NO QUAKER would suggest that Quaker worship, in its private or public aspects is a panacea for the ills of modern life. They would, nevertheless, want to affirm most strongly that their regular participation in silent worship is, at the very least, a vital and necessary form of therapy. By and large Quakers tend to be busy people, and you rarely find them wondering how to occupy their time. They would, however, be the first to recognize how essential it is for them to have periods of disinvolvement, even from the activities which express their continuing concern to care for people .... In our disinvolvement two elements will be present. First is a kind of detachment that while standing back, accepts all experience in the hope of transcending it- seeing beyond it creatively. Secondly a cessation from all mental activity so that the body and mind are as still and quiet as possible.
The Society of Friends has always encouraged its members to seek a daily opportunity to withdraw from, the necessary affairs of life, and, "in inward retirement", to renew their resources, and also to ensure that they get their priorities right. There is no hard and fast rule about how this should be done, and Friends will set about it In the manner most helpful and natural to them .... It is, of course, an individual discipline, but it has a two-fold objective. The first is to enable a person to be in touch with the inner core of his being so that his whole life may be renewed. The second is to help to prepare him to enter more fully into the corporate worship which is the central activity of the Society of Friends ... [Yet] the uniqueness of the Quaker approach lies in its emphasis on the role of silence.
-George H. Gorman, 1973.
Added 8th Month 29, 1999
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