“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“[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.'”
December 2025: Each of us deserves rest, not because we’ve “earned” it, or because we are preparing ourselves for productivity, but because we have divine light within us, inherent value. These messages explore the relationship between rest and spirituality, the idea that we can be outwardly busy but inwardly resting and prayerful, and the Quaker concept of retirement, routinely setting aside time for a devotional practice.
“For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a happy one! The Daily Quaker Message spent the last month exploring the theme of Gratitude. In early Quaker texts, this sentiment was more often communicated as “awe” before God, and we read excerpts from journals where a feeling that began as reverence for the Divine moved Friends to feel thankful for life’s blessings.
Though gratitude isn’t one of the Quaker Testimonies, engaging in gratitude necessarily means engaging more deeply with Quaker values, and is a tool some Friends use to help them enter into worship. Paired with humility, a gratitude practice can be a transformational force of compassion and set the practitioner up to choose happiness, even in times of suffering.”
“When I consider the short extent of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the small space that I fill or even see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces unknown to me and which know me not, I am terrified and astounded to find myself here and not there.”
“When all comes to all, the most precious element in life is wonder. Love is a great emotion and power is power but both love and power are based on wonder. Plant consciousness, insect consciousness, fish consciousness, animal consciousness, all are related by one permanent element, which many called the religious element in all life, even in a flea: the sense of wonder. That is our sixth sense. And it is the natural religious sense.”
“Rather than ceding the major holidays to corporate America, I believe that it is time to reclaim them. Starting with Thanksgiving.
We are a nation that is over-worked to the point of exhaustion. We are a people desperately in need of Sabbath. Sunday was once widely reserved as a time of rest and worship, but now it is considered fair game by many employers. Even those of us who are privileged enough to be exempted from working weekends have largely lost the rest that our ancestors once knew. If we do not spend our weekends putting in extra hours on our electronic devices, we are out shopping, chauffeuring kids around, and generally catching up on all the unpaid work that we had to defer during the week.”
“Many years ago, I was present at a monthly meeting for business seeking to discern whether to hold worship on Thanksgiving morning. Thinking of all the work I would be facing that morning, my contribution to the discussion was, ‘You all can go ahead and worship Thanksgiving morning, but I will be home baking pies.’ As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt humiliated. How could I make such an unworshipful comment? Wouldn’t Friends think me a bad Quaker for prioritizing pies over worship? After the business meeting, many Friends responded to my comment. To my surprise, none scolded me. Instead, many seemed astonished that anyone knew how to bake homemade pies anymore. Reverently, they said, ‘You bake pies?'”
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