Why I Came Back To Quaker Meeting
Jacob Ginsberg went to Quaker school from K–12, then stepped away from meeting for over a decade. After a stretch of hard years, he found his way back to a community that welcomed him home with open arms. This week, Jacob shares why he returned, what he found in worship and community, and why Quaker meeting has become his refuge in a turbulent world.
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Transcript
Jacob Ginsberg
Went to Quaker School, K through 12, and didn’t go back to Quaker meeting for over a decade since then.
Hi, I’m Jacob Ginsberg, I’m 32 years old. I went to Quaker school my whole life, and after about a decade I headed back into Quaker meeting, and since then I’ve been a regular attender at Arch Street Monthly Meeting, AKA, Philadelphia Monthly Meeting.
They tell you you’re going to miss it, and I didn’t believe that I would.
I had been going through like a really tough time, several just like years of losses. You know, a long-term relationship for most of my 20s was ending. We lost family members, pets, general tumult in the whole like world, personally, internally, I was like in a you know bad spot, and throughout that time, I had been thinking about going back, walking by the meeting house. I lived right around the corner, you know, floating it to friends, especially maybe we should go. You know, I used to go to Quaker school. I’m thinking about going to meeting, and I never went. And it wasn’t until I started to come out of that funk and start to feel more like hopeful again. It was spring a year ago that I actually went. It was like a message. It comes to you in meeting, and you dismiss it, and then a week later it comes to you again, then you just miss it, and you you turn it over, and you’re you’re making excuses not to talk, and then it keeps coming up until finally it like yanks you out of the chair. I feel like that’s what got me back in there.
I missed the silence. That was the first thing I felt when I got back to meeting. Was likeI felt like at home, and welcome back into the silence. And you know, I had a meditation practice going, but there’s something really different about being silent, like with others in worship, than being silent alone.
But also, then right after there’s tea table, and like there’s this community of people that like know about Quaker stuff, and they know about like they know about simplicity and integrity and the spices and like the values that we had growing up in a Quaker school, everybody there is like, you know, jazzed up about. So there’s this whole community element that’s been like very welcoming too.
So I’ve been on, you know, I went to retreat to Pendle Hill for the day, which is this like amazing Quaker education center. I’ve been to committee meetings for the outreach committee. I’ve been involved with like social justice stuff through the Quaker meeting. I’ve been to a book club. Like, there’s so many opportunities for like fellowship and community.
And one of the efforts I’m involved with is inreach, which is about like you know reaching into the community and like drawing out connections for people who like seem to want more from from the community, from you know the meeting.