Ruth Calder

Sat with a friend and her new diagnosis this afternoon. No words came, so I held her in the Light for the length of a pot of tea. Sometimes that is the whole prayer.

Meeting for worship this morning: forty minutes of silence, one sentence of ministry, a wasp at the window. It was enough. Holding all of you in the Light this week.

Quakers famously have no rituals. Which is why every First Day I sit in the same creaky bench, by the same window, beside the same woman knitting, for exactly one hour of silence. Entirely unritualistic.

One kind of truth

Quakers have declined to swear oaths for more than three centuries, on the strength of 'let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay.' The reasoning is simple: swearing to tell the truth on special occasions implies a lower standard the rest of the time. So when I was a witness in a small claims case last month, I affirmed instead. The clerk didn't blink. But I've been thinking about it since. Plain speech isn't about being blunt, or about thee and thou (I only use those with my sister, mostly to annoy her). It's about having one kind of truth, for the courtroom and the garden gate and the email to the plumber. I fail at it daily. 'Fine, thanks' is my most frequent untruth. But I'm practising.

Someone asked what Quakers do in all that silence. Mostly we wait, and not for anything in particular. Some weeks the waiting is the answer.