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 man and woman, the nuclear relationship where love begins and where life begins? Can one proclaim peace among the nations if unable to contrive to live in harmony with those under one's own roof?

The mood of our age is compounded of hope and despair. We have achieved so much, in terms of technological skill and power; and we have achieved so little, in terms of harmonious human relationships. We have created the power to make this world, compared with what it has been, a paradise for man to enjoy, but we have failed to make it possible for man to enjoy what has been achieved. With the threat of an atomic holocaust hanging like the sword of Damocles over our heads, we know beyond doubt that we must learn the art of living together in love and peace or lose all we have.

In such an hour, what can we do?

We can make a beginning. We can begin at home—with ourselves, and those nearest and dearest to us. We can strive to learn the great art of living in the school that has been provided for us. We can build relationship-in-depth at the foundations of human society: for in the last resort the quality of relationships in any community cannot rise to any higher levels than the quality of relationships in the families that make up the community; and the quality of relationships in any family cannot rise any higher than the quality of relationships in the marriage that has brought it into being.

Yes, there is something we can do to witness to the power of love and peace. We can make a beginning. Marriage enrichment is such a beginning.