Exploring Quaker Experiences: Relationships

Friends seek to let Quaker values impact all areas of our lives, including our relationships with others around us. Quaker Faith and Practice gives a wealth of practical advice across all aspects of close relationships, from marriage, raising children, being a good friend and living with others to navigating difficult relationships, grieving loved ones and ending relationships.

“Do you cherish your friendships, so that they grow in depth and understanding and mutual respect? In close relationships we may risk pain as well as finding joy. When experiencing great happiness or great hurt we may be more open to the working of the Spirit.” Advices and Queries, 21

We asked Friends to share how being a Quaker impacts their relationships:

Daniel Flynn reflected on practicing Quaker values in his close relationships:

“I regard any close relationship as a gift, just as I regard life as a gift, by a power greater than me. My role and my responsibility for this gift is to practice spiritual principles in all my affairs. Spiritual principles that I get from Quakers and from other programs that I've engaged in. Today I have a list of 25 values I seek to practice. The first one is silence, along the way comes compassion, in the middle is intuition and the yield of all that is simple, silent gratitude.”

Marilyn Cox discussed how Quaker meetings impacted her children growing up:

“None of our children have decided to be Quakers, but all of them, in my view, are Quakers in their attitude to life and the way they treat people. They all came to meeting from when they were babies upwards, but my youngest daughter, when she was about three or four, used to sit on my lap and when the children went out, she wouldn't go out. She just sat there and stayed there as quiet as a mouse. I said to her one day, “Why do you stay in meeting? Why don't you go with the other children?” She said “Because I love the quiet of it. It's just so special.” She's always felt like that. She just felt safe. In that silence when we meet, while there may be disagreements within individuals there, the silence doesn't stoke the fire. The silence gives you time to think about it and perhaps come to a different conclusion, and we're all equal in the silence.”

Trevor Bending shared how attending Quaker meetings can make people more accepting and tolerant of others:

“I have been going to meetings for worship for about 15 years. I think it makes you more accepting and more tolerant of people that you're not particularly keen on, or who have different values from you. For me, that has been, in some ways, more significant than the effect on close relationships. I think it does have some effect on close relationships in that, within the family, if I behave in a way that I then think “Oh, that wasn't very Quakerly of me”, then it kind of pulls you up short and you reflect on it, so it has some effects there.”