Rest and Quaker Retirement

“[Jesus said,] ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.'”

“There is, it sometimes seems, an excess of religious and social busyness these days, a round of committees and conferences and journeyings, of which the cost in ‘peaceable wisdom’ is not sufficiently counted. Sometimes we appear overmuch to count as merit our participation in these things… At least we ought to make sure that we sacrifice our leisure for something worthy.”

“Stayed awake some time last night, and much enjoyed the stillness around me; it was a lovely night, the stars looked very beautiful, and reminded me of the 19th Psalm [‘The heavens declare the glory of God; / the skies proclaim the work of his hands.’]; it was a time I shall long remember, for I was favoured to enjoy much peace.”

“You are worthy of rest. We don’t have to earn rest. Rest is not a luxury, a privilege, or a bonus we must wait for once we are burned out. I hear so many repeat the myth of rest being a privilege and I understand this concept and still deeply disagree with it. Rest is not a privilege because our bodies are still our own, no matter what the current systems teach us. The more we think of rest as a luxury, the more we buy into the systemic lies of grind culture.”

“Why with all our labor-saving devices and fast transport, are we so short of time? Is it because we are greedy of experience for its own sake? — to see more, go farther, earn more, learn more, than is feasible in one short lifetime? The human soul needs time, needs to take time, unless experience is to become mere accumulation, bearing bad fruit, like any other kind of ambition.”