When I was 13 years old, I was sent away to boarding school by my parents. It wasn’t a bad thing; I was unhappy, probably slightly depressed and getting away felt like a new start. The school I went to was a Quaker school, founded by the Religious Society of Friends in the early 1800’s.

For those who don’t know, Quakers are a strand of Christianity who believe that there is an element of godliness in every person rather than a specific god per se. Their core beliefs are kindness, equality and peace. The reason this is important is that, in line with Quaker tradition, every morning at school, 6 days a week (yes, we had school on a Saturday!) we had a ‘meeting’, a short-ish period of ‘worship’ where congregants sit in silence for around 30 minutes. Anyone can minister, stand and share their thoughts or a reading etc, but essentially you sit there, quietly, with your thoughts in the company of others doing the same.

As a jumped-up teenager, I found this dull. Sitting in silence isn’t exciting. It’s not chatting football with your mates. It’s not chasing girls. It’s not gossiping about who from the year above got off with someone from the year below at the school disco. Sitting in silence is boring.

Fast forward a year or 20 and my life is manic. Juggling a busy and stressful job, two young children, a household, a side-hustle of teaching, various mentoring gigs, and so on. I run at a frantic pace and there is rarely time to sit and have a cup of tea, never mind anything more substantial.

When my Grandmother passed away a few years ago, something happened. I don’t know what. I happened to walk past a Quaker Meeting House which advertised their service times on the door. I decided to go, having not attended a Meeting in many many years. Suddenly, I was greeted by warmth. I was sat there, in silence, accompanied by around 15 others and it was wonderful. Thoughts of my Grandmother came flooding back to me. I cried. And I realised that, with all the hassle of her funeral, work and a load of other stuff I had going on at the time, I hadn’t had time to grieve properly… and it all came out there and then. I went back a few more times, sat in silence, entertained the thoughts in my head, enjoyed the memories that came back to me and found it a wholly fulfilling experience.

I’ll be honest, once again, life kind of got in the way and the normal mania resumed. Recently I had the chance to attend another Quaker Meeting and again, the peace, serenity and just time to stop, think, reflect and remember was such an incredible experience that, for someone who doesn’t believe in God, I think it comes as close to ‘being with God’ as I could ever come.

In modern life we rarely ever have time where we genuinely stop and have nothing else to do. We have quiet periods of time in the day where perhaps we are commuting or waiting for an appointment, but there’s always something else going on. We never really have time to stop, clear our minds and focus on us, let our minds wander and our thoughts drift. I highly recommend it and it’s something we all need to do more often.

They say that ‘Silence is Golden’… it really is. Embrace it.