, trying to find resources to deal with a
seemingly insurmountable problem. At our first retreat, with the loving
support of the group, we were able as a couple to recover our
self-confidence, sense of worth, and well-being, and reaffirm our
strengths to each other.

"The family problem has now been happily resolved, and we have found
extra strength to participate fully in the expression of our Quaker
concerns in the larger community. Our Meeting did much to sustain us
through the bleakest times, and bring us back into clearness and light;
but what helped us the most to help ourselves was our activities with
the marriage enrichment project. We continue to nurture at home the new
openness and depth we have discovered, and have committed ourselves to
maintain the healthy growth that has been made possible for us."

CONCLUSION

What has been described in this booklet could easily be dismissed as a
new fad that will gain limited attention for a short time and then be
forgotten, but it may instead be the discovery of vast untapped
resources that can raise primary human relationships to new and higher
levels of richness and creativity. If this should be the case the loss
of this great opportunity would be tragic.

The need of men and women today, as in all ages, is to learn to live
together in love and peace--to build up rather than to tear down, to
cooperate rather than to compete, to find meaning in life through open
sharing with others rather than through narrow self-seeking.

Religion has always striven to further these goals, because they
represent the spiritual development of man. But again and again the
simple truths spoken by great religious leaders have been lost in the
complexity of elaborate institutions and the lust for power.

Friends have been distinctive in their stubborn resistance to these
diversions and distortions of the simple truth that we must learn to
love God and man, and that there is no other path to redemption. In each
new age, Quakers have found ways to witness to the way of love and the
way of peace.

May it be that a central calling for Friends today is to respond to the
disintegration of marriages and the alienation of the generations by
finding in their own marriages, and in their family relationships, a new
quality of creativeness based on a deep and honest sharing of life? Can
love be spread abroad in the earth, if it cannot be nurtured in the
close and intimate relationship between