On Easter Sunday, a dozen adults and half the number of children gathered at the Perry City Friends meeting, an hour before the usual time of worship. They came to bring plates of food for a moment of fellowship before worship. The children took part in an Easter egg hunt, while the adults visited them for coffee and snacks. After a while, the group moved to the meeting room for some singing time. The meeting room, a simple room with a stage at one end and a few small tables holding brochures along the wall, has simple benches arranged in a circle around a central space. Someone had set up a small table with a vase filled with freshly picked daffodils in the middle. Music is not part of the worship of this meeting which is not scheduled, so this moment of singing together was special for the Easter holidays. One person played the piano, while people looked through the hymn book looking for their favorite hymns. Anyone was free to suggest a hymn, because no one is responsible for planning a service. As worship time approached, the hymns would be gathered and put away, and an adult would lead the children downstairs for the first day's school. Without announcement, everyone fell into silence. Silence in worship meetings is not passive silence; it is the deep and comfortable silence of people used to meeting together like this. This was not broken when a few more people entered the sanctuary to join the group. The silence continued for about an hour, each worshiper communing with the Holy Spirit in their own way, uninterrupted when the children returned to join in silent worship. A man broke the silence to say a few words about the simplicity of Jesus' teachings, and then silence returned. At the end of the hour, without announcement, a woman turned to middle of paper......ress, 1990. Densmore, Christopher and Thomas Bassett. “Quakers, Slavery, and the Civil War.” In Quaker Crosscurrents: Three Hundred Years of Friends at the New York Annual Meetings, edited by Hugh Barbor and Christopher Densmore, 183-197. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995. Gaustad, Edwin, and Leigh Schmidt. The Religious History of America; the heart of American history from colonial times to the present. New York: Harper One, 2002. Hamm, Thomas D. Quakers in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Hope, Margaret Hope. Mothers of Feminism: The History of Quaker Women in America. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986. Luker, Ralph E. The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885-1912. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Punshon, John. Meeting with silence. Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1987.