Generations of Friends have remarked how well they began to appreciate the silence when, as children, they worshipped daily with their families and attended worship with Friends at meeting. Cultivating quietness and inward listening makes us increasingly able to remain silent when it is not necessary to speak or to speak the wisdom that comes from stillness.

  
When your heart is wandering and distracted, bring it back quickly to its point, restore it tenderly to its Master's side, and if you did nothing else the whole of your hour but bring back your heart patiently and put it near our Lord again, and every time you put it back it turned away again, your hour would be well employed.

--Francis de Sales, in Thomas Green,
"Preparation for Worship," 1952

. . . IN SOLITUDE

The capacity to be alone is a necessary balance to the press of social life, and the healing power of solitude is central to our well-being. It promotes self-understanding and contact with those inner depths of being that often elude us when meeting the demands of daily living. Above all, solitude provides the opportunity to be alone with God and opens us to the workings of the Spirit.

  
Remember, it is a still voice that speaks to us in this day, and that it is not to be heard in the noises and hurries of the mind. Jesus loved and chose solitudes, often going to mountains, to gardens, and seasides to avoid crowds and hurries to show his disciples it was good to be solitary and sit loose to the world.

--William Penn,
Preface to The Journal of George Fox, 1694

Prev   15   Next