Surrendering into Silence: Quaker Prayer Cycles

by David Johnson, Charles H. Martin (Editor)

Quaker spirituality is at its core a contemplative practice which is based on the path taught and lived by Jesus. The traditional Quaker experience is that the Spirit of God communicates directly to each and every person, especially when we spend time in silence, and is experienced mainly as an Inward Light in the conscience. Further, as this Inward Light is followed, we are granted more light and greater purity of heart or holiness, and we become reborn inwardly as the Spirit of God (Christ) takes hold of our lives.

Many of the quotations in this work are deliberately sourced from the first Quakers, whose remarkable spiritual strength opened up a vision of true Christianity and changed the world around them. The language of the 1600s sounds foreign to our ears until it becomes familiar. Many words have had different meanings over the centuries, as is clear in the different wordings of the King James Version and Revised Standard Version translations of the Bible. Readers are urged to sit and feel for the underlying spiritual message of these written experiences of our Quaker ministers and elders as well as of the selected excerpts from the Scriptures.

The Quaker experience and understanding are that God is always ready to guide and lead us and goes before us, though we may be called upon to wait till we have been inwardly prepared. ‘Way will open’ in God’s time rather than in our own time frame.

Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2020

About the author

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Reviews

[Mike Farley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much needed guide

There is far too little published about the life of prayer from a specifically Quaker point of view; this brilliant and lucid little book will be of great value not only to Friends, but to all who are called to the contemplative way, from whichever tradition.

[Brian Wilcox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of this was a review to me, having been trained under the teachings of the late Thomas Keating, a Catholic. Surrendering into Silence is a Quaker version of Keating, who was one among three who began the movement of Centering Prayer and which became Contemplative Outreach LTD.

Here, Johnson, a Quaker from Australia, applies universal principles of the cycle recurring in the life of spiritual contemplation to the Quaker, or Society of Friends, or Religious Society of Friends, tradition. His use of citations from varied traditions, ancient and modern, amplifies his own comments.

While Johnson rightly acknowledges the contemplative dimension is in varied spiritual paths, his book reads like a primer for Quakers. Still, the book would prove a valuable introduction to contemplative silence for anyone interested in exploring the process of such a way of prayerful silence and the psychology behind it as a means of purification and growing intimacy with the Divine - Johnson, in the way of Quakerism, does not seek to decide or define what the Divine would be for the reader.

Johnson points out, rightly, spiritual depth in a faith community is not possible apart from this contemplative silence. In the silence, as Johnson clarifies, we are welcomed below the usual chatter of mind and emotion so to be receptive to the Light.

And, again in the vein of Friends, receptivity to the Light in silence is done as part of a community, one not grounded on doctrinal or moral agreement, but on a shared vision in response to divine Grace. Hence, for Johnson, prayerfulness among others is as, if not more, important than alone. Indeed, he disallows any form of privatized worship, wherein one is not linked in agreement of spirit with others who share a like vision and life together.