We don’t worship silence

Isaac Smith:

There are a lot of Quak­ers for whom the qual­i­ty of their wor­ship is mea­sured by the qual­i­ty of the silence there­in, to the point that “dis­rup­tions” — whether they come from chil­dren, late­com­ers, folks who are not neu­rotyp­i­cal, or folks who don’t com­port them­selves in the man­ner of the white mid­dle class — are regard­ed as annoy­ances. This is not just a mistake. 

We don’t wor­ship silence