The Hardest Journey

The Hardest Journey is an essay by the Quaker philosopher and spiritual writer Douglas V. Steere, published in 1969 as a Pendle Hill Pamphlet. Steere taught philosophy at Haverford College for decades and was among the most active Quaker ecumenists of the twentieth century, a participant in postwar relief work and an observer at the Second Vatican Council. He wrote the essay out of the conviction that the deepest obstacle to a life of prayer is not the world's distance from God but the distance within the self, between where we are and where we would honestly meet God.

The title gives the argument its shape. The hardest journey, Steere suggests, is the one that goes inward, and the difficulty is not mainly intellectual or even moral in the narrow sense. It lies in being willing to be seen, to stop managing the face we present to others and to ourselves, and to come into the presence of God without defenses. Drawing on the Quaker tradition of waiting worship and on the wider Christian literature of contemplation, he treats attentiveness as the central discipline: a patient, receptive listening that precedes and shapes speech, action, and decision. He is wary of treating inwardness as a retreat from the world. The inward journey, as he presents it, is the ground from which genuine outward service can grow, and he returns repeatedly to the point that prayer and compassion are not rival callings but one movement seen from two sides.

The essay is characteristic of Steere's method. He writes in a plain, conversational register, gathering illustrations from lived encounters and from the devotional writers he knew well, and he avoids technical vocabulary. The result reads less like a treatise than like the counsel of an experienced companion who has made the journey and does not pretend it is easy.

The essay has remained in circulation because it speaks to a problem that has only sharpened since 1969: the difficulty of sustained attention and of honest silence in a life crowded with obligations and noise. It also offers a clear window into Quaker contemplative practice, presented without sectarian argument, which has made it useful well beyond Friends meetings. Readers in many traditions have found in it a measured, unsentimental account of why the spiritual life is demanding and why it is worth the cost.

Who should read this: Anyone who senses that their prayer has become busy or performative, and who wants a gentle but unflinching guide to the discipline of attentive silence, will find a patient companion here. It suits pastors, spiritual directors, and thoughtful lay readers who value reflection over technique. It is not for readers looking for a step-by-step method, a theological argument to be defended, or a quick program of devotional practice; Steere offers invitation and orientation, not procedure.