Description: What do Quakers have to offer when there is pain and distress in body, mind and spirit? Can their beliefs and worship help in the processes of healing?

In this book, Diana and John Lampen try to answer these questions, drawing on their experiences of caring for troubled people and working in situations of conflict, as well as their long membership of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The book contains practices which readers can use for themselves.

Verdict: To give you a little understanding, the Quaker way is so to order the inner life that outer pressures can be adequately met and dealt with. This is not the method of the ascetic who conquers his sensual desires by violence toward himself, nor of the hermit who avoids his fellow men, nor of the stoic who makes himself independent and indifferent to the world around him.

It is rather an ordering of the inner life, so that there will be a proper balance of inner and outer, the inner holding first place. In one sense we become independent of outer tumults and conflicts, but in another sense we are not independent because we must seek to reproduce in the world around us the inner peace created within ourselves. If we do not seek to reproduce our inner peace it will become lifeless and static.

Opening on a very informative Introduction, other chapters to be explored include Unease and Anxiety, Physical Pain and Distress, The Wounded Soul, Nature, Art and Time, and then we get The Practices, where the chapters include Being peaceful, Facing a worry, Breathing to help with pain, and then come Writing a letter, Holding someone in the light, A memory of joy and both Reviewing our life and Letting go - into death.

Written by both John and Diana Lampen, their dual perspectives combine to bring forth a very observant, and highly informative prose that comes in the form of fourteen practices created to enable us all to better handle our daily, and at most times, stressful lives.

As they themselves say, wonderful things exist beyond our fears, anxieties, anger and hurts. Their friend, Alla, who is also quoted within the book, wrote that life has a good quality. It goes on no matter what.

Ergo, and through proven wisdom and expertly cultured practical advice, Quaker Quicks - Inner Healing, Inner Peace was created to speak to us all, in a way that embodies our very own mind, body and soul. As if we are walked hand by hand through each section, their personal narratives highlight the world we live in and how to successfully navigate it.

For they have learnt, through their own personal trials and tribulations, to not only veritably revolutionize hurt into healing, but moreover, invite us to embrace peacefulness, open our hearts to the Spirit, as we encounter it in others and in ourselves.

About the Author John Lampen is a Quaker author with experience of peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, South Africa, former Soviet Union, former Yugoslavia and elsewhere. He is the author of Twenty Questions about Jesus, Mending Hurts and The Peace Kit.

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