Quaker worship is based on silent waiting, where we expect to come into the presence of God.  In this living silence, we listen for the still, small voice that comes from God through the Inward Light.  Worshiping together in silence is a way for a community to be brought together in love and faithfulness.

During silent worship, anyone—man, woman, or child—may feel inspired to give vocal ministry (speak out of the silence).  After the person speaks the message, the silence resumes.  Such messages may be offered several times during a meeting for worship, or the whole period of worship may be silent.  Someone will signal the close of worship by shaking hands with another person, then everyone shakes hands with those seated nearby.

(from Friends General Conference)

FRIENDS AND WORSHIP BY DOUGLAS STEERE

For when I came into the silent assemblies of God's people, I felt a secret power among them which touched my heart; and as I gave way unto it, I found the evil weakening in me and the good raised up.  

Robert Barclay

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I was once asked by a woman about the Quaker approach to life, and I began to tell her what Quakers believed about the nature of people and their relation to God. But she cut me off abruptly with the assurance that she had heard a similar ideal theory expounded by every religious group she had ever met. "What I want to know," she insisted, "is what you Quakers do!" What then do we do in Quaker worship? I can only speak for myself as a member of the Society of Friends, and I shall put it very informally and very personally.

I attend a meeting that usually has sixty to ninety persons present. We meet together in an old meeting house each Sunday morning for an hour. I know many of the worshipping company. I think about this meeting for worship during the week. I think about the people who I shall meet there. I often go out to visit one or two of them during the week. They come to visit my wife and me. We know one another as people, with personal problems, political views, with special "concerns," and in the course of time we come to know the weaknesses and the strengths of one another in the affairs of this world. On Sunday we gather "to know one another in that which is Eternal."

The little meeting house where I worship lies well out in the country. I enter in silence and sit down. There is no altar before me, no chancel, no choir loft, no organ. Only three rows of "facing benches," each of the back two being slightly elevated about the one in front of it. In former days, as in many meetings still, certain older Friends and some "weighty" Friends who have often had insights to share with the group sat in these benches facing the meeting.

Our meetings are made up of a group of people gathered together in silent prayer. The first thing that I do is to close my eyes and then to still my body in order to get it as far out of the way as I can. Then I still my mind and let it open to God in silent prayer, for the meeting, as we understand it, is the meeting place of the worshipper with God. I thank God inwardly for this occasion, for the week's happenings, for what I have learned, for my family, for the work there is to do, for the existence of God. And I often pause to enjoy God. In God's presence I search the week and feel the piercing twinge of remorse that comes at this, and this, and this.

I see again-for I have often been aware of it at the time-the right way. I ask forgiveness for my faithlessness and ask for strength to meet this matter when it arises again. There have been times when I had to re-weave a part of my life under this auspice.

I hold up persons before God in intercession, loving them and seeing them with God, longing for a healing and redeeming power to course through their lives. I hold up certain social situations, certain projects. At such a time I often see things that I may do in company with or that are related to this person or this situation. I hold up the persons in the meeting and their needs, as I know them, to God.

But again and again before I get through this far in prayer my mind has been drawn away by some distraction. Someone has come in late. Two adorable little girls who are sitting on opposite sides of their mother are almost overcome by delight in something which is much too subtle to be comprehended by the adult mind. How noisy the cares are out on the highway today. The wind howls around the corner and rattles the old pre-revolutionary glass in the window sashes. Do these rude interruptions destroy the silent prayer? Well, there was a time when they did, and there are times still when they interfere somewhat, but for the most part I think they help. The latecomers stir me to a resolve to be more punctual myself-a fault I am all too well aware of-and I pass directly on in prayer, glad that they have come today. The little girls remind me of the undiscovered gaiety in every cell of life that these little "bon-vivants" know ever so well, and they remind me too that a meeting for worship must be made to reach these fierce-eyed nine- and ten-year-olds, and I pass on. Sometimes I pray the distraction directly into the prayer-"Swift, hurrying life of which these humming motors are the symbol-pass by at your will-I seek the still water that lies beneath these surface waves," or, "The wind of God is always blowing, but I must hoist my sail"-and proceed with my prayer.

When I have finished these inward prayers, I quietly resign myself to complete listening-letting go in the intimacy of this friendly company and in the intimacy of the Great Friend who is always near. At this point, one could use Robert Barclay's words in describing our silent sitting together, "As our worship consisted not in words so neither in silences as silence, but in a holy dependence silence necessarily follows in the first place until words can be brought forth which are from God's spirit." I do not know what takes place here. Often I am sure it is nothing at all. But there are times when a certain slowing-down takes place, a certain healing seems to go on, a certain tendering, a certain "dependence of the mind upon God." This, however, may come in at any point in my own directed prayers and take precedence over them. Someone asked another how long he ought to pray, and received the answer, "Long enough to forget time." One might say of one's own prayers that they ought to be persisted in only long enough to be superseded by something that takes a person beyond them. It is so much more important that we be prayed than that we pray. And yet the latter has been found to be a frequent preparation for the former.

When this tendering happens in a meeting, one feels knit very closely to one's fellow- worshippers, and a particular sense of our common ground in God and of our life in "holy obedience" often develops. With this we may be brought very low and into a realization of the condition of some group with which we stand out of unity, whether it be the suffering millions in Egypt or India or so many of the neglected, unbefriended older generation, or an underprivileged group or family in our own neighborhood.

Out of this leveling and this "gathering" of the meeting, some vocal ministry often develops. I said at the beginning that I often thought about the meeting during the week. Experiences of my own, things that I read, a verse of poetry, some insight that may come while on a walk or in the classroom or in a personal visit, some passage of Scripture that has come up in our daily family worship, these are always being directed toward the meeting. Since we have no minister, all of us have a responsibility-it is not the abolition of ministry but the abolition of the passive laity that the Society of Friends has ever striven for. One never brings anything to meeting with the certainty of giving it there, but one tries not to come empty. Under the influence of the quiet prayer and this sense of unity in the meeting, what light one brought is often completely set aside, or one feels that this should be reserved for another occasion, or it is made over, or new accents, new illustrations, new simplifications are effected. The mind is often drawn to an entirely fresh seed that unfolds itself there in the consciousness of the worshipper.

When I feel drawn to share something in the quiet meeting for worship, I simply rise and say it as briefly as I know how, seeking ever to "keep close to the root" and to avoid all vain and distracting ornamentation. The other worshippers often do not raise their heads or open their eyes. If they feel in unity with what I have shared and if it speaks to the condition of the meeting, out of which, if it be genuine, it originally sprang, than it becomes a seed for their meditation and something to search themselves in regard to. If it does not, they pay little attention to it and continue in their own worship. If this or something given by one of the other members of the meeting interprets the common need and exercise of the meeting, it is often added to by others, and a common theme is developed that grips the mind of every participating worshipper who is present. I say "participating" worshipper, for it is possible to come to a Friends meeting and just "sit" or perhaps wait and often wait in vain for someone to "say something." Perhaps in no service of worship is so much left to the worshipper as in a Friends meeting. Those who must have music, responsive reading, scripture reading, announcements, and professional speaking to keep them aroused would certainly not be happy there. But the minister of Trinity Church, New York, must have had some persons in mind when he made his suggestion of a moratorium on preaching for a year or two so that those who desire to may worship in peace. Those persons would, I believe, find in the Quaker silent meeting a form of worship in which they could "participate."

After about an hour whoever happens to be the "head" of the meeting on that day shakes hands with the person next to him or her, and the "rise" of the meeting has come. Most of us linger and talk with one another for fifteen of twenty minutes before we leave. One of our members leaves directly, and it is not her Sunday dinner that is responsible. She says that her cup is often so filled at meeting that she is not quite fit to talk about things in general at this point but feels that she must hold it full and get home as soon as possible to see what this means for her to do. "Was thee faithful?" and "Did thee yield?" are not archaic echoes of personal queries Friends used to ask themselves centuries ago in the first flush of their discovery. More than one member has hurried off to do something on which the divine accent has settled in the meeting. Concerns for certain social situations have sprung out of the meeting. Few leave without some refreshment, some sensitizing, and without at least a tiny nosegay of those mountain flowers that Francis de Sales declared to be there on the heights waiting to be plucked by every true worshipper.