For each and all. We need silence and stillness. For each for all, that atmosphere of waiting souls; this is not the hush before the storm, when no twig moves no leaf dares to stir.
Think of the high noon of summer, Think of the stillness of snow, how heat or lightness everywhere give that sense of abounding life, making a quietness of rapture
As mind, as soul, as even the body grows still, sinking deeper and deeper into the life of God, the pettiness, the tangles, the failures of the outer life begin to be seen in their true proportions, and the sense of infilling, uplifting Divine Redeeming Love becomes real. Not quiescence, the soul is alive, yet so still, it hardly knows its own intensity.
This is the third of three texts taken from Quaker writings poetised for my song cycle Improving Silence. Joan Mary Fry was the sister of Roger Fry, the artist and writer.