Steve Smith is a member of Claremont Monthly Meeting (Pacific Yearly Meeting). A lifelong Friend and retired philosophy professor, he began Zen meditation in 1981 and leads a weekly Zen meditation group. He is the editor of Everyday Zen and Nothing Special by Charlotte Joko Beck, and the author of Pendle Hill Pamphlet 370, A Quaker in the Zendo.
Steve was born into Quakerism, but drifted away from it for many years. A personal crisis and a serendipitous encounter with Zen initiated a 30-year meditation practice that led him back to the Religious Society of Friends, his true spiritual home.