The large room is full of people greeting old friends and chatting happily. There is no apparent signal. Suddenly the room falls silent with an expectant waiting. We’re at Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM). In a moment the door opens and the clerks enter.

Most of you go to your Local Meetings on a Sunday or midweek. When the first person enters the Meeting room, the Meeting begins. People generally speak in the area outside the Meeting room, not as at BYM both inside and outside. In our small Meeting in Finchley there is a great deal of welcoming of each other and chatting until the clock reaches just before 10.30am. Then people quiet down and almost parade into the Meeting room. Obviously the clerk does not announce that this is a particular Meeting as at BYM but all fall silent, except for occasional noises from the Children’s Meeting going on in parallel.

So what is the difference between our Local Meetings for Worship and BYM? Well, the first major thing is the number of people gathered together as Quakers. It is exciting to have approximately 1,000 people coming to worship together. What possibilities of discernment must run through the group?

Second, this isn’t an ordinary Meeting for Worship but a Meeting for Worship for church affairs at which the business of our entire Religious Society of Friends in Britain as a whole, including Scotland and Wales, is decided.

The absolute silence falls. Occasionally a person will rise from the silence, waiting patiently until the microphone steward sees them. Sometimes the message is spoken, sometimes sung. Coming out of the gathered silence it makes me listen intently.

My Local Meeting also has a gathered silence but often of not more than ten people, although recently we have reached as high as twenty. The silence is rich but somehow the silence of hundreds of people feels almost palpable. I can look around my Local Meeting and hold each person in the Light by name, also remembering those who are not present. At BYM, I can pray for people and the occasion asking that we discern the will of God corporately, but there is no way that I can pray for all the people present by name.

This gathering of old friends and the expectation of meeting new friends, all meeting with a common purpose, is exhilarating. I don’t understand how the quiet of the multitude can be so similar to the quiet of the small group but, after all, aren’t we coming together as seekers after the will of God whether few or many?

Worship in silence is the tie that binds us Quakers in Britain Yearly Meeting together despite our differences and individual concerns. I look forward to the first drop of silence on Friday evening.

Britain Yearly Meeting takes place from Friday 28 May to Sunday 31 May at Friends House in London.