Did this seem strange to me? Not at all. As a student at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, I attended what was known as Fifth Day meeting. The whole student body trooped over to the meeting house adjacent to the campus for the regular Thursday morning hour of meditation. I was too immature at the time to appreciate these gatherings, as were many other undergraduates. Since Thursday was the day Time magazine arrived, one could hear the rustle of turning pages in the midst of an otherwise prayerful silence.

After Haverford, it was still a long time before I had any real sense of Quaker spirituality. It began, curiously, following my entrance into the Society of Jesus. I began to read the works of Quakers like John Woolman, who spoke out against slavery in his travels through the colonies. His journal, published in 1773, helped to confirm me in a lasting attraction to spiritual autobiographiesas did the journal of George Fox, an early leader in the Society of Friends imprisoned in England for adhering to his faith.

From their beginnings in 17th-century England, the Quakers have long been committed to the cause of justice. John Woolman’s outspoken objection to slavery is just one instance of that commitment. An English Quaker, Elizabeth Fry, led the way in prison reform in the 1800’s; her compassionate work among women prisoners, in particular, was groundbreaking at a time when they were treated with great cruelty, packed into dungeons with their children.

Concern for peace, too, is a major part of the Quaker tradition. The often-reproduced versions of The Peaceable Kingdom were the work of a Quaker artist, Edward Hicks; their theme is taken from the passage in the 11th chapter of Isaiah that speaks of the leopard and the lamb lying down together. The day I attended the 15th Street meeting, a woman rose at the end of the hour to mention a vigil for peace to be held that afternoon at the great arch on Washington Square.

As a further sign of its commitment to social justice, a building next to the meeting house hosts a year-round shelter for homeless men and women.