Photo: Left: East 15th Street and Rutherford Place, on Stuyvesant Square. Photo: Eden, Janine and Jim via Flickr. Right: Cyndi Lauper at Glastonbury in 2024. Photo: Raph_PH via Wikimedia Commons.
Eye - 25 April 2025
Eye hears about an unusual wedding at a Quaker Meeting house, and an encounter at a Quaker Meeting for Worship for Marriage
Fun in a friendly place
In March Cyndi Lauper appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs (which you can hear at https://bbc.in/4iiW8oS).
Rupert Price, of Winchmore Hill Meeting, got in touch with Eye when a Quaker Meeting house was mentioned!
In 1991 Cyndi Lauper married David Thornton at the Meeting house of the 15th Street Monthly Meeting, with Little Richard performing the ceremony, and Patti LaBelle singing ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’.
In an article written the day after her marriage, Cyndi Lauper wrote: ‘The Friends Meeting House, a Quaker house of worship, has been the scene for many non-traditional wedding ceremonies. Lauper mixed the traditional with the outrageous, the touching and the hilarious.’
A story to share
‘At the first Quaker Meeting for Worship I attended, I wore a top hat and played the fiddle.’
How could Eye resist such a wonderful reply to the question ‘How did you come to Quakerism?’
Eric Johnson, of Bournemouth Meeting, continued: ‘I was in a folk band and the gig was a Quaker Meeting for Worship for Marriage. Thae bride, a Quaker, danced with a local Morris Side and the groom played accordion with the band.
‘Having attended many church marriage services using a prescribed order, I found this Quaker marriage service to be so very, very different.
‘I found myself among about fifty friends and relatives sitting in a double circle in an unremarkable meeting room.
‘After words of welcome, it was explained that silence was the norm, but friends and relatives were invited to speak spontaneously – and they did. Among them were Quakers, close friends, colleagues from their workplaces and others who had supported them during training and career changes. The couple were to exchange vows “when they were so moved”.
‘When this had happened, the marriage certificate was signed, not by just two witnesses, but by many of the friends and relatives present.
‘After these formalities, the chairs were moved, and the floor was cleared and the band mounted the stage and played.
‘The Morris Side, including the bride, danced traditional Border Morris dances to traditional tunes.
‘I came away deeply moved, even slightly baffled, and felt compelled to go back there to Meeting for Worship on the following Sunday morning.
‘It was Remembrance Sunday, and I wore a white poppy. The welcomers were also wearing white poppies, and I felt an immediate identification with them and this small, worshipping Quaker community.
‘My partner and I have attended regularly since that first Sunday more than six years ago.
‘Friends often talk about the Spiritual Journey and a sense of “having arrived”. I can only say that this was my experience.
‘Recently, I was accepted as a member; wearing a top hat and playing the fiddle was not seen as a
hindrance.’
Eye delights in stories that allow us to get to know the readers of the sunshine pages better.
Do you have a story to share about how you came to Quakerism?
Is there a question you would like Eye to pose?
What glimmers of light would you like to see on the sunshine pages?
