Quaker Writing: 18th-20th century
QUAKER WRITING: 18TH CENTURY
John Woolman, American saint. Born 1720 at Northhampton, New Jersey. A merchandiser, tailor, schoolmaster and lawyer, who cut down his business that he might see more clearly the simplicity of Truth. He held himself responsible for the world’s evil and he sought to clear his whole life of it. He went to England to labor against the traffic in slaves and there died of smallpox in 1772.
Foreword—Here [in this pamphlet] such parts of his writings are collected as bear on the problem, “What is worship? How shall we have faith? This is a record of that constant state of being wherein one can find “the simplicity of Truth.” Hating evil, John Woolman loved evil men and spoke to them without bitterness. Loving the exaltation of Truth, he hid himself in humility. He found that to love God is the mightiest of social weapons. Worship to John Woolman was [more than] First-Day meditation and deportment; it was a matter of everyday speaking and thinking and living; it was a way, a condition, a means to Pure Wisdom. This collection tries in brief to catch the kernel of it. John Woolman is not to be studied as history. He is to be read and read again. From him it is impossible to stop learning.
We have a prospect of one common interest [with God] from which our own is inseparable: to turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of universal love becomes business of our lives. The call goes forth to the church that she gather to the place of pure inward prayer; and her habitation is safe. It is confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any where the heart stands in perfect sincerity.
John Woolman is brought low—I humbly prayed to the Lord for his help, that I might be delivered from vanities which so ensnared me, and [the Lord] helped me as I learned to bear the cross. [But] I still found myself in great dangers, having many weaknesses attending me and strong temptations to wrestle with. We may see ourselves crippled and [desiring] pleasant and easy things, find it impossible to move forward. But things impossible with men are possible with God. God is sometimes pleased, through outward distress, to bring us near the gates of death: [there] all earthly bonds may be loosened and the mind prepared for that deep and sacred instruction which otherwise would not be received. In [keeping] “as near to the purity of Truth as business will admit of—here the mind remains entangled and the shining of the Light of Life into the soul is obstructed.
In an entire subjection of our wills the Lord opens a way for his people, where all their wants are bounded by his wisdom. As new life forms in us, the heart is purified and prepared to understand clearly. Retiring into private places, I have asked my gracious Father to give me a heart resigned to the direction of his wisdom. I must in all things attend to God’s wisdom and be teachable, and so cease from all customs contrary thereto.
He does away with obstacles—My mind hath often been affected with sorrow [from the] spirit which leads to pursuing ways of living attended with unnecessary labor. A query at times hath arisen: Do I in all my proceedings keep to that use of things which is agreeable to Universal Righteousness? My mind, through the power of Truth, was in a good degree weaned from the desire of outward greatness, and I was learning to be content with real conveniences that were not costly. The increase of business became my burden, for I believed Truth required me to live more free from outward cumbers. [And] may we look upon our treasures, and [ask]: Do the seeds of war have any nourishment in these our possessions?
He pushes aside the wisdom of the world—The worldly part in any is the changeable part. But they who are “single to the truth, waiting daily to feel the life and virtue of it in their hearts, these shall rejoice in the midst of adversity.” The sense I had of the state of the churches brought a weight of distress upon me. Through the prevailing of the spirit of this world the minds of many were brought into an inward desolation, and a spirit of fierceness and the love of dominion too generally prevailed. He who professeth to believe in [the Creator and Christ] and yet [loves] honors, profits and friendships of the world more, is in the channel of idolatry. If I was honest to declare that which Truth opened in me I could not please all men, and labored to be content in the way of my duty. Deep-rooted customs, though wrong, are not easily altered, but it is the duty of every man to be firm in that which he certainly knows is right for him.
Doth pride lead to vanity? Doth vanity form imaginary wants, [which in the end spreads desolation in the world]? Doth Christ condescend to bless thee with his presence, to move and influence to action? Dwell in humility and take heed that no views of outward gain get too deep hold of you, that so your eyes being single to the Lord, you may be preserved in the way of safety. [Sincere followers of Christ have a weightiness in] their spirits that secretly works on the minds of others.
John Woolman sees Truth—At a Friend’s house in Burlington, I saw a light in the chamber at a distance of 5 feet, about 9 inches diameter, of a clear easy brightness & near the center most radiant. [A voice in my mind said]: CERTAIN EVIDENCE OF DIVINE TRUTH. True religion consists in an inward life, wherein the heart doth love & reverence God the Creator & learns to exercise true justice & goodness toward all. I found no narrowness respecting sects & opinions, but believe that sincere upright-hearted people . . . who truly love God were accepted of God. My heart was tender & contrite & a universal love to fellow creatures increased in me.
In a time of sickness with the pleurisy I was brought so near the gates of death that I forgot my name. I was mixed [& merged] with a mass of human beings. A melodious [angelic] voice said: “JOHN WOOLMAN IS DEAD.” I was carried to poor people, oppressed [by Christians]; they blasphemed the name of Christ. [I was led to say:] “I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me. . . I now live in the flesh by faith in the Son of God who loved me & gave himself for me.” The language, JOHN WOOLMAN IS DEAD, meant no more than my own will’s death. I felt the depth & misery of my fellow creatures, separated from the divine harmony; and I was crushed down under it. Thou hadst pity on me when no man could help me.
We do not know what to pray for as we ought. But as the Holy Spirit doth open and direct our minds and as we faithfully yield to it, our prayers unite with the will of our heavenly Father, who fails not to grant that which God’s own spirit asketh. The necessity of an inward stillness hath under these exercises appeared clear to my mind. In the desire of outward gain the mind is prevented from a perfect attention to the voice of Christ. While aught remains in us different from a perfect resignation of our wills, it is like a seal to a book wherein is written ... that will of God concerning us. To be active in the visible gathered church without the leadings of the Holy Spirit is not only unprofitable but tends to increase dimness. In entering into that life which is hid with Christ in God, we behold the peaceable government of Christ, where the whole family are governed by the same spirit and, doing to others as we would they should do unto us. A care attends me that a young generation may feel the nature of this worship. [For] in real silent worship the soul feeds on that which is divine.
He is again brought low—Though our way may be difficult and require close attention to keep in it, and though the manner in which we are led may tend to our own abasement, yet if we continue in patience and meekness, heavenly peace is the reward of our labors. I was made watchful and attentive to the deep moving of the spirit of Truth on my heart, and here some duties were opened to me which in times of fullness I believed I should have been in danger of omitting.
He strives not to speak too much—I was afflicted in mind some weeks [for saying too much]. I was thus humbled & disciplined under the cross, which taught me to wait in silence sometimes many weeks together until I felt that rise which prepares the creature to stand like a trumpet, through which the Lord speaks to his flock. Wasting one minute of time among 300 people [in excess talk] does an injury like that of imprisoning one man 5 hours without cause. It was my concern from day to day to say no more nor less than what the spirit of Truth opened in me. To attempt to do the Lord’s work in our own will, & to speak to that which is the burden of the Word in a way easy to the natural part [of myself or pleasing to others], doesn't reach the bottom of the disorder.
In the heat of zeal I once made reply to what an ancient Friend said. I [later] stood up and acquainted Friends that I was uneasy with the manner of my speaking, as believing milder language would have been better. Here luxury and covetousness appeared very afflicting to me, and I felt in that which is immutable that the seeds of great calamity and desolation are sown and growing fast on this continent.
He foresees great troubles—I have seen in the Light of the Lord that the day is approaching when the man that is the most wise in human policies shall be the greatest fool. Thus the inspired prophet saith: “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee . . . [for] thou has forsaken the Lord thy God, & fear of me isn't in thee.” Let us then in awe regard these beginnings of his sore judgments, & with abasement and humiliation turn to him whom we have offended. The gloom grows thicker & darker, till error gets established by general opinion, so that whoever attends to perfect goodness and remains under the melting influence of it, finds a path unknown to many.
John Woolman describes true worship—Wheresoever men are true ministers of Jesus Christ, it is from the operation of his spirit upon their hearts, first purifying them and thus giving them a feeling of the condition of others. Deep answers to deep in the hearts of sincere and upright men, though in their different growths they may not all have attained to the same clearness. Though there are different ways of thinking amongst us, yet if we kept to that spirit and power which crucifies to the world, true Unity may still be preserved amongst us.
I have frequently felt a necessity to stand up when the spring of the ministry was low, and to speak from necessity in that which subjecteth the will of the creature; herein I was united with the suffering seed and found inward sweetness in these mortifying labors. The work of the ministry being a work of Divine Love, I feel that the openings thereof are to be waited for in all our appointments. I have sometimes felt a necessity to stand up; but that spirit which is of the world hath so much prevailed in many, and the pure life of Truth been so pressed down, that I have gone forth [feeling the need to carefully consider] where to step next.
The gift is pure; and while the eye is single in attending thereto, the understanding is preserved clear; self is kept out. The natural man loveth eloquence, and many love to hear eloquent orations. If there is not a careful attention to the gift, men who have once labored in the pure gospel ministry, [seek eloquence] that hearers may speak highly of these labors. In this journey a labor hath attended my mind, that the ministers amongst us may be preserved in the meek feeling life of Truth, where we have no desire but to follow Christ and be with him.
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312. Motion of Love: Woolman as Mystic and Activist (by Sterling Olmsted; 1993)
Foreword—Here [in this pamphlet] such parts of his writings are collected as bear on the problem, “What is worship? How shall we have faith? This is a record of that constant state of being wherein one can find “the simplicity of Truth.” Hating evil, John Woolman loved evil men and spoke to them without bitterness. Loving the exaltation of Truth, he hid himself in humility. He found that to love God is the mightiest of social weapons. Worship to John Woolman was [more than] First-Day meditation and deportment; it was a matter of everyday speaking and thinking and living; it was a way, a condition, a means to Pure Wisdom. This collection tries in brief to catch the kernel of it. John Woolman is not to be studied as history. He is to be read and read again. From him it is impossible to stop learning.
We have a prospect of one common interest [with God] from which our own is inseparable: to turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of universal love becomes business of our lives. The call goes forth to the church that she gather to the place of pure inward prayer; and her habitation is safe. It is confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any where the heart stands in perfect sincerity.
John Woolman is brought low—I humbly prayed to the Lord for his help, that I might be delivered from vanities which so ensnared me, and [the Lord] helped me as I learned to bear the cross. [But] I still found myself in great dangers, having many weaknesses attending me and strong temptations to wrestle with. We may see ourselves crippled and [desiring] pleasant and easy things, find it impossible to move forward. But things impossible with men are possible with God. God is sometimes pleased, through outward distress, to bring us near the gates of death: [there] all earthly bonds may be loosened and the mind prepared for that deep and sacred instruction which otherwise would not be received. In [keeping] “as near to the purity of Truth as business will admit of—here the mind remains entangled and the shining of the Light of Life into the soul is obstructed.
In an entire subjection of our wills the Lord opens a way for his people, where all their wants are bounded by his wisdom. As new life forms in us, the heart is purified and prepared to understand clearly. Retiring into private places, I have asked my gracious Father to give me a heart resigned to the direction of his wisdom. I must in all things attend to God’s wisdom and be teachable, and so cease from all customs contrary thereto.
He does away with obstacles—My mind hath often been affected with sorrow [from the] spirit which leads to pursuing ways of living attended with unnecessary labor. A query at times hath arisen: Do I in all my proceedings keep to that use of things which is agreeable to Universal Righteousness? My mind, through the power of Truth, was in a good degree weaned from the desire of outward greatness, and I was learning to be content with real conveniences that were not costly. The increase of business became my burden, for I believed Truth required me to live more free from outward cumbers. [And] may we look upon our treasures, and [ask]: Do the seeds of war have any nourishment in these our possessions?
He pushes aside the wisdom of the world—The worldly part in any is the changeable part. But they who are “single to the truth, waiting daily to feel the life and virtue of it in their hearts, these shall rejoice in the midst of adversity.” The sense I had of the state of the churches brought a weight of distress upon me. Through the prevailing of the spirit of this world the minds of many were brought into an inward desolation, and a spirit of fierceness and the love of dominion too generally prevailed. He who professeth to believe in [the Creator and Christ] and yet [loves] honors, profits and friendships of the world more, is in the channel of idolatry. If I was honest to declare that which Truth opened in me I could not please all men, and labored to be content in the way of my duty. Deep-rooted customs, though wrong, are not easily altered, but it is the duty of every man to be firm in that which he certainly knows is right for him.
Doth pride lead to vanity? Doth vanity form imaginary wants, [which in the end spreads desolation in the world]? Doth Christ condescend to bless thee with his presence, to move and influence to action? Dwell in humility and take heed that no views of outward gain get too deep hold of you, that so your eyes being single to the Lord, you may be preserved in the way of safety. [Sincere followers of Christ have a weightiness in] their spirits that secretly works on the minds of others.
John Woolman sees Truth—At a Friend’s house in Burlington, I saw a light in the chamber at a distance of 5 feet, about 9 inches diameter, of a clear easy brightness & near the center most radiant. [A voice in my mind said]: CERTAIN EVIDENCE OF DIVINE TRUTH. True religion consists in an inward life, wherein the heart doth love & reverence God the Creator & learns to exercise true justice & goodness toward all. I found no narrowness respecting sects & opinions, but believe that sincere upright-hearted people . . . who truly love God were accepted of God. My heart was tender & contrite & a universal love to fellow creatures increased in me.
In a time of sickness with the pleurisy I was brought so near the gates of death that I forgot my name. I was mixed [& merged] with a mass of human beings. A melodious [angelic] voice said: “JOHN WOOLMAN IS DEAD.” I was carried to poor people, oppressed [by Christians]; they blasphemed the name of Christ. [I was led to say:] “I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me. . . I now live in the flesh by faith in the Son of God who loved me & gave himself for me.” The language, JOHN WOOLMAN IS DEAD, meant no more than my own will’s death. I felt the depth & misery of my fellow creatures, separated from the divine harmony; and I was crushed down under it. Thou hadst pity on me when no man could help me.
We do not know what to pray for as we ought. But as the Holy Spirit doth open and direct our minds and as we faithfully yield to it, our prayers unite with the will of our heavenly Father, who fails not to grant that which God’s own spirit asketh. The necessity of an inward stillness hath under these exercises appeared clear to my mind. In the desire of outward gain the mind is prevented from a perfect attention to the voice of Christ. While aught remains in us different from a perfect resignation of our wills, it is like a seal to a book wherein is written ... that will of God concerning us. To be active in the visible gathered church without the leadings of the Holy Spirit is not only unprofitable but tends to increase dimness. In entering into that life which is hid with Christ in God, we behold the peaceable government of Christ, where the whole family are governed by the same spirit and, doing to others as we would they should do unto us. A care attends me that a young generation may feel the nature of this worship. [For] in real silent worship the soul feeds on that which is divine.
He is again brought low—Though our way may be difficult and require close attention to keep in it, and though the manner in which we are led may tend to our own abasement, yet if we continue in patience and meekness, heavenly peace is the reward of our labors. I was made watchful and attentive to the deep moving of the spirit of Truth on my heart, and here some duties were opened to me which in times of fullness I believed I should have been in danger of omitting.
He strives not to speak too much—I was afflicted in mind some weeks [for saying too much]. I was thus humbled & disciplined under the cross, which taught me to wait in silence sometimes many weeks together until I felt that rise which prepares the creature to stand like a trumpet, through which the Lord speaks to his flock. Wasting one minute of time among 300 people [in excess talk] does an injury like that of imprisoning one man 5 hours without cause. It was my concern from day to day to say no more nor less than what the spirit of Truth opened in me. To attempt to do the Lord’s work in our own will, & to speak to that which is the burden of the Word in a way easy to the natural part [of myself or pleasing to others], doesn't reach the bottom of the disorder.
In the heat of zeal I once made reply to what an ancient Friend said. I [later] stood up and acquainted Friends that I was uneasy with the manner of my speaking, as believing milder language would have been better. Here luxury and covetousness appeared very afflicting to me, and I felt in that which is immutable that the seeds of great calamity and desolation are sown and growing fast on this continent.
He foresees great troubles—I have seen in the Light of the Lord that the day is approaching when the man that is the most wise in human policies shall be the greatest fool. Thus the inspired prophet saith: “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee . . . [for] thou has forsaken the Lord thy God, & fear of me isn't in thee.” Let us then in awe regard these beginnings of his sore judgments, & with abasement and humiliation turn to him whom we have offended. The gloom grows thicker & darker, till error gets established by general opinion, so that whoever attends to perfect goodness and remains under the melting influence of it, finds a path unknown to many.
John Woolman describes true worship—Wheresoever men are true ministers of Jesus Christ, it is from the operation of his spirit upon their hearts, first purifying them and thus giving them a feeling of the condition of others. Deep answers to deep in the hearts of sincere and upright men, though in their different growths they may not all have attained to the same clearness. Though there are different ways of thinking amongst us, yet if we kept to that spirit and power which crucifies to the world, true Unity may still be preserved amongst us.
I have frequently felt a necessity to stand up when the spring of the ministry was low, and to speak from necessity in that which subjecteth the will of the creature; herein I was united with the suffering seed and found inward sweetness in these mortifying labors. The work of the ministry being a work of Divine Love, I feel that the openings thereof are to be waited for in all our appointments. I have sometimes felt a necessity to stand up; but that spirit which is of the world hath so much prevailed in many, and the pure life of Truth been so pressed down, that I have gone forth [feeling the need to carefully consider] where to step next.
The gift is pure; and while the eye is single in attending thereto, the understanding is preserved clear; self is kept out. The natural man loveth eloquence, and many love to hear eloquent orations. If there is not a careful attention to the gift, men who have once labored in the pure gospel ministry, [seek eloquence] that hearers may speak highly of these labors. In this journey a labor hath attended my mind, that the ministers amongst us may be preserved in the meek feeling life of Truth, where we have no desire but to follow Christ and be with him.
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312. Motion of Love: Woolman as Mystic and Activist (by Sterling Olmsted; 1993)
About the Author—Sterling Olmsted was Dean of Faculty at Wilmington College of Ohio, & has been active in the Religious Society of Friends for 30 years, serving on Yearly Meeting (YM) committees (Wilmington & Ohio Valley), as well as Friends Committee on National Legislation, Friends World Committee for Consultation, & Friends Committee for Higher Education (FAHE). He taught "Nonviolence & Social Change." The pamphlet's 1st version was at the FAHE 1989 annual meeting at Swarthmore. Sterling says "I had been carrying on a dialogue with Woolman, which I was finding very useful, & I wanted to bring others into the dialogue."
[Introduction]/ Woolman' Faith Revealed—John Woolman offers us a [long-running], detailed and continuing record of inner motions and outer actions which connects with our experience. John Woolman is both mystic and activist or prophet. It is not unheard of, but neither is it common to the degree which I find in Woolman. In both these roles, he is accessible to us. His mysticism is so much like ours that we may not even think of it as mysticism. Woolman seldom reports experiences which involve hearing voices or seeing visions. He has concerns, openings, and motions of love. If Woolman is mystic and activist, so are many of us. Our inner motions may be less demanding and powerful, our actions less courageous, but in principle they are the same. We need to look at his writing very closely to see his beliefs and how he was inwardly moved and what he did.
John Woolman's Journal provides a starting point for constructing a coherent body of beliefs: "I kept steady to meetings, spent First Day afternoon chiefly in reading the Scriptures ... and was early convinced in my mind that true religion consisted in an inward life ... As the mind was moved on an inward principle to love God as an invisible being ... it was moved to love God in all God's manifestations in the visible world ... Sincere, upright-hearted people in every society who truly loved God were accepted of God ... As I lived under the cross and simply followed openings of truth, my mind from day to day was more enlightened."
Central to Woolman's faith is belief in an inner source; early in the Journal, he calls it a principle. He writes: "The true felicity [joy] of man in this life ... is in being inwardly united to the fountain of universal love & bliss." Woolman sees this inner source as universal, "confined to no forms of religion, nor excluded from any where the heart stands in perfect sincerity," [young or old]. He also sees the inner source as being addressable in others, "so that I trust the pure witness in many minds was reached." This concept is a significant part of Woolman's faith.
Woolman sees contrary motions as arising from individual will, the selfish spirit, the "spirit of oppression." He writes: "[When the principle] which incites to the exercise of goodness ... [is] being frequently & totally rejected, the mind shuts itself up in a contrary disposition ... [&] there remains an obstruction against the clearness of light operating in us." Because of these contrary motions, Woolman is careful to say that his efforts are only partially what he had hoped for.
At times he would say: "As I was preserved in the ministry to keep low with the truth, the same truth in their hearts answered it; it was a time of mutual refreshment from the Lord's presence." Woolman's faith helps us understand his attention to inner motion, his inattention to outward results, his efforts to liberate oppressors from oppressing, & the speaking of a principle within him to the same principle in others. The Bible is very much part of his experience & must have shaped his understanding; guidance seems to come to him from an inner source.
Woolman's Faith in Action—We are looking for specific Journal passages in which Woolman reports his inner motions, the choices he made, & the obedient actions he took. I was able to identify 111 narrative accounts which fit these criteria. I charted the components of these passages under 6 headings, 3 inner & 3 outer. Almost never in these narrative accounts does Woolman make reference to outer results. All 6 components appear in only 8 of the passages; the most common number is 4. Most begin with a reference to the world around, or with inner motions. More than a quarter of the passages have more than 1 entry in a given column. [Editor's note: I have listed the headings below in the fonts in which their respective components will appear; they won't always appear in this order, nor are all of them used in every passage]: Outer World Around Woolman; INNER MOTIONS OF THE SOURCE; INNER TURN TO GOD; Outer Social Check; Outer Action; INNER REFLECTIONS].
[Example]: "Great number of slaves ... & continuance of trade MADE A DEEP IMPRESSION ON ME & MY CRIES WERE PUT UP TO MY FATHER IN SECRET [SO THAT I COULD] DISCHARGE MY DUTIES ... We took Swansea ... in our way to Boston where we had a meeting ... EXERCISE WAS DEEP, & LOVE OF TRUTH PREVAILED, FOR WHICH I THANK THE LORD. [There are 7 more examples in Appendix]. Queries: What decision is Woolman facing? Is he trying to decide where to go next? What is context of his particular journey? In 1760, Woolman moved toward a stronger focus on slavery and the slave trade. This passage recounts one step in the process. It shows the way in which his concerns and actions develop.
Dialogue with the Text—All 111 passages, taken as a whole in relation to each other and to Woolman's faith, makes it possible for us to carry on a dialogue with the text, to ask questions, find some answers, think of new questions, look for more answers. Queries: What does Woolman's language tell us about his state of mind? How does the INNER MOTIONS column content compare with that in INNER REFLECTIONS? How does Woolman's observations of his world affect his INNER MOTIONS? How close is the connection between his INNER MOTIONS and action? What does Woolman do and how does he do it? When and why does he stop short of action? When and for what does Woolman turn to other Friends? When he makes explicit appeals and requests to God, what does he ask for?
[Introduction]/ Woolman' Faith Revealed—John Woolman offers us a [long-running], detailed and continuing record of inner motions and outer actions which connects with our experience. John Woolman is both mystic and activist or prophet. It is not unheard of, but neither is it common to the degree which I find in Woolman. In both these roles, he is accessible to us. His mysticism is so much like ours that we may not even think of it as mysticism. Woolman seldom reports experiences which involve hearing voices or seeing visions. He has concerns, openings, and motions of love. If Woolman is mystic and activist, so are many of us. Our inner motions may be less demanding and powerful, our actions less courageous, but in principle they are the same. We need to look at his writing very closely to see his beliefs and how he was inwardly moved and what he did.
John Woolman's Journal provides a starting point for constructing a coherent body of beliefs: "I kept steady to meetings, spent First Day afternoon chiefly in reading the Scriptures ... and was early convinced in my mind that true religion consisted in an inward life ... As the mind was moved on an inward principle to love God as an invisible being ... it was moved to love God in all God's manifestations in the visible world ... Sincere, upright-hearted people in every society who truly loved God were accepted of God ... As I lived under the cross and simply followed openings of truth, my mind from day to day was more enlightened."
Central to Woolman's faith is belief in an inner source; early in the Journal, he calls it a principle. He writes: "The true felicity [joy] of man in this life ... is in being inwardly united to the fountain of universal love & bliss." Woolman sees this inner source as universal, "confined to no forms of religion, nor excluded from any where the heart stands in perfect sincerity," [young or old]. He also sees the inner source as being addressable in others, "so that I trust the pure witness in many minds was reached." This concept is a significant part of Woolman's faith.
Woolman sees contrary motions as arising from individual will, the selfish spirit, the "spirit of oppression." He writes: "[When the principle] which incites to the exercise of goodness ... [is] being frequently & totally rejected, the mind shuts itself up in a contrary disposition ... [&] there remains an obstruction against the clearness of light operating in us." Because of these contrary motions, Woolman is careful to say that his efforts are only partially what he had hoped for.
At times he would say: "As I was preserved in the ministry to keep low with the truth, the same truth in their hearts answered it; it was a time of mutual refreshment from the Lord's presence." Woolman's faith helps us understand his attention to inner motion, his inattention to outward results, his efforts to liberate oppressors from oppressing, & the speaking of a principle within him to the same principle in others. The Bible is very much part of his experience & must have shaped his understanding; guidance seems to come to him from an inner source.
Woolman's Faith in Action—We are looking for specific Journal passages in which Woolman reports his inner motions, the choices he made, & the obedient actions he took. I was able to identify 111 narrative accounts which fit these criteria. I charted the components of these passages under 6 headings, 3 inner & 3 outer. Almost never in these narrative accounts does Woolman make reference to outer results. All 6 components appear in only 8 of the passages; the most common number is 4. Most begin with a reference to the world around, or with inner motions. More than a quarter of the passages have more than 1 entry in a given column. [Editor's note: I have listed the headings below in the fonts in which their respective components will appear; they won't always appear in this order, nor are all of them used in every passage]: Outer World Around Woolman; INNER MOTIONS OF THE SOURCE; INNER TURN TO GOD; Outer Social Check; Outer Action; INNER REFLECTIONS].
[Example]: "Great number of slaves ... & continuance of trade MADE A DEEP IMPRESSION ON ME & MY CRIES WERE PUT UP TO MY FATHER IN SECRET [SO THAT I COULD] DISCHARGE MY DUTIES ... We took Swansea ... in our way to Boston where we had a meeting ... EXERCISE WAS DEEP, & LOVE OF TRUTH PREVAILED, FOR WHICH I THANK THE LORD. [There are 7 more examples in Appendix]. Queries: What decision is Woolman facing? Is he trying to decide where to go next? What is context of his particular journey? In 1760, Woolman moved toward a stronger focus on slavery and the slave trade. This passage recounts one step in the process. It shows the way in which his concerns and actions develop.
Dialogue with the Text—All 111 passages, taken as a whole in relation to each other and to Woolman's faith, makes it possible for us to carry on a dialogue with the text, to ask questions, find some answers, think of new questions, look for more answers. Queries: What does Woolman's language tell us about his state of mind? How does the INNER MOTIONS column content compare with that in INNER REFLECTIONS? How does Woolman's observations of his world affect his INNER MOTIONS? How close is the connection between his INNER MOTIONS and action? What does Woolman do and how does he do it? When and why does he stop short of action? When and for what does Woolman turn to other Friends? When he makes explicit appeals and requests to God, what does he ask for?
"State of Mind" Words and Phrases
INNER MOTIONS INNER REFLECTIONS
motions of love ...admonition ...heavy ...distress of found relief ... encouragement ... calmness of mind ...
mind ... way opened in pure flowings of divine love heart enlarged ...love of truth prevailed sense of God's
want of strength ... in a watchful and tender state goodness ... pure witness reached ... heart contrite
Some phrases in the 1st column suggest a positive or happy state, but the dominant impression is of suffering, pain, affliction, weakness, sorrow, heaviness. Woolman is uncomfortable, unclear. He undergoes painful exercises. He feels engaged to do something. He feels drawn, concerned. In the 2nd column, after Woolman has acted and is reflecting on how he feels, he writes of finding relief, feeling forgiveness, finding peace, comfort, calmness of mind, inward healing. More than ½ the phrases refer either to the state of other individuals or group minds while he was visiting. Central to Woolman's thinking, is the strong emphasis in the INNER RE-FLECTIONS column on mutuality or unity. When in close conversations with others, he is clearly concerned that what he does will strengthen rather than weaken his ties with them. He said: "My heavenly Father hath preserved me in such a tender state of mind that none, I believe, hath ever been offended at what I have said." It is certainly clear from the INNER REFLECTIONS' expressions that Woolman saw what was happening to himself and others as the work of God, not his own work. God gets the credit in 20 entries from this column.
Many initial references to the world are no more than places, dates, or establishing a context. In many others, what happens, or what is observed, produces inner motions. He clearly carried with him continuing and growing concerns. There was a very complex interaction between outer observations and inner motions. In meeting with Indians, 2 things were already working within him—love and a sense of injustice. He has a chance meeting which gave him an opportunity to observe the Indians closely. He begins to feel inward drawings, which he keeps mostly to himself until they come to ripeness. His path was like one through a miry place with steppingstones "so situated that one step being taken, time is necessary to see where to step next."
There is usually a clear connection, a flow, between inner motion and action. In nearly ½ the passages, the word used to describe the inner motion is followed by naming the action, actual or proposed. Sometimes he does not feel clear; he then often turns to God for further guidance or assurance. He is moved to communicate or persuade—to speak in meeting, to labor with individuals, to leave something in writing. As he talks with people, he seeks, with God's help, to reach the witness within them, without impairing the unity which he prizes so much. He directs his persuasion particularly to those who are in a position to effect change—influential Friends, slave owners, and rich people generally. This emphasis on unity does not imply a reluctance to speak plainly. He nearly always feels he is doing it under a concern or engagement, with God's help.
Most of Woolman's accounts of his actions are quite brief; many confirm that he did what he set out to do. There were times when he stopped short of action, because he felt comfortable in leaving matters to God or to other people. In such instances, he seems to be "looking less to the effects ... than to the pure motion and reality of the concern as it arises from heavenly love." When and for what does Woolman turn to other Friends? When does he appeal to God? What does he ask for from God [and other Friends]? Woolman almost always asks [for some sort of letter authenticating his journey and its purpose]. Most often he is looking for a traveling companion, or for help laboring with slave owners. [He once explained his choice of traveling alone as]: "My concern was that I might attend with singleness of heart to the voice of the True Shepherd."
He turns to God much more often than he turns to people. He asks for help often for stressful actions, difficult issues, or wrestling with contrary motions. A query he put to himself was: "Do I in all my proceedings keep to that use of things which is agreeable to universal righteousness?" Or he will "ask my gracious Fa-ther to give me a heart in all things resigned to the direction of God's wisdom." It appears that generally it is suffering which calls forth an appeal to God. What he seeks is to be an instrument of God. Therefore he turns to God explicitly when he [needs clarity], when he is uncertain of his own strength, or when he fears he is not low enough, humble enough, to hear and obey.
Woolman's Visions—The accounts we have been examining reinforce impression that what he felt & did is within range of our experience. To understand Woolman more fully, we must look at 2 experiences in his Journals which are much less ordinary. He awakens [in the night &] sees a light "at the distance of 5 feet, about 9 inches in diameter, of a clear easy brightness & near the center the most radiant. He also hears words ["of the Holy One"] inwardly which fill his inward man: "Certain evidence of Divine Truth." "They were again repeated exactly in the same manner, whereupon the light disappeared." He is wide awake, in good health [and lucid]; he did not take action as a result of it.
"2nd day, 8th month, 1772 ... In a time of sickness ... I was brought so near to the gates of death that I forgot my name ... I saw a mass of matter of a dull gloomy color ... [which] was human beings in as much misery as possible & yet live ... I was mixed in with them & henceforth might not consider myself as a distinct & separate being ... I believed [I heard] the voice of an angel who spake to other angels [say]: "John Woolman is dead." [I remembered that I was once John Woolman, & ... I greatly wondered what that heavenly voice could mean ... I was carried in spirit to ... where poor oppressed people were digging rich treasures for ... Christians, & heard them blaspheme the name of Christ ... They said: "If Christ directed them to use us in this sort, then Christ is a cruel tyrant ... and I perceived ... that the language John Woolman is dead meant no more than the death of my own will ... After this sickness ... my mind was very often in the company with oppressed slaves as I sat [silent] in meetings ... The divine gift operated by abundance of weeping in feeling the oppression of this people."
[There were differences between the 1st and 2nd experience in worldliness, mood, and the similarities to or differences from Fox's visions]. The 2nd vision can be seen as marking a radical restructuring of Woolman's inner/ outer dynamics; he takes the vision very seriously. In a short time, [he experiences: death of self and separate will; "seeing" suffering humanity; being "incorporated" into it; more unity with the divine source]. He writes long afterward in Concerning the Ministry on complete dependence on the Inward Christ:
Christ, being the Prince of Peace, and we being no more than ministers, I find it necessary for us, not only to feel a concern in our 1st going forth, but to experience the renewing thereof ... Thus I have been more and more instructed as to the necessity of depending, not upon a concern which I felt in America, but upon fresh instructions of Christ, the Prince of Peace, from day to day.
Woolman as Pattern—[Woolman echoes Fox in saying]: "Your example in a plain life might encourage other rich families in this simple way of living." We Quakers, walking as Woolman did within the Christian tradition, may well find ourselves in the company of Hindus and Buddhists. [Woolman's seeing self and will as obstacles, his avoiding emphasis on effects of his labors, his complete dependence on the inner actions of God, his awareness of the suffering of all creatures], is close to Hindu and Buddhist thought.
[Editor's emphasis]: What I see Woolman offering the spiritual seeker is a detailed report of his own search, which shows a coherent and balanced pattern in which inner and outer are connected in life and practice. He shows us how to carry the motions of love we feel into the workings of the world. He does not withdraw from that world, nor does he become so fixated on results that he tramples over others, and he does what he does by addressing the witness in others. This is a pattern which is valuable for our own journey, and which can bring us close to the experience of seekers in other traditions.
Appendix--[Editor's note: I have listed the headings below in the fonts in which their respective components will appear in the analysis of the narrative accounts; they won't always appear in this order, nor are all of them used in every passage]: Outer World Around Woolman; INNER MOTIONS OF THE SOURCE; INNER TURN TO GOD; Outer Social Check; Outer Action; INNER REFLECTIONS. Following are 7 examples:
1. At Camp Creek Meeting and a meeting at a Friend's house I FELT SORROW OF HEART AND MY TEARS WERE POURED OUT BEFORE THE LORD, BY WHICH WAY OPENED to clear my mind amongst Friends in those places ... From there I went to Fork Creek and to Cedar Creek. HERE I FOUND A TENDER SEED, AND I WAS PRESERVED IN THE MINISTRY TO KEEP LOW WITH THE TRUTH ... [mine & theirs, and there was] MUTUAL REFRESHMENT FROM THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD.
2. HAVING FELT MY MIND DRAWN TOWARD A VISIT TO A FEW MEETING IN PA I WAS VERY DESIROUS TO BE RIGHTLY INSTRUCTED AS TO THE TIME OF SETTING OFF ... TO SEEK FOR HEAVENLY INSTRUCTION AND COME HOME OR GO ON ... THROUGH THE SPRINGING UP OF PURE LOVE I FELT ENCOURAGEMENT and so crossed the river ...I was at 2 Quarterly and 3 Monthly Meetings and felt my way open to labor with Friends who kept Negroes. AND AS I WAS FAVORED TO KEEP TO THE ROOT ... I FOUND PEACE THEREIN.
3. We continued in our tent & HERE I WAS LED TO THINK OF THE NATURE OF THE EXERCISE WHICH ATTENDED ME. LOVE WAS THE FIRST MOTION, & THEN A CONCERN ... TO SPEND SOME TIME WITH THE INDIANS ... & AS MINE EYE WAS TO THE GREAT FATHER OF MERCIES, DESIRING TO KNOW WHAT GOD'S WILL WAS CONCERNING ME, I WAS MADE QUIET & CONTENT.
4. THROUGH THE HUMBLING DISPENSATION OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE MY MIND HATH BEEN BROUGHT INTO A FURTHER FEELING of the difficulties of Friends and their servants southwestward AND BEING OFTEN ENGAGED IN SPIRIT ... I BELIEVED IT MY DUTY TO WALK THROUGH THE HUMBLING DISPENSATION OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE and having obtained a certificate I took leave of my family ... rode to the ferry ...and from thence walked.
5. And now sitting down with Friends, MY MIND WAS TURNED TOWARD THE LORD TO WAIT FOR GOD'S HOLY LEADING WHO WAS PLEASED TO SOFTEN MY HEART ... AND DID STRENGTHEN ME ... THE NEXT DAY THE LORD GAVE US A HEART-TENDERING SESSION ... THROUGH THE HUMBLING POWER OF TRUTH.
6. On the 5th, 5th month, 1768 I left home UNDER THE HUMBLING HAND OF THE LORD having obtained a certificate in order to visit some meetings in Maryland AND TO PROCEED WITHOUT A HORSE LOOKED CLEAREST TO ME. I was at Quarterly Meeting at Philadelphia and Concord ... Thence back to Chester River and taking a few meetings in my way ... home. IT WAS A JOURNEY OF MUCH INWARD WAITING ... IN MY RETURN I FELT RELIEF OF MIND ...HAVING LABORED IN MUCH PLAINNESS ... SO THAT I TRUST THE PURE WITNESS IN MANY MINDS WAS REACHED.
7. I, being much amongst the seamen, HAVE, FROM A MOTION OF LOVE taken opportunities with one alone, and labored to turn their minds toward a fear of the Lord ... and we had a meeting in the cabin WHERE MY HEART WAS CONTRITE UNDER A FEELING OF DIVINE LOVE.
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About this Pamphlet—Under the weight of a religious concern for social justice, this committee offers this reprint of John Woolman's A Plea for the Poor (1793) for its relevance to the effects of poverty today. He relates poverty to wasteful consumption, brings the rich & powerful to account, and calls for simplicity as a style of life. (See also PHP #356 by David Morse, Testimony: John Woolman on Today's Global Economy). [Editor's Note: I found Woolman's choice of phrases, words, and word order to be an obstacle in getting to his meaning. I have paraphrased extensively, sacrificing some of the tone of his writing to better present its meaning].
Introduction [excerpted from Phillips P. Moulton, ed., The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman; Friends United Press, 2000]—Born in 1720, Woolman grew up in Burlington County, New Jersey, near Philadelphia; his family was neither wealthy nor poor. He had formal education for 10 years, and continued a lifelong process of self-education. As he set up shop for himself, his sales grew and he began to prosper.
His success was disturbing to Woolman; his involvement in business threatened the life-balance he had set for himself. He cut back on trade & later gave up retailing to do tailoring, which he could control more readily. He also did: surveying; drawing up documents; teaching; orchard tending. When a Quaker meeting agreed that a member's witness was edifying, it could acknowledge one's special gift by making a record in the official minutes. At 23, Woolman went on his 1st of about 30 missionary journeys over the next & last 29 years of his life. Woolman is one of the most notable of hundreds of itinerant Quaker ministers. Woolman's economic views have inspired many to live simply & without luxury; his criticisms have given support to radical reformers.
A large excerpt from A Plea for the Poor was printed in 1897; its 2nd printing was 10,000 copies. In the 20th century, Quaker Social Order Committees dealt with economic issues & frequently quoted Woolman's contention that the "seeds of war" take root in an unjust social order. Reginald Reynolds wrote: "Woolman didn't try to stir up feeling against those who had power or possession, but endeavored to arouse the feeling of those very people & to quicken their consciences ... He took upon himself the burden of society's guilt." This work will be relevant for those in any age who strive for social justice.
A Plea for the Poor or A Word of Remembrance and Caution to the Rich: Chapter One—Large possessions in the hands of selfish men means too few people are employed in things useful. Some of these few, as well as land tenants, have to labor too hard, while others want jobs to earn their bread. The oxen & horses of these hard-workers are often worked too hard. So much of their money goes to rent or interest that they haven't enough to hire the help they need. The money which the wealthy receive from the poor, who work harder than they should have to in raising it is paid to other poor for unnecessary things.
Men with much, who are charitable, pay attention to their poor tenants. They regulate their demands agreeable to universal love, rather than what laws & customs allow them to take. The good they do isn't seen by them as doing the poor a favor. Their goodness tends to open the channel to moderate labor in useful affairs & to discourage business which isn't based on true wisdom. To work in virtuous things is what best suits an honest man. Using money without pride and vanity remains open to those who sympathize with the hard-working poor.
Chapters Two-Four—Earth's Creator is owner of it. We are accountable to our creation's [system]. Having enough seems so natural that no one may justly deprive us of it. By our ancestors' agreements, & by our actions & processes, some claim more than others. It is fair when possessions are faithfully improved for the good of all. If one seeks self-promotion & works animals too hard, & if with one's profit one employs people to have luxuries, one acts contrary to the gracious design of the Earth's True Owner; such conduct can't be justified. Following pure wisdom's directions is required of all. Laws & customs are unrighteous. If following them requires more toil & time spent on business than pure love calls for, we violate the tenants' rights as fellow-tenants of God's world. If the right use of things was sought instead of unneeded things & satisfying pride, people might work more moderately to provide useful things, and might have leisure time for affairs of civil society.
Too much or too little business is tiresome; a right portion is healthful to body & mind. Wealthy men hold great estates in a place of trust. For them to live in an affluent fashion, & at the same time use things as our Redeemer, his example, & the early church's example prescribes, requires close attention to divine love. This includes relief of those needing charity. As our Creator influences our minds, we become interested in lessening the distress of the afflicted & increasing happiness. We seek to turn our treasures into channels of universal love. Wealthy men seeking this find a field for humble meditation and an obligation to be kind and tender-hearted. Poor released from too much labor and expense can hire others to assist, care for their animals and have a healthy social life. When these poor reflect on the good conduct of their wealthy man, that he does not oppress them, they sense a brotherhood. The goodness of his conduct tends to spread benevolence in the world.
Our blessed Redeemer directs us to [Golden Rule]. Those living on the labor of others, who have never done hard labor are in danger of not knowing what they would want if they did labor & pay rents. Such need to take every opportunity of being acquainted with hardships & fatigues of those who labor & to ask: Am I influenced with true charity in fixing all my demands? Do I have any desire to support myself in the same expensive customs as my neighbors? Before I increase labor, rents, or interest, couldn't I name & dispense with costly articles of mine that aren't useful, & lessen expenses & burden? If a wealthy man in good conscience finds such articles & expenses, & if in putting himself in his laborers' place finds that he would want them discontinued he would find "Do thou even so to them" compelling. Divine love imposeth no rigorous or unreasonable commands. It points to spirit of brotherhood & way to happiness, & away from all that is selfish.
Chapter Five—One who been a stranger amongst unkind people or under their government who were hard-hearted knows how it feels to be a stranger. A person who hath never felt the weight of misapplied power comes to this knowledge only by an inward tenderness. When this laborer considers that this great toil & fatigue is laid on him to support something which has nothing to do with wisdom, there will be an uneasiness in his mind. When he sees this man gratifying a wrong desire, conforming to wrong customs, and increasing labors to an extreme, he will think himself unkindly used. We might after careful consideration sense an innocent person's condition. Those who must labor excessively understand the passage about "knowing the heart of a stranger."
Many who know not the stranger's heart indulge themselves in ways which cause more labor than Infinite Goodness intends for man. Were they to change places with those who labor, they would have a way to know the stranger's heart. Restored to their former estate, I believe many of them would embrace a way of life less expensive and lighten the burdens of those who labor out of their sight. If we consider those same laborers, and that much less than we demand would supply us with all things really needful, what heart will not relent.
Chapter Six—If there were more men usefully employed and fewer eating bread as a reward for useless labor, food and raiment would be more in proportion. In following sound wisdom, small portion of daily labor might suffice to keep a proper stream gently flowing through society. This labor can be divided and done in the most efficient parts of the day. What 4 men can do in 8 hours, 5 men could do in 6 2/5 hours. People would not have that plea for using strong liquors which they now have.
Many thousand hogheads of this liquor can't be drank without having a strong effect on manners, and rendering their minds less apt to receive the pure Truth. When people drink not only for refreshment from past labors, but to support them to go on without proper rest, it prevents the calm thought that allows one to apply their hearts to true wisdom. Spirits scattered by too much labor in the heat & revived by strong drink are unfit for divine meditation. I am moved to express a heart-concern about a more quiet, calm, & happy way for us to walk in; I found it through divine goodness. Every degree of luxury, every money demand inconsistent with divine order, hath a connection with unnecessary labor. A man quite drunk has a mind in which God can't be acceptably worshiped. Over a long period, use of drink without being very drunk affects the mind the same way to a lesser degree; long continuance hurts both mind and body.
Many who show some regard for piety still collect wealth which increaseth labor beyond the bounds fixed by divine wisdom. I hope that they will take heed, lest by exacting too much unrighteous labor, they promote in conduct what they speak against in words. To treasure up wealth for another generation through immoderate labor is doing evil at present. To labor too hard or cause others to do so, conforming to customs contradicted by Christ the Redeemer and divine order, is to manure the soil for propagating an evil seed.
Serious consideration of these things will deeply affect some. They will be directed in the right use of things, and will bear patiently the reproaches of not following custom and thus standing out. The more a person appears to be virtuous and heavenly-minded while still conforming a little , the more powerfully does his conformity operate in in favor of evil-doers. We must beware lest by our example we lead others to wrong.
Chapter Seven—If by our wealth as an inheritance we make our children great without knowing that we couldn't bestow it better, & thus give them power to deal with others more virtuous than they, it would be no better than if we had given the inheritance to others to oppress ours. If a man had much good land, & discovers that ½ his estate belongs to orphans, this might cause him to consider whether he had interests different from the orphans'. If we believed that after our death our estates would go equally between our children & poor children, it would likely give us uneasiness. That uneasiness would seem inconsistent with divine love, & there would be need to attend to the influence of God's Spirit, to be redeemed from all selfishness. In our future state of being there would be no way of taking delight in anything contrary to universal love. Grasping after wealth & power for our favorites adds greatly to the poor's burdens & increaseth the evil of covetousness in this age. How vain & weak a thing it is to give wealth & power to such who are unlikely to apply it to general good when we are gone.
As Christians, all we possess are the gifts of God. If we, as stewards of those gifts bestow them lavishly on some to the injury of others, & damage the Giver, we are unworthy stewards. The true source of happiness in one's life & the life to come, is being inwardly united to the fountain of universal love. We may make a selfish settlement of our inheritance. When it is too late to make an alteration, a sincere repentance for all things done with a will outside of universal love must precede attaining to the purified state which our Redeemer prayed to his Father we might have. In our purified state, our determinations in favor of those we have loved selfishly won't give us pleasure. If after selfish settlements our wills continue to stand in opposition to the fountain of universal light and love, there will be an impassable gulf between the soul and true happiness.
Chapter Eight—To maintain awareness of divine love, & remained disentangled from the power of darkness is the great business of one's life. Collecting riches, coveting all manner of luxuries belongs not to the children of the Light. God is now as attentive to the necessities of God's people as ever. We endeavor not to exempt some from those cares which necessarily relate to laboring in this life, or give them power to oppress others. We desire that they all be the Lord's children and live in that humility and order becoming Christ's family.
A person desiring wealth for its power and distinction may be called a rich man, whose mind is moved by a picture of life different from the Father's drawings. He cannot be united with the heavenly society until he is delivered from this contrary picture. Rich men must cease from that spirit which craves riches, and be reduced into another disposition before he inherits the kingdom. The rich youth was told to sell all he had. It may not be the duty on every one to commit at once their substance to other hands. However much they are entrusted with goods, they may not conform to sumptuous or luxurious living. If possessing great treasures had been enough to make a fine show in the world, Christ our Lord wouldn't have lived in so much plainness. The fair amount we possess is a gift from God to us. By the Son all things were created, so he is truly the richest of all. His depth of knowledge surpasses ours. The title of Lord he owned; no one is more deserving of it. In riches, wisdom, and greatness there was none on earth equal to him, yet he lived in perfect plainness and simplicity.
Chapter Nine—When seen clearly, the selfish spirit within is the greatest of all tyrants. Compared to it, the worst of Roman emperors are short-lived, limited tyrants of small consequence. If we consider various oppressions & wars, we remember that selfishness hath been the cause of them all. We realize that the powerful, selfish spirits not only afflict others, but are afflicted themselves & have no real quietness in this life or the next. Consider the havoc that is made in this age, & how people rush to collect treasures & pervert the true use of things. Consider the great number of people employed in preparing the materials of war, & armies set apart for protecting territories. Consider farmers and other laborers, who must exert too much labor to support themselves, armies, and owners of the soil. Some fetch men from distant parts of the world to be slaves in various industries.
Amidst all this confusion, sorrow & distress, can we remember the Prince of Peace, that we are his humble, plain disciples, & remember to have no fellowship with those inventions which men in the fallen wisdom have sought out? Can we behold the prevalance of idolatry in the selfishness of this age, & be jealous over ourselves lest we unwarily join in it? Even the seemingly harmless act of casting incense was refused at fatal cost by martyrs, because it signified approval of idolatry. We can't do anything which is in the nature of offering incense to an idol. A small degree of compliance to that which is wrong is very dangerous.
Chapter Ten—Those who refuse to join in wars, & who are redeemed from loving the world & possess nothing in a selfish spirit are preserved by God in resignedness, even in chaotic times. As they possess only basic things that pertain to family, anxious thoughts of wealth or dominion hath little or nothing to work with. They learn contentment in being disposed of according to God's will; God causeth all things to work for their good.
The spirit that loves riches works, gathers wealth & indulges in self-pleasing. That spirit seeks help from a power which seeks separation from divine love & defends its treasures. Desire to attain wealth is the beginning. Wealth is attended with power to bargain & proceeds contrary to righteousness. Oppression clothes itself with the name of justice & becomes a seed of discord. Seeds of war grow & becomes strong; much fruits are ripened. Do we look upon our treasures, the furniture of our houses & our garments ... & try whether seeds of war have nourishment in our possession? Holding treasures in a self-pleasing spirit is a strong plant; the fruit ripens fast. Leave everything which our Lord Jesus [wouldn't] own. Think not his pattern too plain or coarse for you. Let us walk as he walked.
Chapter Eleven—The estate we hold is under God as God's gift. It is our duty to act consistent with our benefactor's designs. This gift is conditional; God is true proprietor. Where divine love takes place in the hearts of any people, & they steadily act on a universal righteousness principle, there the Law's true intent is fulfilled, though their outward ways are different. Where men are possessed by spirit which says their wealth was gained by their own strength, here they deviate from divine law. They don't account their possession's as strictly God's, nor are weak & poor entitled to as much of the increase thereof. Instead they indulge desires in conforming to worldly pomp. As they accumulate, as poor are thereby straitened, they stand distinguished from universal love. As far as they stand from love, so far prophetic woe will accompany their proceedings. As the Creator was true proprietor of it so he remains. His right to give it is as good as at the first. Any who misapply increase of their possessions contrary to universal love, or are oppressive in disposal of land, are chargeable with usurpation.
Chapter Twelve—If we compare the 1st inhabitants of North America, the natives would bear a small proportion to the others. As over-crowded Britains came over, the natives generally treated them kindly, where settlement was made peaceably. Those ancient possessors of the country are yet owners & inhabiters of the land adjoining to us. Their way of life, requiring much room, hath been transmitted to them from their predecessors through custom of a great many ages. Given this, we may see the need of cultivating lands already given by them & to accommodate the greatest number it is capable of, before we plead the equity of assigning to us more of their lands, & living in less room than they are accustomed to. If we applied the labor & expense of importing & exporting in order to gain luxuries to husbandry & useful trades, a much greater number of people might live well on the lands already granted us by the lands' ancient possessors. I believe God will make some of us useful amongst them, in publishing the gospel & in promoting the advantages of replenishing the earth & subduing it.
Some people will be careful for poor people who earn their bread in preparing and trading those things which [Friends] have no use for. More trade in some serviceable articles may be to mutual advantage and carried on with more regularity and satisfaction than the trade now is. One person in society continuing to live contrary to true wisdom commonly draws others into connection with him. Thus these customs small in their beginning, as they increase they promote business and traffic, and many depend on them for a living.
In joining in wrong customs, there is a departing from the purity of God's government & some alienation from God. To press forward toward perfection is our duty, & if some business by which some people earn bread lessens, the Lord who wishes these things to end will take care of those whose business fails, if they seek him. If our interests engage us to promote plain living in order to enrich our country, by living plain in a selfish spirit we do not advance in true religion. Divine love may so establish our goings that when we labor & meditate on God's universal love, this serenity may never be clouded with remembering a self-seeking custom we are engaged in.
Chapter Thirteen—While in favor of customs different from perfect purity, we are in danger of not attending with singleness to Light which enlightens us in universal righteousness. Men with useful employments besides farming may have no more land than is necessary for a house & to answer family needs; that is consistent with brotherhood. Since gifts in husbandry vary, for some to possess & occupy more land than others may likewise be consistent. Where any demand rents as make their hired laborers work more at business then God intended, this puts brotherhood out of order & increases work not belonging in Christ's family. Some possessing a larger profit may be consistent with true brotherhood, yet the poorest people are entitled to some of these profits.
Our gracious creator is as absolutely the owner of it now after many ages, as God was when God 1st formed it out of nothing. Those who are guided by the Lord give directions concerning their possessions agreeable thereto. Any claim to land which stands on universal righteousness is a good right; continuance of that right depends on properly applying the profits thereof. The word right is continued as a remembrancer of the original intent of dividing the land by boundaries, dividing it rightly, according to righteousness. If we trace an unrighteous claim & find gifts or grants proven by sufficient seals and witnesses, that doesn't give the claimant a right.
Suppose 20 men, professed followers of Christ, discovered an island & with their wives took possession. Suppose they, based on true love, disposed of their property at life's end with regard to the convenience of the whole & with preserving love & harmony. Their successors followed their pious examples & strove to keep op-pression out. Suppose 1 of the 20 favored a son over the others, & gives most of his lands to him. This son demands a portion of the fruits of the earth as may supply him, his family & some others. These others work at providing ornamentation & luxury items suiting that distinction lately arisen between him & other inhabitants. His influence & opposition being great, the other plain, honest men find great difficulty in doing the right thing.
So, for many ages there is one great landlord & the rest generally poor oppressed people. Some presume past great ancestors, find labor disagreeable, & strive to make a living out of increasing the labor of others. Others guard against oppression & with one consent train up their children in plainness & useful labor. If we trace a later generation's claim back to the 1st who favored a son, & see strong legal instruments supporting his claim we couldn't admit he had a right to so great a portion of land. The Lord gave being to numerous people who inhabited this 20th part, who needed fruits from it for sustenance. The one with legal claim couldn't have a right to the whole to satisfy his irregular desires. The ones without legal claim have a right to part of the fruits. Oppression [disguised as "legal rights"] remains oppression. Even a little cherished oppression grows stronger & more extensive. Seeking redemption from oppression is the great business of the whole Christian family.
On Schools: Chapter Fourteen—It remains to be our duty to wait patiently for Christ's help in teaching his family a right regard for all their fellow creatures, and not seek to forward them in learning by the assistance of that spirit Christ was redeeming us from when he gave his life. While in the spirit of pride and love of praise, they may sometimes learn faster, in learning any art or science they accustom themselves to disobey the pure Spirit and grow strong in that wisdom which is foolishness with God. They must painfully unlearn a part of what they have learned before entering the divine family. It is good for us in education to attend diligently to the principle of universal Light, and patiently wait for their improvement in the channel of true wisdom.
If we were free of loving wealth & superfluities, & jobs in producing vanities were finished, leaving only labor in making useful things, there would be much to spare for our children's education. A plain humble man might work as a teacher, & oversee few enough children that he might properly & seasonably administer to each one, & gently lead them as the Gospel Spirit opened the way. We must be sure the teacher of our children can acquaint them with grace's inward work, & can avoid leaving the wrong impressions on their tender, inexperienced minds. Small class size is necessary to avoid the strengthening of a wrong spirit, which can infect a whole class.
If a tutor has a number of students such that the divine strength in him is superior to their instability, he may bring them forward in Christian life. Where a teacher has charge of too many (whether through greed or outside administration) for that degree of strength which the Lord has given one, one suffers & the children suffer too. Educating children in the way of true piety & virtue is a duty all those having children share. Our Heavenly Father requires nothing of us but what he gives strength to perform, as we humbly seek God. If we attend to that wisdom from above, our gracious Father will open a way for us to give them God's requirements for education.
I think sorrowfully of those who, desiring wealth, & living in a way different from the true Christian spirit, exert themselves in things relating to this life. I think too, of the suffering condition of youth through want of pious examples & tutors whose minds are seasoned with the spirit of truth. How much of our household economy goes towards unnecessary things? Amidst those expenses which the pure Truth doesn't require, do we employ teachers not influenced by Truth's spirit? Can we humbly wait on the Lord for wisdom to direct us in their education? When times are so cloudly that we can't go forward in the way of clearness & purity, it behooves us in the depth of humility to wait on the Lord to know God's mind concerning us & our children.
On Masters & Servants: Chapter Fifteen—It is observable in several places that the apostle directs the servants' mind to the true Light, that they might "do God's will from the heart" & "do it heartily, as to the Lord, & not unto men." While the pure in heart encourage upright performance of every reasonable duty, they guard against servants complying with unrighteous commands. Commands of men which couldn't be performed without disobeying God aren't sufficient authority for a servant of Christ to proceed; we ought to obey God not men.
My present concern is that masters might not demand of servants any action where they must necessarily act contrary to universal righteousness. A pious father provides for his children, that by his labors they may be rightly educated and have things they need for their 1st settling in the world. Where a man's righteous intentions are perverted and his labors serve unworthy purposes, he can't labor "heartily as to the Lord." Where unjust labors are required to gratify covetous, luxurious, or ambitious designs, conscientious men are under great difficulty. If they refuse, there is punishment; if they do that which is wrong, they wound their souls.
Chapter Sixteen—To keep Negroes as servants till they are 30 years of age and hold the last 9 years' profit of their labor as our own, supposing in retirement they will be an expense to our estates, is a process in need of improvement. Why?
1. Mature Men who have walked orderly and made no contract to serve are entitled to freedom. To make them serve as slaves 9 years longer may be to keep them slaves for life. They may die and not be an expense.
2. 9 years of Negro labor is worth about 50 pounds. If the money were put out for the Negro's use, or used for his future necessities or as he specifies in his will, this would appear to us a brotherly way to proceed.
3. Where men have labored without wages 9 years longer than is common, and when set free are told that those who detained them are in their debt, they may suspect difficulty in recovering the debt.
4. If I see a man want relief and know he hath money in my hands which must be paid for reasonable use, there is no reason to withhold it when I see he needs it. If in selfishness I consider it part of my estate and spend it on an un-Christian expense, I have gone from one temptation and fallen into another.
5. If the money the man has earned is spent and more is needed, and the public refuseth to bear any expense, this appears to be a case where the righteous [in continuing to pay] suffer for the testimony of a good conscience, and hope for relief.
6. The Negroes have suffered as a people; we as a civil society are the ones by whom they have suffered. I am sorrowful because of the great injuries committed against these Gentiles, & against their children, who have been born into captivity which is unrighteous captivity. While some had the intent of treating them kindly, they bought them as though those violent men had a right to sell them, & thus building on an unrighteous foundation and encouraging those men in this horrible trade; [the crimes went unpunished]. We need to feel for that pure influence which is able to guide us in the way of healing and restoration.
7. I feel I must mention the debt which is due to many Negroes of the present age. Whatever injuries are done to others outside this society by members of this society, that the society does not strive to execute justice, those injuries are chargeable to the society. The victims, and the children of deceased victims are entitled to recompense. I feel sorrow as I write on this subject, because of the great injuries committed against these Gentiles and against their children born in captivity. [If only] active members of society had united in firm opposition to those 1st violent proceedings. Had those in a selfish spirit met with firm opposition, and profit appeared so doubtful that no further attempts were made, how much better had it been for these American colonies.
Few appeared to be alarmed at it or zealously labor to have justice done to the sufferers & their posterity. These poor Africans were people of a strange language & not easy to converse with. Their situation as slaves too generally destroyed that brotherly freedom which frequently exists between us & strangers. Long oppression hath not made oppression consistent with brotherly love, nor length of time made recompense. Under sorrow and a fervent concern for members in society, as well as the interest of my fellow creatures, I express these things.
If a man spent 40 years as a slave, & if the sufferings of this man be computed at 50 pounds—though no sum may properly be mentioned as an equal reward for total deprivation of liberty—50 pounds at 3% compounded every 10 years would be upward of 140 pounds in 40 years. When our minds are thoroughly divested of all prejudice in relation to the difference of color, & the love of Christ prevails, a heavy account lies against us as a civil society for oppressions against a people who didn't injure us. I conclude with the words of a righteous judge in Israel (I Samuel 12: 3) [who promised to restore anything taken by theft, fraud or oppression, & any bribe].
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19TH CENTURY
About the [Editor]—Margaret Hope Bacon is Assistant Secretary for Information for the American Friends Service Committee, & has also been in journalism, public relations, & social work. Assignments have taken her to Africa, Europe, & the Orient; volunteer work has claimed much of her time. Her enthusiasm for Lucretia Mott grew out of her studies on Quaker women. She sees in this stalwart character the great pioneer & spiritual leader of women’s struggle for equality, and [a powerful advocate of social action] being taken by Friends.
FOREWORD—Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) is remembered today as an abolitionist & a pioneer of the women’s rights movement. She was also a 19th century Quaker minister, blessed with deep spiritual insight, & a keen analytic mind. She preached a social gospel, urging Friends into positive action for peace & [against society’s ills]. True to Quaker tradition, Lucretia Mott spoke only as the spirit moved. She never wrote a speech or sermon; she disliked formal writing of any sort. Friends have taken down her sermons, & newspaper reporters covered her speeches. Quaker men are more often quoted than women, though women had no less access to the Inward Teacher. Their culture made them less apt to set their thoughts down, or offer them to posterity. Hopefully the words of Lucretia Mott will be followed by others, so that we will begin to recover all aspects of our spiritual heritage. Margaret Hope Bacon
LUCRETIA MOTT: Memoranda on Herself—The exercise of women’s talents in the mercantile business line, as well as the general care which devolved upon them in their husbands' absence, tended to develop their intellectual powers & strengthen them mentally & physically. In 1804 my father’s family removed to Boston, & in that city's public & private schools. I mingled with all classes without distinction. At 15, I was chosen as an assistant teacher in the place of a leaving teacher. I was later offered and accepted a teaching position.
At 18 I married James Mott of New York. We resorted to the retail dry goods business, & I taught 1 more year. My sympathy was enlisted for the poor slave, influenced by Elias Hicks & other ministers. The unequal condition of women in society also impressed my mind. I engaged in our Society's ministry, & was encouraged by those in authority until the 1827 Separation, [when I chose] the light's sufficiency within, resting on truth as authority, rather than ‘authority as truth.’ I had more interest in moral movements than theological discussion.
Temperance reform, working-classes' oppression, & slavery engaged my attention. I have felt bound to plead the slaves’ cause, in season & out of season, & to abstain [from buying & selling] slave-grown products. Lundy, Clarkson, Wilberforce, Heyrick, & Garrison's efforts prepared the way for a Philadelphia convention in 1833, calling for immediate emancipation without expatriation. I traveled thousands of miles in this country, holding meetings in some slave states, & have shared abundantly in the odium attached to modern abolitionists.
[Women, including me], were denied membership in the World’s Anti-slavery Convention. I have engaged heart and hand on the Woman question, as my labor, travels and public discourses evince. The misrepresentation, ridicule, and abuse heaped upon this, as well as other reforms, do not, in the least, deter me from duty. This imperfect sketch may give some idea of the mode of life of one who has found it ‘good to be always zealously affected in a good thing.’ I have had 6 children. I was much confined to them during their infancy and childhood. I omitted much unnecessary stitching and ornamental work [in order to read more serious literature].
Chronology—1/3/1793: Born Lucretia Coffin on Nantucket Island 4/10/1811: Married to James Mott in Philadelphia. 1/1821: Became recorded minister in the Society of Friends. 12/9/1833: 1st meeting of Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. 1/15/1843: [Anti-Slavery] Sermon delivered to U.S Congressmen in 1st Unitarian Church in Washington. 7/19/1848: Seneca Falls Convention. Declaration of Rights of Women. 9/1852: Women’s Rights Convention, Syracuse, New York. She also spoke at the conventions of 1853, 1854, 1856, & 1866. 5/10/1866: Organization of the American Equal Rights Association. Lucretia Mott president. 7/4/1876: Addresses National Women’s Suffrage Association. Lucretia president. 11/11/1880 Lucretia dies at Roadside, her home in Philadelphia.
LUCRETIA MOTT SPEAKING: …ON SLAVERY—Let us put our souls in their souls’ stead … Let us look at the souls who are led into hopeless captivity, deprived of every right & sundered from every happy association.
There are many who won’t allow anything to be said in the slave’s behalf. I have long believed that an obedience to Christian duty required more mouths should be opened on this subject. The manufacturers of north, consumers of southern productions are implicated. What would this nation be … if she were free of this … injustice?
I am glad … it is being made known that [ the country's commercial & manufacturing relations] are carried on by oppression's gain. [Abolitionists] feel they are called upon not to be partakers of other men’s sins, & to not participate in this. Let them be faithful to their trust … to the poor slave, [&] to all who are in any way …injured.
We are all guilty of the blood of our brother … Everyone has a responsibility in it. We are called to bear our testimony against sin. Our garments are all stained with the blood of the slave. Let us then be clean handed.
… ON WOMEN—Our foolish women set their faces so against any change—hugging their chains so hard I despair of advance in our day … All subjects of reform are kindred in nature; giving to each the proper consideration, will tend to strengthen & nerve the mind for all. We won’t love the slave the less, in loving all humanity more.
What does woman want more of than she enjoys? Of what rights is she deprived? As a right, she wants to be acknowledged as a moral responsible human being … Let Women then go on, not asking as a favor, but claiming as a right, the removal of all hindrances to her elevation in the scale of being.
We are satisfied with [woman’s] nature. But how has neglect & mismanagement increased the difference. If cultivated & refined woman would [use] her powers … she might engage in pursuits which she now shrinks from.
The oppressor does not see himself in that light until the oppressed cry for deliverance.
The idea of this movement's leaders of is not that women should be obliged to accept the privileges which we demand be open to her. [We assert the right, not the obligation, of women to do everything a man does].
On Nantucket island, our mothers kept small groceries & sold provisions, that they might make something in the absence of their husband. … They are not triflers, they have intelligent subjects of conversation.
We ought to put woman on a par with man, not invest her with power, or claim her superiority over her brother; she is just as likely to become a tyrant as man is. [With man & woman working together], it is hoped that there would be less war, injustice, & intolerance in the world. … The assertion of woman that she has all the rights she wants only proves how far the restrictions & disabilities to which she has been subjected have rendered her insensible to the blessings of true liberty.
… ON NATIVE AMERICANS/ … ON JUSTICE—The native Indians of our forests have their worship. I have thought that there was, perhaps as much reasonableness and rational worship in it as passing around the little bread and wine or some of our own peculiarities … Our friend has spoken of the barbarities which have been practiced towards the Indians, and of their present condition of degradation. We have not considered the wronging of the Indians as our own. We have aided in driving them further and further west.
The object of our institution is to aid those whose circumstances prevent their earning a subsistence in any other way: the aged, the sick and the infirm, and widows with small children.
It is the heart of the people we are to preach unto, to proclaim liberty and truth, justice and right … There is a need of preachers against the excesses of the age … We must look beyond the beggar of the day … to consider how much we have done toward causing it … It only lays the foundation for future trouble & fighting when, for reputation and to please men, reformers seek to build again the things they are called on to destroy.
It is a disgrace on our profession of Christianity, these distinctions that exist in Europe between the rich & poor; how little have we really advanced … The requirements of truth have ever been similar in all ages. Why is it that your religious worship has regard to Sabbath day devotion rather than an every day truth? Why is it that you aren't uplifting the poor & the lowly? Are you making the gospel “glad tidings of great joy” to all people? Let this be a country whose tendency is to equalize society. I say the only means I know of appointed by God to remove the terrible oppression in any age of the world, is the faithfulness of God’s children, those who have gone forth proclaiming greater liberty, greater truths to mankind, greater duty for that entire community. …
ON PEACE AND NON-VIOLENCE—[For those who would defend corporal punishment I would say]. It is the master that isn't prepared for emancipation, & the parent that isn't prepared to give up punishment.
As enquiry [into the best mode of settling international disputes] proceeds, men will discover forgiveness and will feel the power of the spirit of love. They will then become more consistent with the Christianity they profess … We hold it the duty of women, to look with an attentive eye upon the great events which are transpiring around them; that they may direct their moral influence against the iniquitous spirit of war. Great is the responsibility of women in relation to this subject [to not teach the child] to mimic war’s murderous game.
It is John Brown the moral hero, John Brown the noble confessor & patient martyr we honor. I have no idea because I am a Non-Resister of submitting tamely to injustice inflicted on either on me or on the slave … I regard the abolition of slavery as being much more the result of this moral warfare which was waged against the great crime of our nation than coming from the battlefield … I lament more than I can express that a military education & training is being introduced into our public schools; it has no business there. While we aim to maintain the highest peace principles, at the same time we can labor with those who don't go as far as we do. England’s working men resolved they won’t submit quietly to being used in war … I hope that as lovers of peace … we shall show our love for the whole people … by a free & open recognition of the rights of all. I want that we may all show faith by our works, our honesty, justice, mercy, & love … beginning with little children ... While I am in favor of peace, I am also in favor of war, the firmness and combativeness that marked the anti-slavery warfare. …
ON THE INWARD TEACHER—Jesus’ simple and benign religion’s primitive beauty is obscured by creeds and dogmas, gloomy appendages of man—its investigation of honest dilemmas checked by the cry of heresy and infidelity … We urge obedience to a manifest duty as a means of acceptance with the Searcher of hearts … My faith is firm in the blessed eternal doctrine preached by Jesus … that great truth that God is the teacher of God’s people … This noble gift of God is legitimate, a part of man’s being.
I believe man is created innately good, & his instincts are good ... We may all admit, that if we receive the Divine Spirit, in its operation in our soul, there will be no mistake, it will be a reprover of evil, & if we obey it, it will be regenerating in nature. [There are] evidences in all parts of the world … testimony to the divine spirit's teachings, independent of man’s teachings ... The same divine principles of goodness & love are found wherever man is found, in whatever age, nation, or country to some extent … We must look for truth & love from the eternal source of light. Let truth ever be our guide … We are to take truth for our authority, not authority for truth. …
ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY/ … ON PRAYER—Where God is, there must be true liberty … I love the Bible because it contains so many truths, but I was never educated to love the Bible's errors … Religion & freedom must go together. If truth were obeyed, then we should be free indeed … If the pure principles of love, justice, mercy, & right have their place in us & are brought forth by faithfulness, by obedience, by practice, difficulties we have to surmount will be easily conquered … [Let the power that conquers all] be called the Indian's Great Spirit, the Quaker “inward light,” the Catholics' “Blessed Mary, mother of Jesus”, or Brahma, the Hindu’s God—they will all be one and there will come to be such faith and such liberty as shall redeem the world.
When I have arisen in the people's assemblies & with solemn sense of dependence upon a higher power, I have asked in humility for aid to stand by, strengthen, support me, I have been abundantly blessed. When the church's mothers & fathers forsake us, we may rest assured that the Lord on high will take us up, he will give us ability to do & suffer whatever may be necessary for the truth’s sake. Prayer's great efficacy is to pray [only] that strength may be given us to do what is required, to stand fast, to have a conscience void of offense toward God & man. We may not have sins to repent … if we are every day desirous to be found doing our duty, & invoking the Divine Power to aid us in this great desire of our hearts. [Prayer as] the aspiration for divine aid, for strength to do right, the inward desire after truth & holiness is natural to man … Praying for rain in dry weather, or the removal of evils … brought on us by our own violations of health & nature’s laws …is absurd & superstitious.
122. The Civil War Diary of Cyrus Pringle (Foreword by Henry Cadbury; 1962)
Foreword—Cyrus Pringle is known to specialists as a pioneer plant breeder and botanical collector. He is also one of the Quakers who battled with their consciences during the Civil War. Cyrus Guernsey Pringle (1838-1911) was born in East Charlotte Vermont. [He had to leave the University of Vermont] to care for his widowed mother and younger brother; in literature, language, and science he was largely self-taught. He spent nearly 40 years in the Southwest and in Mexico collecting specimens.
[This diary] deals with an inward and timeless problem of a sensitive conscience. The diary begins with the events of the day following his call to service, and tells all that happened to him after his refusal to serve, [including] what happened in his mind and heart. It was printed after his death, and 50 years after the events in the Atlantic Monthly (February 1913). Pringle’s two companions were Lindley M. Macomber and Peter Dakin. Particular interest attaches to Lincoln’s behavior in the case. He felt keenly the problem of reconciling war with conscience and understood the Quaker position.
Outwardly Quaker conscripts met both kindness and cruelty. Inwardly they had the natural conflict between the evil of making any surrender to military might & the desire to escape punishment & be obedient to reason-able expectations. The issue is too complicated to be solved by a personal religious faith; it is still in the main a moral problem. Human moral progress often depends on the spontaneous response of one or two sensitive per-sons to quite unexpected situations, when that response became convincing and contagious. Henry J. Cadbury.
[7th month-8th month, 1863]—At Burlington, Vermont, on the 13th of the 7th month, 1863, I was drafted. With ardent zeal for our Faith and the cause of our peaceable principles, I felt to say, “Here am I, Father, for thy service. As thou will.” I felt many times since that I am nothing without the companionship of the Spirit. Wm Lindley Dean and I appeared before the Provost Marshal [on the 27th] with statements of our cases [and on the 29th for a hearing]. On the 31st I came before the Board. Respectfully those men listened to the exposition of our principles. The Provost Marshal released me for 20 days.
We were urged by our acquaintances to pay our commutation money [or hire a substitute, because it] was our duty. We confess a higher duty and deny any obligation to support so unlawful a system, as we hold war to be, even in opposition to evil and in defense of liberty. [We could not hire a substitute and thereby bring others to evil]. Here I must record Rolla Gleason’s (the marshal) kindness; he treated us with respect and kindness. [In the train cars on the way to Brattleboro, VT we were] filled with apprehensions of long, hopeless trials, of abuse and contempt, of patient endurance (or an attempt at this), unto an end seen only by the eye of a strong faith. At Brattleboro our citizen’s dress was taken from us and we were shut up in a rough board building.
Brattleboro—26th day, 8th month. Aimless is military life, except betimes its aim is deadly. Idle life blends with violent death-struggles till the man is unmade a man; & henceforth there is little manhood about him. He is made a soldier, a man-destroying machine. 3 times a day we are marched out to the mess houses for our rations. As we go out & return, on right & left & in front & rear go bayonets. Hard beds are healthy but I query[:] Cannot the result be defeated by the degree? Our mattresses are boards. I praise the discipline I have received from uncarpeted floors through warm summer nights of my boyhood. Lindley M. Macomber (LMM) & I addressed the following letter to Governor Holbrook & hired a corporal to forward it to him [Excerpts from letter]:
“We love our country and acknowledge with gratitude to our Heavenly Father the many blessing we been favored with under the government, and can feel no sympathy with any who seek its overthrow. But . . . we cannot violate our religious convictions either by complying with military requisitions, furnishing a substitute, or paying commutation money. [We suffer] insult and contempt, and penalties of insubordination, though liberty of conscience is granted us by the Vermont and US Constitution. . . Truly thy Friend, Cyrus G. Pringle.”
Camp Vermont: Long Island, Boston. 28th day—[On the train to Long Island, a cavalry officer threaten to have anyone escaping or putting their head out of the window shot. [We marched through Boston to the harbor]; at the head of this company, like convicts, walked, with heavy hearts and downcast eyes, two Quakers. [On the island] troops gather daily from all the New England States except Connecticut and Rhode Island. All is war here. We are surrounded by the pomp and circumstance of war, and enveloped in the cloud thereof.
The men with us give us their sympathy. Although we are relieved from duty and drill, we have heard no complaints. LMM and I appeared before the Captain; he listened to us respectfully and promised to refer us to General Devens. Though fair be the earth, it has come to be tainted and marred by him who was meant to be its crowning glory. Old Father of Mercies, forgive the hard heartlessness, blindness and scarlet sin of my brothers.
In Guard House. 31st day—LMM and I separately came to the judgment that we must not conform to the requirement to clean about camp and bring water. [First argument and then threats were offered in response to our refusal]. The subjects of all misdemeanors are confined [in the island’s hotel]. In most, as in the camps, there are traces yet of manhood and of the Divine Spark, but some are abandoned, dissolute. [The blacks are jeered by substitutes from the New York draft riots]. I must say the blacks are superior to the whites in all their behavior. Here we are in prison in our own land for no crimes. More [than that], we are here for obeying the commands of the Son of God and the influences of his Holy Spirit.
9th month: 1st day, 9th month—Oh, the horrors of the past night—I never before experienced such sensations and fears; never did I feel so clearly that I had nothing but the hand of our Father to shield me from evil. The others [left us alone, but there was bedlam and a chained-up, delirious drunk in the next room]. We learned the next day that the drunk was from a religious family, but was drawn into bad company.
3rd day—A Massachusetts major complimented our choice of religious books and tried to persuade us to serve. He told us of another Quaker Edward W. Holway of Sandwich; we received permission to write to him, but the Major never gave him the letter. Oh the trials from these officers [coming to persuade us to serve]! One after another comes in to relieve himself upon us. [When persuasion does not work] they usually fly into a passion and end by bullying us. How can we reason with such men? They have stopped their ears to the voice of the Spirit, and hardened their hearts to his influences. A little service was required of LMM, but he would not comply, [even in the face of loaded guns]. This is a trial of strength of patience.
6th & 7th day—Major J. B. Gould, 13th Mass. Came in with the determination of persuading us to consent to be transferred to the hospital here. In more than an hour, he lost no part of his self-control or good humor. [We were taken to the hospital, where the major] demonstrated his kindness by his resolution that we should occupy and enjoy the pleasanter quarters of the hospital tent whether we served there or not. He passed by LMM and Peter Dakin [PD] outside the tent and declared they were the strangest prisoners of war he ever saw.
13th & 14th day—Henry Dickinson (HD) wrote, stating that the President, though sympathizing with those in our situation, felt bound by the Conscription Act. [The choice was between hospital service and overseeing blacks on confiscated rebel estates]. What would become of our testimony and determination to preserve ourselves clear of the guilt of this war? We received the unwelcome advice from HD to go into hospital service, [which left us feeling unsupported,] desolate and dreary in our position.
16th & 17th day—[More local Friends visit and write advising us] that we might enter the hospital without compromising our principles; [we find ourselves in discomfort and disagreement with that advice]. Their regard for our personal welfare and safety too much absorbs the zeal they should possess for the maintenance of the principle of peaceableness of our Master’s kingdom. [Our home meeting friends sent] kind and cheering words of Truth. Major Gould bade us Farewell and expressed a hope that we should not have so hard a time as we feared. [He probably also saw to it that we had the liberty of the vessel named Forest City.]
Forest City, 22nd & 23rd day—We cross the mouth of Chesapeake Bay to Fortress Monroe & then steamed up the St. James past Norfolk to leave the New Hampshire detachment at Portsmouth, back to Fortress Monroe and up the Potomac to Alexandria. We hear that we are to go right to the active field. Fierce indeed are our trials.
Camp near Culpeper. 25th day—Though we felt free to keep with those among whom we had been placed, we could not consent to carry a gun even though we did not intend to use it. We succeeded in giving the young officers a slight idea of what we were and why we did not pay our commutation. A council was soon held to decide what to do with us. The guns were thrust over our heads and hung upon our shoulders.
[As we marched, seeing for the first time, a country made dreary by the war-blight, one realizes as he can no other way something of the ruin that lies in a war’s trail. When one contrasts the face of this country with New England, he sees stamped on it the great irrefutable arguments against slavery and war, these twin relics of barbarism so awful in their consequences that they change the face of the country. We marched 4 miles, the guns interfering with our walking. We declined to be present at inspection of arms, and were ordered by the colonel to be tied. We were threatened great severities & even death. We seem perfectly at the mercy of the military power.
26th day—Yesterday my mind was much agitated; doubts & fears & forebodings seized me. This morning I enjoy peace; I feel as though I could face anything. Oh, praise be to the Lord for the peace, love, & resignation that has filled my soul today! There is a holy life that is above fear; it is a close communion with Christ.
Regimental Hospital, 4th Vermont—The colonel came to us apologizing for the roughness with which he had treated us at first. He urged us to go into the hospital stating that this course was advised by Friends about New York. He gave us until the next morning to consider the question and report our decision. If we persisted [we might] be exposed to the charge of over-zeal and fanaticism even among our own brethren. At last we consented to a trial at least till we could make inquiries and ask the counsel of our friends. The voice that seemed to say, “Follow me” kept pleading with me, convincing of sin, till I knew of a truth my feet had strayed from the path. We met with the Colonel in the morning, requesting him to proceed with court-martial. I have seen LMM in the thoroughness and patience of his trial to perform service in hospital, and seen him fail and declare to us, “I cannot stay here.” I have received new proof from the experimental knowledge of an honest man, that no Friend desiring to keep himself clear of complicity with this system of war and to bear a perfect testimony against it, can lawfully perform service in the hospitals of the Army in lieu of bearing arms.
[10th month] 3rd & 6th day at Washington—I was asked to clean the gun I brought, & declining, was tied some 2 hours upon the ground. We were ordered into our companies, that, separated, & with the forces of the officers of a company bearing on us, we might the more likely be subdued; no personal injury was allowed. [I met with the Colonel & begged of him release from the attempts by violence to compel obedience & service. He replied that he had shown us all the favor he should; he turned us over to the military power & was going to let that takes its course, [i.e.] henceforth we were to be at the inferior officers’ mercy. He denied that our consent was temporary & conditional and declared that a man who wouldn’t fight for his country did not deserve to live.
[When asked by the lieutenant if I would clean my gun, and after replying] “I cannot do it,” I was tied to stakes on the ground for 2 hours. I wept from sorrow that such things should be in our own country. It seemed as if the gospel of Christ had never been preached upon earth, and the beautiful example of his life had been utterly lost. I wondered if it could be that they could force me to obedience by torture, and examined myself closely to see if they had advanced as yet one step toward accomplishing their purposes. I found myself, through divine strength, as firm in my resolution to maintain my allegiance to my Master.
[The next morning I reported to the lieutenant who said, “You are ordered to report to Washington. I do not know what it is for.” Short and uncertain at first were the flights of Hope. As the slave many times before us, leaving his yoke behind him, we turned our backs upon the camp of the 4th Vermont.
At the War Office we were soon admitted to an audience with the Adjutant General [& then] Surgeon General Hammond. Here we met Isaac Newton [IN], Commissioner of Agriculture. We understand it is through the influence of IN that Friends have been able to approach the Government heads in our behalf & to prevail with them to so great an extent. The Secretary of War & the President sympathized with Friends. The one door of relief that appeared was to parole us [to our homes], subject to their call, though this they neither wished nor pro-posed to do. [In the meantime] we were sent to Medical Purveyor Abbot, who assigned us to Douglas Hospital.
8th-13th day—We all went out to see the city on a pass. IN came to see us, stating that he had called upon the President that afternoon to request our release & to let us go home to our friends. A woman sought help to prevent her 15 year-old son being shot for desertion. IN approached the President, who halted the execution.
On 11th day we attended meeting, held in Asa Arnold’s house; there were but 4 persons besides ourselves. On 13th day LMM faced the officer of the day where he served. The officer demanded obedience and a salute; LMM gave him neither, and was put in the guardhouse. The surgeon in charge had him released. We are all getting uneasy about remaining here. If our releases do not come soon, we feel we must intercede with the authorities, even if the alternative be imprisonment.
20th-26th day—I shall not say but we submit too much in not declining at once, but it has seemed most prudent at least to make suit with Government rather than provoke the hostility of their subalterns. Is patience justified under the circumstances? [I got sick and] after a week I find that I am reduced very low in strength and flesh by the sickness and pain I am experiencing.
11th month. 5th day—I spend most of my time on my bed, much of it alone. And very precious to me is the nearness I am favored to attain unto the Master. The fruits of this are sweet, and a recompense for affliction. Edward W. Holway saw IN on my behalf; IN met with the President, who read a letter from a New York Friend, and instructed Secretary Stanton that “all those young men be sent home at once.” The order was given and we were released. Upon my arrival in New York on 7th day, I was seized with delirium from which I recovered after many weeks, through the mercy & favor of Him, who in all this trial had been our guide & strength and comfort.
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33. Quaker Anecdotes (by Irvin C. Poley & Ruth V. Poley; 1947)
I. FAIR WARNING/ II. THE WORLD ALMOST FALLS OFF —[Reading a lot of small offerings can be wearisome]. In order to avoid some of this danger, the anecdotes that more or less go together have been arranged in groups.
Messages in Quaker meeting are like water going through pipes; sometimes the water tastes of the pipes. [Henry Wilbur].
My heaven is mountains on one side, sea or lake on the other, and in between Pendle Hill with its greenery and its stone buildings, white-throat singing, roses blooming; and people meeting as they wander the paths and through the rooms. Mary C. Morrison
VII—And then Dora died. October 1952. Suddenly this morning, the bird singing, that same one with the high, sweet song. It makes me think of that postcard Dora brought me from Switzerland, a painting of a wrinkled old man, and a wide-eyed boy looking at some crystals. A light glows over the crystals; it seems to blaze out from the interaction between them and the crystals. It would catch my eye and say to me, “Look. Here was a whole day of life, and not once have you stopped to admire its wonders with the old man and the boy.”
“Operative images” bring everything to brightness & clarity. I have trusted them for a long time & they have never failed to rescue me from confusion, inertia & despair; they are life-bringers. Dora was such an operative image in my mind; the old man & wide-eyed boy were another. Her power always called me back to myself, however far I might wander. Dying didn’t stop her image-power, but there was a stop of some kind. In 1957, I came back to Pendle Hill as a teacher of the Gospels course. There was a presence on the premises, a friendly, challenging ghost, who spoke in my mind & touched my imagination & my memory; then, slowly vanished.
[Undated entry]. At the Ascension, I don’t think Jesus went away at all. I think that he went deep inside them, into their inner world. I think this total gift of another person to our inner growth is an everyday experience. In John 16:7, it is the Counselor, the manifestation in them of all that they have seen and heard and experienced of him, i.e. the inward guide. This manifestation is granted only to the discernment of love.” At Pendle Hill, the climate permitted and protected both love and vulnerability. To love the Gospels; to befriend them and the people I studied them with; to order and befriend my own life—that triple process was heaven to me and still is. My heaven is mountains on one side, sea or lake on the other, and in between Pendle Hill with its greenery and its stone buildings, white-throat singing, roses blooming; and people meeting as they wander the paths and through the rooms. A coalescence of operative images, you might say.
VIII—Learning never stops, but now I found, my relation to it was different. I was still learning—perhaps more than before—but now I was the teacher. I still needed a mentor; now I was one. I was appalled. I found out as mentors before me, that it did not all depend on me; in fact, not much depended on me. Teaching and learning went on as before; all I had to do was relax and settle in to my new role. I began to find mentors everywhere.
Heading the list was Henry J. Cadbury. May 1961. Henry Cadbury came to speak to my class yesterday. He has a compelling line of thought which you can neither ignore nor come to terms with. Yesterday he came close to saying that Jesus couldn’t possibly mean anything to modern minds because 1st century life and 20th century life were radically different. I thought of the Sphinx and the riddles it/she poses. I think the Sphinx personifies the universe, and HJC personifies the Sphinx. After connecting Rilke’s famous saying about loving the questions and living some day into the answers with Henry, I see it as almost an exact description of him. He lived his answers to Gospel questions and refused to answer in words.
In class, He always challenged assumptions & easy conclusions. After demolishing most of the biblical & theological baggage that his hearers bring to class, he expected them to be happy that their biblical “attic” was now cleared and in order. For me, he cleared out the Either/Or dilemma. He said: “Either/Or won’t work in dealing with the Gospels. You have to use Both/&. Explore both authentic traditions that say different things.”
February 1959. Another mentor was Alexandra Docili. Alex’s poetry-writing course is aimed straight where I am. The assignment was to look at an egg for an hour. I found myself thankful it was only an egg that I had been asked to be attentive to. I described holding the egg, feeling and moving the egg. I described the color and surface features, how it looked in sunlight, and how it sounded when shaken.
June 1961. I went to hear Eshin Nishimura give his term paper on an 18th century commentary on an earlier Buddhist work. [At 1st] I was baffled & frustrated, [trying to understand esoteric Zen thought given with an incomplete command of English pronunciation & sentence structure]. I treated the presentation as a living koan, [a statement used in Zen to provoke "great doubt" & test a student's progress in Zen practice]. I enjoyed Eshin himself. [Looking at his subject] was like looking at a view in a thick fog. Sometimes tantalizing bits of scenery come as the fog drifts apart, & go as it closes again. The experience of fog plus & minus view is more than a clear view alone would be. Eshin agreed, “That’s the Zen of it.” Zen is hard to understand because it’s so simple.
IX—I took all these lessons to heart, and my teaching took on new ease, assurance, and spaciousness. I found that whatever I gave more than a cursory attention to, inner or outer world, turned out to be made up of Both/ And, to be of the paradoxical nature that I now recognize as the stuff of life. Paradox was primarily playful, a kind of cosmic joke. I began to believe that in his parables Jesus was telling God’s jokes, sweeping out the cluttered attics of the hearer’s preconceived notions and fixed ideas with “What about this?”
Paradox, Parable, & Play. This was play at a consciousness level that I could scarcely comprehend, play that would bring the Kingdom, inside & out. 1965 article: In Praise of Paradox. “To everyone who knocks, a unique door of perception opens. To everyone who asks, a true answer is given. If we ever study war no more, it’s be-cause paradox teaches us that opposing truths shouldn’t destroy each other, but supplement & fulfill each other.”
“Paradox is essentially humorous in its sudden juxtaposition of opposite and unlike things. It points toward reconciliation and forgiveness. The greatest teachings are couched in paradox. They have to be; nothing else will transmit the whole truth, unmutilated, unimprisoned, alive. The whole truth isn’t in a straight line. It is more like a diamond with many facets. The more facets we can look at and into, the closer we shall come to seeing that central Light and letting it illuminate our lives.”
More recently my line of thought has been in praise of parables. [When I saw] Jesus’ playfulness, the parables began to open out their riches like flowers in bloom, and I found Jesus calling me home to my lost country, continually found and lost and found again. I began imagining a world in which God actually does send the sunshine and the rain down on the good and just only, and I began to laugh, with little squares of plenty and deprivation all over town, as people vary. I began to see it as the world in which I continually insist on living in with my judgmental attitudes. How can I change [the judgmental life I live]?
In the Kingdom there’s an unfairness that is beyond—on the far side of—fairness, and I should live in it and rejoice. [It is] a world where I can allow God to do what he will with his own. His will is to give, to cherish, to welcome. Can I live lightly, like a child playing? Not Yet. But I have glimpses. For this interaction of the journal and the journey shapes a life and creates a world. Our task, our privilege of making and sharing a world is the life work that we were sent to do, in the image of the Creator who made us.
127. Thou dost open up my life; selections from the Rufus Jones collection. (Ed. Mary H. Jones; 1963)
Foreword—This pamphlet commemorates the 100th year since Rufus Jones’ birth, and comes from car-tons of note cards written by Rufus Jones for his sermons and talks of the ‘30s and ‘40s. The earlier selections were written on [the backs of] cards that originally [served another purpose]. Later ones were on new, blank note cards. Rufus Jones never appeared to use notes. They served to fix a central idea in his mind and were only a springboard from which he took off. Rufus Jones had a simple, direct manner of speaking, and knew that the Kingdom of Heaven had gathered and caught them as in a net.
Thou Dost Open up my Life (after 1933)—When I was 8, I read the Psalms entirely through. Much of it was over my head & I missed the meaning, but the exalted nature poetry thrilled me. I could feel the difference between the [legalistic] scribe, & the [poetic] prophet. Psalm 119:32 says: I will obey thee eagerly as thou dost open up my life.” [Self-expression is popular today], but it is useless to talk about self-expression until we have a self to express. Which one of 1,000 possible selves shall we express? How [do you] get a rightly fashioned life that is truly worth expressing? How [do you] open out the possibilities of life? Religion opens up life.
The Way of Growth (after 1933)—Psalm 1 is the first one I ever learned; it compares a man to a tree. They both grow. How much does the Bible have to say about growth? Lilies toil not; they let the forces of life operate, & then find themselves beautiful. Growth is silent, gentle, quiet, unnoticed. It isn’t effort, it isn’t struggle that makes persons grow; it is contact with life forces. Spiritual life begins with life from God & grows through light & truth & love which have their source in God. We are the soil, God’s farm; God is the rain & dew.
Breadth and Length and Depth and Height (early ‘40s)—[“That ye may be able to comprehend with all saints the breadth, length, depth, and height.”—Ephesians 3:18] I want especially to call attention to the dimensions of life for which Paul prayed. I am thinking especially this morning about the horizontal and perpendicular [&] the Book of James. [In this book] the writer has taken great pains with its creation; it is a sermon, not an epistle. He disagrees with Paul about faith, for action is the life of all. This book is all horizontal; it is thin in depth and height [i.e. there is a lot of connection with humankind, but little connecting with Christ and God]. [In Ephesians] you have the mystical note—the depth and height that makes a great horizontal life possible.
Not a Book Religion (1934?)—Jesus came to Nazareth and read his [mission statement from Isaiah] in the synagogue; then he closed the book. It was in a time of uplift, and releasing of power after the temptation that Jesus read his program. He translated ancient words [of Isaiah] into life. It cannot be done unless we get beyond speeches and articles and radio addresses and translate this program, this reign of God into action.
To Whom Shall we Go (1940s)?—What is the alternative? What is the substitute for Christ? To Whom would you turn in personal crisis, when everything seems to crash in on you? What is your major support? The crowds took him for a miracle worker, & wanted him for political king. Everything was done that could spoil a prophet, a spiritual guide of life. John has Jesus saying I have come to re-orient your life, to make it significant, to bring inspiration, to kindle life with aim, purpose, & direction, to be inward food of the soul.
Science can't be an alternative to Christ. All its paths lead to boundaries where research ends & the things we most want lie beyond those boundaries. [It does not] ennoble the soul and give it over-brimming joy in life. George Fox said, “I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, Christ Jesus that can speak to thy condition.’ ” He was and is the cure of souls. He knew human nature, through and through, and yet he expects so much of us.
Every Day Living (1945-48)—On one occasion Moses took the Elders up on the mountain, and they too saw God; the great Reality broke in on their lives, and then “they did eat and drink.” Elders throughout biblical and church history had divine meetings with God & then they came back to the business of life on a new level of life & significance. We need the lift of vision & the inspiration of contact with God. It ought to gird & equip us for everyday life. We want leaders unique & peculiar in their leadership, but we no less need to have the level of the rank & file raised to a new level of life & power. In Colossians, Paul instructs them on how they should conduct themselves in daily life [in all their relationships & duties which] are transformed by this discovery of the Divine Presence. The sacred & the secular are 2 indivisible aspects of one life, [lived] to the glory of God.
The Father’s Business (late ‘30s, early 40s)—[At 12, Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem without his parent’s knowing]. They went back full of anxiety and searched 3 days before they found him in the temple, listening to learned men. His response to them was “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? At 12 he had discovered his mission. In that poor but spiritually devout home he was saturated with OT ideas and hopes; he was a God-taught child. No matter what the vocation may be, [carpentry, scholarship, ministry], the avocation may well be promoting the Father’s business.
In this early period of Jesus’ life, his main business was preparation for his mission. Later Jesus saw in children what he had felt as a child—that it is perfectly natural to be open-souled to God, & to be preparing for the main business of life—being an organ of the Spirit. Unnamed saints, Brother Lawrence, country doctors, street sweepers, lighthouse keepers, mothers, toilers in any field may make life a ministry [for] the Father’s business.
The Constructive & Prophetic Service of Religion (late 30s)—The world needs this service today. When vital & creative, it dignifies & ennobles one. [What it calls for is a person with a serene, adventurous spirit].
Contact But Not Communion (after 1934)—I love to see a sower striding across a well-prepared field & flinging out seed broadcast with an [overflowing] hand, & thinking of the harvest. [Jesus may have seen this as a boy & used it in a parable, with himself as the sower]. He flings out great truths & sees some of them going to waste [on dry, hard minds]. The miracle of transmitting life lies within the seed but it won't germinate without cooperation from the soil [soul]. Truth is laid alongside a soul; [there is contact but no communion]. [Jesus offers seed & door]: “I am the door. By me if any enter in, they shall be saved.” They shall have contact & communion.
Caring Matters Most—It often takes a whole lifetime to learn the meaning of the greatest words we use. I wish we might lift love up & see it in the light of its divine possibilities. Baron von Hügel said, “... Caring matters most. Christianity has taught us to care.” Love is caring beyond all known limits for what concerns another.
What Men Live By (early 1930s)—I went once to Cana of Galilee and visited the house where the famous wedding took place and the water was changed to wine. Cana is repeated in this Meeting House. [A marriage of spirits takes place, and ordinary water is changed to the sparkling wine of life]. “May God bless us and keep us and may we live together in such a spirit of love that God can enjoy our life together. Love is what men live by.
The Christmas Texts (mid 1940s)—The NT has many ways of heralding the great event of Christmas. [Shepherds and magi, expert star-watchers, were invited to the event]. It seems very fitting that the first scientists who came to Christ should have been star-led. St. John’s Gospel opens with a totally different, philosophical approach; we are in the exalted realm of thought. God has revealed God’s self by an eternal outgoing expression of God’s self, human & dwelling among us. This is the climax, the goal of the long process of the ages. We discover that we belong to God, that God has forever been seeking us and at length we know that God has found us.
Behold! (late 1920s)—We of modern times live more in the attitude of questioning than of exclamation. We lose the sense of wonder & vision. “Behold!” has the force of an imperative, as though they say “See what I see. Open your eyes to the meaning of what is before you.” I John 3:1 says: “Behold what love the Father be-stowed on us that we can be sons of God.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson writes: “Not of sunlight,/ Not of moonlight,/ Not of starlight,/ O young mariner,/ Down to the haven, Call your companions,/ Launch your vessel,/ Crowd canvas,/ Ere it vanishes/ Over the margin./ After it, follow it./ Follow the gleam. (from Merlin & the Gleam).
Underneath are Everlasting Arms [Deut. 33:27] (Late ‘30s, early ‘40s)—The more I see of loss and sorrow and death and separation, the less easy I find it to talk of such things in words. Once more we have had to discover the fact we are so prone to forget—how fragile is the container of all our most precious treasures. [But] Death cannot be an enemy—it must be the way of fulfillment, the way into richer life and greater love.
Faith in Immortality (early 1940s)—One of the most noticeable features of our time is weakening faith in immortality. “Heaven in the sky” is gone, & the body’s resurrection seems crude & materialistic. It seems strange that Paul’s great spiritual conception has never quite got into man’s consciousness; it is a marvelous insight. Paul holds that we are weaving a permanent soul-structure while we live & think & act here in the body. The apostle shows how life moves on in stages & always has a form which fits the realm it inhabits. The spirit is sown a natural body at birth but slowly under divine influence it grows & is transformed into an inner spiritual substance which is at home with God as soon as it is freed from old encasement. The new-formed nature is the same as God's reality. Alfred, Lord Tennyson writes of a baby’s growth: But as he grows he gathers much,/ & learns the use of “I” & “me”,/& finds “I am not what I see,/& other than the things I touch” (from In Memoriam)
Take no Thought for the Morrow (1939-45)—Few things would make life more impossible than to take the Sermon on the Mount literally. The interesting thing is that Jesus himself did not follow it literally. [He used oriental exaggeration frequently in it. It is first of all a new spirit, a new joy, a new radiance, a new thrill of living—not the burden of a new legal system. Christ’s major point throughout the Sermon on the Mount is to get rid of fears and anxieties. He isn't against ownership as such, only against excessive worry over things. The real issue which Jesus is discussing is: In what does your life really exist? He is making a powerful plea for inspiration in our lives, and insight of real values. Buoyancy and radiance [need to replace] worry and anxious care.
Mary and Martha (late 1920s)—[For] centuries Mary & Martha have stood for 2 life-alternatives. These aren't alternatives to choose between. Either way of life is poor & thin without the other. The 2 must be fused into one [person] before a complete life is obtained. It is fuss & worry, bustle and distraction that Jesus criticizes in Martha—not her action. The whole point of the story bears on one’s central choice or focus of life. Mary has chosen the one simple thing that makes life inherently good and that lasts through all mutations and vicissitudes. You can choose a whirl of secondary aims or you can concentrate on intrinsic riches. Every time the soul catches a glimpse of eternal truth or beauty it quickens its powers to catch more; love and service become easier.
Blessed are the Meek (late 1920s)—[In the Beatitudes] the quality of spirit is good because blessedness is essentially conjoined with that trait of character, with that kind of person. The trait that perhaps most puzzles this strenuous & militant world is meekness. [But] the most elemental qualities of true scientific or historical research are traits of meekness: absence of bluster & assertiveness, restraint that [sticks to] the facts; patience [& commitment to report] things as they are. Christ’s meek man is, in the same way, a person who has calm & absolute confidence in the eternal nature of things, & in the divine Heart's goodness; a man like Abraham Lincoln.
The Plumb-Line (early 1940s)—“I saw God, the Eternal, holding a plumb-line in his hand.” [Amos 7:7]. Amos was a product of the desert, stern, unafraid but with a strange power to feel the eternal behind the temporal. He told them [in Bethel] that sacrifices & offerings and priestly ritual were human inventions. The [most] extraordinary thing about Amos is his insight into the vast universal moral law of gravitation by which every individual & every nation is tested. [Plato, Euripides, Christ, and Shakespeare recognized Amos’ plumbline].
A Living Hope (1942 or later)—The 27th Psalm is one of the most striking instances of a sudden shift from the highest faith [“The Lord is my light & my salvation” (v. 1)] to a dark night of the soul [“. . . put not thy servant away in anger ... leave me not, neither forsake me.” (v.9)]. [It began on a high note (v.1),] then come doubt & agony & he faces the mystery of evil, the divine silence, the loss of assurance and exultation (v.9). His phrase “I had believed to see the goodness of God in the land of the living” is significant. The hope of personal life after death comes [much later than the Psalms] in the OT. The old psalmist has his finger on the central nerve. Is the universe fundamentally significant? Has it produced and will it answer the deepest longings and strivings of human hearts? We can trust [God’s divine bestowal on us] as the mariner trusts his compass.
The Challenge of the Closed Door (mid 1940s)—Christ did not say, did not promise, that the door to the things we most desire is an open door. One of the first laws of life is: you must seek; you must want and then you must eagerly and patiently knock. It seems strange that the things we want most are not furnished ready-made. Apocalypses all take the easy line of expectation. Everything is to be done for us with any effort on our part. It looks to me as though Christ put His blessing on the slow, hard way. The trouble with the Scribes and Pharisees was that they didn’t have wants; they had arrived. They were at their easy goal [and reward]. There is no open door to our new world order. We must face that challenge of the closed door.
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Foreword—Cyrus Pringle is known to specialists as a pioneer plant breeder and botanical collector. He is also one of the Quakers who battled with their consciences during the Civil War. Cyrus Guernsey Pringle (1838-1911) was born in East Charlotte Vermont. [He had to leave the University of Vermont] to care for his widowed mother and younger brother; in literature, language, and science he was largely self-taught. He spent nearly 40 years in the Southwest and in Mexico collecting specimens.
[This diary] deals with an inward and timeless problem of a sensitive conscience. The diary begins with the events of the day following his call to service, and tells all that happened to him after his refusal to serve, [including] what happened in his mind and heart. It was printed after his death, and 50 years after the events in the Atlantic Monthly (February 1913). Pringle’s two companions were Lindley M. Macomber and Peter Dakin. Particular interest attaches to Lincoln’s behavior in the case. He felt keenly the problem of reconciling war with conscience and understood the Quaker position.
Outwardly Quaker conscripts met both kindness and cruelty. Inwardly they had the natural conflict between the evil of making any surrender to military might & the desire to escape punishment & be obedient to reason-able expectations. The issue is too complicated to be solved by a personal religious faith; it is still in the main a moral problem. Human moral progress often depends on the spontaneous response of one or two sensitive per-sons to quite unexpected situations, when that response became convincing and contagious. Henry J. Cadbury.
[7th month-8th month, 1863]—At Burlington, Vermont, on the 13th of the 7th month, 1863, I was drafted. With ardent zeal for our Faith and the cause of our peaceable principles, I felt to say, “Here am I, Father, for thy service. As thou will.” I felt many times since that I am nothing without the companionship of the Spirit. Wm Lindley Dean and I appeared before the Provost Marshal [on the 27th] with statements of our cases [and on the 29th for a hearing]. On the 31st I came before the Board. Respectfully those men listened to the exposition of our principles. The Provost Marshal released me for 20 days.
We were urged by our acquaintances to pay our commutation money [or hire a substitute, because it] was our duty. We confess a higher duty and deny any obligation to support so unlawful a system, as we hold war to be, even in opposition to evil and in defense of liberty. [We could not hire a substitute and thereby bring others to evil]. Here I must record Rolla Gleason’s (the marshal) kindness; he treated us with respect and kindness. [In the train cars on the way to Brattleboro, VT we were] filled with apprehensions of long, hopeless trials, of abuse and contempt, of patient endurance (or an attempt at this), unto an end seen only by the eye of a strong faith. At Brattleboro our citizen’s dress was taken from us and we were shut up in a rough board building.
Brattleboro—26th day, 8th month. Aimless is military life, except betimes its aim is deadly. Idle life blends with violent death-struggles till the man is unmade a man; & henceforth there is little manhood about him. He is made a soldier, a man-destroying machine. 3 times a day we are marched out to the mess houses for our rations. As we go out & return, on right & left & in front & rear go bayonets. Hard beds are healthy but I query[:] Cannot the result be defeated by the degree? Our mattresses are boards. I praise the discipline I have received from uncarpeted floors through warm summer nights of my boyhood. Lindley M. Macomber (LMM) & I addressed the following letter to Governor Holbrook & hired a corporal to forward it to him [Excerpts from letter]:
“We love our country and acknowledge with gratitude to our Heavenly Father the many blessing we been favored with under the government, and can feel no sympathy with any who seek its overthrow. But . . . we cannot violate our religious convictions either by complying with military requisitions, furnishing a substitute, or paying commutation money. [We suffer] insult and contempt, and penalties of insubordination, though liberty of conscience is granted us by the Vermont and US Constitution. . . Truly thy Friend, Cyrus G. Pringle.”
Camp Vermont: Long Island, Boston. 28th day—[On the train to Long Island, a cavalry officer threaten to have anyone escaping or putting their head out of the window shot. [We marched through Boston to the harbor]; at the head of this company, like convicts, walked, with heavy hearts and downcast eyes, two Quakers. [On the island] troops gather daily from all the New England States except Connecticut and Rhode Island. All is war here. We are surrounded by the pomp and circumstance of war, and enveloped in the cloud thereof.
The men with us give us their sympathy. Although we are relieved from duty and drill, we have heard no complaints. LMM and I appeared before the Captain; he listened to us respectfully and promised to refer us to General Devens. Though fair be the earth, it has come to be tainted and marred by him who was meant to be its crowning glory. Old Father of Mercies, forgive the hard heartlessness, blindness and scarlet sin of my brothers.
In Guard House. 31st day—LMM and I separately came to the judgment that we must not conform to the requirement to clean about camp and bring water. [First argument and then threats were offered in response to our refusal]. The subjects of all misdemeanors are confined [in the island’s hotel]. In most, as in the camps, there are traces yet of manhood and of the Divine Spark, but some are abandoned, dissolute. [The blacks are jeered by substitutes from the New York draft riots]. I must say the blacks are superior to the whites in all their behavior. Here we are in prison in our own land for no crimes. More [than that], we are here for obeying the commands of the Son of God and the influences of his Holy Spirit.
9th month: 1st day, 9th month—Oh, the horrors of the past night—I never before experienced such sensations and fears; never did I feel so clearly that I had nothing but the hand of our Father to shield me from evil. The others [left us alone, but there was bedlam and a chained-up, delirious drunk in the next room]. We learned the next day that the drunk was from a religious family, but was drawn into bad company.
3rd day—A Massachusetts major complimented our choice of religious books and tried to persuade us to serve. He told us of another Quaker Edward W. Holway of Sandwich; we received permission to write to him, but the Major never gave him the letter. Oh the trials from these officers [coming to persuade us to serve]! One after another comes in to relieve himself upon us. [When persuasion does not work] they usually fly into a passion and end by bullying us. How can we reason with such men? They have stopped their ears to the voice of the Spirit, and hardened their hearts to his influences. A little service was required of LMM, but he would not comply, [even in the face of loaded guns]. This is a trial of strength of patience.
6th & 7th day—Major J. B. Gould, 13th Mass. Came in with the determination of persuading us to consent to be transferred to the hospital here. In more than an hour, he lost no part of his self-control or good humor. [We were taken to the hospital, where the major] demonstrated his kindness by his resolution that we should occupy and enjoy the pleasanter quarters of the hospital tent whether we served there or not. He passed by LMM and Peter Dakin [PD] outside the tent and declared they were the strangest prisoners of war he ever saw.
13th & 14th day—Henry Dickinson (HD) wrote, stating that the President, though sympathizing with those in our situation, felt bound by the Conscription Act. [The choice was between hospital service and overseeing blacks on confiscated rebel estates]. What would become of our testimony and determination to preserve ourselves clear of the guilt of this war? We received the unwelcome advice from HD to go into hospital service, [which left us feeling unsupported,] desolate and dreary in our position.
16th & 17th day—[More local Friends visit and write advising us] that we might enter the hospital without compromising our principles; [we find ourselves in discomfort and disagreement with that advice]. Their regard for our personal welfare and safety too much absorbs the zeal they should possess for the maintenance of the principle of peaceableness of our Master’s kingdom. [Our home meeting friends sent] kind and cheering words of Truth. Major Gould bade us Farewell and expressed a hope that we should not have so hard a time as we feared. [He probably also saw to it that we had the liberty of the vessel named Forest City.]
Forest City, 22nd & 23rd day—We cross the mouth of Chesapeake Bay to Fortress Monroe & then steamed up the St. James past Norfolk to leave the New Hampshire detachment at Portsmouth, back to Fortress Monroe and up the Potomac to Alexandria. We hear that we are to go right to the active field. Fierce indeed are our trials.
Camp near Culpeper. 25th day—Though we felt free to keep with those among whom we had been placed, we could not consent to carry a gun even though we did not intend to use it. We succeeded in giving the young officers a slight idea of what we were and why we did not pay our commutation. A council was soon held to decide what to do with us. The guns were thrust over our heads and hung upon our shoulders.
[As we marched, seeing for the first time, a country made dreary by the war-blight, one realizes as he can no other way something of the ruin that lies in a war’s trail. When one contrasts the face of this country with New England, he sees stamped on it the great irrefutable arguments against slavery and war, these twin relics of barbarism so awful in their consequences that they change the face of the country. We marched 4 miles, the guns interfering with our walking. We declined to be present at inspection of arms, and were ordered by the colonel to be tied. We were threatened great severities & even death. We seem perfectly at the mercy of the military power.
26th day—Yesterday my mind was much agitated; doubts & fears & forebodings seized me. This morning I enjoy peace; I feel as though I could face anything. Oh, praise be to the Lord for the peace, love, & resignation that has filled my soul today! There is a holy life that is above fear; it is a close communion with Christ.
Regimental Hospital, 4th Vermont—The colonel came to us apologizing for the roughness with which he had treated us at first. He urged us to go into the hospital stating that this course was advised by Friends about New York. He gave us until the next morning to consider the question and report our decision. If we persisted [we might] be exposed to the charge of over-zeal and fanaticism even among our own brethren. At last we consented to a trial at least till we could make inquiries and ask the counsel of our friends. The voice that seemed to say, “Follow me” kept pleading with me, convincing of sin, till I knew of a truth my feet had strayed from the path. We met with the Colonel in the morning, requesting him to proceed with court-martial. I have seen LMM in the thoroughness and patience of his trial to perform service in hospital, and seen him fail and declare to us, “I cannot stay here.” I have received new proof from the experimental knowledge of an honest man, that no Friend desiring to keep himself clear of complicity with this system of war and to bear a perfect testimony against it, can lawfully perform service in the hospitals of the Army in lieu of bearing arms.
[10th month] 3rd & 6th day at Washington—I was asked to clean the gun I brought, & declining, was tied some 2 hours upon the ground. We were ordered into our companies, that, separated, & with the forces of the officers of a company bearing on us, we might the more likely be subdued; no personal injury was allowed. [I met with the Colonel & begged of him release from the attempts by violence to compel obedience & service. He replied that he had shown us all the favor he should; he turned us over to the military power & was going to let that takes its course, [i.e.] henceforth we were to be at the inferior officers’ mercy. He denied that our consent was temporary & conditional and declared that a man who wouldn’t fight for his country did not deserve to live.
[When asked by the lieutenant if I would clean my gun, and after replying] “I cannot do it,” I was tied to stakes on the ground for 2 hours. I wept from sorrow that such things should be in our own country. It seemed as if the gospel of Christ had never been preached upon earth, and the beautiful example of his life had been utterly lost. I wondered if it could be that they could force me to obedience by torture, and examined myself closely to see if they had advanced as yet one step toward accomplishing their purposes. I found myself, through divine strength, as firm in my resolution to maintain my allegiance to my Master.
[The next morning I reported to the lieutenant who said, “You are ordered to report to Washington. I do not know what it is for.” Short and uncertain at first were the flights of Hope. As the slave many times before us, leaving his yoke behind him, we turned our backs upon the camp of the 4th Vermont.
At the War Office we were soon admitted to an audience with the Adjutant General [& then] Surgeon General Hammond. Here we met Isaac Newton [IN], Commissioner of Agriculture. We understand it is through the influence of IN that Friends have been able to approach the Government heads in our behalf & to prevail with them to so great an extent. The Secretary of War & the President sympathized with Friends. The one door of relief that appeared was to parole us [to our homes], subject to their call, though this they neither wished nor pro-posed to do. [In the meantime] we were sent to Medical Purveyor Abbot, who assigned us to Douglas Hospital.
8th-13th day—We all went out to see the city on a pass. IN came to see us, stating that he had called upon the President that afternoon to request our release & to let us go home to our friends. A woman sought help to prevent her 15 year-old son being shot for desertion. IN approached the President, who halted the execution.
On 11th day we attended meeting, held in Asa Arnold’s house; there were but 4 persons besides ourselves. On 13th day LMM faced the officer of the day where he served. The officer demanded obedience and a salute; LMM gave him neither, and was put in the guardhouse. The surgeon in charge had him released. We are all getting uneasy about remaining here. If our releases do not come soon, we feel we must intercede with the authorities, even if the alternative be imprisonment.
20th-26th day—I shall not say but we submit too much in not declining at once, but it has seemed most prudent at least to make suit with Government rather than provoke the hostility of their subalterns. Is patience justified under the circumstances? [I got sick and] after a week I find that I am reduced very low in strength and flesh by the sickness and pain I am experiencing.
11th month. 5th day—I spend most of my time on my bed, much of it alone. And very precious to me is the nearness I am favored to attain unto the Master. The fruits of this are sweet, and a recompense for affliction. Edward W. Holway saw IN on my behalf; IN met with the President, who read a letter from a New York Friend, and instructed Secretary Stanton that “all those young men be sent home at once.” The order was given and we were released. Upon my arrival in New York on 7th day, I was seized with delirium from which I recovered after many weeks, through the mercy & favor of Him, who in all this trial had been our guide & strength and comfort.
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20TH CENTURY
I. FAIR WARNING/ II. THE WORLD ALMOST FALLS OFF —[Reading a lot of small offerings can be wearisome]. In order to avoid some of this danger, the anecdotes that more or less go together have been arranged in groups.
Messages in Quaker meeting are like water going through pipes; sometimes the water tastes of the pipes. [Henry Wilbur].
This section bears on meeting for worship. Some stories taste strongly of the pipes; [others are by those who seek] to eliminate from their lives whatever makes the taste of the pipes more prominent.
"Friends, I entered this [silent] meeting with a bundle of hides on my back ... I am thankful to say it is gone." [Thomas Scattergood, tanner]
Charles F. Jenkins writes: "A woman Friend ... rose in Women's Yearly Meeting (YM) [5th & Cherry St.] She expressed a concern to visit Men's YM at 4th & Green St. [several blocks away] ... A committee of 2 was sent to see if the Men's Meeting would receive the woman Friend ... the men agreed after deliberation; [the committee returned with the message] ... A committee of 2 women accompanied the concerned woman back to the Men's Meeting ... She rose, delivered the sermon of "Jesus wept," sat down a short time, went back to the Women's YM ... [where] it was reported to have been an effective and impressive sermon."
Israel Drake felt called to journey several days from Albany. His coach brought him to London Grove, PA. A meeting was arranged for him; they met for 1½ hours but he never spoke, "as he had had no opening."
Richard Jordan had a neighbor in NC, who conceived a great inclination to hear Richard preach. He attended several 1st-Day meetings, where Richard remained silent. The neighbor tried weekday meetings, where Richard also remained seated. Several weeks passed, and the neighbor developed a feeling that he could not neglect attendance of any meetings; he became convinced of Quaker principles and Richard started speaking again. John Warren of Maine overheard a boy comment "Didn't that beat the devil" on Warren's not speaking at an appointed community meeting. Warren said, "That's what it was designed to do."
Rufus Jones told the following 2 stories about meeting for worship. In the late 18th century, David Sands of Maine was holding a meeting in Vassalboro. A passing Friend had a strong [leading] to go to meeting; he let his horse decide, and ended up at meeting. Sands stopped preaching and said to him: "It would have been well if thou hadst left it to thy horse years ago." The man became a leading Friend of the community.
Joseph Hoag of Vermont and his son, Lindley Murray Hoag (recorded minister before the age of 20), sat on the facing bench at an important Quarterly Meeting. Lindley had a message for the meeting, but deferred to the meeting's desire to hear his father. Joseph realized his son had a weighty concern, and pushed him slightly with his foot; the son preached an amazing sermon. When criticized by elders for deciding when another should preach, Joseph replied, "If you can kick a sermon like that out of any of your boys, you better do it." Rufus Jones and Augustus Murray spoke at New England YM. [They always gave scholarly, thought-provoking talks]. An elderly Friend, thinking they had talked over the heads of their audience, said: "Jesus said 'Feed my lambs,' not 'Feed my giraffes"; the meeting ended on that note. (Rufus enjoys telling this story about himself).
Howard Brinton attended Ohio YM in 1940; he was the only one there not wearing plain dress. He said: "I was invited to sit on the facing bench. The person who invited me was criticized in Bible verse. The critical Friend was in turn criticized from the 1st chapter of the same epistle: "If any man ... seems to be religious and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain."
Haverford Meeting "Some were standing up, some were sitting down, some were doing both."
Country meeting A non-member compared the meeting house and nearby school building with the nearness of Mind and Soul. A member added "and the graveyard—these 3."
A woman Friend began her sermon with "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse. No doubt the scriptural writer referred to a spiritual home."
An impressive looking man misquoted scripture in President Hoover's presence by saying, "Their young men shall see women and their old men shall dream dreams."
Someone's sister-in-law kept her from standing up to speak by putting a knee firmly against the coat of the would-be speaker, who later said: "I was about to speak in meeting today, but the good Lord held me down."
Agnes Tierney was complimented on a sermon & responded with: "That's what the devil said to me when I sat down."
III. LET THY YEA BE YEA—Friends have always believed in cautious statements; most of them have practiced it, some to an exaggerated extent. Friends' funny, cautious statements: "I think, or at least I think I think." [Providence RI]; "One never knows, does one? & when one does, one isn't sure, is one?"; "I think I may safely say she is much as she sometime is."; [In response to a proposed & questionable candidate]—"That's a name that wouldn't have occurred to me."; [An elderly Friend's response to "dangerous new views"]—A young man who lost his faith [because of these views] went sailing with a friend ... A storm came up & the young man ... was drowned ... [long pause] ... For the honor of truth I think I should say that the [friend] was drown also."
Frank Aydelotte of Swarthmore College secured a contribution of $100,000, & expected an enthusiastic response from the Board of Managers. What he got after a prolonged silence was: "I see no reason why we should not accept the gift." Herbert Hoover was looking out the window of a train when a companion remarked, "Those sheep have been sheared." President Hoover replied: "Well, on this side, certainly."
IV. FOLLOWING THE LIGHT—Esther Nichols Wilbur was a "conductor" on the Underground Railway & an abolitionist. An anti-slavery meeting was planned; North Easton Meeting House's caretaker wasn't an abolitionist & planned to lock people out after morning meeting for worship. Esther decided to stay until the afternoon meeting, in spite of threats of forcible removal. She then unlocked the house for the afternoon meeting. Isaac T. Hopper was disowned by his meeting and considered unworthy of being called a Friend [because of his outspoken, too-advanced stand against slavery]; he continued to attend meeting. A Friend said: "Thee knows the meeting has disowned thee." He replied, "But I have not disowned the meeting."
Eli Jones, Quaker minister, was elected to Maine's State Legislature, and appointed Major General in the State Militia. He said: "I should give such orders as 'Ground Arms' ... [and] 'Right about face. Go, beat your swords into plowshares and spears into pruning-hooks, and learn war no more." Howard Jenkins said: "As long as civilized nations believe in war, I expect to give about 50 editorials a year to the subject [of peace]." The Quaker wife of a merchant said: "But John, I hope thee didn't charge more than thee paid for it."
2 Quaker farmers who traded even on horses wanted to give the other $5 "to make the trade "fair & even." Levi T. Penington writes of a Quaker who gave a note to Pacific College's endowment fund in 1914: "For years he lived with his children, with an income very near the vanishing point. Nearly 30 years later, he came to me with $300, saved a nickel at a time ... I said to him ... "I've found a Quaker whose word is better than his bond." "Owd Jacob [Bright ]" [came upon a throng around a neighbor] whose valuable beast had met with an accident & had to be killed. He said: "I am sorry £5. How much are thee sorry?"& raised a subscription [then and there].
V. AN EARLY QUAKER WIT—A fellow lawyer said to Nicholas Waln (18th century): "Mr. Waln, there is a great deal of dignity and intelligence under that hat of yours." Nicholas took off his hat, handed it to the lawyer and said, "Take it. Thou hast need of both." Nicholas met a young dandy wearing multiple capes, each of which he had named after geographic capes, like Cape Henlopen and Cape Hatteras. Nicholas tapped the young lad's head and said, Then this must be Mount Airy." It was a very warm day in Birmingham, PA, during a meeting for worship that was often 2 hours long. Nicholas shook hands to close meeting in about a ½-hour. When criticized, he said, "I desire mercy and not burnt offerings."
VI. RETORTS COURTEOUS, OR FAIRLY SO—Often Quaker directness of speech made its point without offense; sometimes it verged on rudeness. In a trial, opposing counsel said to the witness, Samuel Bettle, "You use the words 'also' and 'likewise' very frequently; can you distinguish between them?" Samuel replied, "Our counsel here is a lawyer; thou art also, but not likewise." A mentally ill Friend was carried out of meeting by 4 members and shouted, "Behold, I am greater than my Master. He was carried by 1 ass, and I am carried by 4." A prominent American Friend said in a meeting that he had not committed a sin for 15 years. Thomas Chase said, "If I had heard him say it I would have said, 'But thou hast now." Asa Branson was hard of hearing and carried an ear trumpet. Young men congregated at the village pump, and some of them employed improper language and abusive terms when speaking into his ear trumpet. Asa did not rebuke them verbally this time, but calmly walked over to the pump, washed out his ear trumpet, and went home.
VII. AS OTHERS SEE US/ VIII. OFF THE RECORDS—Many Friends are fearful of smugness, the unwillingness to venture, that comes to a group when all speak well of them. An Irish gardener for President Isaac Sharpless' (Haverford College) father said: "My mind's made up, it is. I've been watchin' the Quakers, and they're a God-fearin', money-makin' set of people, and I want to be one of them." One attender asked another non-member about Queries: "Queries are those old men who sit on the facing benches." Another non-member asked: "How does the clerk get the sense of the meeting if there isn't any sense?"
Some of us [are nostalgic] for a simpler age [and meeting] uncontaminated by "worldly" practice. Here are minute excerpts from much earlier meetings. 1716 Darby Women's Meeting wrote: "This Meeting gives their testimony against taking or giving of garters at marriages or any vain or needless custom whatsoever. 1715 Chester (PA) Women's Meeting wrote a similar minute. 1739 Another monthly meeting tried in vain to get satisfaction from Joseph Bethell "for his being in the vain practice of firing guns at marriages." Between 1684-1786 Chesterfield Monthly Meeting (NJ) wrote: Much fewer cases of immoral conduct are recorded than on the PA side of the river. 1777 Radnor Monthly Meeting minuted: "None of the Friends appointed attended the Quarterly Meeting owing to the Prevailing Commotions [Revolutionary War]."
1855 From David Ferris' journal we have this advice: "From inattention to my Heavenly Guide, I took hint from man; following my inclination [& the advice of friends], I moved without asking my divine Master's advice [to court a young lady] ... [A ½-hour into the evening], I heard something, like a still small voice, saying, 'Seekest thou great things for thyself?—seek them not' ... It so filled me with confusion, that I ... soon took my leave, without opening ... the subject which led me to visit them ... I didn't recover my usual state for several months. I couldn’t suddenly see that my error was acting without permission ... At length I was brought to submit & say 'Amen."
1797 Catherine Phillips' advice to spinsters [& bachelors]: 1st, guard their own minds, lest they ... slide into familiarity & freedom of ... behavior, which might tend to engage the affections of young men. 2nd, strictly observe the other's behavior toward them ... to better judge their motives for accompanying them ... [& forestall] any forward thought that looks beyond friendship ... with some prudent oblique remarks. 3rd, The Lord ... may permit love for a season to lean to [another] instrument [of God's will]. A prudent reserve & a tender regard for the growth of the other is necessary.
IX. MINOR TESTIMONIES—Gradually you & your (plural) became general for all the elect, while thou, thy, thee were the 2nd person singular, used for social inferiors. For early Quakers, using the "plain language" was a mark of democracy, a denial of caste in human relationship. And in the beginning, "plain dress" was the apparel of the period with the ornamentation taken off. The old 2nd person singular is now used within the Quaker community, and in the family circle. Sometimes people unaccustomed to plain language will say things like, "I never can tell thee (S/B "you" plural) apart unless I see thee (you) together." William Bacon Evans said "thee" several times to a Kent County jail warden, and then explained: "We are Quakers and have a testimony for the plain language." The warden replied: "You got to speak plainer than that if you want me to understand."
Plain clothes were 1st worn in protest against the waste and caprices of following fashion. Later, the Quaker garb was "simple" only in appearance; it cost a good deal more in time and money than non-Quaker clothing. Friends numbered months and days 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc., not by names derived from "heathen gods." Other words used that had mythological origins were not protested [e.g. jovial, mercurial, cereal, iris]. Although personally against music in meeting, a member of a Maine meeting gave a generous contribution saying, "If you must worship the Lord with machinery, I want you to have a first-class instrument." And even though each member of Haverford College's Board had no personal objection to the gift of a piano, it was turned down unanimously, because each one "knew" it would not be accepted by the others. In response to the Quaker silence before meals, one non-Friend said: "Everything was fine. There was a little awkward silence at the beginning of the meal, but I just told a funny story and broke the ice."
X. THEIR QUAKERISM TRIED—Quakers at their best have never interpreted "non-resistance" as acquiescence in evil. There is often a super-resistant vein on a higher, more permanent level than violence. Lucretia Mott sent her escort away, & relied on one of the mob's roughest to conduct her safely & respectfully through the tumult. The mob leader had a conversation with her, & found her to be "a good & sensible woman." Catherine Shipley offered to pray with a would-be pickpocket: "We'll ... ask Heavenly Father if he means thee to have it."
Elias Hicks' wheat fields once yielded abundantly in a light harvest; speculators sought to buy his wheat, at ever higher prices. When poorer neighbors began to need, he invited them get what they required at $1 a bushel. In Nantucket harbor, Captain Gifford had a sloop-load of coal during a shortage; he decided to "act conscience today." He decided that "thee can have 1 ton for $8; thee can't have any more," for all who asked. David Cope sold a neighbor seed wheat. The neighbor wasn't satisfied with the amount; he measured it himself, & found more than he asked for. David said: "Thee wasn't satisfied with my measure—thee will have to take thy own."
A Quaker was asked by a highway robber at gunpoint to trade horses. The Quaker led the robber's broken down horse to the city & then turn him loose, saying, "Go ahead, Lazarus; thou knowest the way to the stall better than I." He followed the horse to the robber's door, surprised the robber, and got his horse back plus 2 crowns.
XI. YOUNG FRIENDS—Benjamin Hallowell once tried to avoid school by hiding his hat. His mother responded by tying her bonnet on his head. Ben all of a sudden knew where his hat was, "found" it, and asked his mother to take the bonnet off. Edward was told to wash his feet for a woman minister's visit. When she intoned, "Take the shoes from off thy feet," Edward gave a terrified wail, sure that the visitor knew he had not washed. [One change over the last 50 or even 25 years] is a freedom to laugh over the feelings between Hicksites and Orthodox that were once so important [and divisive]. A minister preached the words, "Be still, and know that I am God." A little boy whispered to his father, "Is he, Daddy?" An older child with only one Quaker parent wrote home from Westtown: "I'm tired of being a paggon; I want to be a Quacker."
XII. CONCERNED WITH EDUCATION—In notifying Isaac Sharpless of his appointment to a teaching position, the committee said that he was appointed because they could not find a really qualified person. Friends sometimes confuse honesty with unnecessary bluntness. Neave Brayshaw was a beloved educator that English schoolboys enjoyed mimicking. During a holiday party, Neave did an imitation of himself in a contest and won only 3rd prize. Benjamin Hallowell once shared the educational philosophy that "everything can be moved if we touch the right spring." Elizabeth Dunn said: "I'm so afraid of staying on [the Westtown School Committee] too long. I don't want anyone to whisper that I'm no longer useful." Her daughter Sarah retorted, "But, Mother, I'd tell thee honestly. Thee stay on and I'll say frankly the minute that it's really time to get off." The wise lady replied, "But I mightn't believe thee then."
XIII. WHERE BUT IN QUAKERDOM?/ XIV. A CLOSING WORD—When Andrew Jackson became President, he recognized the loyalty of a Quaker supporter, Roberts Vaux, by appointing his son, Richard, Secretary to the Court of St. James Legation. Richard wrote: "Last night I went to a ball at the palace and even danced with the Princess Victoria. His mother said: I do hope Richard won't marry outside the meeting." George Cadbury walked through his Chocolate works with the King and Queen, carrying his hat as a sign of respect. The Queen politely asked him to put on his hat, and playfully suggested having the King command him. Elizabeth Cadbury looked up in her most regal manner and said, "George, put on your hat." He did.
Edward Grubb (English Friend) & Rufus Jones were together at Rufus' Haverford home. Edward put his shoes out to be cleaned by a servant. There was no servant for that, so Rufus cleaned them. Edward gave a dollar for the "servant." Rufus said: "I will see that he gets it." A young married couple came to a Friends Hostel, asking for accommodations. The Quaker host asked, "Are you Friends?" The young man said, "No, we're married."
After 9 years in China away from London YM, Henry Hodgkin spoke there for 20 minutes. Wanting to make a point with the [more long-winded] members, the Clerk said: "There can be no impropriety in his speaking for 20 minutes. If we divide 20 by 9 or 10, does it not suggest a proper limit ... for regular attenders?" Once after George Walton had spoken, Dr. William Speakman came up at the close of meeting, and said, "Thanks for what thee said; it always does my wife good to hear thee."
We have dwelt on the human side of Friendly life. This little collection of stories is offered in the belief that there is value in tasting the feast of good, amusing, little things in our Friendly heritage. We shall be none the worse for [getting a taste of the Water from] the human pipes to which it has been entrusted.
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242. The Journal and the Journey (by Mary Chase Morrison; 1982)
"Friends, I entered this [silent] meeting with a bundle of hides on my back ... I am thankful to say it is gone." [Thomas Scattergood, tanner]
Charles F. Jenkins writes: "A woman Friend ... rose in Women's Yearly Meeting (YM) [5th & Cherry St.] She expressed a concern to visit Men's YM at 4th & Green St. [several blocks away] ... A committee of 2 was sent to see if the Men's Meeting would receive the woman Friend ... the men agreed after deliberation; [the committee returned with the message] ... A committee of 2 women accompanied the concerned woman back to the Men's Meeting ... She rose, delivered the sermon of "Jesus wept," sat down a short time, went back to the Women's YM ... [where] it was reported to have been an effective and impressive sermon."
Israel Drake felt called to journey several days from Albany. His coach brought him to London Grove, PA. A meeting was arranged for him; they met for 1½ hours but he never spoke, "as he had had no opening."
Richard Jordan had a neighbor in NC, who conceived a great inclination to hear Richard preach. He attended several 1st-Day meetings, where Richard remained silent. The neighbor tried weekday meetings, where Richard also remained seated. Several weeks passed, and the neighbor developed a feeling that he could not neglect attendance of any meetings; he became convinced of Quaker principles and Richard started speaking again. John Warren of Maine overheard a boy comment "Didn't that beat the devil" on Warren's not speaking at an appointed community meeting. Warren said, "That's what it was designed to do."
Rufus Jones told the following 2 stories about meeting for worship. In the late 18th century, David Sands of Maine was holding a meeting in Vassalboro. A passing Friend had a strong [leading] to go to meeting; he let his horse decide, and ended up at meeting. Sands stopped preaching and said to him: "It would have been well if thou hadst left it to thy horse years ago." The man became a leading Friend of the community.
Joseph Hoag of Vermont and his son, Lindley Murray Hoag (recorded minister before the age of 20), sat on the facing bench at an important Quarterly Meeting. Lindley had a message for the meeting, but deferred to the meeting's desire to hear his father. Joseph realized his son had a weighty concern, and pushed him slightly with his foot; the son preached an amazing sermon. When criticized by elders for deciding when another should preach, Joseph replied, "If you can kick a sermon like that out of any of your boys, you better do it." Rufus Jones and Augustus Murray spoke at New England YM. [They always gave scholarly, thought-provoking talks]. An elderly Friend, thinking they had talked over the heads of their audience, said: "Jesus said 'Feed my lambs,' not 'Feed my giraffes"; the meeting ended on that note. (Rufus enjoys telling this story about himself).
Howard Brinton attended Ohio YM in 1940; he was the only one there not wearing plain dress. He said: "I was invited to sit on the facing bench. The person who invited me was criticized in Bible verse. The critical Friend was in turn criticized from the 1st chapter of the same epistle: "If any man ... seems to be religious and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain."
Haverford Meeting "Some were standing up, some were sitting down, some were doing both."
Country meeting A non-member compared the meeting house and nearby school building with the nearness of Mind and Soul. A member added "and the graveyard—these 3."
A woman Friend began her sermon with "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse. No doubt the scriptural writer referred to a spiritual home."
An impressive looking man misquoted scripture in President Hoover's presence by saying, "Their young men shall see women and their old men shall dream dreams."
Someone's sister-in-law kept her from standing up to speak by putting a knee firmly against the coat of the would-be speaker, who later said: "I was about to speak in meeting today, but the good Lord held me down."
Agnes Tierney was complimented on a sermon & responded with: "That's what the devil said to me when I sat down."
III. LET THY YEA BE YEA—Friends have always believed in cautious statements; most of them have practiced it, some to an exaggerated extent. Friends' funny, cautious statements: "I think, or at least I think I think." [Providence RI]; "One never knows, does one? & when one does, one isn't sure, is one?"; "I think I may safely say she is much as she sometime is."; [In response to a proposed & questionable candidate]—"That's a name that wouldn't have occurred to me."; [An elderly Friend's response to "dangerous new views"]—A young man who lost his faith [because of these views] went sailing with a friend ... A storm came up & the young man ... was drowned ... [long pause] ... For the honor of truth I think I should say that the [friend] was drown also."
Frank Aydelotte of Swarthmore College secured a contribution of $100,000, & expected an enthusiastic response from the Board of Managers. What he got after a prolonged silence was: "I see no reason why we should not accept the gift." Herbert Hoover was looking out the window of a train when a companion remarked, "Those sheep have been sheared." President Hoover replied: "Well, on this side, certainly."
IV. FOLLOWING THE LIGHT—Esther Nichols Wilbur was a "conductor" on the Underground Railway & an abolitionist. An anti-slavery meeting was planned; North Easton Meeting House's caretaker wasn't an abolitionist & planned to lock people out after morning meeting for worship. Esther decided to stay until the afternoon meeting, in spite of threats of forcible removal. She then unlocked the house for the afternoon meeting. Isaac T. Hopper was disowned by his meeting and considered unworthy of being called a Friend [because of his outspoken, too-advanced stand against slavery]; he continued to attend meeting. A Friend said: "Thee knows the meeting has disowned thee." He replied, "But I have not disowned the meeting."
Eli Jones, Quaker minister, was elected to Maine's State Legislature, and appointed Major General in the State Militia. He said: "I should give such orders as 'Ground Arms' ... [and] 'Right about face. Go, beat your swords into plowshares and spears into pruning-hooks, and learn war no more." Howard Jenkins said: "As long as civilized nations believe in war, I expect to give about 50 editorials a year to the subject [of peace]." The Quaker wife of a merchant said: "But John, I hope thee didn't charge more than thee paid for it."
2 Quaker farmers who traded even on horses wanted to give the other $5 "to make the trade "fair & even." Levi T. Penington writes of a Quaker who gave a note to Pacific College's endowment fund in 1914: "For years he lived with his children, with an income very near the vanishing point. Nearly 30 years later, he came to me with $300, saved a nickel at a time ... I said to him ... "I've found a Quaker whose word is better than his bond." "Owd Jacob [Bright ]" [came upon a throng around a neighbor] whose valuable beast had met with an accident & had to be killed. He said: "I am sorry £5. How much are thee sorry?"& raised a subscription [then and there].
V. AN EARLY QUAKER WIT—A fellow lawyer said to Nicholas Waln (18th century): "Mr. Waln, there is a great deal of dignity and intelligence under that hat of yours." Nicholas took off his hat, handed it to the lawyer and said, "Take it. Thou hast need of both." Nicholas met a young dandy wearing multiple capes, each of which he had named after geographic capes, like Cape Henlopen and Cape Hatteras. Nicholas tapped the young lad's head and said, Then this must be Mount Airy." It was a very warm day in Birmingham, PA, during a meeting for worship that was often 2 hours long. Nicholas shook hands to close meeting in about a ½-hour. When criticized, he said, "I desire mercy and not burnt offerings."
VI. RETORTS COURTEOUS, OR FAIRLY SO—Often Quaker directness of speech made its point without offense; sometimes it verged on rudeness. In a trial, opposing counsel said to the witness, Samuel Bettle, "You use the words 'also' and 'likewise' very frequently; can you distinguish between them?" Samuel replied, "Our counsel here is a lawyer; thou art also, but not likewise." A mentally ill Friend was carried out of meeting by 4 members and shouted, "Behold, I am greater than my Master. He was carried by 1 ass, and I am carried by 4." A prominent American Friend said in a meeting that he had not committed a sin for 15 years. Thomas Chase said, "If I had heard him say it I would have said, 'But thou hast now." Asa Branson was hard of hearing and carried an ear trumpet. Young men congregated at the village pump, and some of them employed improper language and abusive terms when speaking into his ear trumpet. Asa did not rebuke them verbally this time, but calmly walked over to the pump, washed out his ear trumpet, and went home.
VII. AS OTHERS SEE US/ VIII. OFF THE RECORDS—Many Friends are fearful of smugness, the unwillingness to venture, that comes to a group when all speak well of them. An Irish gardener for President Isaac Sharpless' (Haverford College) father said: "My mind's made up, it is. I've been watchin' the Quakers, and they're a God-fearin', money-makin' set of people, and I want to be one of them." One attender asked another non-member about Queries: "Queries are those old men who sit on the facing benches." Another non-member asked: "How does the clerk get the sense of the meeting if there isn't any sense?"
Some of us [are nostalgic] for a simpler age [and meeting] uncontaminated by "worldly" practice. Here are minute excerpts from much earlier meetings. 1716 Darby Women's Meeting wrote: "This Meeting gives their testimony against taking or giving of garters at marriages or any vain or needless custom whatsoever. 1715 Chester (PA) Women's Meeting wrote a similar minute. 1739 Another monthly meeting tried in vain to get satisfaction from Joseph Bethell "for his being in the vain practice of firing guns at marriages." Between 1684-1786 Chesterfield Monthly Meeting (NJ) wrote: Much fewer cases of immoral conduct are recorded than on the PA side of the river. 1777 Radnor Monthly Meeting minuted: "None of the Friends appointed attended the Quarterly Meeting owing to the Prevailing Commotions [Revolutionary War]."
1855 From David Ferris' journal we have this advice: "From inattention to my Heavenly Guide, I took hint from man; following my inclination [& the advice of friends], I moved without asking my divine Master's advice [to court a young lady] ... [A ½-hour into the evening], I heard something, like a still small voice, saying, 'Seekest thou great things for thyself?—seek them not' ... It so filled me with confusion, that I ... soon took my leave, without opening ... the subject which led me to visit them ... I didn't recover my usual state for several months. I couldn’t suddenly see that my error was acting without permission ... At length I was brought to submit & say 'Amen."
1797 Catherine Phillips' advice to spinsters [& bachelors]: 1st, guard their own minds, lest they ... slide into familiarity & freedom of ... behavior, which might tend to engage the affections of young men. 2nd, strictly observe the other's behavior toward them ... to better judge their motives for accompanying them ... [& forestall] any forward thought that looks beyond friendship ... with some prudent oblique remarks. 3rd, The Lord ... may permit love for a season to lean to [another] instrument [of God's will]. A prudent reserve & a tender regard for the growth of the other is necessary.
IX. MINOR TESTIMONIES—Gradually you & your (plural) became general for all the elect, while thou, thy, thee were the 2nd person singular, used for social inferiors. For early Quakers, using the "plain language" was a mark of democracy, a denial of caste in human relationship. And in the beginning, "plain dress" was the apparel of the period with the ornamentation taken off. The old 2nd person singular is now used within the Quaker community, and in the family circle. Sometimes people unaccustomed to plain language will say things like, "I never can tell thee (S/B "you" plural) apart unless I see thee (you) together." William Bacon Evans said "thee" several times to a Kent County jail warden, and then explained: "We are Quakers and have a testimony for the plain language." The warden replied: "You got to speak plainer than that if you want me to understand."
Plain clothes were 1st worn in protest against the waste and caprices of following fashion. Later, the Quaker garb was "simple" only in appearance; it cost a good deal more in time and money than non-Quaker clothing. Friends numbered months and days 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc., not by names derived from "heathen gods." Other words used that had mythological origins were not protested [e.g. jovial, mercurial, cereal, iris]. Although personally against music in meeting, a member of a Maine meeting gave a generous contribution saying, "If you must worship the Lord with machinery, I want you to have a first-class instrument." And even though each member of Haverford College's Board had no personal objection to the gift of a piano, it was turned down unanimously, because each one "knew" it would not be accepted by the others. In response to the Quaker silence before meals, one non-Friend said: "Everything was fine. There was a little awkward silence at the beginning of the meal, but I just told a funny story and broke the ice."
X. THEIR QUAKERISM TRIED—Quakers at their best have never interpreted "non-resistance" as acquiescence in evil. There is often a super-resistant vein on a higher, more permanent level than violence. Lucretia Mott sent her escort away, & relied on one of the mob's roughest to conduct her safely & respectfully through the tumult. The mob leader had a conversation with her, & found her to be "a good & sensible woman." Catherine Shipley offered to pray with a would-be pickpocket: "We'll ... ask Heavenly Father if he means thee to have it."
Elias Hicks' wheat fields once yielded abundantly in a light harvest; speculators sought to buy his wheat, at ever higher prices. When poorer neighbors began to need, he invited them get what they required at $1 a bushel. In Nantucket harbor, Captain Gifford had a sloop-load of coal during a shortage; he decided to "act conscience today." He decided that "thee can have 1 ton for $8; thee can't have any more," for all who asked. David Cope sold a neighbor seed wheat. The neighbor wasn't satisfied with the amount; he measured it himself, & found more than he asked for. David said: "Thee wasn't satisfied with my measure—thee will have to take thy own."
A Quaker was asked by a highway robber at gunpoint to trade horses. The Quaker led the robber's broken down horse to the city & then turn him loose, saying, "Go ahead, Lazarus; thou knowest the way to the stall better than I." He followed the horse to the robber's door, surprised the robber, and got his horse back plus 2 crowns.
XI. YOUNG FRIENDS—Benjamin Hallowell once tried to avoid school by hiding his hat. His mother responded by tying her bonnet on his head. Ben all of a sudden knew where his hat was, "found" it, and asked his mother to take the bonnet off. Edward was told to wash his feet for a woman minister's visit. When she intoned, "Take the shoes from off thy feet," Edward gave a terrified wail, sure that the visitor knew he had not washed. [One change over the last 50 or even 25 years] is a freedom to laugh over the feelings between Hicksites and Orthodox that were once so important [and divisive]. A minister preached the words, "Be still, and know that I am God." A little boy whispered to his father, "Is he, Daddy?" An older child with only one Quaker parent wrote home from Westtown: "I'm tired of being a paggon; I want to be a Quacker."
XII. CONCERNED WITH EDUCATION—In notifying Isaac Sharpless of his appointment to a teaching position, the committee said that he was appointed because they could not find a really qualified person. Friends sometimes confuse honesty with unnecessary bluntness. Neave Brayshaw was a beloved educator that English schoolboys enjoyed mimicking. During a holiday party, Neave did an imitation of himself in a contest and won only 3rd prize. Benjamin Hallowell once shared the educational philosophy that "everything can be moved if we touch the right spring." Elizabeth Dunn said: "I'm so afraid of staying on [the Westtown School Committee] too long. I don't want anyone to whisper that I'm no longer useful." Her daughter Sarah retorted, "But, Mother, I'd tell thee honestly. Thee stay on and I'll say frankly the minute that it's really time to get off." The wise lady replied, "But I mightn't believe thee then."
XIII. WHERE BUT IN QUAKERDOM?/ XIV. A CLOSING WORD—When Andrew Jackson became President, he recognized the loyalty of a Quaker supporter, Roberts Vaux, by appointing his son, Richard, Secretary to the Court of St. James Legation. Richard wrote: "Last night I went to a ball at the palace and even danced with the Princess Victoria. His mother said: I do hope Richard won't marry outside the meeting." George Cadbury walked through his Chocolate works with the King and Queen, carrying his hat as a sign of respect. The Queen politely asked him to put on his hat, and playfully suggested having the King command him. Elizabeth Cadbury looked up in her most regal manner and said, "George, put on your hat." He did.
Edward Grubb (English Friend) & Rufus Jones were together at Rufus' Haverford home. Edward put his shoes out to be cleaned by a servant. There was no servant for that, so Rufus cleaned them. Edward gave a dollar for the "servant." Rufus said: "I will see that he gets it." A young married couple came to a Friends Hostel, asking for accommodations. The Quaker host asked, "Are you Friends?" The young man said, "No, we're married."
After 9 years in China away from London YM, Henry Hodgkin spoke there for 20 minutes. Wanting to make a point with the [more long-winded] members, the Clerk said: "There can be no impropriety in his speaking for 20 minutes. If we divide 20 by 9 or 10, does it not suggest a proper limit ... for regular attenders?" Once after George Walton had spoken, Dr. William Speakman came up at the close of meeting, and said, "Thanks for what thee said; it always does my wife good to hear thee."
We have dwelt on the human side of Friendly life. This little collection of stories is offered in the belief that there is value in tasting the feast of good, amusing, little things in our Friendly heritage. We shall be none the worse for [getting a taste of the Water from] the human pipes to which it has been entrusted.
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242. The Journal and the Journey (by Mary Chase Morrison; 1982)
About the Author—A card-carrying senior citizen, Mary Morrison enjoys old age and is looking forward to more of it as offering time for quiet, reflection, and solitude often shared with friends. Her family is made up of grown children, teenage grandchildren, and a husband who loves hiking and has traveled long distances on several mountain ranges. She winters in Swarthmore, PA and does summers in West Danville, VT. Her 3 other pamphlets are: 120. William Law: Selections on the Interior Life (editor; 1962); 198. Re-conciliation: the hidden hyphen (1974); 219. Approaching the Gospels (1978).
I—Journals hold a high place in any tradition of inward search & growth. Julian of Norwich, St. Teresa of Avila, George Fox, John Woolman are all prime examples of seekers who used this kind of writing to help know themselves & find direction. Now, journals have acquired importance again with Ira Progoff’s work. My journal came along between 2 high places. I was writing that journal because I had to, as a question came home urgently: How, where am I going to find the resources to make good on all the promises I made to life, & to myself? (e.g. baby/ family/marriage, being useful, and response-able.
A motivating sentence out of miscellaneous reading was: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” At the time I thought I was doing writing exercises. The entries that appeared had very little to do with writing & much to do with my life.
A motivating sentence out of miscellaneous reading was: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” At the time I thought I was doing writing exercises. The entries that appeared had very little to do with writing & much to do with my life.
June 1939. In a dream, I was prisoner in a great house on a high moor, with The Life of Christ (7 vol.), the task of learning submission, an unworn straitjacket, another task, a priest with a telescope, and dead planets. All the points raised in this dream were new to me then. I had never given Christ a serious thought. I had no suspicion that an important part of me felt imprisoned. In submission to what?
The dream, which still retains its mystery, states in its own way most of the directions that my life has taken in the last 40 years: escape from lifelessness; lonely work done in solitude; power of Christ. All this was in the dream as well as other meaning which I still haven’t plumbed & perhaps never will. I began to read of Christ, not in 7 volumes, but 4 Gospels. I felt as if I were coming home again to some forgotten country once well known to me, a Lost Country called the Kingdom, [& actually was the Kingdom Within]. This “within” country insisted that I explore it with its frightening, encouraging, peaceful, tempestuous experiences.
The dream, which still retains its mystery, states in its own way most of the directions that my life has taken in the last 40 years: escape from lifelessness; lonely work done in solitude; power of Christ. All this was in the dream as well as other meaning which I still haven’t plumbed & perhaps never will. I began to read of Christ, not in 7 volumes, but 4 Gospels. I felt as if I were coming home again to some forgotten country once well known to me, a Lost Country called the Kingdom, [& actually was the Kingdom Within]. This “within” country insisted that I explore it with its frightening, encouraging, peaceful, tempestuous experiences.
In another dream, May 1943, I rode my bike down a steep hill into a dark valley. The dark heavens opened with long streaks of sun-light coming down towards me and my soul leapt up to meet them. I read Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections and realized that the inner country, though dangerous, was a sign less of insanity than of ultimate sanity.
II—Other dreams and insights staked out for me other parts of the Inner Kingdom. January 1944. A dream, or an instantaneous insight that flashed all at once into my mind. It can only be told as a dream-story: I was a small child standing at my heavenly Father’s knee. He was fully engaged with some other adult. I kept poking at his knee and saying: “All I want to know is what you want me to do; then I’ll go do it. Just tell me.” He finally looked at me with a wonderful half-teasing, half-impatient smile, and said, “Just run away and play, that’s what I want you to do.” I heard Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze the next day, and the music and the dream spoke to each other in ways that I could only dimly glimpse and could not describe.
November 1944. I became fascinated by [a song of giving one’s love the gift of] fruits to come, gifts of the future. That’s what we want to give to the people we love—life, growth, the future, the promise. [At one end is our love for someone that makes us think of sexual activity, the easiest, surest and most obvious way to give life. At the other end of the scale is “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. And in between are all our vague, poorly understood and worse expressed hopes and dreams of all kinds of life that we would like to give to and get from the people we love.
III—With this entry the journal came to a 4-year pause. [I had] a secure, busy, even happy outer life. In the spring of 1948, I touched base at Pendle Hill for the 1st time; I lived 2 miles away, but never at Pendle Hill, to my great regret. The 1st connection turned out to be the main connection throughout—the Gospel class. I was invited by a friend to “Come and see.” I liked that echo of the 4th Gospel’s “Come and see,” [the invitation to a future disciple to meet Jesus]. So I did. The group spent 2 hours on “Whosoever shall see to gain his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.” I went back the next time to see if they ever would come up with any final answers; they never did. I began to sense a process at work, and I was hooked.
With all my solitary reading of the Gospels, I had produced a castle in the air. I only needed and wanted to put a solid foundation under it; that happened with trusted and beloved individuals in my class. [My journal, Dora Willson’s (leader of the class) guidance, my exploration of the Gospels and of the wild and unknown inner country that I was beginning at last to be less afraid of, went along together, hand-in-hand.
A dream from Easter, 1949. The word went round that Christ was coming, to simply be seen and heard. Everyone wanted to welcome him; I wanted to see him when he came by. Groups went by, but they weren’t Christ. I decided to go wait at a rich friends’ house in the country. The gateway into this place had become almost impassable, blocked by a huge, twisted and gnarled thorn-tree, bristling with spikes. I asked my friends why it was there. “It grew from a thorn-tree seed from your place that dropped out of your pocket.” I looked up and there, the very center of the tree, was a great jack-in-the-pulpit; the man in it was the one we were waiting for.
IV—All these dreams I have included here I now call Great Dreams. Their images had depth complexity, & shimmering aliveness; they didn’t come from me, but out of some depth within, as a gift, Dream as Art. James Hillman says that you should befriend dreams, especially great ones. You visit them, pay attention to them, work & play with them as with a person with whom you want befriend. You respect them, allowing them to keep their distance & their mystery, sharing themselves with you at their own pace. What do your dreams say to you?
We were befriending the Gospels, approaching them, asking them what they were saying. While we were reading & befriending them, they were reading [& befriending] us. The befriending was within us as individuals, among us as a group, & around us as the changes in the quality of our lives. I kept working away at the tangle of string/[ideas] in my left-hand pocket/[mind], winding it onto the ball of neatly wound string/[ideas] in my right-hand pocket/[mind]. My group at Pendle Hill finished its year & left; something told me firmly that I mustn’t repeat. I began to lead Gospel groups on my own near home, finding that how much & what one learns as a student can’t compare with what one learns as a teacher. I gradually acquired skill as a leader of Gospel study groups.
I kept writing in my journal. The inner processes that began interacted with each other & generally enriched my life. August 1949. Mr. Q is a useful character who turned up during notebook work. He was in an interior dialogue, being scornful, finding fault, putting me down. He is the eternal under-miner, and he appears often. I find him a much better friend than I could ever have dreamed at the beginning. He always begins by being negative and abusive, and this I must accept. I have come to know that he will end by giving me his blessing.
The “run away & play” “dream,” which had continued to dwell in & influence my thoughts, was confirmed by William Law (“Adam was put into this world as a kind of heavenly artist), Howard Brinton (“When Boehme is speaking of God’s life...he refers to it as ‘play”), C. S. Lewis, in a story about a planet created purely as a hob-by for its creator, & Rilke (“… lightly, like children playing). The Play concept never stopped growing [for me].
September 1950. Play is an idea that seems to have vanished entirely out of ordinary church-going religion. Mr. Q asks what makes me think it was there in the 1st place. The dream of course, and the general tenor of the Gospels. In our Protestant/Puritan tradition play simply isn’t there. Losing the concept of play has divided the world’s activities into things, not ways. Jesus’ statements about the Kingdom are laws of behavior, not facts.
V-VI—The 3rd great interior event of this period: the discovery of paradox. During my year of Gospels study at Pendle Hill we came back to the passage beginning “Whosover seeks to gain his life ...” [mentioned earlier] Some biblical scholars refer to it as the Great Paradox. This Great Paradox was looking at me and demanding that I redefine life itself, to see it as a constantly changing, ever-moving process whose changes I could trust to death and beyond as truth; a process that would not endure for one minute should I try to grasp and hold it. [Paradox is polyvalance, a substance that excites different responses in different organisms].
November 1949. The tricky thing about a paradox is that half of it tends to get lost. Law/freedom; negation/affirmation; judgment/forgiveness; personality/impersonality. The winning half then gets hard, old encrusted. Paradoxes are like balance-scales; the truth lies in the balance itself. Jesus, while restoring the lost half, at the same time knocked off the encrustations on the old half, repaired the scales and set the whole thing up again. Very shortly after this entry, I had to have serious lung surgery; I found great difficult in recovering my strength, especially psychologically. Who was I now? How was I to function effectively as this new me?
I began to be obsessed by snakes. I dreamed about them almost every night. What was happening to me in my Inner Country that snakes should begin to move into it? What was I supposed to do about them?
February 1951. In my dreams, I received both positive acts from snakes and warnings about snakes. Maybe that’s his function, to present the either/or, to be the impossible ambiguity, to crack my image-structure, my self-image. My 1st step will have to be to look at it and see what it actually is, what my basic assumptions are and how they are fitted together. Where is the crack in my image-structure? I think [my] snakes are a kind of specialization of the backbone, as if the spinal cord and nervous system had decided to go off on its own. Just a naked “I” standing all by itself. The serpent [in the Garden of Eden] is an evil creature. As part of the whole, both exterior and interior, there’s nothing wrong with him at all. What is he in the interior zoo? The central column of life, the indispensable support for any kind of higher activity and consciousness, a life-giver, not a death-dealer. [In the snake story of Numbers 21: 8, seeing the image or central idea of the serpent, could take away the deadly power of the serpent and give life instead. There was also the image of the intertwined snakes of the caduceus, ancient sign of the healer. Living with the ambiguity/paradox of the serpent, I began at last to get well again.
I had lost my easy ability to meet the needs of other people, or even to like them very much; that frightened me. I found myself carrying on a nighttime interior dialog with a man in white.
II—Other dreams and insights staked out for me other parts of the Inner Kingdom. January 1944. A dream, or an instantaneous insight that flashed all at once into my mind. It can only be told as a dream-story: I was a small child standing at my heavenly Father’s knee. He was fully engaged with some other adult. I kept poking at his knee and saying: “All I want to know is what you want me to do; then I’ll go do it. Just tell me.” He finally looked at me with a wonderful half-teasing, half-impatient smile, and said, “Just run away and play, that’s what I want you to do.” I heard Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze the next day, and the music and the dream spoke to each other in ways that I could only dimly glimpse and could not describe.
November 1944. I became fascinated by [a song of giving one’s love the gift of] fruits to come, gifts of the future. That’s what we want to give to the people we love—life, growth, the future, the promise. [At one end is our love for someone that makes us think of sexual activity, the easiest, surest and most obvious way to give life. At the other end of the scale is “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. And in between are all our vague, poorly understood and worse expressed hopes and dreams of all kinds of life that we would like to give to and get from the people we love.
III—With this entry the journal came to a 4-year pause. [I had] a secure, busy, even happy outer life. In the spring of 1948, I touched base at Pendle Hill for the 1st time; I lived 2 miles away, but never at Pendle Hill, to my great regret. The 1st connection turned out to be the main connection throughout—the Gospel class. I was invited by a friend to “Come and see.” I liked that echo of the 4th Gospel’s “Come and see,” [the invitation to a future disciple to meet Jesus]. So I did. The group spent 2 hours on “Whosoever shall see to gain his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.” I went back the next time to see if they ever would come up with any final answers; they never did. I began to sense a process at work, and I was hooked.
With all my solitary reading of the Gospels, I had produced a castle in the air. I only needed and wanted to put a solid foundation under it; that happened with trusted and beloved individuals in my class. [My journal, Dora Willson’s (leader of the class) guidance, my exploration of the Gospels and of the wild and unknown inner country that I was beginning at last to be less afraid of, went along together, hand-in-hand.
A dream from Easter, 1949. The word went round that Christ was coming, to simply be seen and heard. Everyone wanted to welcome him; I wanted to see him when he came by. Groups went by, but they weren’t Christ. I decided to go wait at a rich friends’ house in the country. The gateway into this place had become almost impassable, blocked by a huge, twisted and gnarled thorn-tree, bristling with spikes. I asked my friends why it was there. “It grew from a thorn-tree seed from your place that dropped out of your pocket.” I looked up and there, the very center of the tree, was a great jack-in-the-pulpit; the man in it was the one we were waiting for.
IV—All these dreams I have included here I now call Great Dreams. Their images had depth complexity, & shimmering aliveness; they didn’t come from me, but out of some depth within, as a gift, Dream as Art. James Hillman says that you should befriend dreams, especially great ones. You visit them, pay attention to them, work & play with them as with a person with whom you want befriend. You respect them, allowing them to keep their distance & their mystery, sharing themselves with you at their own pace. What do your dreams say to you?
We were befriending the Gospels, approaching them, asking them what they were saying. While we were reading & befriending them, they were reading [& befriending] us. The befriending was within us as individuals, among us as a group, & around us as the changes in the quality of our lives. I kept working away at the tangle of string/[ideas] in my left-hand pocket/[mind], winding it onto the ball of neatly wound string/[ideas] in my right-hand pocket/[mind]. My group at Pendle Hill finished its year & left; something told me firmly that I mustn’t repeat. I began to lead Gospel groups on my own near home, finding that how much & what one learns as a student can’t compare with what one learns as a teacher. I gradually acquired skill as a leader of Gospel study groups.
I kept writing in my journal. The inner processes that began interacted with each other & generally enriched my life. August 1949. Mr. Q is a useful character who turned up during notebook work. He was in an interior dialogue, being scornful, finding fault, putting me down. He is the eternal under-miner, and he appears often. I find him a much better friend than I could ever have dreamed at the beginning. He always begins by being negative and abusive, and this I must accept. I have come to know that he will end by giving me his blessing.
The “run away & play” “dream,” which had continued to dwell in & influence my thoughts, was confirmed by William Law (“Adam was put into this world as a kind of heavenly artist), Howard Brinton (“When Boehme is speaking of God’s life...he refers to it as ‘play”), C. S. Lewis, in a story about a planet created purely as a hob-by for its creator, & Rilke (“… lightly, like children playing). The Play concept never stopped growing [for me].
September 1950. Play is an idea that seems to have vanished entirely out of ordinary church-going religion. Mr. Q asks what makes me think it was there in the 1st place. The dream of course, and the general tenor of the Gospels. In our Protestant/Puritan tradition play simply isn’t there. Losing the concept of play has divided the world’s activities into things, not ways. Jesus’ statements about the Kingdom are laws of behavior, not facts.
V-VI—The 3rd great interior event of this period: the discovery of paradox. During my year of Gospels study at Pendle Hill we came back to the passage beginning “Whosover seeks to gain his life ...” [mentioned earlier] Some biblical scholars refer to it as the Great Paradox. This Great Paradox was looking at me and demanding that I redefine life itself, to see it as a constantly changing, ever-moving process whose changes I could trust to death and beyond as truth; a process that would not endure for one minute should I try to grasp and hold it. [Paradox is polyvalance, a substance that excites different responses in different organisms].
November 1949. The tricky thing about a paradox is that half of it tends to get lost. Law/freedom; negation/affirmation; judgment/forgiveness; personality/impersonality. The winning half then gets hard, old encrusted. Paradoxes are like balance-scales; the truth lies in the balance itself. Jesus, while restoring the lost half, at the same time knocked off the encrustations on the old half, repaired the scales and set the whole thing up again. Very shortly after this entry, I had to have serious lung surgery; I found great difficult in recovering my strength, especially psychologically. Who was I now? How was I to function effectively as this new me?
I began to be obsessed by snakes. I dreamed about them almost every night. What was happening to me in my Inner Country that snakes should begin to move into it? What was I supposed to do about them?
February 1951. In my dreams, I received both positive acts from snakes and warnings about snakes. Maybe that’s his function, to present the either/or, to be the impossible ambiguity, to crack my image-structure, my self-image. My 1st step will have to be to look at it and see what it actually is, what my basic assumptions are and how they are fitted together. Where is the crack in my image-structure? I think [my] snakes are a kind of specialization of the backbone, as if the spinal cord and nervous system had decided to go off on its own. Just a naked “I” standing all by itself. The serpent [in the Garden of Eden] is an evil creature. As part of the whole, both exterior and interior, there’s nothing wrong with him at all. What is he in the interior zoo? The central column of life, the indispensable support for any kind of higher activity and consciousness, a life-giver, not a death-dealer. [In the snake story of Numbers 21: 8, seeing the image or central idea of the serpent, could take away the deadly power of the serpent and give life instead. There was also the image of the intertwined snakes of the caduceus, ancient sign of the healer. Living with the ambiguity/paradox of the serpent, I began at last to get well again.
I had lost my easy ability to meet the needs of other people, or even to like them very much; that frightened me. I found myself carrying on a nighttime interior dialog with a man in white.
March 1951. “What frightens [me is] Satan [even when] cut down to my size. The sol-ipse—himself alone. Satan standing alone, made a choice. What was it? Not to be under God. Is the solipse part wrong in itself? No, it’s probably the only part that can relate, 1st-hand, to God and make the choice of whether or not to be under him. It is the part of you that relates to God no matter what happens.” The forgotten 3rd part of the Great Commandment came into my mind, freed from all the “Kingdom’s” [actually my own] injunctions to “unselfishness”. Loving yourself is the indispensable starting place for your own health and for healthy love of your neighbor.
My heaven is mountains on one side, sea or lake on the other, and in between Pendle Hill with its greenery and its stone buildings, white-throat singing, roses blooming; and people meeting as they wander the paths and through the rooms. Mary C. Morrison
VII—And then Dora died. October 1952. Suddenly this morning, the bird singing, that same one with the high, sweet song. It makes me think of that postcard Dora brought me from Switzerland, a painting of a wrinkled old man, and a wide-eyed boy looking at some crystals. A light glows over the crystals; it seems to blaze out from the interaction between them and the crystals. It would catch my eye and say to me, “Look. Here was a whole day of life, and not once have you stopped to admire its wonders with the old man and the boy.”
“Operative images” bring everything to brightness & clarity. I have trusted them for a long time & they have never failed to rescue me from confusion, inertia & despair; they are life-bringers. Dora was such an operative image in my mind; the old man & wide-eyed boy were another. Her power always called me back to myself, however far I might wander. Dying didn’t stop her image-power, but there was a stop of some kind. In 1957, I came back to Pendle Hill as a teacher of the Gospels course. There was a presence on the premises, a friendly, challenging ghost, who spoke in my mind & touched my imagination & my memory; then, slowly vanished.
[Undated entry]. At the Ascension, I don’t think Jesus went away at all. I think that he went deep inside them, into their inner world. I think this total gift of another person to our inner growth is an everyday experience. In John 16:7, it is the Counselor, the manifestation in them of all that they have seen and heard and experienced of him, i.e. the inward guide. This manifestation is granted only to the discernment of love.” At Pendle Hill, the climate permitted and protected both love and vulnerability. To love the Gospels; to befriend them and the people I studied them with; to order and befriend my own life—that triple process was heaven to me and still is. My heaven is mountains on one side, sea or lake on the other, and in between Pendle Hill with its greenery and its stone buildings, white-throat singing, roses blooming; and people meeting as they wander the paths and through the rooms. A coalescence of operative images, you might say.
VIII—Learning never stops, but now I found, my relation to it was different. I was still learning—perhaps more than before—but now I was the teacher. I still needed a mentor; now I was one. I was appalled. I found out as mentors before me, that it did not all depend on me; in fact, not much depended on me. Teaching and learning went on as before; all I had to do was relax and settle in to my new role. I began to find mentors everywhere.
Heading the list was Henry J. Cadbury. May 1961. Henry Cadbury came to speak to my class yesterday. He has a compelling line of thought which you can neither ignore nor come to terms with. Yesterday he came close to saying that Jesus couldn’t possibly mean anything to modern minds because 1st century life and 20th century life were radically different. I thought of the Sphinx and the riddles it/she poses. I think the Sphinx personifies the universe, and HJC personifies the Sphinx. After connecting Rilke’s famous saying about loving the questions and living some day into the answers with Henry, I see it as almost an exact description of him. He lived his answers to Gospel questions and refused to answer in words.
In class, He always challenged assumptions & easy conclusions. After demolishing most of the biblical & theological baggage that his hearers bring to class, he expected them to be happy that their biblical “attic” was now cleared and in order. For me, he cleared out the Either/Or dilemma. He said: “Either/Or won’t work in dealing with the Gospels. You have to use Both/&. Explore both authentic traditions that say different things.”
February 1959. Another mentor was Alexandra Docili. Alex’s poetry-writing course is aimed straight where I am. The assignment was to look at an egg for an hour. I found myself thankful it was only an egg that I had been asked to be attentive to. I described holding the egg, feeling and moving the egg. I described the color and surface features, how it looked in sunlight, and how it sounded when shaken.
June 1961. I went to hear Eshin Nishimura give his term paper on an 18th century commentary on an earlier Buddhist work. [At 1st] I was baffled & frustrated, [trying to understand esoteric Zen thought given with an incomplete command of English pronunciation & sentence structure]. I treated the presentation as a living koan, [a statement used in Zen to provoke "great doubt" & test a student's progress in Zen practice]. I enjoyed Eshin himself. [Looking at his subject] was like looking at a view in a thick fog. Sometimes tantalizing bits of scenery come as the fog drifts apart, & go as it closes again. The experience of fog plus & minus view is more than a clear view alone would be. Eshin agreed, “That’s the Zen of it.” Zen is hard to understand because it’s so simple.
IX—I took all these lessons to heart, and my teaching took on new ease, assurance, and spaciousness. I found that whatever I gave more than a cursory attention to, inner or outer world, turned out to be made up of Both/ And, to be of the paradoxical nature that I now recognize as the stuff of life. Paradox was primarily playful, a kind of cosmic joke. I began to believe that in his parables Jesus was telling God’s jokes, sweeping out the cluttered attics of the hearer’s preconceived notions and fixed ideas with “What about this?”
Paradox, Parable, & Play. This was play at a consciousness level that I could scarcely comprehend, play that would bring the Kingdom, inside & out. 1965 article: In Praise of Paradox. “To everyone who knocks, a unique door of perception opens. To everyone who asks, a true answer is given. If we ever study war no more, it’s be-cause paradox teaches us that opposing truths shouldn’t destroy each other, but supplement & fulfill each other.”
“Paradox is essentially humorous in its sudden juxtaposition of opposite and unlike things. It points toward reconciliation and forgiveness. The greatest teachings are couched in paradox. They have to be; nothing else will transmit the whole truth, unmutilated, unimprisoned, alive. The whole truth isn’t in a straight line. It is more like a diamond with many facets. The more facets we can look at and into, the closer we shall come to seeing that central Light and letting it illuminate our lives.”
More recently my line of thought has been in praise of parables. [When I saw] Jesus’ playfulness, the parables began to open out their riches like flowers in bloom, and I found Jesus calling me home to my lost country, continually found and lost and found again. I began imagining a world in which God actually does send the sunshine and the rain down on the good and just only, and I began to laugh, with little squares of plenty and deprivation all over town, as people vary. I began to see it as the world in which I continually insist on living in with my judgmental attitudes. How can I change [the judgmental life I live]?
In the Kingdom there’s an unfairness that is beyond—on the far side of—fairness, and I should live in it and rejoice. [It is] a world where I can allow God to do what he will with his own. His will is to give, to cherish, to welcome. Can I live lightly, like a child playing? Not Yet. But I have glimpses. For this interaction of the journal and the journey shapes a life and creates a world. Our task, our privilege of making and sharing a world is the life work that we were sent to do, in the image of the Creator who made us.
127. Thou dost open up my life; selections from the Rufus Jones collection. (Ed. Mary H. Jones; 1963)
Foreword—This pamphlet commemorates the 100th year since Rufus Jones’ birth, and comes from car-tons of note cards written by Rufus Jones for his sermons and talks of the ‘30s and ‘40s. The earlier selections were written on [the backs of] cards that originally [served another purpose]. Later ones were on new, blank note cards. Rufus Jones never appeared to use notes. They served to fix a central idea in his mind and were only a springboard from which he took off. Rufus Jones had a simple, direct manner of speaking, and knew that the Kingdom of Heaven had gathered and caught them as in a net.
Thou Dost Open up my Life (after 1933)—When I was 8, I read the Psalms entirely through. Much of it was over my head & I missed the meaning, but the exalted nature poetry thrilled me. I could feel the difference between the [legalistic] scribe, & the [poetic] prophet. Psalm 119:32 says: I will obey thee eagerly as thou dost open up my life.” [Self-expression is popular today], but it is useless to talk about self-expression until we have a self to express. Which one of 1,000 possible selves shall we express? How [do you] get a rightly fashioned life that is truly worth expressing? How [do you] open out the possibilities of life? Religion opens up life.
The Way of Growth (after 1933)—Psalm 1 is the first one I ever learned; it compares a man to a tree. They both grow. How much does the Bible have to say about growth? Lilies toil not; they let the forces of life operate, & then find themselves beautiful. Growth is silent, gentle, quiet, unnoticed. It isn’t effort, it isn’t struggle that makes persons grow; it is contact with life forces. Spiritual life begins with life from God & grows through light & truth & love which have their source in God. We are the soil, God’s farm; God is the rain & dew.
Breadth and Length and Depth and Height (early ‘40s)—[“That ye may be able to comprehend with all saints the breadth, length, depth, and height.”—Ephesians 3:18] I want especially to call attention to the dimensions of life for which Paul prayed. I am thinking especially this morning about the horizontal and perpendicular [&] the Book of James. [In this book] the writer has taken great pains with its creation; it is a sermon, not an epistle. He disagrees with Paul about faith, for action is the life of all. This book is all horizontal; it is thin in depth and height [i.e. there is a lot of connection with humankind, but little connecting with Christ and God]. [In Ephesians] you have the mystical note—the depth and height that makes a great horizontal life possible.
Not a Book Religion (1934?)—Jesus came to Nazareth and read his [mission statement from Isaiah] in the synagogue; then he closed the book. It was in a time of uplift, and releasing of power after the temptation that Jesus read his program. He translated ancient words [of Isaiah] into life. It cannot be done unless we get beyond speeches and articles and radio addresses and translate this program, this reign of God into action.
To Whom Shall we Go (1940s)?—What is the alternative? What is the substitute for Christ? To Whom would you turn in personal crisis, when everything seems to crash in on you? What is your major support? The crowds took him for a miracle worker, & wanted him for political king. Everything was done that could spoil a prophet, a spiritual guide of life. John has Jesus saying I have come to re-orient your life, to make it significant, to bring inspiration, to kindle life with aim, purpose, & direction, to be inward food of the soul.
Science can't be an alternative to Christ. All its paths lead to boundaries where research ends & the things we most want lie beyond those boundaries. [It does not] ennoble the soul and give it over-brimming joy in life. George Fox said, “I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, Christ Jesus that can speak to thy condition.’ ” He was and is the cure of souls. He knew human nature, through and through, and yet he expects so much of us.
Every Day Living (1945-48)—On one occasion Moses took the Elders up on the mountain, and they too saw God; the great Reality broke in on their lives, and then “they did eat and drink.” Elders throughout biblical and church history had divine meetings with God & then they came back to the business of life on a new level of life & significance. We need the lift of vision & the inspiration of contact with God. It ought to gird & equip us for everyday life. We want leaders unique & peculiar in their leadership, but we no less need to have the level of the rank & file raised to a new level of life & power. In Colossians, Paul instructs them on how they should conduct themselves in daily life [in all their relationships & duties which] are transformed by this discovery of the Divine Presence. The sacred & the secular are 2 indivisible aspects of one life, [lived] to the glory of God.
The Father’s Business (late ‘30s, early 40s)—[At 12, Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem without his parent’s knowing]. They went back full of anxiety and searched 3 days before they found him in the temple, listening to learned men. His response to them was “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? At 12 he had discovered his mission. In that poor but spiritually devout home he was saturated with OT ideas and hopes; he was a God-taught child. No matter what the vocation may be, [carpentry, scholarship, ministry], the avocation may well be promoting the Father’s business.
In this early period of Jesus’ life, his main business was preparation for his mission. Later Jesus saw in children what he had felt as a child—that it is perfectly natural to be open-souled to God, & to be preparing for the main business of life—being an organ of the Spirit. Unnamed saints, Brother Lawrence, country doctors, street sweepers, lighthouse keepers, mothers, toilers in any field may make life a ministry [for] the Father’s business.
The Constructive & Prophetic Service of Religion (late 30s)—The world needs this service today. When vital & creative, it dignifies & ennobles one. [What it calls for is a person with a serene, adventurous spirit].
Contact But Not Communion (after 1934)—I love to see a sower striding across a well-prepared field & flinging out seed broadcast with an [overflowing] hand, & thinking of the harvest. [Jesus may have seen this as a boy & used it in a parable, with himself as the sower]. He flings out great truths & sees some of them going to waste [on dry, hard minds]. The miracle of transmitting life lies within the seed but it won't germinate without cooperation from the soil [soul]. Truth is laid alongside a soul; [there is contact but no communion]. [Jesus offers seed & door]: “I am the door. By me if any enter in, they shall be saved.” They shall have contact & communion.
Caring Matters Most—It often takes a whole lifetime to learn the meaning of the greatest words we use. I wish we might lift love up & see it in the light of its divine possibilities. Baron von Hügel said, “... Caring matters most. Christianity has taught us to care.” Love is caring beyond all known limits for what concerns another.
What Men Live By (early 1930s)—I went once to Cana of Galilee and visited the house where the famous wedding took place and the water was changed to wine. Cana is repeated in this Meeting House. [A marriage of spirits takes place, and ordinary water is changed to the sparkling wine of life]. “May God bless us and keep us and may we live together in such a spirit of love that God can enjoy our life together. Love is what men live by.
The Christmas Texts (mid 1940s)—The NT has many ways of heralding the great event of Christmas. [Shepherds and magi, expert star-watchers, were invited to the event]. It seems very fitting that the first scientists who came to Christ should have been star-led. St. John’s Gospel opens with a totally different, philosophical approach; we are in the exalted realm of thought. God has revealed God’s self by an eternal outgoing expression of God’s self, human & dwelling among us. This is the climax, the goal of the long process of the ages. We discover that we belong to God, that God has forever been seeking us and at length we know that God has found us.
Behold! (late 1920s)—We of modern times live more in the attitude of questioning than of exclamation. We lose the sense of wonder & vision. “Behold!” has the force of an imperative, as though they say “See what I see. Open your eyes to the meaning of what is before you.” I John 3:1 says: “Behold what love the Father be-stowed on us that we can be sons of God.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson writes: “Not of sunlight,/ Not of moonlight,/ Not of starlight,/ O young mariner,/ Down to the haven, Call your companions,/ Launch your vessel,/ Crowd canvas,/ Ere it vanishes/ Over the margin./ After it, follow it./ Follow the gleam. (from Merlin & the Gleam).
Underneath are Everlasting Arms [Deut. 33:27] (Late ‘30s, early ‘40s)—The more I see of loss and sorrow and death and separation, the less easy I find it to talk of such things in words. Once more we have had to discover the fact we are so prone to forget—how fragile is the container of all our most precious treasures. [But] Death cannot be an enemy—it must be the way of fulfillment, the way into richer life and greater love.
Faith in Immortality (early 1940s)—One of the most noticeable features of our time is weakening faith in immortality. “Heaven in the sky” is gone, & the body’s resurrection seems crude & materialistic. It seems strange that Paul’s great spiritual conception has never quite got into man’s consciousness; it is a marvelous insight. Paul holds that we are weaving a permanent soul-structure while we live & think & act here in the body. The apostle shows how life moves on in stages & always has a form which fits the realm it inhabits. The spirit is sown a natural body at birth but slowly under divine influence it grows & is transformed into an inner spiritual substance which is at home with God as soon as it is freed from old encasement. The new-formed nature is the same as God's reality. Alfred, Lord Tennyson writes of a baby’s growth: But as he grows he gathers much,/ & learns the use of “I” & “me”,/& finds “I am not what I see,/& other than the things I touch” (from In Memoriam)
Take no Thought for the Morrow (1939-45)—Few things would make life more impossible than to take the Sermon on the Mount literally. The interesting thing is that Jesus himself did not follow it literally. [He used oriental exaggeration frequently in it. It is first of all a new spirit, a new joy, a new radiance, a new thrill of living—not the burden of a new legal system. Christ’s major point throughout the Sermon on the Mount is to get rid of fears and anxieties. He isn't against ownership as such, only against excessive worry over things. The real issue which Jesus is discussing is: In what does your life really exist? He is making a powerful plea for inspiration in our lives, and insight of real values. Buoyancy and radiance [need to replace] worry and anxious care.
Mary and Martha (late 1920s)—[For] centuries Mary & Martha have stood for 2 life-alternatives. These aren't alternatives to choose between. Either way of life is poor & thin without the other. The 2 must be fused into one [person] before a complete life is obtained. It is fuss & worry, bustle and distraction that Jesus criticizes in Martha—not her action. The whole point of the story bears on one’s central choice or focus of life. Mary has chosen the one simple thing that makes life inherently good and that lasts through all mutations and vicissitudes. You can choose a whirl of secondary aims or you can concentrate on intrinsic riches. Every time the soul catches a glimpse of eternal truth or beauty it quickens its powers to catch more; love and service become easier.
Blessed are the Meek (late 1920s)—[In the Beatitudes] the quality of spirit is good because blessedness is essentially conjoined with that trait of character, with that kind of person. The trait that perhaps most puzzles this strenuous & militant world is meekness. [But] the most elemental qualities of true scientific or historical research are traits of meekness: absence of bluster & assertiveness, restraint that [sticks to] the facts; patience [& commitment to report] things as they are. Christ’s meek man is, in the same way, a person who has calm & absolute confidence in the eternal nature of things, & in the divine Heart's goodness; a man like Abraham Lincoln.
The Plumb-Line (early 1940s)—“I saw God, the Eternal, holding a plumb-line in his hand.” [Amos 7:7]. Amos was a product of the desert, stern, unafraid but with a strange power to feel the eternal behind the temporal. He told them [in Bethel] that sacrifices & offerings and priestly ritual were human inventions. The [most] extraordinary thing about Amos is his insight into the vast universal moral law of gravitation by which every individual & every nation is tested. [Plato, Euripides, Christ, and Shakespeare recognized Amos’ plumbline].
A Living Hope (1942 or later)—The 27th Psalm is one of the most striking instances of a sudden shift from the highest faith [“The Lord is my light & my salvation” (v. 1)] to a dark night of the soul [“. . . put not thy servant away in anger ... leave me not, neither forsake me.” (v.9)]. [It began on a high note (v.1),] then come doubt & agony & he faces the mystery of evil, the divine silence, the loss of assurance and exultation (v.9). His phrase “I had believed to see the goodness of God in the land of the living” is significant. The hope of personal life after death comes [much later than the Psalms] in the OT. The old psalmist has his finger on the central nerve. Is the universe fundamentally significant? Has it produced and will it answer the deepest longings and strivings of human hearts? We can trust [God’s divine bestowal on us] as the mariner trusts his compass.
The Challenge of the Closed Door (mid 1940s)—Christ did not say, did not promise, that the door to the things we most desire is an open door. One of the first laws of life is: you must seek; you must want and then you must eagerly and patiently knock. It seems strange that the things we want most are not furnished ready-made. Apocalypses all take the easy line of expectation. Everything is to be done for us with any effort on our part. It looks to me as though Christ put His blessing on the slow, hard way. The trouble with the Scribes and Pharisees was that they didn’t have wants; they had arrived. They were at their easy goal [and reward]. There is no open door to our new world order. We must face that challenge of the closed door.
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18. Anthology with Comments (by Elizabeth Gray Vining; 1942)
[About the Author]—Elizabeth Gray Vining or Elizabeth Janet Gray was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1902. She earned a MS in library science from Drexel Institute and became a librarian at UNC at Chapel Hill. She became a Quaker by convincement after her husband died and she was injured in a car accident. She was an author of many children’s books, and tutored the Japanese royal family from 1946-1950. After writing this pamphlet she went on to write PH pamphlets #34, 66, 167, 221, and #246.
PREPARATIONS—[Even though an earthly king may inspire all manner of preparation], “at the coming of the King of Heaven/All’s set at 6 and 7;/ we wallow in our sin/Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn. We entertain him always like a stranger,/ And as at first, still lodge him in a manger. CHRIST CHURCH MS.
The King of Heaven gives no hint of his visit beforehand. Preparations for spiritual visitation consist of watching and praying, maintaining “alert passivity.” Today the number of people who are able to assert and to prove their assertion by their transformed lives and shining faces that they have been visited by the Holy Spirit is small. There are undoubtedly many who have had the experience but who are not willing to talk about it.
[If their numbers are few], there are increasing numbers of intelligent, thoughtful people who are willing to enter upon preparation and spiritual training. Albert Einstein, Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington find a spiritual force in the universe, though they may not call it God. Pascal said: “Thou wouldst not have sought me if thou hadst not already found me.” [Maybe] the King of Heaven is taking a hand in such preparations.
[Ecstasy]…A rainbow and a cuckoo’s song/ May never come together again;/ May never come/ This side of the tomb. W.H. DAVIES. Only a few people know ecstasy. [Here], I am thinking of “minor ecstasies”, bits of stardust which are for all of us. Something seen, heard, or felt flashes upon one with a bright freshness, & the heart stirs & lifts in answer. Fragments of beauty & truth lie in every path; they need only the seeing eye & the receptive spirit to become the stuff of minor ecstasies. [Poets are inspired by great & minor ecstasies alike].
[For me] an airplane, a great silver bird more rare then than now, coming out of the sunset [was a moment of ecstasy, & became my yard stick for future minor ecstasies. Once in sorrow, I heard the] soft & playful patter of locust blossoms falling on the roof from the tree above, & my heart knew again the happiness that is of the universe. It is well to recognize and cherish the moments when they come; it is an added joy to collect them.
Writing them down saves them for us; it reminds us when we need it that we have had these moments and will have them again. Exercising our faculty for minor ecstasies may actually increase the number of them we feel, though we must be careful not to let lust cloud our honesty with ourselves. Minor ecstasies will light those [numerous] gray stretches like faint but unmistakable stars, if we but look for them.
[Renewal]—… And now in age I bud again;/after so many deaths I live and write;/I once more smell the dew and rain/And relish versing:O my only Light,/ It cannot be/That I am he/On whom thy tempests fell all night. GEORGE HERBERT A mystic, he perhaps wrote of the Dark Night of the Soul, that arid and bleak time, experienced by most of the saints, when the Spirit seems to withdraw its presence, leaving the human soul in doubt and despair. Most great mystics have described it as the necessary stage before the soul laboriously climbing the Ladder of Perfection reaches union with the divine.
[Sympathy for Animals]—A Robin Redbreast in a Cage/Puts all Heaven in a Rage./ Each outcry of the hunted Hare/ A fiber from the Brain does tear. WILLIAM BLAKE
I have heard just once the outcry of the hunted hare. [My West Highland terrier chased one, caught it, and shook it to death]. The scream of the hare before death is almost human in its intensity, and a human cry is nearly animal in its abandonment to pain and fright. It is part of the makeup of mystics that they feel a sympathy and a union with animals. [Some are gifted enough to communicate the experience to others].
PRAISE OF CREATED THINGS—[After praising Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Brother Wind and Sister Water, Brother Fire and Mother Earth Saint Francis continues with]: Be thou praised my Lord, of our Sister Bodily Death/ from whom no man living may escape./ Woe to those who die in mortal sin./ Blessed are they who are found in thy most holy will,/ for the second death shall not work them ill. SAINT FRANCIS
St. Francis’ Hymn of Praise of Created Things is [especially moving in its recognition of the beauty of the universe, it realization of our kinship with all it manifestations and its simple thankfulness. Birds were dear to St. Francis indeed; they enter again and again into the story of his life. [It is said he even preached to them; they listened reverently; awaited his leave to go; & left going in the 4 directions, singing praises to God as they went]. Larks, swallows, turtle doves, and falcons are the birds St. Francis knew, and about which stories were told.
God’s Troubadour they called Francis of Assisi, because he had that skill in his youth. He would always show joy to the world and used his skill to sing praises in French unto the Lord Jesus Christ. In St. Francis’ life, more than any other I know about, the stream ran not only humble and precious and pure, but joyful as well.
THE ELIXIR—To do it as for Thee … A servant with this clause/makes drudgerie divine:/Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,/Makes that and th’action fine.//This is the famous stone/That turneth all to gold:/For that which God doth touch and own/Cannot for less be told. GEORGE HERBERT
All life is sacrament. In preparing meals, the engagement is fought daily; no ground is taken. Brother Lawrence was famous for practicing God's presence in the kitchen better than in his cell meditations. It takes a special double consciousness to achieve 2-fold success in meditation & cooking. Work can be looked on as sacrament, [with] making drudgery divine. [There must be] honest dedication to a Reality honestly believed in.
[Thomas Ellwood]—The winter tree/resembles me/ Whose sap lies in its root./ The spring draws nigh;/ As it so I/ Shall bud, I hope, and shoot. THOMAS ELLWOOD.
This is very bad poetry. [Yet,] I like its humility, its hope, and its unconscious humor. Where Herbert wrote joyously of actual renewal, Ellwood is looking forward in a sort of numb faith to the hope of spring. Thomas Ellwood was the son of Squire Ellwood of Crowell, Oxfordshire. [Following Quaker beliefs, the son refused to take his hat in his father’s presence, the father snatched it off, and did so until Thomas ran out of hats. After further tribulations and imprisonment, Thomas went to live with the Peningtons at Chalfont St. Peter and tutored their children. He was for a time Milton’s secretary. A meek, drab-skirted Muse [would be fitting] for Ellwood, as his personality was earnest, humorless, and faintly absurd. He still speaks for many of us who dare to look forward to a time when we too Shall bud, I hope, and shoot.
[Faith]—Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine,/That lights the pathway but one step ahead/Across a void of mystery and dread./Bid then the tender light of faith to shine/By which alone the mortal heart is led/Unto the thinking of the thought divine. GEORGE SANTAYANA
When I was in college, we had little use for faith, defined as “believing something you know is not true.” It has taken me more than 15 years to know faith as the basis of action. The higher and nobler the object or force on which one sets one’s faith, the more daring and effective the action.
[Releasing Joy]—He who kisses a joy as it flies/ Lives in eternity’s sunrise. WILLIAM BLAKE
One of the most effective and most necessary ways of overcoming self is learning not to lay one’s hot, possessive hands on the joys that one values. The Cloud of Unknowing sees danger even in fastening oneself to mediation’s and contemplation’s joys.
[Why does Evil Flourish?]—Mine, O thou Lord of life, send my roots rain. GERALD MANLEY HOPKINS
Gerald M. Hopkins poem is a paraphrase of Jeremiah’s previous complaint (Jer. 12:1) Though the thought of these 2 intensely religious men are similar, [there is a difference]. Jeremiah takes comfort in the prospect of the Lord’s vengeance. The modern has come into full possession of his ego, [and asks for rain on his roots].
[Patience]—Patience… suffreth debonairely alle the outrages of adversitte & wikked word. CHAUCER
The Parson’s Tale is a sermon on the 7 deadly sins. His practice of his own precepts has typified for us these 500 odd years the ideal country parson. He describes fully sin’s antidote among the virtues. Patience is a discredited value, [no doubt because as practiced today by heads of state is really impatience]. Patience characterized by grace and lightheartedness in meeting outrageous misfortune, is something different altogether.
NIGHT—The sun descending in the west,/ The evening star does shine;/ The birds are silent in their nest,/ & I must seek for mine,/ The moon like a flower,/In heaven’s high bower,/ With silent delight/ Sits & smiles on the night.//…“And now beside thee, bleating lamb,/I can lay down and sleep,/Or think on Him who bore thy name,/Graze after thee, and weep./For, wash’d in life’s river, My bright mane for ever/ Shall shine like gold/As I guard o’er the fold. WILLIAM BLAKE His Songs of Innocence in 1789 was as revolutionary and significant as the 1st snowdrop that pushes it head through the frost-hard ground, a wild flower in the winter forest.
There is over all the Songs of Innocence an unearthly and ineffable shine. [They are to words what Blake’s “Infant Jesus at Prayer” is to painting]. A.E. Housman writes: “Blake gives us poetry neat or with so little meaning that nothing but poetic emotion is perceived or matters.” [Perception of poetic emotion is] allowing the active analytic surface mind to cease questioning, and the deep-self, which understands symbols [intuitively], to receive the full substance of the poem, [to feel it] and be enriched by it.
[Death]—They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it... Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas. They live in one another still… This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their Friendship and Society are in the best sense ever present, because immortal. WILLIAM PENN
Very few poems have been written about death when it strikes those whom we love, a situation that urgently calls for the balm & stimulus of beautiful & comforting words. That is why these lines of William Penn’s taken from Some Fruits of Solitude, are so valuable. Penn had lost his beloved wife & son, as well as his loving, protective mother. Sorrow can't be fought & overcome; it can't be evaded or escaped; it must be lived with. Somehow we must learn to meet it with courage and to bear it with serenity, which is a whole way of living. We long to find in sorrow something that makes us stronger and better for the experience, [perhaps something immortal].
[LAST LINES]—Emily Bronte’s statement, these LAST LINES of faith in the God within endures no comment: No coward soul is mine,/ No trembler in the world’s storm troubled sphere:/ I see Heaven’s glories shine,/& faith shines equal, arming me from fear.//… Though earth & man were gone,/& suns & universes ceased to be,/ & Thou wert left alone,/ Every existence would exist in Thee.// There isn't room for Death,/Nor atom that his might could render void:/Thou—Thou art Being & Breath,/ & what Thou art may never be destroyed.
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[About the Author]—Elizabeth Gray Vining or Elizabeth Janet Gray was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1902. She earned a MS in library science from Drexel Institute and became a librarian at UNC at Chapel Hill. She became a Quaker by convincement after her husband died and she was injured in a car accident. She was an author of many children’s books, and tutored the Japanese royal family from 1946-1950. After writing this pamphlet she went on to write PH pamphlets #34, 66, 167, 221, and #246.
PREPARATIONS—[Even though an earthly king may inspire all manner of preparation], “at the coming of the King of Heaven/All’s set at 6 and 7;/ we wallow in our sin/Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn. We entertain him always like a stranger,/ And as at first, still lodge him in a manger. CHRIST CHURCH MS.
The King of Heaven gives no hint of his visit beforehand. Preparations for spiritual visitation consist of watching and praying, maintaining “alert passivity.” Today the number of people who are able to assert and to prove their assertion by their transformed lives and shining faces that they have been visited by the Holy Spirit is small. There are undoubtedly many who have had the experience but who are not willing to talk about it.
[If their numbers are few], there are increasing numbers of intelligent, thoughtful people who are willing to enter upon preparation and spiritual training. Albert Einstein, Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington find a spiritual force in the universe, though they may not call it God. Pascal said: “Thou wouldst not have sought me if thou hadst not already found me.” [Maybe] the King of Heaven is taking a hand in such preparations.
[Ecstasy]…A rainbow and a cuckoo’s song/ May never come together again;/ May never come/ This side of the tomb. W.H. DAVIES. Only a few people know ecstasy. [Here], I am thinking of “minor ecstasies”, bits of stardust which are for all of us. Something seen, heard, or felt flashes upon one with a bright freshness, & the heart stirs & lifts in answer. Fragments of beauty & truth lie in every path; they need only the seeing eye & the receptive spirit to become the stuff of minor ecstasies. [Poets are inspired by great & minor ecstasies alike].
[For me] an airplane, a great silver bird more rare then than now, coming out of the sunset [was a moment of ecstasy, & became my yard stick for future minor ecstasies. Once in sorrow, I heard the] soft & playful patter of locust blossoms falling on the roof from the tree above, & my heart knew again the happiness that is of the universe. It is well to recognize and cherish the moments when they come; it is an added joy to collect them.
Writing them down saves them for us; it reminds us when we need it that we have had these moments and will have them again. Exercising our faculty for minor ecstasies may actually increase the number of them we feel, though we must be careful not to let lust cloud our honesty with ourselves. Minor ecstasies will light those [numerous] gray stretches like faint but unmistakable stars, if we but look for them.
[Renewal]—… And now in age I bud again;/after so many deaths I live and write;/I once more smell the dew and rain/And relish versing:O my only Light,/ It cannot be/That I am he/On whom thy tempests fell all night. GEORGE HERBERT A mystic, he perhaps wrote of the Dark Night of the Soul, that arid and bleak time, experienced by most of the saints, when the Spirit seems to withdraw its presence, leaving the human soul in doubt and despair. Most great mystics have described it as the necessary stage before the soul laboriously climbing the Ladder of Perfection reaches union with the divine.
[Sympathy for Animals]—A Robin Redbreast in a Cage/Puts all Heaven in a Rage./ Each outcry of the hunted Hare/ A fiber from the Brain does tear. WILLIAM BLAKE
I have heard just once the outcry of the hunted hare. [My West Highland terrier chased one, caught it, and shook it to death]. The scream of the hare before death is almost human in its intensity, and a human cry is nearly animal in its abandonment to pain and fright. It is part of the makeup of mystics that they feel a sympathy and a union with animals. [Some are gifted enough to communicate the experience to others].
PRAISE OF CREATED THINGS—[After praising Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Brother Wind and Sister Water, Brother Fire and Mother Earth Saint Francis continues with]: Be thou praised my Lord, of our Sister Bodily Death/ from whom no man living may escape./ Woe to those who die in mortal sin./ Blessed are they who are found in thy most holy will,/ for the second death shall not work them ill. SAINT FRANCIS
St. Francis’ Hymn of Praise of Created Things is [especially moving in its recognition of the beauty of the universe, it realization of our kinship with all it manifestations and its simple thankfulness. Birds were dear to St. Francis indeed; they enter again and again into the story of his life. [It is said he even preached to them; they listened reverently; awaited his leave to go; & left going in the 4 directions, singing praises to God as they went]. Larks, swallows, turtle doves, and falcons are the birds St. Francis knew, and about which stories were told.
God’s Troubadour they called Francis of Assisi, because he had that skill in his youth. He would always show joy to the world and used his skill to sing praises in French unto the Lord Jesus Christ. In St. Francis’ life, more than any other I know about, the stream ran not only humble and precious and pure, but joyful as well.
THE ELIXIR—To do it as for Thee … A servant with this clause/makes drudgerie divine:/Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,/Makes that and th’action fine.//This is the famous stone/That turneth all to gold:/For that which God doth touch and own/Cannot for less be told. GEORGE HERBERT
All life is sacrament. In preparing meals, the engagement is fought daily; no ground is taken. Brother Lawrence was famous for practicing God's presence in the kitchen better than in his cell meditations. It takes a special double consciousness to achieve 2-fold success in meditation & cooking. Work can be looked on as sacrament, [with] making drudgery divine. [There must be] honest dedication to a Reality honestly believed in.
[Thomas Ellwood]—The winter tree/resembles me/ Whose sap lies in its root./ The spring draws nigh;/ As it so I/ Shall bud, I hope, and shoot. THOMAS ELLWOOD.
This is very bad poetry. [Yet,] I like its humility, its hope, and its unconscious humor. Where Herbert wrote joyously of actual renewal, Ellwood is looking forward in a sort of numb faith to the hope of spring. Thomas Ellwood was the son of Squire Ellwood of Crowell, Oxfordshire. [Following Quaker beliefs, the son refused to take his hat in his father’s presence, the father snatched it off, and did so until Thomas ran out of hats. After further tribulations and imprisonment, Thomas went to live with the Peningtons at Chalfont St. Peter and tutored their children. He was for a time Milton’s secretary. A meek, drab-skirted Muse [would be fitting] for Ellwood, as his personality was earnest, humorless, and faintly absurd. He still speaks for many of us who dare to look forward to a time when we too Shall bud, I hope, and shoot.
[Faith]—Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine,/That lights the pathway but one step ahead/Across a void of mystery and dread./Bid then the tender light of faith to shine/By which alone the mortal heart is led/Unto the thinking of the thought divine. GEORGE SANTAYANA
When I was in college, we had little use for faith, defined as “believing something you know is not true.” It has taken me more than 15 years to know faith as the basis of action. The higher and nobler the object or force on which one sets one’s faith, the more daring and effective the action.
[Releasing Joy]—He who kisses a joy as it flies/ Lives in eternity’s sunrise. WILLIAM BLAKE
One of the most effective and most necessary ways of overcoming self is learning not to lay one’s hot, possessive hands on the joys that one values. The Cloud of Unknowing sees danger even in fastening oneself to mediation’s and contemplation’s joys.
[Why does Evil Flourish?]—Mine, O thou Lord of life, send my roots rain. GERALD MANLEY HOPKINS
Gerald M. Hopkins poem is a paraphrase of Jeremiah’s previous complaint (Jer. 12:1) Though the thought of these 2 intensely religious men are similar, [there is a difference]. Jeremiah takes comfort in the prospect of the Lord’s vengeance. The modern has come into full possession of his ego, [and asks for rain on his roots].
[Patience]—Patience… suffreth debonairely alle the outrages of adversitte & wikked word. CHAUCER
The Parson’s Tale is a sermon on the 7 deadly sins. His practice of his own precepts has typified for us these 500 odd years the ideal country parson. He describes fully sin’s antidote among the virtues. Patience is a discredited value, [no doubt because as practiced today by heads of state is really impatience]. Patience characterized by grace and lightheartedness in meeting outrageous misfortune, is something different altogether.
NIGHT—The sun descending in the west,/ The evening star does shine;/ The birds are silent in their nest,/ & I must seek for mine,/ The moon like a flower,/In heaven’s high bower,/ With silent delight/ Sits & smiles on the night.//…“And now beside thee, bleating lamb,/I can lay down and sleep,/Or think on Him who bore thy name,/Graze after thee, and weep./For, wash’d in life’s river, My bright mane for ever/ Shall shine like gold/As I guard o’er the fold. WILLIAM BLAKE His Songs of Innocence in 1789 was as revolutionary and significant as the 1st snowdrop that pushes it head through the frost-hard ground, a wild flower in the winter forest.
There is over all the Songs of Innocence an unearthly and ineffable shine. [They are to words what Blake’s “Infant Jesus at Prayer” is to painting]. A.E. Housman writes: “Blake gives us poetry neat or with so little meaning that nothing but poetic emotion is perceived or matters.” [Perception of poetic emotion is] allowing the active analytic surface mind to cease questioning, and the deep-self, which understands symbols [intuitively], to receive the full substance of the poem, [to feel it] and be enriched by it.
[Death]—They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it... Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas. They live in one another still… This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their Friendship and Society are in the best sense ever present, because immortal. WILLIAM PENN
Very few poems have been written about death when it strikes those whom we love, a situation that urgently calls for the balm & stimulus of beautiful & comforting words. That is why these lines of William Penn’s taken from Some Fruits of Solitude, are so valuable. Penn had lost his beloved wife & son, as well as his loving, protective mother. Sorrow can't be fought & overcome; it can't be evaded or escaped; it must be lived with. Somehow we must learn to meet it with courage and to bear it with serenity, which is a whole way of living. We long to find in sorrow something that makes us stronger and better for the experience, [perhaps something immortal].
[LAST LINES]—Emily Bronte’s statement, these LAST LINES of faith in the God within endures no comment: No coward soul is mine,/ No trembler in the world’s storm troubled sphere:/ I see Heaven’s glories shine,/& faith shines equal, arming me from fear.//… Though earth & man were gone,/& suns & universes ceased to be,/ & Thou wert left alone,/ Every existence would exist in Thee.// There isn't room for Death,/Nor atom that his might could render void:/Thou—Thou art Being & Breath,/ & what Thou art may never be destroyed.
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