Together in Solitude

Together in Solitude is a late work by Douglas V. Steere, the Quaker philosopher and longtime professor at Haverford College, published in 1982 as part of the Crossroad Spiritual Journey series. It gathers a lifetime of reflection from a man who spent decades traveling between traditions: an American Quaker who served as an official observer at the Second Vatican Council, who sustained friendships with Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant contemplatives, and who had translated and introduced the writings of figures such as Kierkegaard and Rufus Jones to wider audiences. The book comes out of that ecumenical practice and out of a conviction Steere had carried for years, that the contemplative life had been wrongly cast as either a private luxury or an escape from the world's needs.

The argument turns on a pairing the title states plainly. Solitude and community, Steere insists, are not rivals to be balanced but two movements of one life, each deepening the other. The person who cannot be alone, he suggests, brings only restlessness and need into fellowship, while the person who withdraws without ever returning has mistaken retreat for prayer. He draws on the Quaker practice of waiting worship, where a gathered group sits in silence together, as a lived instance of the thesis: a shared solitude in which each person attends to God and, through that attending, to one another. Alongside this he gives sustained attention to intercessory prayer, to the discipline of listening, and to the way quiet attention to God sends a person back toward neighbors with more patience and less agenda. His method is conversational rather than systematic. He moves among stories, quotations from writers across traditions, and personal observation, trusting the reader to recognize what he describes from their own experience.

The book has endured because it speaks to a problem that has only intensified: how to cultivate inner stillness amid constant demands, without treating that stillness as self-absorption. It remains a clear, humane introduction to Quaker contemplative practice, and a good example of how a person rooted in one tradition can learn from others without flattening the differences.

Who should read this: Anyone who lives a crowded, outward-facing life, such as pastors, caregivers, and teachers, and who suspects that their service would be healthier if it were fed by deeper silence. It suits readers curious about Quaker worship and about contemplative prayer more broadly. It is not for those wanting a step-by-step method of meditation or a rigorous theological treatise; Steere offers an invitation and a perspective, not a program.