A Quaker Book of Wisdom: Life Lessons In Simplicity, Service, And Common Sense

by Robert Lawrence Smith

For Quakers, wisdom begins in silence. Quakers believe that only when we have silenced our voices and our souls can we hear the “still small voice” that dwells within each of us—the voice of God that speaks to us and that we express to others through our deeds. Only by listening in stillness for that voice and letting it guide our actions can we truly let our lives speak.

Live a life of simplicity, love, and service. Let your life speak, and trust that your children will learn by your example.

Ernest Hemingway wrote, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” I feel the same way about Meeting; it is a moveable feast of the spirit. No matter where you worship, or who joins you in your silent search, the truth is always waiting there for you like an old friend.

Quakers do not categorize the sacred and the secular as separate realms.

If I were asked to define Quaker simplicity in a nutshell, I would say that it has little to do with how many things you own and everything to do with not letting your possessions own you.

What was becoming increasingly obvious to me was that Hitler was a brutal murderer who must be opposed, and that fascism was the closest thing to an ocean of darkness that I was likely to encounter in this life.

The Quaker author explains why he chose to enlist in WW 2.

Fifty years after the fact, it’s difficult not to take the Allied victory for granted, to view it as inevitable. But it’s important to remember how close the ocean of darkness came to enveloping the world in the 1940s—and how crucial it was that the democratic countries, and the individuals who lived there, allied themselves to oppose the evil of fascism.

Ironically, the war ended with the frightening specter of a new ocean of darkness: proof for all time of the unimagined destructiveness of nuclear weapons. History teaches us that darkness and death take different forms in every generation, but the challenge of gathering the forces of light and love to oppose them remains the same.

Expectations about what is enjoyable in life are homegrown, and home is also the place where habits of the heart and mind begin. Children thrive when its atmosphere is calm, orderly, and nonviolent; when they know that their parents want to spend all their available time with their children, ahead of anything else; when lines of communication are kept open; and when no one’s keeping score. I believe that it’s also important for children to have plenty of time with grandparents. It’s a much less pressured relationship for them than the one with their parents, and the wisdom grandparents pass on is grounded in a much longer span of experience.

Love is the jewel that family life perfects over time, the heirloom that gets passed on to children and to future generations. And love is also the Quaker antidote for the cruelty and violence we find everywhere in life. It begins within, as a mysterious feeling that wraps itself around your heart and won’t let go. The longer it stays the longer it wants to stay, and the stronger it holds on. Love is the emotion of first resort. It works because it arises from that spark of the divine, the small voice within us all, and for that reason it is quickly recognized by every person it touches. It is the essence of the Quaker legacy, and it is miraculously contagious on contact.

The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground.”