Saturday, April 7, 2012

Running between the centuries

I went for a long run tonight through Haverford Township. But first, I strapped on my heart rate monitor - I had stents put in a few months ago, and want to monitor what's going on in there. On the other wrist - my regular watch - which is also a stop watch.

Then I downloaded an mp3 file of the oral argument that took place before the Supreme Court today on Obamacare onto a small playable flash drive. I hooked the flash drive up to a plug in the pocket of a hoodie that is wired through the ties to tips which serve as ear buds. Feeling like Inspector Gadget, I started all of my gadgetry and off I went, down Darby Road to Oakmont, listening to the arguments that had taken place just hours before, and glancing from time to time at my time and heart rate.

My half way point was the Old Haverford Friends Meeting, founded in 1683; and one of the few places in what is now Delaware County where William Penn is known to have visited. This is one of many old Quaker meeting houses in our area, still hosting weekly "meeting" - the silent worship of the Quakers.

As I ran by, with all of my gadgetry running as well, I thought how very different is our world from the time of Penn. Our technology, our pace of life, and our culture are all changing at warp speed. The people of the 17th, 18th and 19th century all traveled by foot or by horse or mule power. They would recognize and be comfortable in each other's world. But they would no doubt find ours overwhelming.

Yet not everything is change. Many of us still gather in silence in those old Quaker meeting houses on Sundays. We go to worship at places that have been in use for that purpose for hundreds of years. They are filled with that history. They are silent and peaceful and they welcome us to sit in that community of silence for an hour and take stock of our lives and our relationship to the larger world.

Sitting in the benches worn by centuries of use, we seek not complex but simple truths. We shift out of high gear and into park. We take the measure of our hearts, not with 21st century gadgetry, but by listening carefully in the silence, just as our 17th century friends did. We search for those truths that give our life purpose and meaning. "The unexamined life is not worth living." So we examine them.

And for that hour, sitting in the same buildings and the same silence as Penn and his brethren, we find that we are not so different after all.