a reality that can be explicitly contrasted with non-reality. But I believe this role-fluidity to be a natural and long-standing element of linguistics and not a modern phenomenon; and because I find that people become communities through language, among other things, I'm comfortable applying that one retroactively where it suits me.
The immanence of the inner light is a quite widely held belief among Quakers.
I haven't actually read Spinoza's Ethics and am only superficially familiar with his work in a formal setting. But it feels to me that his ideas have seeped deeply into many people's understandings of Quaker ideals.
Spinoza's rejection of a human-like and conscious God is probably in line with my beliefs as well as those of many Quakers who are skeptical of traditional Christian representations of the divine, especially younger people—they often have more agnostic tendencies or are indifferent toward scripture. In my circles, I don't hear too many comments about Christ literally walking among us, though some people do refer to Christ by name and as a "lover" and "teacher" and so forth. Among Friends who attend liberal and unprogrammed meetings, and again among young Friends, there is perhaps more emphasis on the light before us (as a piece of and/or within people) than in an overpowering supernatural force which happens to take a human-esque (with personality) or parental aspect as demonstrated in the Bible. Modern beliefs are a little too pessimistic for a lot of folks to accept that an omnipotent God is directly and personally caring for them and everyone else in a world full of problems. That predisposition lends itself toward a more dispersed and/or unconscious understanding of spirit. However, I think Quakers place additional emphasis on mutual/communal love and support in a way that I imagine Spinoza may not specifically comment on. Friends may or may not understand the spirit itself as something they love and which loves them (depends who you ask), but there is universally an emphasis on holding love for each other; channeling love through spirit.
So in the sense that liberal Quakers don't really have a creed, and thus lacking an enforced "orthodoxy," a particular belief can't really be "heterodox." Faith and Practice is not a Bible. My yearly meeting's issue in fact begins with this quotation from the Elders of Balby (1656) in the foreword:
Informally, I would be confident in saying that beliefs like mine or Spinoza's would not be considered aberrant in many Quaker meetings. My impression is that many people are attracted to the kind of Quaker meeting I attend in part because it is unlike traditional monotheistic, scripture-based, prescriptive Christianity.
Apologies for all my qualified remarks; I'm trying not to misrepresent folks here. But I hope this answers your question!
You've been more than generous, thank you for taking the time to reply to me, this is really interesting stuff.
Epistemologically or ontologically? Also, would you consider your view to be an apophatic approach to the divine, as is common in other mystical traditions?
You'll need to forgive me, I'm not well-read in this stuff, so I'm trying to understand how hyperreality works in pre-modern cultures who's populations had little access to media. What would be a pre-modern simulacrum? An idol maybe? I can imagine people of every historical era have confused maps with the territory. I am also struggling to understand how I should connect this to your view on the relationship between the Earthly and the divine, so I may need an ELI5 :)
I know this is really disconnected from the rest of our conversation, but what is the relationship between Quakers and scripture? Do Quakers believe in Sola scriptura? If you have a sort of inner revelation, how does this relate to scripture?
I had meant to convey ontological ambiguity, but I suppose it would be epistemological too. I have long held that I know nothing, and that knowing is itself uncertain or at least subjective.
I find that "there is that of the [spirit|inner light] within all people." If the spirit or inner light is a sign of divinity, then are the people who encapsulate it themselves, in a sense, light? Not wholly, yet it is always there, and thus to my supposition—do the mortal and divine occupy the same space at the same time, or perhaps an array of spaces at an array of times? After all, the human condition is hardly singular. And if the divine is naturally inert or unconscious as per Spinoza's rendering, then are not these people who can knowingly and consciously enact love on the world—the truest form of spirit—transforming themselves toward the divine in the process? If it is godly to love, and feel love, and be loved; and if it is these human agents experiencing such emotions; then is the human agent not taking on the personified role of the divine? Is it so preposterous to find that one may take up the mantle of spirit, or one's inner light (being part of oneself) thus understood, as to embody love? This being the case, can we ever say for certain what is truly earthly and what is divine?
These questions are mostly rhetorical. I'm still exploring ideas like this in my own practice.
I have not considered that term before. Sure, you can call it partially apophatic. I find that God is not a person exactly and not understood by everyone the same way.
But I would positively/cataphatically render spirit as love. So far, that is something I have observed. I am less confident about other positive labels, but I have felt them too.
A simulacrum is an image that represents something else. That could be a map, as in Borges' Exactitude. It could also be an image of God. Baudrillard asks these age-old questions:
I don't have the academic background to produce a historical or sociological analysis of iconography in religion. However, I think the numerous and yet-ongoing holy wars fought over such things speak for themselves. Icons—simulacra—have power because of what they both do and do not represent (divinely); what they both are and are not (terrestrially); and reflexively, apparently being both divine and terrestrial (subjectively), icons themselves act upon our understanding of the world and of God, which may change the world, which may in turn change God, and so on. I find that the concept can be extended infinitely and in virtually any context. Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
So you can think of the hyperreal as the confluence of truth and untruth, or of subject and object, or any other two entities in a duality, such that this duality becomes indecipherable.
For the record, this is a notoriously obtuse piece of writing, or at least this translation is. I quoted it because it found relevant to your question about whether the earthly and the divine are the same or different. I find them to be both at once and more; i.e. that the role inhabited by an individual (earthly) and that of a deity or other such force (divine) may be taken up by any entity and not just the figure it was prescribed for. This is a very postmodern (properly post-structuralist) thing to believe, hence the Baudrillard. But it is also not so very new at all, hence the Hegel. The latter proposed a relationship between two self-conscious people which can be summarized thusly:
The bold emphasis is my own and not in the original text. Hegel's "lord–bondsman dialectic" (some translations may use starker terms) provides an example of the inverted power dynamic represented by the intermixed roles of the nominally powerful and the nominally powerless.
That is all supposed to explain the nature of a person in the context of other people, each of whom have consciousness. The leap that I would make to spiritual matters is substituting those figures in the dialectic with, say, my own mortal self and the concept of the divine in general. I take it that the inner light exists within all people, and that I both recognize and am recognized by it. In this sense, I might abstractly consider it a "self-consciousness" (per Hegel). Though I don't find spirit to be a person, more of a force, I would still be interested in interpreting it as a self-consciousness because I find it to at least mediate the subjective self-consciousnesses of other people (for I find the inner light to exist within them as well as myself). You could say that the Hegelian process of recognition is what intermixes the divine across all people.
I will note that Hegel speaks quite a bit about spirit and religion properly, and I have not read that part of the book. I will also note that Hegel's conceptualization of sublation, identity, and power dynamics—though perhaps inspirational—is a quite gloomy and domineering matter that isn't exactly how I understand inner light, which I find to be much more loving. But it is still an interesting piece as far as role-reversals are concerned and can nevertheless be interpreted optimistically.
There isn't a particular scripture in the kind of Quakerism I practice. The closest we have is the entirely descriptive, rather than prescriptive, Faith and Practice. The Bible also exists, but these days is not the exclusive text people take seriously, religious or otherwise. Because there isn't any single written source of truth, many Quakers don't worry about the authority of scripture in general, though they may still hold some reverence for it.
Early Quakers were Protestants, but the idea that the inner light exists within everyone (and therefore that anyone can engage directly with the light) supersedes the Bible as the source of spiritual truth. It's fair to say that many Quakers use the Bible and other sources (including non-Christian texts) for spiritual guidance, but sola scriptura seems incompatible with the kind of Quakerism I practice. My community sees value in the personal sights and revelations of all Friends, which is why we engage in unprogrammed worship where anyone can speak if they are so moved. Scripture may very well be the source of those insights. However, as far as spiritual matters are concerned, the idea that words on a page necessarily and unquestionably override someone's lived experience is not something that people in my meeting would be keen on.
Friends in my meeting share their personal experiences during worship. There is almost no focus on scripture for its own sake. Occasionally, someone may be moved to quote the Bible or sing a round from the Agnus Dei. It is conventional (though not spirit-led) for an elder in my meeting to occasionally read from the Advices in Faith and Practice during worship. But in an unprogrammed worship, no one is sitting there reading scripture. Typically, no one is reading at all because the purpose of communal worship is to commune with the inner light, which is interior (in the soul) and not exterior (in a book), though there is no rule about what physical behavior constitutes worship. If you have a spiritual revelation and are led to speak about it, that would be considered just as divine as any spiritual experience anyone else has had, whether or not they had written it down. It is always welcome.
There are evangelical Quakers who believe strongly in the authority of the Bible. That is not part of my world. I'm not sure how they reconcile concepts like inner light with such adherence to scripture.
I'm lucky enough that there even seems to be a weekly meeting here in Berlin -- and it's not even painfully early! I may go check them out based on that. Based on their German website they definitely seem very universalist and community-focused, which definitely appeals to me and I'm curious about what it's like in practice.