Silence is only one of the tools available

“What is happening when we open a Quaker session with a request for ‘a bit of quiet’ or ‘a moment of stillness’? The aim, I think, is good: to offer people a short period of time to set aside concerns from outside the session and focus; to give people a space in which to tune in to their inner Light; and to use the tools of unprogrammed Quaker worship, including silence, to do that. 

But when we name the tool – quiet, silence, stillness – rather than the goal or the process – settling, worshipping, listening – I worry about two risks. One is conflating them: assuming that for everyone, those are the tools which work. The other is diminishing them: leaving out some of the richness and the complexity of unprogrammed worship, in which anything can happen and we might be stirred up as well as calmed, in favour of a weaker version, a self-fulfilling prophecy in which we know in advance that there will only be silence.

When I ask a group of Quakers in the unprogrammed tradition for a short period of worship, rather than a moment of quiet, I know that there will probably be silence. I’ve participated in hundreds of two-minute silences and ten-minute silences in which we were open, but nobody had a message to share. But I’ve also been in just a few where there was a message: either something that came directly to me and for me alone, speaking to my condition, even if I was anxious or fretful or clock-watching or whatever, or something that was shared with the group, such as a request to uphold a person or situation, or a reading that set the tone for what came next. 

Whatever words we use to introduce our practice, I want to keep that possibility. Into our lives, through our listening and waiting, can come surprising possibilities and divine guidance. Stillness and quiet can help us be responsive to that, but so can anything that helps us listen and be open […]

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.”