How to Build a Daily Quaker Practice

Download the transcript and discussion questions.

Discussion questions

1. Patricia McBee says, “The idea of spiritual disciplines for some Quakers, at least initially, doesn’t sound like anything they want to be part of…I think of disciplines as skill building, as a kind of spiritual calisthenics so that you’re ready to be present in the world.” How do you view spiritual disciplines and why?
2. Emily Felt said that due to her busy schedule, she often incorporates moments of contemplation throughout her day. If you aspire to have a daily spiritual practice, consider moments in your day where you can pause to read a short devotional (perhaps The Daily Quaker Message) or for prayer or another practice.

Emily Felt

It’s about nine in the morning, when I got this email, I opened the email, the topic was about relationship with God. And as I read it, I could just already feel it affecting me emotionally, it’s been kind of a rough couple of weeks. And so I could just feel the prompt and the message kind of slowly working into me. And I think that’s because it talks about having a fuller relationship with God. And what this brought up for me was, right now that I’ve been working on that in a really devoted way for the past few years. And as I find that relationship growing, it feels somewhat like a roller coaster.

Various

Thee Quaker Podcast: Story, spirit, sound.

Georgia

I’m Georgia Sparling

Jon

I’m Jon Watts

Georgia

Today’s episode is all about spiritual practices and it was inspired by a project that you conceived of, Jon, and that is actually alive in the world now.

Jon

Yes! I’m so excited about this. So at the beginning of April, after many many months of development,  we launched the Daily Quaker Message.

Georgia

And I know many of our listeners have already signed up and are receiving those emails. 

Jon

Yeah I’m sure you’ll say this later but if you want to pause this episode and go subscribe, it’s free and easy– just go to DailyQuaker.com. We’ve had over 700 people sign up in its first month, so we’re really excited.

Georgia

And later in the episode we’ll hear from Maeve, who is our newsletter and social media manager, but while we’ve got you here, will you talk about why you even wanted to do this project?

Jon

Right. So I’ve been making online Quaker media for well over a decade now, and that’s all mainly been focused on these big ideas–what does modern Quakerism look like, where did it come from, you know, and now these stories of spiritual courage. But as I travel and meet viewers and listeners, I’ve always heard this question from folks who say, “yeah I watched a video or listened to an episode, and I’m excited! But I want to try it out… like what does being a Quaker every day look like?” So the daily Quaker is an answer to that. Whether you’re a seasoned Friend or you’re just wanting to dip a toe into the water, Daily Q Message is designed to accompany you on that journey.

Georgia

How have you benefited from daily spiritual practices?

Jon

Well. I have had seasons in my life where I’ve had a strong daily practice every morning, and seasons where I totally fell off from that practice. I find that it makes a crazy amount of difference. Even 45 minutes in the morning, changes how I experience the entire rest of the day, and how people experience me. I just love that reminder every morning about what’s most important to me, which helps me to put the events of the upcoming day into perspective. How about you? Do you have a daily spiritual practice?

Georgia

There are so many spiritual disciplines. Personally, prayer and Bible reading are ones that I try to practice every day to learn about and from God, to bring my attention and intention to where it needs to be. You know, there are so many spiritual practices. Anything you do repetitively can be a spiritual practice — kindness for sure, gathering for a meal with your community, picking up trash, dressing plain as we talked about on our What Do Quakers Wear episode.

Jon

Nice throwback. Yeah totally–it doesn’t have to be anything huge. I mean, at some point I realized I was waking up dehydrated every day, and it was a bad way to start the day. Now every evening I put out a glass of water for morning Jon, who is often too groggy to figure out what he needs. And as I’m drinking that glass of water every morning, I feel the care that I put into myself the previous evening, and I feel refreshed and cared for. 

So that’s my physical body, and the same can be true of our spirituality – doing some practice of our spiritual tradition every morning helps to remind us that whatever else is going on, this life is a miracle, and every moment is sacred, and that the Spirit is here with us and in everyone we meet.

Now what is the specifically Quaker approach to daily spiritual discipline? Well, that’s something we’ve been working hard to answer with this project, and it’s something we’re going to explore in this episode. 

Georgia

Well that is an excellent segment for our first segment today, where we’re going to talk to Patricia McBee about Quaker spiritual disciplines, which contrary to what some Friends think, do exist. Let’s get started.

In 2003, Patricia published an article in Friends Journal called “Quaker Spiritual Disciplines for Hard Times.” 

Patricia 

A friend of mine commented to me that people didn’t believe Quakers had any spiritual disciplines. And that lots of friends looked elsewhere to centering prayer or to Buddhist meditation or to reading the Sufi mystics.

Georgia

But this friend also said that Quakers do in fact have spiritual practices or disciplines, they just don’t always use that terminology.

Patricia

…And so that got me to think about what some of those Quaker spiritual disciplines are and how we actually do practice them.

Georgia

She already read widely and so she did some research. Five areas of Quaker Spiritual Disciplines emerged.

Patricia

If you ask a group of Quakers, do they know anything about these things, they won’t recognize the terminology and they’ll go, I don’t know, what was she talking about? But in fact, many Quakers practice these things all the time. 

Georgia

The first discipline is one that Quakers of old called Retirement.

Patricia

Which is to step back out of the busyness of whatever’s going on and give yourself an opportunity to tap your inner wisdom. That can be an hour or a half hour of sitting, or it could be a moment in the middle of a difficult conversation where you just take a moment, quiet yourself, and then rejoin the conversation. 

Georgia

The second discipline that Patricia lists is prayer. 

Patricia

There are among Quakers people who don’t think of a God who’s sitting there waiting for me to dial him up and tell him what I want. When I think of prayer, I think of relating to something. If retirement is your inner wisdom, prayer is to relate to a broader wisdom, divine wisdom, the wisdom of the universe. And it can be accessed as simply as seeing a beautiful sunset and just feeling grateful. 

Georgia

A practice called “keeping low” is next.

Patricia

Which is the idea that you don’t assume that your point of view necessarily holds all the available truth. So to be humble about your point of view and listen to the other person to find the kernel of truth in what they’re saying and to use that as a basis of coming to an agreement or sorting out a thorny problem.

Georgia

And then there’s the discipline of living in the cross.

Patricia

Which in a contemporary sense is living in reality. Living with the fact that the world isn’t quite just perfect the way you always wanted it to be. And it has paradoxes and contradictions. 

Georgia

As an example, Patricia’s daughter recently lamented that her own teenager has hit that developmental milestone where he thinks his parents are stupid and worthless.

Patricia 

What we talked about is just riding with that. That it’s part of being a late teenager and finding, separating from your parents and the way your household does things. So instead of trying to fix him and tell him to be a little more polite to his loving parents, it’s to accept the fact that this is an awkward and uncomfortable moment in a relationship that will pass.

Georgia

And now the final discipline, discernment.

Patricia

Now discernment is trying to make a good decision or a good choice to be faithful to your principles of integrity when choosing something to buy, choosing what entertainments to engage in, how to use your money. And it takes all of those other disciplines into account. In order to make a good, clear, faithful, grounded decision, you need to step back out of the chatter of your mind, settle into your inner wisdom, tune into the wisdom of the universe, accepting that there is additional wisdom available to you.

Keeping low, being humble, listening in the situation. Don’t jump to a conclusion or to be so sure that you’re right. Accepting the fact that the situation is sticky and not smooth and nice the way you would like it to be. And then pulling all that together to open your heart to possibility.

And doing this in community.

Georgia

Ok so I’ve gathered that among some Friends the phrase “spiritual discipline” has a very negative connotation. Patricia spoke to that.

Patricia

Among unprogrammed, silent Quakers, there’s an avoidance of ritual and an avoidance of creed. And so there’s an avoidance of having anybody tell you what to do, too. So the idea of spiritual disciplines for some Quakers, at least initially, doesn’t sound like anything they want to be part of. That it’s somehow being imposed on them, like the discipline that your mother or your teacher imposes as opposed to the disciplines that your coach imposes, so I think of disciplines as skill building, as a kind of spiritual calisthenics so that you’re ready to be present in the world.

Georgia

It can be daunting to undertake a new spiritual discipline and for some it can be oppressive, but Patricia sees Quaker disciplines differently.

Patricia

One of the beauties of Quaker practice is that there’s also no limit. And so I would advise somebody to go to what comes at hand and feels easy or inviting. 

Georgia

And she says, try different things. If one thing doesn’t’ work, that doesn’t mean that spiritual disciplines aren’t for you. Patricia also recommends doing this in community. Ask friends what they do. Maybe even meet together.

Patricia

A person can just feel so much lighter in the world if there is some place, some touchstone, some teaching or teacher that helps you not carry all the weight on your own shoulders. To know that you’re part of this this great universe of which we’re an essential part. We’re related to the birds, the bees, the trees, the clouds, the stars, and eight billion other human beings. And we can all work together for a better world.

[music]

Georgia

Up next, we’re going to do a spiritual discipline experiment of our own. That’s after the break.

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Jon

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Ok, back to the show.

Georgia

And we’re back.

So, it’s about time I introduced you to my colleague Maeve Sutherland who is the person behind the Daily Quaker Message. And actually, if you were listening at the beginning of the season she came on briefly to discuss what the message was about and then to introduce Your Moment of Quaker Zen which has been at the end of every episode.

So. Hi, Maeve. Welcome back.

Maeve

Hi Georgia. You know, I was a fan of the podcast before I was your colleague, so It’s an extra thrill for me to be on!

Georgia

Yeah well I”m happy to have you here. Also a big congratulations on launching the Daily Quaker, which when this airs we’ll be a month or so I think.

Maeve

Yes, thanks! We’ve been working hard on it, thinking deeply about how we can make the Daily Quaker a spiritually rich resource for our readers.

Georgia

I’m going to get you to explain more about the Daily Quaker Message, but first I was hoping that you would tell our audience a little about yourself and how you became interested in working on our team.

Maeve

Sure, I went to a Quaker school as a kid, and it got a hold on me. I really identified with the testimonies and respected the way Quakers that I knew let their lives speak. I wanted to be like that! If you look at pictures of me at 12 years old, I’m always wearing solid-colored, unbranded boys’ T-shirts because I was working through what “simplicity” meant to me. 

After college I did a fellowship year with a project that I called “Peaceable Kingdoms.” I lived with pacifist intentional communities around the world, and I made art, and I met some really inspiring people. I lived in Monteverde, Costa Rica, which some listeners will know has a big Quaker community and was founded by Quakers. That was just part of my time, but I also attended meetings in other countries whenever I could find them.

As a young adult I got more serious about Quakerism. I started attending meeting, and gatherings for young adult Friends. I was married under the care of a meeting, and I worked at a Friends school.

Then when I saw that Thee Quaker needed someone to create a Quaker daily devotional email from scratch, I was so excited. Because here was an opportunity to learn more about Quakerism, to deepen my faith, and to get paid for it! I knew from the beginning that the Daily Quaker Message had the potential to make a difference in a lot of people’s lives. I saw it as a chance for me to use my writing and research background to do good in the world.

Georgia

Yeah we were so excited when we got your application, I can tell. So we’re glad you’re part of our team. Yeah. before you started working on this, what were your thoughts on daily or regular spiritual practices? How has working on this project affected that?

Maeve

I’ll be honest, daily spiritual practice was never something I aspired to for myself until I started working on the Daily Quaker Message. I had enough to keep me busy in my life as it was – a toddler, a husband, a job, a home, and a cat who is always up to no good. I thought I’ve carved out Sunday mornings for my spirituality, wasn’t that enough? But I thought it was only fair that I try out the spiritual exercises I was asking our readers to do. 

And then something surprising happened. I found that taking a few minutes every morning to open myself to Spirit made the busyness of the rest of my day feel more manageable. It helped me be a parent, partner, colleague, pet owner in the spirit of worship, to be a better, more grounded version of myself (sometimes!). And when I go to meeting on Sundays, I’m more spiritually prepared. I feel like I can center more easily and I can listen more generously.

Georgia

A lot has gone into planning the Daily Quaker. A lot a lot. What resources have you drawn on?

Maeve

We decided that each month should have a different theme, a different aspect of spirituality for readers to focus on. For example, the theme for our first month was “Spiritual Disciplines” – which are practices like prayer, scripture reading, journaling, that deepen a person’s relationship to Spirit. So every month I’m in a Quaker library, researching the next theme (and thankfully I live near Philadelphia, so there are Quaker libraries around here). I also read blogs and other contemporary sources, and I get input from Friends who have a lot of experience on these topics. Patricia McBee who we’ve already heard from gave me great advice for the Spiritual Discipline month! 

Georgia

So at the top of the show, Jon shared a little of the heart behind the Daily Quaker Message, but practically speaking, what does it look like? 

Maeve

So, when you open up the email, at the top you’ll see “Your Daily Quaker Message.” This is usually a quote, but it can also be a song, a video, a poem, a photograph, or a piece of art and it spans quotes from early Friends all the way to a tweet from last week. And we focus on content from Quaker sources, but we also include relevant messages from other religious traditions, too. 

The next part is the Invitation. This is a spiritual exercise, and it’s related to the day’s message, that you’re invited to try out in your own life. It’s designed to be something quick you can do while you’re having your morning cup of coffee, or else it’s something that easily integrates into your day.

Finally, there’s a query, a new one every week. The query is a way to examine different aspects of the month’s theme, and the messages and invitations relate to the query. Maybe the month’s theme is Community, and the week’s query is about conflict within community. Sunday emails are special because we publish readers’ thoughts on the week’s query. We’ve been getting some really wonderful responses.

Georgia

So I wanted you to explain the format because we did a little experiment. I actually recruited a few people to record audio journals as they responded to and meditated on the Daily Quaker and we had no idea what people would say. In a second you’re going to hear Emily Felt. Emily lives in California, she’s got two kids, and it sounds like she’s got a  busy, full life, which I’m sure many of our listeners can relate to. Emily was someone who reached out to us when she first heard about the Daily Quaker and was super excited to sign up.

So I called her and asked a little about her and found out that she’s been doing a daily spiritual practice for 10 or 12 years, which is pretty incredible, but even so, I think you’ll hear in a minute that it is a struggle for her to find time and space for doing it. 

Maeve

Yeah relatable

Georgia

But I want to let Emily speak for herself, so I’m going to hit play and we’re going to share a selection of her responses to the Daily Quaker and then we’ll be back to talk more.

Emily Felt

Hi, this is Emily Felt. It is March 13. And this is my reflection on the Daily Quaker Message. So this morning, I got up, I had a pretty calm morning, I happened to find myself in the state of Washington. And in a spot where there are lots of mountains around. And I’ve come up here for a bit of rest and retreats. So it’s the perfect day to contemplate my Quaker message. 

Today’s prompt actually really resonated with me. It’s all about different ways of centering and having space with God, even when it’s not necessarily a certain activity or sitting in silence. I’m a mother of two children, one of whom has a very rare disease. And so I’m also a caregiver. And so there just aren’t that many times and spaces in my life where I truly am alone, where I truly can focus inward. And often, it’s even hard for me to attend meeting for worship because the meeting doesn’t have a childcare situation. 

So I have to do my own spiritual practice throughout the course of my day, often at the same time as I’m doing other things. So I need to look for ways to try and be contemplative, even as I’m taking a child to their appointment, even as I’m doing my own work for the day or fielding medical calls. So it was nice to see this prompt and remind myself that there’s so many different ways of connecting with God. And I don’t need to feel like there’s only one way and I’m not doing it right. 

I also appreciate the part about creativity, doing something creative definitely helps open up for me more of a situation of presence. This prompt reminds me that the energy of creativity is inspired by God. So that’s also a way of connecting.

Um, what did I do today? Well, I, I opened the email when I got to my workplace around eight in the morning. 

Today’s message included the idea of trying out a new way of incorporating it into the day. So I chose to read it two times. And to read it out loud. The first part of the message is about listening spirituality, and which types of practices are supportive of inner listening. And so I made this list and I wrote down things like doing spiritual study through reading texts, journaling, being coached by others. Also, I realized that being in nature, I’m a little nature deprived. And being in nature is a way that I find the ability to do spiritual listening and feel God’s presence in my life when I’m in nature. I also wrote down making gratitude lists. So sometimes, especially if I’m just feeling like my day’s really off, and I’m not very connected, not really feeling all of the beautiful things and blessings around me, I’ll just sit down and make a list of everything that I’m grateful for.

Then I made a list of many of the things that I want to do, but don’t do for whatever reason. Sometimes these things I feel guilty about not doing them like I’d really like to attend Meeting for Worship more frequently. It’s a place where I really feel good and feel God’s presence in my life when I’m meeting for worship in silence. I always read and know and think and feel that being in silence is one of the most important things for spiritual practice and yet my current phase of life with children and caregiving and working and living in a very virtual digital information driven society really has squeezed out any way of really having that time in my life. So I’m feeling sad about that.

It’s about nine in the morning, when I got this email, I opened the email, the topic was about relationship with God. And as I read it, I could just already feel it affecting me emotionally, it’s been kind of a rough couple of weeks. And so I could just feel the prompt and the message kind of slowly working into me. And I think that’s because it talks about having a fuller relationship with God. And what this brought up for me was, right now that I’ve been working on that in a really devoted way for the past few years. And as I find that relationship growing, it feels somewhat like a roller coaster. 

This deep relationship with God, right now in my life, it looks like issues coming up where I have more of an opportunity to turn towards God, and trust and have faith. And that involves seeing how I can find peace even during struggle or conflict. And above all, uncertainty, which is very hard to sit with.

So the prompt and reflections have kind of a calming effect. It’s like part of the practice. And there’s also just a little lingering anxiety underneath, which was something that I woke up with in the morning today. With, you know, with a lot of things to do. 

So I’m aware that these prompts come in by email, and they’re mixed in with like, a lot of other things that could be could be stressful. But they do I do, I like them. I like having that, you know, five minutes of a little bit of joy, a little bit of something powerful amidst all of those things. So those are my reflections for this prompt for today. And that’s about it. 

Today’s message was a little bit different. Today’s message was “what do they mean by the light of God.” I came to my co working space this morning so I could escape my family and get some work done. Today, Sunday just to prepare for the week. And I decided as I sat down to my computer that I would start my this little mini workday by engaging with the Daily Quaker Message. So I sat down at my computer, I had a cup of tea with me. I was reading sort of like what it was about and looking at the images. And then I got down to the video, a video of Rex Ambler, who I remember studying in my studies at Earlham School of Religion. 

And I have to say I said, hm, how long is this video? I checked it, it looks like it’s 10 minutes long, which seems kind of long for me, given that I was trying to come and get work done this morning. But I was truly captivated by this video. I was absolutely excited to check it out. I can’t say why. And I ended up watching the entire video in its entirety and I took some notes even like down on a piece of paper of stuff I wanted to remember. 

It helped calm me down a little bit, I feel a little more grounded after watching it. So I went on ahead and read the reflections after the video, which I also really liked really appreciated. And then I decided I would just sit down and record this, this feedback. I’ve loved all of the opportunities over the course of this whole week to engage and reflect. I’ve appreciated them and this one I think was somewhat special just because of the way that this particular video came to me at the right place in the right time.

Georgia

So what do you think?

Maeve

Wow, I’m so grateful to Emily for keeping this journal and being vulnerable with us. I’m glad that some of the messages met her where she was. Some of that is chance, and some of that is the brilliance of the Quaker visionaries whose thoughts we share in the messages. I appreciated hearing about how she’s often fitting in her spiritual practice while she’s doing other things, like driving to appointments, that she doesn’t always have time for silence or time to herself. And that’s important for me to keep in mind as I’m writing the invitations. 

I noticed that Emily said a few times that the prompts were calming to her in moments when she was feeling anxious or stressed. And I really like the idea of the Daily Quaker Message as a little oasis of peace in people’s days, though some of the messages and invitations, they are intended to be spiritually challenging, too. 

Georgia

I think just hearing the phrase “spiritual practice” can elicit some feelings in people. It sounds like a hard thing to do and maybe an easy thing to skip over. 

Maeve

For sure. For sure. The Daily Quaker Message is designed to support a daily spiritual practice, and I hope it’s a tool that I hope people will use in the way that works best for them. If you only want to read the Sunday issue, that’s great! If you want to save them up and read 30 of them on vacation, great! These are all valid ways to engage with The Daily Quaker. Spirituality is deeply personal and not one-size-fits-all. And of course if you’re starting a daily spiritual practice from scratch, you’re going to stumble a few times, just like when you’re trying to form any new habit. That’s what it’s like to grow!

We do keep that in mind how hard it is, and we try to make it as easy on our readers and that’s because the email is short and sweet and still profound.

So we had four people keeping these audio journals as they tried out the Daily Quaker message. Were there themes that popped up?

Georgia

Yeah there were actually. I think everyone mentioned their challenges with carving out space. 

My friend Molly Shea, she’s a non quaker like myself, but I asked her to be part of this project and she had some interesting things to say about trying to find that silence. I thought I’d share that clip. Here’s Molly.

Molly Shea

Even though I appreciate the Quaker search for silence, sometimes that search for silence just amplifies how loud everything is around you. And I kind of wonder about how Quakers or other people who are in spiritual quests, deal with that adjustment. Like when you quiet down and you’re trying to find truth and you’re trying to find meaning and trying to find guidance and you’re trying to get quiet to hear you yet everything else is getting louder and more distracting and more annoying. How do you continue to quiet it down so you can hear? And I don’t know maybe that’s the breakthrough of the day. How can you keep it, keep it going quieter when you’re already halfway deaf and everything and yet everything gets amplified.

Maeve

Yes! Sometimes incorporating more silence into your life can really put the contrast between silence and noise into relief. Something I’ve learned from reading Quaker mystics is that with a certain amount of practice, you can carry a well of silence and stillness inside of you, dipping into it regularly even as you are outwardly dealing with the noise of daily life. I don’t always achieve this myself, but I’m working on it!

Georgia

I think a lot of people — Quaker or not – are feeling a pull to develop healthy spiritual practices.

Maeve

Yeah we had Quakers and non-Quakers to participating in this experiment. It goes to show that the Daily Quaker is for everyone. It’s for longtime Friends. It’s for seekers. It’s for anyone who would like to enrich an existing practice or start one from scratch and spirituality is valuable to everybody, Quakers and non-Quakers alike.

Georgia

And that actually reminds me of another clip from my friend Molly. This one she recorded at 4:30 in the morning while walking her dog and you’ll hear some crickets in the background, but here’s Molly.

Molly 

So this project’s been fun because it’s been requiring me to kind of ask questions of faith that I don’t often give myself think I just sort of live and try to be as morally on the up and up as I can be.

And having some sort of presence that you’re acknowledging that is hopefully on your side kind of creates a combination of being both less lonely and more lonely. Because if there is someone here guiding you, and that you’re on some form of path that’s encouraging. But also it’s like, why is this so hard? Why are you making it hard? And maybe the hardness is like what we’re trying to mitigate, like make it less hard by faith.

Maeve

Molly really said it. That’s the crux of faith, isn’t it? 

Georgia

Yeah

ANd you’ve gotten a lot of great feedback during this whole process, right?

Maeve

Yeah but we still consider the Daily Quaker Message to be in its pilot phase right now, and so we want more feedback from readers about what we should change or improve. We want it to be the most useful tool it can be.There’s a survey on our website, DailyQuaker.com, and at the bottom of every email if you’re a subscriber. 

Georgia

And if you want to start getting these in your inbox, please go over to DailyQuaker.com. You can also find the archive of past Daily Quaker Messages. Go ahead and sign up. And Maeve, thanks for coming on and tell us about this.

Maeve

Thanks, Georgia.

Georgia

Thanks for listening and thank you to our guests today — Patricia McBee, Emily Felt and Molly Shea. Head over to QuakerPodcast.com for discussion questions, links to the topics we discussed today and a transcript. Also, don’t forget to go to DailyQuaker.com to sign up for the Daily Quaker Message! 

This episode was written and recorded by me, Georgia Sparling. Jon Watts wrote and performed the music. Studio D mixed the episode and Your Moment of Quakers Zen was read by Grace Gonglewski. 

Thee Quaker Podcast is a part of Thee Quaker Project, a Quaker media organization whose focus is on lifting up voices of spiritual courage and giving Quakers a platform in 21st Century Media. If you want to partner with us, please consider becoming a monthly supporter. Every contribution expands our capacity to tell Quaker stories in a fresh way, and it makes this project more sustainable. Visit QuakerPodcast.com for more information, and now for Your Moment of Quakers Zen.

Grace Gonglewski

Elise Boulding, 1956: For the real difference between happiness and joy is that one is grounded in this world, the other in eternity. Happiness cannot encompass suffering and evil. Joy can. Happiness depends on the present. Joy leaps into the future and triumphantly creates a new present out of it.

Georgia 

Sign up for daily or weekly Quaker wisdom to accompany you on your spiritual path. Just go to DailyQuaker.com. That’s DailyQuaker.com. 

We’ll be back in two weeks with a new episode.

Recorded, written, and edited by Georgia Sparling. Cohosted by Jon Watts.

Original music and sound design by Jon Watts (Listen to more of Jon’s music here.)

Mixed and mastered by Studio D.

Supported by listeners like you (thank you!!)

Referenced in this episode:

• “Quaker Spiritual Disciplines for Hard Times” by Patricia McBee
• Sign up for the Daily Quaker Message or check out the archive.