Quaker Silence (with guest editor Jon Watts)

September 2025: One of the most distinctive things about Quaker worship is that it incorporates silence. Whether it is a full hour of silence, or part of a program, Quakers believe that our relationship to the spirit begins with leaving space. This month we’ll explore why that is, and what comes from it.

September 1, 2025

A Communion as Strong as in Any Bread and Wine

“For the last 350 years, gathered silence has been the foundation of Quaker worship. The silence of Quaker worship, however, is not an end in itself, but an opportunity for seeking communion with the Sacred.” 
September 2, 2025

Why We Can Hardly Bear to Remain Silent

“One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are so accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. If we are silent, who will take control? God will take control, but we will never let him take control until we trust him. Silence is intimately related to trust.”
September 3, 2025

The One Cornerstone of Quaker Belief

“The one cornerstone of belief upon which the Society of Friends is built is the conviction that God does indeed communicate with each one of the spirits He has made, in a direct and living inbreathing of some measure of the breath of His own Life; that He never leaves Himself without a witness in the heart as well as in the surroundings of man; that the measure of light, life, or grace thus given increases by obedience; and that in order clearly to hear the Divine voice speaking within us we need to be still; to be alone with Him, in the secret place of His Presence; that all flesh should keep silence before Him.”
September 4, 2025

Sitting in Silence Until it Silences Us

“Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise.”
September 5, 2025

The Amazing Fact of Quaker Worship

“Some Friends are able to recall with clarity the first occasion on which they attended a Quaker meeting. While I cannot remember when or where I did so, I do have a vivid recollection of the meeting which I began to attend regularly. It was held in a rather hideous building: the meeting room was dingy. We sat on rickety chairs that creaked at the slightest movement. The whole place gave little hope that those who worshipped there might catch a glimpse of the vision of God. It was in stark contrast to the splendour of the Anglican churches to which I had been accustomed, where through dignified ritual the beauty of holiness was vividly portrayed. However, it was in this unlikely setting that I came to know what I can only describe as the amazing fact of Quaker worship.”
September 6, 2025

Becoming Empty for God

“The use of silence or solitude as a doorway to the Divine has a long history in the Christian tradition. Jesus often went away to pray alone. (Mark 1:35; Matthew 14:23; Luke 5:16). Early Christian monastics went to live alone in the desert in the fourth century AD to find and love God. This type of spirituality remains important in the Orthodox Christian Church under the term Hesychasm (quietness, rest, inner peace). It continues in the Catholic monastic tradition under the term ‘contemplation.’ Since the seventeenth century, Quakers have often used ‘silent worship’ as a part of their corporate worship. Quakers have more accurately termed this practice ‘expectant waiting.'”
September 7, 2025

Dwell in the Stillness of the Almighty

“In the stillness and silence of the power of the Almighty dwell, which never varies, alters, nor changes, but preserveth over and out of, and above all the changeable worships, religions, ministers, churches, teachings, principalities, and powers, with the power of God, which keepeth over all this, to the kingdom of Christ, that is everlasting, in which there is no changing, who is King of kings, and Lord of lords.”
September 8, 2025

In the Silence of the Heart, God Will Speak

“We cannot find God in noise and agitation. Nature: trees, flowers, and grass grow in silence. The stars, the moon, and the sun move in silence. What is essential is not what we say but what God tells us and what He tells others through us. In silence He listens to us; in silence He speaks to our souls. In silence we are granted the privilege of listening to His voice.”
September 9, 2025

Silence Is to the Spirit What Sleep Is to the Body

“Love silence, even in the mind; for thoughts are to the mind as words are to the body, troublesome; much speaking, as well as much thinking, spends [….] True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment. It is a great virtue; it covers folly, keeps secrets, avoids disputes, and prevents sin.”
September 10, 2025

Yielding to the Presence of God Is Not Easy

“The early church gathered not around Scripture, creed, or liturgy but around the presence and the experience of God in their midst. They trusted that God is what they needed to live and find their way through the empire. These new followers created seedbed communities called the Ekklesia—meaning called-out assembly or congregation—in which they could experience the presence of God within.”
September 11, 2025

On 9/11, We Remember That War Does Not Work

“​​Friends, as events unfold in the world around us, I very much fear that we are on the eve of a new and terrible global war. Even now it could be stopped, but there is not the will to stop it. There is rather the will to threaten and to fight, either by design or lack of thought, blundering forward in a manner reminiscent of the events that led up to World War I. The consequences of the war now beginning will bring immense suffering to many peoples. We as Friends need to do what we can to stop the wars that are already spreading or intensifying.  But we also need to be prepared to be Quakers in wartime — never an easy experience.”
September 12, 2025

Is Quaker Meeting Boring?

“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”
September 13, 2025

The Foundation of Quaker Spirituality

“What is spiritual silence? It is not just the absence of talk. Silence has substance. It is the presence of something. If we can stay in this place of silence without rushing to fill it up in some way, we are humbled to know even for a little while that we in our own power do not have all the answers. We become more willing to listen. Meanwhile, God has always been communicating. Listening to the Inward Teacher is the foundation of Quaker spirituality.”
September 14, 2025

Don’t Crowd the Canvas

“Open spaces are the analogue of the silences in a meeting for worship. Too full for articulate expression, the glory and fullness of the Infinite can only be portrayed by the unbroken silence.  Unhurried, unharried, we feel our way back to the world’s Mother, as the child feels its way to its parent’s arms. And there the Unspeakable is enough, fuller than expostulations and assurances. Yet again and again from out of that background emerge words, outthrusts of the Divine Life, a few sentences uttered in time yet pronounced from Eternity, a daily matter is set in cosmic frame. Resumption of silence is but the continuation of silence; unbroken space extends behind crag and cascade and river.”
September 15, 2025

In silence, love can blossom

“What is spiritual silence? It is not just the absence of talk. Silence has substance. It is the presence of something. If we can stay in this place of silence without rushing to fill it up in some way, we are humbled to know even for a little while that we in our own power do not have all the answers. We become more willing to listen. Meanwhile, God has always been communicating. Listening to the Inward Teacher is the foundation of Quaker spirituality.”
September 16, 2025

Spirit is more immediate without words

“Seeing the Spirit inwardly nourisheth, when he giveth not to speak words, the inward sense and nourishment is to be waited for, and received as it was given when there are no words. Yea, the ministry of the Spirit and life is more close and immediate when without words, than when with words, as has been often felt, and is faithfully testified by many witnesses.”
September 17, 2025

Inner silence is the same as the love of God

“Inner silence, calming the agitations of our hearts and minds, letting go of all that is stubborn and grasping, is essentially an expression of the love of truth. To be dispassionate, not to let one’s own needs or prejudices or emotions color one’s actions, is essentially to put truth before everything else. To love truth in this way is to love God, who is Truth. Thus the practice of inner silence is the same as the love of God.”
September 18, 2025

Silence is only one of the tools available

“Quakers say that of God is in everyone and everywhere. Our task is to notice that and act on it, in whatever way works for us.”
September 19, 2025

It’s not about getting God’s attention

“God is always talking to us. God is always reaching out to us. Every time I stop to listen, I hear that God has already started. It’s not a case of getting God’s attention, but it’s a case of getting my attention.”
September 19, 2025

Doing God’s will as if it were my own

In calm and cool and silence, once again I find my old accustomed place among My brethren, where, perchance, no human tongue Shall utter words; where never hymn is sung,
September 21, 2025

When there was silence in heaven

“May our minds be gathered to it, let our name and our profession to religion be what it may, and may we experience this divine communion of saints, and deeply ponder God’s unbounded love in solemn silence, for there is no power of eloquence can sufficiently acknowledge the obligation and reverence we owe his infinite majesty”
September 22, 2025

Silence outside of Quaker meeting

“The essence of the value of silence, for Quakers as well as for monastics and others, is to free ourselves from influences other than from God. Silence, then, can open ourselves to God and let us truly listen to the Living Christ.”
September 23, 2025

What Quakers do in the silence

“Many religions include short moments of silence in their services, but for Quakers, silence is the heart of worship. The room goes still as we let go of everyday busyness. Individuals may rise occasionally to share a message out of the silence, but for the most part quiet reigns. And yet, inside our heads, thoughts dance and twist about. As anyone who has tried to meditate knows, silencing one’s thoughts can be a challenge. Everything from grocery lists to worries about loved ones parades through the mind. Sometimes the procession makes a clatter; other times, a steady whisper of thoughts. But either way, it can be hard to settle.”
September 24, 2025

Everyone present contributes to Quaker meeting

“Every member of a Meeting, whatever his formal status […] contributes to the Meeting. Sometimes this contribution is spoken; generally it is silent.”
September 25, 2025

What undergirds Quaker worship

“Underlying and undergirding the unprogrammed worship of Friends is prayer; the prayerful corporate waiting which takes place in any meeting when it has centered down. As we go deeper and deeper, prayer is our task as individuals and as a group.”
September 26, 2025

“These stuffy old Friends are really talking sense”

“I read that I was supposed to make ‘a place for inward retirement and waiting upon God’ in my daily life, as the Queries in those days expressed it. At last I began to realise, first that I needed some kind of inner peace, and then that these apparently stuffy old Friends were really talking sense. If I studied what they were trying to tell me, I might possibly find that the ‘place of inward retirement’ was not a place I had to go to, it was there all the time.”
September 27, 2025

How Quakers use a “moment of silence”

“Besides its symbolic connection to the practice of silence in Quaker circles, even a short moment of silence is a useful practice that can be used throughout the day to stay physically grounded and awake to your own surroundings.“