Gleanings: A Random Harvest

Gleanings: A Random Harvest is a late collection from Douglas V. Steere, the Quaker philosopher who taught at Haverford College for more than three decades and spent much of his life carrying the contemplative tradition into ecumenical conversation. Published in 1986, when Steere was in his mid-eighties, the book gathers what he had picked up over a long life of reading, travel, and friendship: passages from writers he loved, remembered encounters, and brief reflections set beside them. The title names its method honestly. Gleaning is the work of walking a field after the main harvest and gathering what remains, and Steere offers the book in that spirit rather than as a system.

The pieces do not build a single argument, but a consistent habit of attention runs through them. Steere had spent his career on prayer, on the discipline of listening, and on what he called the quality of a person's presence to others. He wrote about Kierkegaard, Baron von Hügel, Rufus Jones, and Thomas Kelly, and he studied the mystics closely. In these pages he returns to the same convictions: that the inner life is cultivated by patient, ordinary practice, that genuine spirituality turns a person outward toward the suffering of others, and that the saints and sages of every century are better companions than most of our contemporaries. Because the entries are short, the book works by accumulation. A quotation is allowed to stand, a story is told plainly, and Steere trusts the reader to do the interior work.

The book is a good window onto the temperament of twentieth-century Quaker contemplative writing: unhurried, hospitable across denominational lines, and suspicious of religious display. It shows a mind formed by decades of reading in the classics of devotion and by the practical work of reconciliation in which Steere took part, including his service with the American Friends Service Committee and his role as an ecumenical observer. It also models a way of reading, in which spiritual literature is gathered slowly, kept close, and returned to over years.

Who should read this: Readers who want a gentle, browsable companion for daily devotional reading, and those already drawn to Quaker spirituality or to Steere's longer works on prayer and presence, will find it rewarding. It suits a bedside table better than a study desk. It is not for anyone seeking a sustained theological argument, a practical manual on prayer, or a first introduction to the contemplative tradition; Steere's fuller books serve those needs better, and this one is best approached after them.