Not silent but thinking

To a Friends Meeting House and a service in silence. An hour spent sitting still, in the quiet, surrounded by other people is a challenge. You won't find me plugged into my iPod at all hours, I don't even listen to music much, but silence is a novelty, especially purposeful silence.

I am on a bench by the door, three rows back from the centre and all I can hear is breathing, pages turning, legs crossing, feet shuffling. My face itches like madness. For the first twenty minutes I focus well, discerning the Spirit, or trying to. It is taking, I realise later, all my powers of concentration. I focus, I refocus, I search my body and my head, the sounds near to me, the sounds far away from me, looking for something I don't understand. I close my eyes but that makes the itching worse. I try to sit with my feet on the floor, my hands in my lap, but I can't. My legs need to be crossed, my head supported. I give up.

Around me men and women, mostly in their 40s and 50s have their eyes closed beatifically. I can't copy them. I try and I can't. There is no deepening. My focus oscillates back and forth metronomically between discernment and distraction. Do I feel the Spirit? Do I feel nearer the Spirit? How do I even know?

After 20 minutes my psyche is exhausted and I think <<maybe that's the point>>

Time to not-try, to just exist in the room. I open my eyes and watch the other people. Someone speaks, tells a story, and I listen carefully. One woman hasn't shifted a muscle since I walked in. I feel envious. My head is sometimes filled with white noise, sometimes blank. I sit together with everyone else and enjoy the dawdling, the pleasant large windows, the young guy in a cap who smiles consistently. Are they all discerning the Spirit together? Are <<we>>?

The time passes very quickly and within moments the hour is up and two men in long beards shake hands, there is a sense, I think, of collective release. We smile and nod at each other. There is tea afterwards and one woman suggests to me that this is close to a monastic experience. Communion that isn't filled with action or purpose or function but just - communion. I agree and have a coffee.