From Our Friends School Drew Smith Head of School L ike all Friends Schools, we hold Meeting for Worship once per week. Unlike some of those schools, we are fortunate to hold those worship sessions in an historic meetinghouse thanks to our gracious neighbors from the Mullica Hill Monthly Meeting. Twice each Thursday, our students parade to the meetinghouse, some quietly and alone, and others as parts of larger and louder groups of students who will most likely take a minute or two to settle into silence.
Silence is a relative term.
I have found that the silence of a Fourth Day Meeting is different than that of First Day. In Fourth Day meeting I find that there is more ruffling of coats, more clomps of feet as they slip from the footrest to the floor, more quiet giggles, more sniffling noses, and more crinkling of candy or cough drop wrappers. Quite frankly, the silence isn't always silent. The ambient sound is more like the one I might hear if I were to hold a seashell to my ear to listen for the sound of the ocean. In other ways, it is very much like First Day.