Quaker Writing: About Writing; Poetry
QUAKER WRITING: ABOUT WRITING
THE AUTHOR—MILDRED TONGE was born and educated in England. She taught at Bryn Mawr and Wellesley. She has published poems, articles and stories in England and America and her paintings have been exhibited at galleries in Philadelphia, New York City and Maine. At present Mildred Tonge is a member of the resident staff at Pendle Hill, where she teaches art and writing.
[Introduction]—The more we know of our own experience [through art and writing], the more we make contact with our present experience of God, the world, other people. My special interest is in applying to adults what I believe most of us would concede to children: that each of us is potentially creative in the arts; each of us has not outgrown our own growing point. Just as each of us must experience individually the Presence of God, so each of us must experience individually their own creativity. The experience has value beyond visible results. An intelligent, well-educated adult has to overcome self-consciousness in order to find self-expression.
Writing Group—The group is the ideal audience that in old days before printing story-tellers had before them visibly. When the group meets for the first time, the leader suggests that each member write for 5 minutes on anything that comes to mind. There is no yardstick or authority to meet in this piece of writing. No one is forced to read aloud what has been written, but it is rare for anyone to hold back. [It becomes clear that] what seems obvious to the writer is not obvious at all to the listener. By the time a few people have read aloud their own 5-minutes worth, it is obvious that each person in the group has material they alone could have experienced.
There is a writer in each of us, and only by letting that writer have an outlet can we encourage their development. At the 1st meeting the leader’s main business is to let each member relax into self-expression; the less the leader suggests subjects the better. Each “I” finds the single form of expression, clear as a path on a map, difficult to find when we are trying to follow someone else’s path up the mountain. The leader’s job is to help all believe that their own trail leads on the same satisfactory writing journey as Shakepeare’s, Dante’s or George Fox’s. [We must not] let another writer’s influence drown out our own vision of the world.
One useful exercise is using the characters who irritate you, inspire, you, or amuse you. [You may find yourself] freed from part of your pilgrim’s bundles [once you as a] writer dare to touch your own life’s material. Between the 1st and 2nd meeting, many have found a waning of enthusiasm. They have sat at typewriters; they have bought notebooks; they have felt restless. The restlessness is one hope to tie onto. All writing is an expression of God, partial but seeking. By writing we may nurse our raw emotions into maturity, gaining greater power to perceive and express. In daring to write from deeper levels, we release the imprisoned splendor.
[If one’s earlier training and reading seem to get in the way, it can be treated] as compost for one’s seed-growing. Each of us must hold our critic aside at sword’s point until we are ready to let them in. Treat the groping writer as a bright shy child. The leader’s business is to keep the members of the group focused on the main purpose—the balance between spontaneity and restraint in each person. The leader’s emphasis is towards expansiveness. What the group soon realizes is that their whole attitude to life changes as they see their material with more love. You become mature by facing yourself in words.
What emotions are we afraid of revealing in what we write? Try a few attempts; let Pegasus prance or make himself ridiculous. He knows better than we what gives him the meat to soar. We must remember that we are only the riders. What forms make us feel easy? Obviously the forms each suit different members of the group at different times. Withhold the mockery at yourself as claiming to be [some great writer]. You aren't claiming to be anyone but yourself. Encourage yourself to grow naturally; pruning & checking & measuring may come later.
From the spontaneous writing some of the group will have begun to develop longer passages. The members of the group begin to lose their over-confidences as well as their over-fears. Each of us has the opportunity to communicate our special world within the forms of the 20th century. A writer’s special core is to feel as intensely as a child, but with the remembered layers giving wisdom to the heights and depths of childhood.
With pencil and paper, no other equipment, a writer has all essential tools for an ART. When each member of the group gains faith in their own value as a writer, the exploring of their special kingdom is work with a purpose. One can even believe that in a sense one has something to communicate as vital as what Chaucer or Bunyan communicated. The leader can help by being a genuinely interested reader. As writer you have put them more in touch with themselves made them feel more alive, more able to be reconciled with their experiences. For most of us in our rediscovered kingdoms a better use of our time is in working with our own ore rather than studying further the traditions of how other writing explorers communicated the nameless.
Art Group—The approach used in a writing group can be used in an art group, by providing chalks & paints, paper of many sizes, brushes, scissors, sponges, cans of water and turpentine. [Adults will respond to these materials with a variety of reservations, “I can’ts,” & “How do I….”] In a painting group the main object is to paint, not to talk about painting. The closer the adults can get to the childhood feeling of making something they liked, the better they will get along. The leader may find used newspapers valuable for the 1st plunge. The leader will doodle something large just to get a few things started into motion. Some will enjoy their 1st doodle, others will be looking for cues on how to proceed. The leader may repeat that there is no “right” & “wrong” way to be an artist. The leader wants the group’s faith to grow, so that there will be no stereotypes and imitations.
In painting we begin to get in touch with intuitions, instincts, 5 senses. [We embellish our 1st doodle, & members of the group make discoveries. The leader ought to keep out of the way as much as possible so that no member will wait for “the right way” to do something. The leader’s main task is supplying materials. If 6 people are all trying different methods of getting colored pigment onto paper, the results are sure to be interesting.
[Adults will worry too much about how expensive the materials are.] The leader knows that more paint wastes from drying up in the jars and tubes than from being spread lavishly. [A sense of fun is an important part of the class.] It is hard for adults to realize that their “camera eye” gives them a unique view as artist. The 1st few meetings of the members of the art group put them in touch with materials and encourage them to find out where they respond. All the different preferences that arise are important.
The leader is hoping for greater confidence in self-expression. Between classes each member looks at the world differently because of taking part in the art experience; their eyes are being re-born. As an artist one has to exercise one’s seeing in a new way. [One’s artistic senses are heightened by Cézanne’s, Van Gogh’s, or Turner’s heightened perception of their subject]. But this experience is slight compared to the awakening that takes place when one begins to see objects with their own eyes, [when] one sees with the authentic vision. What we hope for is to re-find our own lost kingdoms. Our business is to allow our artistic child to grow.
[The leader will have to deal with the inner critics more in the 2nd meeting]. The leader’s business is to get the group painting as quickly as possible, to have new ways to start at this 2nd meeting, so that no one gets set in the rut of expecting to continue making doodles. For the 1st few meetings the group should keep away from “Still Life,” “Landscape,” “Figure Drawing,” “Interior,” “Jar of Flowers.” Their critic selves will flinch at their own attempts to meet any of these categories.
At the 2nd meeting the group may like to try monotypes. Each uses as work surface a pane of glass [with paint smeared on it]. The leader lays a sheet of paper on the oil paint, and shows how one can make 3 prints from the same oil-spread pattern on the glass. These prints are a way to get started. Some will want to do the process over again; some will want to add things to the print. [Their inner critic will be busy with comments]. [When working on their prints], their inner child artist is an important part of the painting team. Each of us must feed this inner child. Seeing with [that inner child’s] creative imagination, one sees a new world.
One early meeting may focus on collages. Each member of the group cuts paper into shapes & pastes them onto drawing paper, & then makes doodles over the pasted page. Part of the leader’s business is to encourage members to try all sorts of mixtures. [Eventually] the group gets that there is no one “right way,” & gets the spirit of experimenters. Through the art group, they may re-find this lost part of themselves. Once the group has met 6 times, the rigidity they felt the 1st time will have been broken.
Conclusion—The practice of both art and writing clears a pathway to some sort of new creative center within each of us. The value of our weekly group is that we each have the group as sounding board. The group’s enthusiasm carries us when we feel discouraged. Working in writing and art groups with adults has made me aware of how much each of us has re-educate ourselves. Each of us has to conquer our own form of conservatism if we expect to belong in the mainstream of 20th century forms. I had much to unlearn in writing.
A sort of panic makes us cling more firmly to the areas where we have felt secure. Each adult has to fight his own stubbornness a million times. Working in the right spirit, we acknowledge ourselves apprentices to life. Both writing & art groups encourage a feeling of discovery. [Mutual respect grows in these groups]. The [group] process is not mechanical, not imitative, not directed from without. [In our groups], we are allowed to pick up again, where we lost it as children.
Writers and artists, like children, know the sacredness, the immediacy of their own experience. Faith means believing in the divine purpose behind our own childhood and adulthood. When we attempt to express ourselves [in art and writing], we perform the human act of organizing something from chaos. We share the divine act of creation. We become part of the tide of human life, not isolated from it.
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About the Authors—Mary Morrison (MM) is a writer & teacher who divides time between PA & VT. She taught Gospel courses at Pendle Hill, & still leads Bible Study at a Kendal retirement community. She's author of 5 other pamphlets: 198 Re-Conciliation: The Hidden Hyphen; 219. Approaching Gospels 242. Journal & the Journey; 260 Way of the Cross; 311 Without Nightfall Upon the Spirit, a book, many articles, & book reviews.
Barbara Parsons (BP) spent nearly 15 years at Pendle Hill as student & staff. She works at Kendal retirement communities. Both authors kept journals most of their lives. Material for pamphlet came from a Pendle Hill course in fall 1995. Authors took turns presenting materials; authors' initials appear before each author change.
Barbara Parsons (BP) spent nearly 15 years at Pendle Hill as student & staff. She works at Kendal retirement communities. Both authors kept journals most of their lives. Material for pamphlet came from a Pendle Hill course in fall 1995. Authors took turns presenting materials; authors' initials appear before each author change.
Love questions themselves ... Don't seek answers; you can't have them, because you wouldn't be able to live them, [which is the whole point]. Live questions now ... You will gradually ... without noticing, Live ... into answers. Rainer Maria Rilke
(BP) JOURNALS —Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, George Fox, John Woolman are all early seekers using journals to help them know themselves, find life direction, & testify to faith. Howard Brinton used another term—religious autobiography—for journals & saw it as a characteristic form of Quaker writing. Non-religious seekers find great power in journals; writing is a journey into the unknown. Burghild Holzer writes: "I trace my steps on the page." In journals we work through experience and explore the questions that confront us every day.
(MM) I. EMPTY PAGE—If you look closely at your feelings as you write, you may find qualms, hesitations & maybe even paralysis. For Pema Chodron, beginning to write requires: Precision—clarity about & being present with what comes in writing; Gentleness—welcoming what comes through writing, giving it freedom to say what it will; Letting Go—once written, leave it alone until it returns to you, however long that takes.
Write down the 1st thing that comes to you every morning after you wake up. Eventually this practice becomes something else, raising questions & starting a journey while starting a journal. No stopping; no editing.
THOUGHTS ARE FREE—What restrictions will we find on our "free-flowing" thoughts? There are the many cultural values we recognize & resist. Some of society's normative values we resist without knowing why. There is a certain amount of nonsense, even in cultural values we accept, & a certain amount of good sense in ones we reject. We can gradually uncover what is holding our thoughts back, letting them go & then writing. [There is a facet of ourselves that] is very rigid, proper, & easily shocked. There is a "nice person" self-image. In contrast there are all kinds of nasty, vindictive thoughts appearing. It's important to know that you can harbor such feelings—have them often—& by being fully aware of them you can avoid acting on them unconsciously.
We need to accept what appears on the page uncritically as part of us. The most pervasive thought-blocker of all is "Mr. Question." He blocks the road to living into the [helpful] questions by asking severely demoralizing questions all the time. He kept me from writing or taking any decisive action; he discouraged me from being what I was. Yet he was inaudible to my conscious ear; we are only aware of a paralysis that afflicts us. We need to write down a dialog with our inmost critic. Write as if your thoughts were free, untrammeled by rigidity, by editing out all negativity and nasty thoughts, by [doubt-inducing negative questions].
THE GOOD LISTENER—If we are successful in [ignoring for a time] our obstacles to really free thoughts, a new problem arises. Writing and talking into a vacuum, to nobody, is chaos. It is not enough to rid ourselves of our negative observers. We need to find within ourselves another observer, a positive one, who will open up our inner life. It needs to be an attentive listener, who occasionally asks clarifying, [horizon-expanding] questions. We must work toward being our own best listener and find within us the same kind of wise and gentle hearing that we have sometimes been lucky enough to find in other, outer listeners. Write to this wise and understanding listener about a deep concern, answer the thoughtful, clarifying questions raised by them. Eventually we will find our selves whispering into the ear of the 1st and final creator, God.
(BP) II. ON THE ALERT—How do we use our writing to explore ways in which we connect to the world? How do we let the metaphors we find lead us to a greater understanding of self and place in the world? For 24 years until his death at age 45, Henry David Thoreau kept journals and notebooks that amounted to 2,000,000 words in 39 volumes. A recurring theme in the journals is: "I am on the alert for some wonderful Thing/ Which somewhere's a-taking place ... We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by infinite expectation of the dawn ... Choice experiences in my own writing may inspire me and ... I may make wholes of parts ... we remember our best hours and stimulate ourselves."
We rarely see and feel and hear with every sense alert. Henry James said: "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost." Fresh eyes will bring new material to our writing, & we will reach down into the depths of our nature; perhaps we will release memories that we have forgotten. Be entirely present to what you are observing; describe what you see, hear, smell; move on to feeling memories and associations; do this daily.
CONSIDER THE TURTLE—Thoreau writes: Perchance you have worried your self; despaired of the world, mediated the end of life, and all things seemed rushing to destruction; nature has steadily and serenely advanced with a turtle's pace ... What is summer [but a] time for a turtle's eggs to hatch?" [Our fast-paced life puts me in mind of] Alice running with the Red Queen, and "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." How do we leave time for sunrise, sunset, leaves growing in spring, a fine piece of music, a poem, scripture, a family member or friend? Ed Sanders was a Pendle Hill director. Before a staff retreat, he took the time to say goodbye to each of the older, dying trees tagged for removal while we were gone. I have scattered around the house, something on which to jot down short notes about things I want to remember. What is happening to you in this moment? What are you experiencing? What interests you and moves you? What is your mind doing? What does your life mean on this day?
HALLOWING THE EVERYDAY—If we do not allow work to take up all our attention, and give attention to the rest of the day, the day can give us great themes. [During Work Day Wednesday morning, I worked on the basement floor of the Barn]. The Barn is one of two focuses for Pendle Hill's community activities. The basement led me to think of the early Christian catacombs. After removing loose debris, we were going to try to remove with picks and shovels the layers of accumulated dirt and cinders that encrusted the concrete floor.
[Me]: Why are we doing this? [Leader]: Well, we need to clean out the furnace room.
We worked on, making very little progress on a job that increasingly seemed, in the grand scheme of things, futile and unnecessary. [Thoughts and images went in strange directions]. What if all those years of encrusted layers of debris were essential to keeping the structure above from crumbling and collapsing? What if we dug too deep? How would it be destructive to dig down through our own inner layers of the past and remove what could be binding the life above us together? Some of that "debris" may be necessary to maintain our inner stability. It is possible to dig too deep and destroy what is essential? How do we know when to stop digging? Those strange basement thoughts still keep working in my mind.
Thomas Kelly writes: "[We can be] immersed in this world daily living ... [and at the same time be] in active relation with Eternal Life." The poet Pablo Neruda wrote numerous odes to ordinary objects. We can hallow the everyday by being fully engaged and seeing where it takes us. Give your attention to one specific activity or experience of your common, everyday life. What did you do? Who with? Did you want to do it or not? How did you have something happen on another level or trigger memories during the experience?
COLLECTING—How did you collect some special thing as a child (e.g. ceramic or wooden dogs)? What collections do we carry into adulthood? In the end, one small wooden Pomeranian came with me to remind me of my 1st "collection." Now I collect books, music on CDs, English and Irish scenes, travel experiences, and words in notebooks and journals.
Elizabeth Vining calls her special moments, her minor ecstasies: "bits of star dust ... Something seen, heard, felt, flashes upon one with a bright freshness, and the heart, tired, sick, sad, or merely indifferent, stirs and lifts in answer, joy and wonder. Fragments of beauty and truth lie in every path; they need only the seeing eye and receptive spirit to become the stuff of authentic minor ecstasies. It cost but a notebook and the time it takes to jot down the few words that bring them back to us when time has overlaid them in our minds with dust, from everyday life. Writing them down, treasuring them ... makes us more aware of them ... collection of minor ecstasies can be a source of joy that is secret inviolable, inexhaustible."
What and why do you collect what you do? What does it mean to you? What does it add to your life? Be alert for some fleeting moment that lifts you out of the everyday, that brings moments of joy and wonder. Collect these experiences in your journal.
(MM) III. REVISITING OUR PAST—Revisiting it can be a valuable piece of personal writing. You can wallow in bitterness & sorrow, or you can gain understanding, really see it & gain a new perspective & [see how memory has reshaped the past as the distance from it increases]. There is what actually happened & what meaning you & the years have put into it. Albert Einstein writes: "Every reminiscence is colored by today being what it is, & therefore by a deceptive point of view." C.S. Lewis writes: "What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure; [a brief meeting] grows as we remember it. What it will be when I remember it, what it makes in me all my days [since] then—that is the real meeting." The [initial meeting] is only its beginning." We need to spend more time in gratitude & less in blame. Only when we know what debt we owe to parents, siblings, teachers, mentors, friends, & enemies can we give gifts an effective place in our lives.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, emperor of the declining Roman Empire in the 2nd century, best exemplifies writing in & of gratitude. For several pages, beginning with his grandfather & mother, he lists people from whom he has learned important things & to whom he's grateful. Write your own list of gratitudes & the people responsible. Gratitude is one of the greatest psychological gifts we can pick up along this personal writing path.
FROM POLARITY TO PARADOX—What episodes have you found in your remembrances that have a confusing mix of good & bad in them? How much & what kind of good & bad? It is in the good/ bad tension in experiences that growth comes. Polarity is more pressing & intense than ambivalence. Jung said that a person who could embrace both parts of a polarity & stay within that tension for as long as needful was doing the most necessary work of the world. [Truth lies in both halves of a polarized truth], in the realm of both/ and.
It takes more than thinking and puzzling to come to terms with a paradox; it has to be lived. Paradox seems to say that I am supposed to laugh and dance. For Paradox moves us to another dimension entirely, into a kind of cosmic playfulness. Paradox says, Wisdom is justified by all her children. To everyone who knocks, a unique door of perception opens. To all who ask, a true answer is given. Paradox is not out to win [an argument]. It is essentially humorous in its sudden juxtaposition of opposite and unlike things. It points toward reconciliation and forgiveness and smiles to show they are not heavy, laborious things we had thought.
The greatest truths are couched in paradox; nothing else will transmit the whole truth alive and free. The whole truth is not laid out in a straight line. It is like a diamond with many facets, all of which point toward and help to create the light shining out from its center." Try to move beyond the Either/ Or into some form of Both/ And. Use statement, a story, an experience, a poem, even a joke.
(BP) THE WEATHER TURNED AROUND—[One morning I was proceeding through the mundane in life, with 3 journal pages & their frustrations & questionable value, job concerns, gardening, walking again, party planning]. After that I fell down, broke leg & elbow & life completely changed. I spent a week in assisted-living, & lived 2 months on the 1st floor of my house in a hospital bed with a lot of help from friends & family. How quickly life changes. Sometimes we live with small changes in the weather, sometimes with immense ones. Explore a life-changing experience. What has it taught you? What has it given you? If you are not ready yet to explore this life experience, be satisfied to simply write about where you are now.
(MM) IV. DREAMS—Dreams were important to Marcus Aurelis & other ancient writers. But they became a casualty of the Enlightenment Age, & only recently have they acquired a kind of fringe-y acceptance through Jung, his followers, & John Sanford. Almost certainly as we write, our sleep will begin to flash with dreams. They are trying to tell us something; we need to learn how to listen. We will soon find out how much they have to reveal of what is going on deep down inside our thinking and feeling, well below consciousness. If we catch the dream and write it down it will reveal its tone and affect. We can set ourselves free from blind obedience to the mood that it has generated. A word or two, noted down, can serve as a reminder for fuller attention later on.
The big, unforgettable dreams are the ones that call for our full attention. We are to befriend them and visit them from time to time and pay attention to what they say. We are to work and play with them. Sometimes one vivid dream will light up a whole area of the lost past or of unexplored new possibilities. During the long period of convalescence mentioned earlier, I had a dream-series about snakes. After I got past my Judeo-Christian snake-prejudices and fears, there developed for me the classical image of the snake as healer. My dreams led me in mind, heart, imagination into the attitudes I needed in order to let my body heal itself.
More recently I had another dream-series, which called for several different techniques, like Jung's Active Imagination technique, which involves visiting the dream when awake and letting a free range of imagination take it further. It was like a treasure hunt, and it sent me to classical dictionaries in order to decipher its message. I had to unlearn old attitudes and learn new ones, presented obliquely and by hints, calling upon me to follow them faithfully into full insights. Go as deeply as you can into the dreams that speak especially to you. When visited by a big one, befriend it; use all your resources to explore its full meaning.
(BP) V. 5 W's & AN H—How many of our biggest questions are like Who is God or I; What is God's will for my life; What is my relationship to divine order; Where do I go from here; When will I find my direction; Why am I here & suffering; How do I know the Truth? It can be embarrassing to discover that the same questions are being asked over and over again, or that we don't know the answer to "obvious" questions. We have questions about identity, relationships, self-worth, work, love, hate. [Throughout life & more often nearer its end we ask]: How are we going to respond to the inevitable & growing diminishment that is coming upon us? Remember your big questions; explore & write about those questions & the times that triggered them.
WHAT IS YOUR QUESTION TODAY—Dr. Brooker, my college chemistry teacher, taught me valuable lessons about asking questions. We had the choice between asking questions about the reading or having a quiz. Many times he would start class by going down the rows of students, asking each one: "Do you have a question?" I was afraid of being the only one who didn't understand, the only stupid one. I would ask a question, and he would happily launch into an explanation and then his lecture for the day.
Elfrida Vipont Foulds says: "Always the search for Truth beings with a question ... inspired by curiosity, passionate protest, or discontent ... Great scientific discoveries, great masterpieces of art, great philosophies have sprung from such questions, and inspired more questions. Souls have been restless with longing for the pearl of great price, the inner peace beyond all questioning." Identify the most important questions in your life right now. [Not answers, just a list of questions]. Choose one and live with it for a week, identifying and exploring as many aspects of your question as you can uncover.
(MM) STATEMENT OF POSITION—[Our lives are made of a tangled ball of thoughts & feelings, which we occasionally take time to add a part of into a neatly-wound ball of thoughts & feelings we have made sense of; both balls exist at the same time]. Once in a while. one tangle will gather itself into a life-crisis & come at us head-on. A Statement of Position is a great thing to make at various mixed-up points in my life. Where do you stand in relation to this mixed-up situation in your life? Keep your thoughts firmly in the present—you aren't trying to find solutions as yet; you are simply trying to see where you stand, & the path by which you have come to that spot in your life. Write about this thing that concerns you deeply, that you need to sort out in your life, that you need to think about clearly & well. Imagine that a wise & understanding listener is listening to you, seeking clarification, or downplaying an overemphasized point—& in general sort this matter out.
(BP) VI. MOMENTS OF BEING—There's a peril in being too high-minded too early, or in fact being consciously high-minded at all. We need to have learned about the rags and riches of our own human nature to take on the so-called "spiritual" side of us, our spiritual experiences. We tend to think, too of "spiritual experiences" as being something apart, something special, always tremendous, magnificent, overwhelming. What if most spiritual experiences are small—perhaps microscopically so—hardly noticeable, needing our attention to magnify them to the point of awareness?
The Order of St. Luke doesn't admit anyone who couldn't report a personal healing experience. Dr. Price's definition is: "Anyone who has ever cut a finger and looked at it day after day, wondering at the marvelous process by which it heals, has had such an experience. Some of the "Moments of Beings" (i.e. moments of full, rich existence and full awareness) include: formerly unnoticed reality taking on a presence; times of enhanced meaning beyond its surface value; a reading speaking directly to you; overwhelming gratitude; especially vivid dream from somewhere beyond yourself; past Moments of Being. [When one comes to you, write about it].
(BP & MM) VII. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER—Christina Baldwin writes: "Journal writing has been around as long as writing itself ... Writing connects us to a [millenium-long] chain of articulation about being human. Writing taps us in ... to the veins of story & experience, some of which we claim as ours alone, & all of which are universal." Journal & journey together shapes a life & creates a world, a web of associations, memories and flashes of insight, woven from experience and dreams, action, thought and feeling, colored by happiness and sorrow. You are giving your life meaning, and perhaps showing others how to find meaning in theirs.
[For the sake of our inner life, there needs to be] a journal, a thoughtful writing-down of happenings thoughts, dreams, nightmares, [any] claim to our attention ... We need to write down our response to them, both immediate and later thoughts. [It will help us sort through] our lifetime store of soul-furniture for what to keep or discard. Through it we can watch what we do and find out who we are. Mary Morrison.
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QUAKER WRITING: POETRY
202. Quakers poets: past and present (by Mary Hoxie Jones; 1975)
(BP) JOURNALS —Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, George Fox, John Woolman are all early seekers using journals to help them know themselves, find life direction, & testify to faith. Howard Brinton used another term—religious autobiography—for journals & saw it as a characteristic form of Quaker writing. Non-religious seekers find great power in journals; writing is a journey into the unknown. Burghild Holzer writes: "I trace my steps on the page." In journals we work through experience and explore the questions that confront us every day.
(MM) I. EMPTY PAGE—If you look closely at your feelings as you write, you may find qualms, hesitations & maybe even paralysis. For Pema Chodron, beginning to write requires: Precision—clarity about & being present with what comes in writing; Gentleness—welcoming what comes through writing, giving it freedom to say what it will; Letting Go—once written, leave it alone until it returns to you, however long that takes.
Write down the 1st thing that comes to you every morning after you wake up. Eventually this practice becomes something else, raising questions & starting a journey while starting a journal. No stopping; no editing.
THOUGHTS ARE FREE—What restrictions will we find on our "free-flowing" thoughts? There are the many cultural values we recognize & resist. Some of society's normative values we resist without knowing why. There is a certain amount of nonsense, even in cultural values we accept, & a certain amount of good sense in ones we reject. We can gradually uncover what is holding our thoughts back, letting them go & then writing. [There is a facet of ourselves that] is very rigid, proper, & easily shocked. There is a "nice person" self-image. In contrast there are all kinds of nasty, vindictive thoughts appearing. It's important to know that you can harbor such feelings—have them often—& by being fully aware of them you can avoid acting on them unconsciously.
We need to accept what appears on the page uncritically as part of us. The most pervasive thought-blocker of all is "Mr. Question." He blocks the road to living into the [helpful] questions by asking severely demoralizing questions all the time. He kept me from writing or taking any decisive action; he discouraged me from being what I was. Yet he was inaudible to my conscious ear; we are only aware of a paralysis that afflicts us. We need to write down a dialog with our inmost critic. Write as if your thoughts were free, untrammeled by rigidity, by editing out all negativity and nasty thoughts, by [doubt-inducing negative questions].
THE GOOD LISTENER—If we are successful in [ignoring for a time] our obstacles to really free thoughts, a new problem arises. Writing and talking into a vacuum, to nobody, is chaos. It is not enough to rid ourselves of our negative observers. We need to find within ourselves another observer, a positive one, who will open up our inner life. It needs to be an attentive listener, who occasionally asks clarifying, [horizon-expanding] questions. We must work toward being our own best listener and find within us the same kind of wise and gentle hearing that we have sometimes been lucky enough to find in other, outer listeners. Write to this wise and understanding listener about a deep concern, answer the thoughtful, clarifying questions raised by them. Eventually we will find our selves whispering into the ear of the 1st and final creator, God.
(BP) II. ON THE ALERT—How do we use our writing to explore ways in which we connect to the world? How do we let the metaphors we find lead us to a greater understanding of self and place in the world? For 24 years until his death at age 45, Henry David Thoreau kept journals and notebooks that amounted to 2,000,000 words in 39 volumes. A recurring theme in the journals is: "I am on the alert for some wonderful Thing/ Which somewhere's a-taking place ... We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by infinite expectation of the dawn ... Choice experiences in my own writing may inspire me and ... I may make wholes of parts ... we remember our best hours and stimulate ourselves."
We rarely see and feel and hear with every sense alert. Henry James said: "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost." Fresh eyes will bring new material to our writing, & we will reach down into the depths of our nature; perhaps we will release memories that we have forgotten. Be entirely present to what you are observing; describe what you see, hear, smell; move on to feeling memories and associations; do this daily.
CONSIDER THE TURTLE—Thoreau writes: Perchance you have worried your self; despaired of the world, mediated the end of life, and all things seemed rushing to destruction; nature has steadily and serenely advanced with a turtle's pace ... What is summer [but a] time for a turtle's eggs to hatch?" [Our fast-paced life puts me in mind of] Alice running with the Red Queen, and "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." How do we leave time for sunrise, sunset, leaves growing in spring, a fine piece of music, a poem, scripture, a family member or friend? Ed Sanders was a Pendle Hill director. Before a staff retreat, he took the time to say goodbye to each of the older, dying trees tagged for removal while we were gone. I have scattered around the house, something on which to jot down short notes about things I want to remember. What is happening to you in this moment? What are you experiencing? What interests you and moves you? What is your mind doing? What does your life mean on this day?
HALLOWING THE EVERYDAY—If we do not allow work to take up all our attention, and give attention to the rest of the day, the day can give us great themes. [During Work Day Wednesday morning, I worked on the basement floor of the Barn]. The Barn is one of two focuses for Pendle Hill's community activities. The basement led me to think of the early Christian catacombs. After removing loose debris, we were going to try to remove with picks and shovels the layers of accumulated dirt and cinders that encrusted the concrete floor.
[Me]: Why are we doing this? [Leader]: Well, we need to clean out the furnace room.
We worked on, making very little progress on a job that increasingly seemed, in the grand scheme of things, futile and unnecessary. [Thoughts and images went in strange directions]. What if all those years of encrusted layers of debris were essential to keeping the structure above from crumbling and collapsing? What if we dug too deep? How would it be destructive to dig down through our own inner layers of the past and remove what could be binding the life above us together? Some of that "debris" may be necessary to maintain our inner stability. It is possible to dig too deep and destroy what is essential? How do we know when to stop digging? Those strange basement thoughts still keep working in my mind.
Thomas Kelly writes: "[We can be] immersed in this world daily living ... [and at the same time be] in active relation with Eternal Life." The poet Pablo Neruda wrote numerous odes to ordinary objects. We can hallow the everyday by being fully engaged and seeing where it takes us. Give your attention to one specific activity or experience of your common, everyday life. What did you do? Who with? Did you want to do it or not? How did you have something happen on another level or trigger memories during the experience?
COLLECTING—How did you collect some special thing as a child (e.g. ceramic or wooden dogs)? What collections do we carry into adulthood? In the end, one small wooden Pomeranian came with me to remind me of my 1st "collection." Now I collect books, music on CDs, English and Irish scenes, travel experiences, and words in notebooks and journals.
Elizabeth Vining calls her special moments, her minor ecstasies: "bits of star dust ... Something seen, heard, felt, flashes upon one with a bright freshness, and the heart, tired, sick, sad, or merely indifferent, stirs and lifts in answer, joy and wonder. Fragments of beauty and truth lie in every path; they need only the seeing eye and receptive spirit to become the stuff of authentic minor ecstasies. It cost but a notebook and the time it takes to jot down the few words that bring them back to us when time has overlaid them in our minds with dust, from everyday life. Writing them down, treasuring them ... makes us more aware of them ... collection of minor ecstasies can be a source of joy that is secret inviolable, inexhaustible."
What and why do you collect what you do? What does it mean to you? What does it add to your life? Be alert for some fleeting moment that lifts you out of the everyday, that brings moments of joy and wonder. Collect these experiences in your journal.
(MM) III. REVISITING OUR PAST—Revisiting it can be a valuable piece of personal writing. You can wallow in bitterness & sorrow, or you can gain understanding, really see it & gain a new perspective & [see how memory has reshaped the past as the distance from it increases]. There is what actually happened & what meaning you & the years have put into it. Albert Einstein writes: "Every reminiscence is colored by today being what it is, & therefore by a deceptive point of view." C.S. Lewis writes: "What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure; [a brief meeting] grows as we remember it. What it will be when I remember it, what it makes in me all my days [since] then—that is the real meeting." The [initial meeting] is only its beginning." We need to spend more time in gratitude & less in blame. Only when we know what debt we owe to parents, siblings, teachers, mentors, friends, & enemies can we give gifts an effective place in our lives.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, emperor of the declining Roman Empire in the 2nd century, best exemplifies writing in & of gratitude. For several pages, beginning with his grandfather & mother, he lists people from whom he has learned important things & to whom he's grateful. Write your own list of gratitudes & the people responsible. Gratitude is one of the greatest psychological gifts we can pick up along this personal writing path.
FROM POLARITY TO PARADOX—What episodes have you found in your remembrances that have a confusing mix of good & bad in them? How much & what kind of good & bad? It is in the good/ bad tension in experiences that growth comes. Polarity is more pressing & intense than ambivalence. Jung said that a person who could embrace both parts of a polarity & stay within that tension for as long as needful was doing the most necessary work of the world. [Truth lies in both halves of a polarized truth], in the realm of both/ and.
It takes more than thinking and puzzling to come to terms with a paradox; it has to be lived. Paradox seems to say that I am supposed to laugh and dance. For Paradox moves us to another dimension entirely, into a kind of cosmic playfulness. Paradox says, Wisdom is justified by all her children. To everyone who knocks, a unique door of perception opens. To all who ask, a true answer is given. Paradox is not out to win [an argument]. It is essentially humorous in its sudden juxtaposition of opposite and unlike things. It points toward reconciliation and forgiveness and smiles to show they are not heavy, laborious things we had thought.
The greatest truths are couched in paradox; nothing else will transmit the whole truth alive and free. The whole truth is not laid out in a straight line. It is like a diamond with many facets, all of which point toward and help to create the light shining out from its center." Try to move beyond the Either/ Or into some form of Both/ And. Use statement, a story, an experience, a poem, even a joke.
(BP) THE WEATHER TURNED AROUND—[One morning I was proceeding through the mundane in life, with 3 journal pages & their frustrations & questionable value, job concerns, gardening, walking again, party planning]. After that I fell down, broke leg & elbow & life completely changed. I spent a week in assisted-living, & lived 2 months on the 1st floor of my house in a hospital bed with a lot of help from friends & family. How quickly life changes. Sometimes we live with small changes in the weather, sometimes with immense ones. Explore a life-changing experience. What has it taught you? What has it given you? If you are not ready yet to explore this life experience, be satisfied to simply write about where you are now.
(MM) IV. DREAMS—Dreams were important to Marcus Aurelis & other ancient writers. But they became a casualty of the Enlightenment Age, & only recently have they acquired a kind of fringe-y acceptance through Jung, his followers, & John Sanford. Almost certainly as we write, our sleep will begin to flash with dreams. They are trying to tell us something; we need to learn how to listen. We will soon find out how much they have to reveal of what is going on deep down inside our thinking and feeling, well below consciousness. If we catch the dream and write it down it will reveal its tone and affect. We can set ourselves free from blind obedience to the mood that it has generated. A word or two, noted down, can serve as a reminder for fuller attention later on.
The big, unforgettable dreams are the ones that call for our full attention. We are to befriend them and visit them from time to time and pay attention to what they say. We are to work and play with them. Sometimes one vivid dream will light up a whole area of the lost past or of unexplored new possibilities. During the long period of convalescence mentioned earlier, I had a dream-series about snakes. After I got past my Judeo-Christian snake-prejudices and fears, there developed for me the classical image of the snake as healer. My dreams led me in mind, heart, imagination into the attitudes I needed in order to let my body heal itself.
More recently I had another dream-series, which called for several different techniques, like Jung's Active Imagination technique, which involves visiting the dream when awake and letting a free range of imagination take it further. It was like a treasure hunt, and it sent me to classical dictionaries in order to decipher its message. I had to unlearn old attitudes and learn new ones, presented obliquely and by hints, calling upon me to follow them faithfully into full insights. Go as deeply as you can into the dreams that speak especially to you. When visited by a big one, befriend it; use all your resources to explore its full meaning.
(BP) V. 5 W's & AN H—How many of our biggest questions are like Who is God or I; What is God's will for my life; What is my relationship to divine order; Where do I go from here; When will I find my direction; Why am I here & suffering; How do I know the Truth? It can be embarrassing to discover that the same questions are being asked over and over again, or that we don't know the answer to "obvious" questions. We have questions about identity, relationships, self-worth, work, love, hate. [Throughout life & more often nearer its end we ask]: How are we going to respond to the inevitable & growing diminishment that is coming upon us? Remember your big questions; explore & write about those questions & the times that triggered them.
WHAT IS YOUR QUESTION TODAY—Dr. Brooker, my college chemistry teacher, taught me valuable lessons about asking questions. We had the choice between asking questions about the reading or having a quiz. Many times he would start class by going down the rows of students, asking each one: "Do you have a question?" I was afraid of being the only one who didn't understand, the only stupid one. I would ask a question, and he would happily launch into an explanation and then his lecture for the day.
Elfrida Vipont Foulds says: "Always the search for Truth beings with a question ... inspired by curiosity, passionate protest, or discontent ... Great scientific discoveries, great masterpieces of art, great philosophies have sprung from such questions, and inspired more questions. Souls have been restless with longing for the pearl of great price, the inner peace beyond all questioning." Identify the most important questions in your life right now. [Not answers, just a list of questions]. Choose one and live with it for a week, identifying and exploring as many aspects of your question as you can uncover.
(MM) STATEMENT OF POSITION—[Our lives are made of a tangled ball of thoughts & feelings, which we occasionally take time to add a part of into a neatly-wound ball of thoughts & feelings we have made sense of; both balls exist at the same time]. Once in a while. one tangle will gather itself into a life-crisis & come at us head-on. A Statement of Position is a great thing to make at various mixed-up points in my life. Where do you stand in relation to this mixed-up situation in your life? Keep your thoughts firmly in the present—you aren't trying to find solutions as yet; you are simply trying to see where you stand, & the path by which you have come to that spot in your life. Write about this thing that concerns you deeply, that you need to sort out in your life, that you need to think about clearly & well. Imagine that a wise & understanding listener is listening to you, seeking clarification, or downplaying an overemphasized point—& in general sort this matter out.
(BP) VI. MOMENTS OF BEING—There's a peril in being too high-minded too early, or in fact being consciously high-minded at all. We need to have learned about the rags and riches of our own human nature to take on the so-called "spiritual" side of us, our spiritual experiences. We tend to think, too of "spiritual experiences" as being something apart, something special, always tremendous, magnificent, overwhelming. What if most spiritual experiences are small—perhaps microscopically so—hardly noticeable, needing our attention to magnify them to the point of awareness?
The Order of St. Luke doesn't admit anyone who couldn't report a personal healing experience. Dr. Price's definition is: "Anyone who has ever cut a finger and looked at it day after day, wondering at the marvelous process by which it heals, has had such an experience. Some of the "Moments of Beings" (i.e. moments of full, rich existence and full awareness) include: formerly unnoticed reality taking on a presence; times of enhanced meaning beyond its surface value; a reading speaking directly to you; overwhelming gratitude; especially vivid dream from somewhere beyond yourself; past Moments of Being. [When one comes to you, write about it].
(BP & MM) VII. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER—Christina Baldwin writes: "Journal writing has been around as long as writing itself ... Writing connects us to a [millenium-long] chain of articulation about being human. Writing taps us in ... to the veins of story & experience, some of which we claim as ours alone, & all of which are universal." Journal & journey together shapes a life & creates a world, a web of associations, memories and flashes of insight, woven from experience and dreams, action, thought and feeling, colored by happiness and sorrow. You are giving your life meaning, and perhaps showing others how to find meaning in theirs.
[For the sake of our inner life, there needs to be] a journal, a thoughtful writing-down of happenings thoughts, dreams, nightmares, [any] claim to our attention ... We need to write down our response to them, both immediate and later thoughts. [It will help us sort through] our lifetime store of soul-furniture for what to keep or discard. Through it we can watch what we do and find out who we are. Mary Morrison.
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QUAKER WRITING: POETRY
About the Author—Mary Hoxie Jones was a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and is presently Research Associate in Quaker Studies at Haverford College Library and the author of several books including 2 volumes of poetry. Mary Hoxie Jones was president of both the American and British Friends Historical Societies. This pamphlet is from an address given to the latter Society.
Where each is at its best, Quakerism and poetry have something in common; the worshiper and the reader . . . may perceive the likeness without putting it in words. Dorothy Gilbert Thorne
Quakerism is poetic. Actually the heart of Quakerism is the quick of sensitivity. E. Merrill Root
I—Where does worship end and poetry begin? The experience of worship, or the experience of trying to worship, & the experience of writing a poem can complement each other. [Doris Dalglish believes that Quakers look at poetry as a tool & not at its intrinsic value]. Clive Sansom says the Friends have allowed “good works to push aside the writing of poetry; [they see it taking] up too much time & energy from the “development of inner life.” [Sansom said]: “It can be a part of the spiritual life, even when the poem isn't concerned . . . with religion.”
Charles Kohler writes: “Poetic experience & the heightened awareness experienced in worship both derive from similar roots: they have their mysterious being in the Kingdom of Eternity... When the mind is quiet & dis-tractions fade, the inward ear & eye apprehend new dimensions of self-knowledge ... In poetry, contemplative spirit is embodied in words.” John W. Harvey writes: “Poetry isn't vision. It is the intent gaze of an eager mind.”
II—The Society had its bleak era, when there were restrictions & inhibitions in the “reading of books & papers that have any tendency to prejudice the profession of the Christian religion.” Robert Barclay believed that “all the imaginations of the natural man were 'evil perpetually in the sight of God.” William Penn wrote: “There is truth & beauty in rhetoric but it more often serves ill turns than good ones”; Penn had a low opinion of poets.
In spite of this attitude, at least 6 volumes of verse were published from 1661-1772. [In late 19th century, the older generation of Quakers took steps to ensure that the younger generation didn't] read anything that wasn't true. Luella Wright says: “ Early Friends failed to realize intellect might be a determining factor in conduct, aid [to] conscience, & a source for preaching & writing, led to a thin literary quality in Friend’s writing.” There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, of an elderly Friend saying: “Thou [shouldn't have been thinking [during meeting].”
III—Fred Nicholson says that early Friends wrote Elegies, Epitaphs, Satires and even love lyrics. Doris Dalglish names Thomas Story as the 1st Quaker poet. In 1690 he wrote “A Song of Praise to the Saints in Zion.” I am tempted to call Margaret Fell the 1st Quaker poet; she wrote an Elegy to Josiah Coale who had just died. William Penn also wrote an elegy to Josiah Coale, a much longer poem, also in rhyming couplets.
Thomas Ellwood (1639-1713) didn't claim to be a poet, but wrote “for common readers, in a style familiar & easy to be understood.” A collection of Ellwood’s poems was published before 1770; the 1st poem fills 9 pages. Thomas Ellwood’s long epic, The Davideis, in 5 books, was started in 1688 but not published until about 1712. John Greenleaf Whittier referred to it in Snowbound (1862). Ellwood said to Milton “Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found”; Milton later wrote Paradise Regained (1671).
IV—John Fry (1701-1775) was a minister of London Yearly Meeting. His poems are of a most moral & didactic sort. [He has no use for poetry that] “conveys no instruction in morality, no encouragement in virtue . . . & is destitute of real Truth.” He wrote “in as plain & explicitly a manner as I could, avoiding every imaginary & flighty mode of expression.” Catherine Phillips of the next generation, had similar concerns. Perhaps the best known poet of the end of this century is Bernard Barton. While The Edinburgh Review expresses delight at finding Barton a Quaker poet, they saw a danger since “the gifts of imagination ... may be abused & misapplied … The sober-minded . . . will scarcely permit him to deal very freely with the stronger passions.” Bernard Barton wrote: “But I contend the Quaker creed,/By fair interpretation,/ Has nothing in it to impede/ Poetic aspiration.
Many verses have been written which have enabled Friends to look at their foibles and to laugh at themselves. James N. Richardson (1846-1921), an Irish Friend wrote such verse. They were inspired by the heated discussion on music and the conditions of Northern Ireland. He wrote to elders in The Quakri at Grange:
“But O ye mighty Elders/ Who guard the ancient Way,/ Who cannot plead the fire of youth,/ To you what can I say?/ Are your own rules forgotten?/ And have ye still to learn/ The seriousness of hindering/ A Quakor ‘neath concern?/ With strange and varying Quavers/ Your accents oft time ring./ Why is it right for you to chant?/ And wrong for him to sing?”
There is an American counterpart to these verses in Quaker Quiddities or Friends in Council, probably written by James B. Congdon (1802-1880), in blank verse, between 2 fictitious Friends, 1 liberal, 1 conservative. On the subject of a piano in a Quaker home, my grandmother could not agree to allow a piano in the home and compromised by allowing her son to have a flute; my uncle later found a piano at Haverford College. I went to a non-Quaker school rather than grow up without music or Shakespeare.
V—James Bunker Congdon said of John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892): “Whittier, the gifted son of song, whose lays/ Have the true lyric ring ... For the 1st time in its history, the Society of Friends has produced [& pardoned] a poet.” Whittier was a better poet than most of those already referred to but perhaps he wasn't as good as many thought. He was dubious about the prevailing Quaker tendencies of the day & urged young men to stand for the great primitive lines of our faith.” Margaret Harvey calls him a great Quaker & a sensitive spirit no matter how people feel about his place as a poet. She believes that “he made a great contribution ... by the remark-able balance he kept between Christian essentials & their expression in Quakerly emphases.” Whittier’s hymn “Dear Lord & Father of mankind” is the last 6 verses of the much longer The Brewing of Soma. In the poem Whittier is making the contrast between the wild orgies connected with Soma & “the still small voice of calm.”
VI—Do I include Walt Whitman in this discussion Quakers & poetry? “The good gray poet” was actually not a Quaker, although his mother had been. Elias Hicks, a neighbor, said “the fullness of the godhead dwelt in every blade of grass,” & Whitman called his book of poems, Leaves of Grass. Henry Bryan Binns refers to Whitman as a prophet-mystic who would not bear arms, who had many of the Quaker traits, including love of silence and goodwill to men. His poetry was greeted with approval and enthusiasm at a Philadelphia Meeting. [Ed. Note: For an example I use the closing verses of [Song of Myself] in honor of George and Elizabeth Watson]:
I depart as air. . . I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,/ I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags./ I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,/ If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles./ You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,/ But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,/ And filter, and fibre your blood./ Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,/ Missing me one place search another,/ I stop some where waiting for you.
VII—Friends are now showing an increasing amount of interest in poetry and arts in general. Dorothy Gilbert Thorne wrote Pendle Hill Pamphlet #130 Poetry Among Friends. I belong to a Quaker poetry group in Philadelphia called “Poets Walk In.” Laurence pointed out that “The full values of Art and Religion cannot be separated without loss to both alike. In the early days of the Society . . . the rejection of the sense of beauty as one of God’s true gifts to man, did the Society no good.”
Modern-day poets include: John H. McCandless (Yet Shall we Kneel; 1972); Kenneth Boulding (There is a Spirit: The Naylor Sonnets (1945)). 75 years ago an English Friend, John Wilhelm Rowntree, spoke for our age as he spoke for his: “Give your soul room to grow. Seek the reality which others have won before you, & make it your own . . . The soul’s true life . . . The soul must know itself and the battle of life must be fought within.”
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77. Poets Walk in (by Anna Pettit Broomell; 1954)
[About the Author]—Anna Pettit Broomell (1887-1973) spent her life in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. She attended Friends Central School and Swarthmore College. She demonstrated her talent as an editor and an inspiration to writers through her work in organizing “THE POETS,” a literary group described in this pamphlet. In addition to her work on poetry, she collected and edited 2 collections of stories. She worked with the Friends Free Library in Germantown, the board of Pendle Hill, and Pendle Hill Publications.
[Introduction]—THE POETS group was started 10 years ago by 4 of us who been studying the synoptic gospels together. [At the end of our studies], someone suggested that the following year we each read poetry, & share with the others the poems she loved best. It was a spontaneous drawing together with no formal membership, & reached 20 in number, which has been maintained as some moved away or dropped out. After several months of reading poetry together we found ourselves writing poetry & reading it to the group. [Sharing intimate poems], openings into the hearts of one another has been an important element in a creative association which has been a delight & a therapeutic. Those who have little opportunity to associate with others are especially prone to think they are the only ones who [have unexpressed joys & sorrows] or difficulties to surmount.
[Informal, Pragmatic, Procedures]—Except for a continuity of meeting place, we remain untrammeled by rules. We have no officers, no dues, no set programs. We meet twice a month, once to read our own, once to get better acquainted with poets we especially like. It was a memorable experience to hear Edith Sitwell's poems read by herself. When I heard her read them, I realized that she was using words as if they were notes of music; I felt the music. We read our offerings in turn. Side by side are doggerel and complicated verse forms; the obvious and the obscure; [each contrasting form benefited from the other]. In writing poetry the satisfaction is not so much dependent upon the product as upon the ability to feel and to concentrate feeling to a focal point.
[Poetry Shared, a New Group Formed]—A charming young woman met with us for several years and shared the delicate touch she inherited from her Japanese forbears; she taught us to cut down on ornamentation, to simplify. [The poetic offerings that follow will be excerpts from the groups' poems unless otherwise noted].
MEDITATION FOR CHRISTMAS: "Were you afraid/ When you held Him/ snug in your arms/ Among the steaming cattle?/ Teach me Mary,/ To walk among men/ Whose doors are half open, With Christmas in my heart."
A poet of 60 years experience adds to the group with her beautiful voice in readings, her beautiful praise, and rarely with a new poem. A member moved to nearby New Jersey and started a new group saying, "If an idea is good it will germinate"; the 2 groups occasionally meet together. One might wonder how the born poets put up with those who are in the process of achieving poetry. It seems as if the amateurs support the proficients like a heavy foundation supports a beautiful building. Small or great, we have all been stimulated to see, understand, feel more acutely and to try to capture our experience in words.
[IN JULY, etc.]—IN JULY: This room is bare-swept like a winter tree/ No gentle draping but wide airy lines ... Here sit, hands still and waiting. This is now,/ The moment unreturning.
[Starry Eye/ Stick-in-the-Mud,]: "Said Starry Eye to Stick-in-the-Mud,/ 'Let's move along today/ Said Stick-in-the-Mud to Starry Eye, 'I do not know the way.' ...'The only way to learn a thing,'/ Said Star, 'is to keep on trying;/ The only way to learn to die/ Is daily practice dying./ 'So come along the road with me/ Where life with every breath/ Will teach you how to live with change/ And feel at home with death."
SKY-HIGH: "I have climbed once more/ To the earth's last floor, ... And a roaring wind and a low white thorn,/ Where a loosened rock from its mooring torn/ Falls in the hollow ... I shall taste the wind, I shall hold the sky,/ I shall savor wings as the winds rush by/ For I have climbed once more/ To the earth's last floor."
DAWN AT SEA: "A fitful cry across the drifting spray/ Where mighty stillness lifts the world from sleep ... Across the waters where the ripples make/ A path where dawn may walk upon the sea."
[About the Author]—Anna Pettit Broomell (1887-1973) spent her life in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. She attended Friends Central School and Swarthmore College. She demonstrated her talent as an editor and an inspiration to writers through her work in organizing “THE POETS,” a literary group described in this pamphlet. In addition to her work on poetry, she collected and edited 2 collections of stories. She worked with the Friends Free Library in Germantown, the board of Pendle Hill, and Pendle Hill Publications.
[Introduction]—THE POETS group was started 10 years ago by 4 of us who been studying the synoptic gospels together. [At the end of our studies], someone suggested that the following year we each read poetry, & share with the others the poems she loved best. It was a spontaneous drawing together with no formal membership, & reached 20 in number, which has been maintained as some moved away or dropped out. After several months of reading poetry together we found ourselves writing poetry & reading it to the group. [Sharing intimate poems], openings into the hearts of one another has been an important element in a creative association which has been a delight & a therapeutic. Those who have little opportunity to associate with others are especially prone to think they are the only ones who [have unexpressed joys & sorrows] or difficulties to surmount.
[Informal, Pragmatic, Procedures]—Except for a continuity of meeting place, we remain untrammeled by rules. We have no officers, no dues, no set programs. We meet twice a month, once to read our own, once to get better acquainted with poets we especially like. It was a memorable experience to hear Edith Sitwell's poems read by herself. When I heard her read them, I realized that she was using words as if they were notes of music; I felt the music. We read our offerings in turn. Side by side are doggerel and complicated verse forms; the obvious and the obscure; [each contrasting form benefited from the other]. In writing poetry the satisfaction is not so much dependent upon the product as upon the ability to feel and to concentrate feeling to a focal point.
[Poetry Shared, a New Group Formed]—A charming young woman met with us for several years and shared the delicate touch she inherited from her Japanese forbears; she taught us to cut down on ornamentation, to simplify. [The poetic offerings that follow will be excerpts from the groups' poems unless otherwise noted].
MEDITATION FOR CHRISTMAS: "Were you afraid/ When you held Him/ snug in your arms/ Among the steaming cattle?/ Teach me Mary,/ To walk among men/ Whose doors are half open, With Christmas in my heart."
A poet of 60 years experience adds to the group with her beautiful voice in readings, her beautiful praise, and rarely with a new poem. A member moved to nearby New Jersey and started a new group saying, "If an idea is good it will germinate"; the 2 groups occasionally meet together. One might wonder how the born poets put up with those who are in the process of achieving poetry. It seems as if the amateurs support the proficients like a heavy foundation supports a beautiful building. Small or great, we have all been stimulated to see, understand, feel more acutely and to try to capture our experience in words.
[IN JULY, etc.]—IN JULY: This room is bare-swept like a winter tree/ No gentle draping but wide airy lines ... Here sit, hands still and waiting. This is now,/ The moment unreturning.
[Starry Eye/ Stick-in-the-Mud,]: "Said Starry Eye to Stick-in-the-Mud,/ 'Let's move along today/ Said Stick-in-the-Mud to Starry Eye, 'I do not know the way.' ...'The only way to learn a thing,'/ Said Star, 'is to keep on trying;/ The only way to learn to die/ Is daily practice dying./ 'So come along the road with me/ Where life with every breath/ Will teach you how to live with change/ And feel at home with death."
SKY-HIGH: "I have climbed once more/ To the earth's last floor, ... And a roaring wind and a low white thorn,/ Where a loosened rock from its mooring torn/ Falls in the hollow ... I shall taste the wind, I shall hold the sky,/ I shall savor wings as the winds rush by/ For I have climbed once more/ To the earth's last floor."
DAWN AT SEA: "A fitful cry across the drifting spray/ Where mighty stillness lifts the world from sleep ... Across the waters where the ripples make/ A path where dawn may walk upon the sea."
FIELDS AT DAYBREAK: "I crossed a field at daybreak wild and sweet ... Narrow grasses tangled at my feet/ Shook off the dew ... And so the fields when morning winds unfold—Shake off the night.
No 2 people go about writing the same way; some people need inspiration, others a deadline. Still others write as a catharsis. Poems are brought back in various stages of evolution. Our criticism is constructive; the negative comes out in questions or suggestions. Sometimes the author asks questions of herself.
[3 Poems on SLEEP, etc.]—1.]: "Lay down the mind upon the floor of being;/ Let it no longer dart and wing in air./ Close in the doors of hearing and seeing./ Let consciousness withdraw into its lair ..."
SLEEP [2.]: "Only in our sleep is truth revealed to us./ Only in this preparatory death are we rocked in that ocean/ From which we came and into which we flow like rivulets./ There, our aspirations are dissolved with our chemistry ... And we are drowned in the philosophy of constant renewal ..."
SLEEP [3.]: "... Courageous confrontation with the deep/ Unknown within the self, for blind/ And uncontrolled and helpless/ We boldly lift the arras to unconsciousness."
Any of us will bring anything to THE POETS, [things we would not bring anywhere else], knowing that they will sense what we are trying to say. And when we really say it, the whole group is lifted up as though it had done it itself; the others feel a vicarious satisfaction.
A Night of Rain: "The presence of rain/ In darkness is anonymous/ No consciousness of place/ enters into it ... One might be ... Feeling nothing, knowing nothing/ But that it is a night of rain."
There are some who do not know even important vital details about some of the others. Yet we are all intimate friends, familiar with each other's characteristic reactions. Such a relationship is indeed a peculiarly fertile way of learning to understand poetry and people.
[The Group]: "Nineteen women,/ As frittered and forspent/ With busyness as most,/ Snatching for themselves ... Two precious, stolen hours,/ For the secret essential self ... how was it/ That confidence grew,/ And companionship/ And bedrock loyalty/ And then love?"
[We Walked in Winter, OLD WOUNDS, etc.]—Using poetry, we can share the essence of experience without the factual details. " We Walked in Winter": "We walked in winter ... with young grief dragging at your side./ Old sorrow followed me ... And I can remember you asked how/ long it took for a grief to ... turn into sorrow ... I am certain now I never replied/ for, strangely enough, it was I who cried."
OLD WOUNDS: "These white scars cannot always hold these old wounds safe ... Some day that inner torture may break loose ... And all the ... agony will ooze and flow/ once more, over my wholesome flesh."
"Hold tenderly, hold lightly": " Hold tenderly, hold lightly/ The tree that shields your home ... All favored days that pass ... Hold tenderly, hold tightly,/ Those silences which flow/ Like light through midnight darkness/ Beyond the world we know."
LIFE & RESURRECTION—Since you who gave me birth/ Now lie in earth,/ Wind flower & bloodroot wave/ Over your grave ... Your urgent, vibrant breath/ Must chafe at death./ Your childlike trust in God/ Must loath the sod ... My mind & heart declare/ You aren't there,/ But where?/ Surely I can't be/ Your immortality."
The whole group sometimes attempts, for 20 minutes at a time, to switch off ordinary mental processes, each member putting pencil to paper and letting come what will. The results might be said to bear to poetry a relation similar to that which [a sketch book or] finger painting bears to art.
["Proud Singing of the Dark"-THE ROAD TO WHERE]—["Proud Singing of the Dark"]: "Listen! The proud singing of the dark!/ The restless tide, over and under the white/ Edges of nowhere. Sand covering sand ... Not even after the tide is gone and the snails/ Lie dryly, waiting alone, not asking for anything,/ Knowing the tide will return. Or perhaps knowing nothing ... [and] a stone,/ Not growing, not ready to answer/ When the tide came back, and the sea knew,/ And the snail wondered, and the stone gave no sign."
A friend tried to write a poem to her 1st grandchild; all that would come was: "Lullaby, my active one ... Bye, bye and don't you fret,/ Not God 's vice-president, no, not yet./ Let poppies blow and send you rest/ Or there'll be a lily on your chest./ In classic language or in not/ Shut off your motor, the engine's hot."
Sometimes when someone has read a poem, one of the listeners will make a comment which brings out a meaning the author had not known was there. Apparently a poem is a relative thing depending to some extent upon what the person who hears it brings to it. When other modern poets wrote obscure poetry, we felt that they were trying to make us feel stupid. When one of our own writes and we cannot understand, we take it home and live with it awhile. And one day we wake up to the fact that we like things we cannot entirely comprehend.
THE ROAD TO WHERE: "... Beyond the door the road to WHERE/ Shifts and shudders and disappears/ Through dense, unlighted thickets/ And danger peers from graveyards ... Only the new and painfully born can find the way/ Their weightless feet touching those mountains only./ The road to WHERE/ Is strewn with the dry, bleached bones of the cautious/ For only fools can find the way."
[THE PLACE OF FEAR-"Meditation"—THE PLACE OF FEAR: "I lost my way in madness or a dream,/ & came upon the place of fear ... 'What is the way?' I cried./ An old man sat on a stone/ And looked past me a thousand, thousand years./ [He replied in a cold, lifeless voice,]: 'There's many a one that asks but none can tell.' ... [A lone man in a lone hut] Called words I didn't hear ... No faintest sound reached where I stood/ Outside his open door ... Through cosmic fault in time / The ancient world lay bared,/ The twilight of the cruel gods,/ The place of fear."
THE SEED AND THE THORN: "... The seed, the thorn, the bone: of all the three/ The infertile bone, abandoned, bare,/ Bleached by the waves or parched by desert air,/ Is oftenest met in modern poetry./ Bright-braceleted but sterile to the core/ It spawns its calcium symbols by the score."
NO GALATEA: "The statue dwelling in the rock,/ The poem lurking in the brain,/ Await the small persistent shock/ Of love to set them free again ... Half human, half immortal, gleam/ The hybrid children of delight."
"Meditation": "I love people whom I know./ Love bubbles up for those who share/ My life and give me of their/ Joy or grief, their need or overflow./ Friendship is love/ And people whom I do not know ... Who'd make the world a better place; ... The rough, the strong, the sensitive the bold ... Interest is love ... And those who sit in doorways in the slums/ Listlessly waiting till the white drug comes ... These I could love, ashamedly. Pity is love./ But how to love [the loveless ones] ... Who scorn the good, drive trust and truth away?/ It would take a god to love such as they./ Stop. Be still. Drain the mind/ Of crowding images, nor seek to find/ Mind's reasons for loving what is unlovely still ... Deeper than symbols, deeper than prayer,/ Within the center, where is no below, above—/ Light./ It is gone. I felt its might/ An instant. I think that it was love."
[TREE LEANING AWAY-"Is it Calamity"]—TREE LEANING AWAY: "The old tree leaned over the old road,/ I went by so fast I hardly saw ... It stood with trunk erect a yard or two/ Then horizontally it leaned away ... Then reared its branches upwards straight enough./ It had the look of sheltering the dim/ Forgotten road ... An apple tree quite likely dying, still/ Alive enough to lean away at will."
"Whose Song": "... Whose song?/ Mine?/ Or those great [or small] celestial harmonies/ Too faintly heard,/ Whose music in transposing/ My fingers blurred?/ Whose song? ... All those who stopped to listen—/ Their song, I say."
THE COMMITTEE MEETING: "The circle forms, our masks are all in place ... [The chairman] executes each step;/ And we respond, our stylized posturing by precedent perfected ... The ballet-master warns: '... No innovations, please!' ... And then you spoke ...../ Our masks lie at our feet./ Your faltering words, your fallible, human voice/ Have stopped this numbing round,/ Have halted time,/ Have shown the one releasing rhythm:/ The human heart-beat and the human breath."
Nearly all of us have alternately fertile & dry spells. What I have tried to record & analyze is how a group of people through poetry can share experience, past & present, & through shared delight, sorrow, searching, understanding, can reach a truer sense of poetry & of community, without being centered in success or failure.
"Is it Calamity?": "..... Is it calamity/ We leave no footprints where we walk,/ That tide has washed our little prints away/ And time has blown our words to naught? I say/ It is enough that we have chanced to talk/ Together and have learned to know/ Our grains of thought—not to aspire/ To set the sea or even Thames on fire:/ Content to share, and so by sharing grow."
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130. Poetry among Friends (by Dorothy Lloyd Gilbert; 1963) No 2 people go about writing the same way; some people need inspiration, others a deadline. Still others write as a catharsis. Poems are brought back in various stages of evolution. Our criticism is constructive; the negative comes out in questions or suggestions. Sometimes the author asks questions of herself.
[3 Poems on SLEEP, etc.]—1.]: "Lay down the mind upon the floor of being;/ Let it no longer dart and wing in air./ Close in the doors of hearing and seeing./ Let consciousness withdraw into its lair ..."
SLEEP [2.]: "Only in our sleep is truth revealed to us./ Only in this preparatory death are we rocked in that ocean/ From which we came and into which we flow like rivulets./ There, our aspirations are dissolved with our chemistry ... And we are drowned in the philosophy of constant renewal ..."
SLEEP [3.]: "... Courageous confrontation with the deep/ Unknown within the self, for blind/ And uncontrolled and helpless/ We boldly lift the arras to unconsciousness."
Any of us will bring anything to THE POETS, [things we would not bring anywhere else], knowing that they will sense what we are trying to say. And when we really say it, the whole group is lifted up as though it had done it itself; the others feel a vicarious satisfaction.
A Night of Rain: "The presence of rain/ In darkness is anonymous/ No consciousness of place/ enters into it ... One might be ... Feeling nothing, knowing nothing/ But that it is a night of rain."
There are some who do not know even important vital details about some of the others. Yet we are all intimate friends, familiar with each other's characteristic reactions. Such a relationship is indeed a peculiarly fertile way of learning to understand poetry and people.
[The Group]: "Nineteen women,/ As frittered and forspent/ With busyness as most,/ Snatching for themselves ... Two precious, stolen hours,/ For the secret essential self ... how was it/ That confidence grew,/ And companionship/ And bedrock loyalty/ And then love?"
[We Walked in Winter, OLD WOUNDS, etc.]—Using poetry, we can share the essence of experience without the factual details. " We Walked in Winter": "We walked in winter ... with young grief dragging at your side./ Old sorrow followed me ... And I can remember you asked how/ long it took for a grief to ... turn into sorrow ... I am certain now I never replied/ for, strangely enough, it was I who cried."
OLD WOUNDS: "These white scars cannot always hold these old wounds safe ... Some day that inner torture may break loose ... And all the ... agony will ooze and flow/ once more, over my wholesome flesh."
"Hold tenderly, hold lightly": " Hold tenderly, hold lightly/ The tree that shields your home ... All favored days that pass ... Hold tenderly, hold tightly,/ Those silences which flow/ Like light through midnight darkness/ Beyond the world we know."
LIFE & RESURRECTION—Since you who gave me birth/ Now lie in earth,/ Wind flower & bloodroot wave/ Over your grave ... Your urgent, vibrant breath/ Must chafe at death./ Your childlike trust in God/ Must loath the sod ... My mind & heart declare/ You aren't there,/ But where?/ Surely I can't be/ Your immortality."
The whole group sometimes attempts, for 20 minutes at a time, to switch off ordinary mental processes, each member putting pencil to paper and letting come what will. The results might be said to bear to poetry a relation similar to that which [a sketch book or] finger painting bears to art.
["Proud Singing of the Dark"-THE ROAD TO WHERE]—["Proud Singing of the Dark"]: "Listen! The proud singing of the dark!/ The restless tide, over and under the white/ Edges of nowhere. Sand covering sand ... Not even after the tide is gone and the snails/ Lie dryly, waiting alone, not asking for anything,/ Knowing the tide will return. Or perhaps knowing nothing ... [and] a stone,/ Not growing, not ready to answer/ When the tide came back, and the sea knew,/ And the snail wondered, and the stone gave no sign."
A friend tried to write a poem to her 1st grandchild; all that would come was: "Lullaby, my active one ... Bye, bye and don't you fret,/ Not God 's vice-president, no, not yet./ Let poppies blow and send you rest/ Or there'll be a lily on your chest./ In classic language or in not/ Shut off your motor, the engine's hot."
Sometimes when someone has read a poem, one of the listeners will make a comment which brings out a meaning the author had not known was there. Apparently a poem is a relative thing depending to some extent upon what the person who hears it brings to it. When other modern poets wrote obscure poetry, we felt that they were trying to make us feel stupid. When one of our own writes and we cannot understand, we take it home and live with it awhile. And one day we wake up to the fact that we like things we cannot entirely comprehend.
THE ROAD TO WHERE: "... Beyond the door the road to WHERE/ Shifts and shudders and disappears/ Through dense, unlighted thickets/ And danger peers from graveyards ... Only the new and painfully born can find the way/ Their weightless feet touching those mountains only./ The road to WHERE/ Is strewn with the dry, bleached bones of the cautious/ For only fools can find the way."
[THE PLACE OF FEAR-"Meditation"—THE PLACE OF FEAR: "I lost my way in madness or a dream,/ & came upon the place of fear ... 'What is the way?' I cried./ An old man sat on a stone/ And looked past me a thousand, thousand years./ [He replied in a cold, lifeless voice,]: 'There's many a one that asks but none can tell.' ... [A lone man in a lone hut] Called words I didn't hear ... No faintest sound reached where I stood/ Outside his open door ... Through cosmic fault in time / The ancient world lay bared,/ The twilight of the cruel gods,/ The place of fear."
THE SEED AND THE THORN: "... The seed, the thorn, the bone: of all the three/ The infertile bone, abandoned, bare,/ Bleached by the waves or parched by desert air,/ Is oftenest met in modern poetry./ Bright-braceleted but sterile to the core/ It spawns its calcium symbols by the score."
NO GALATEA: "The statue dwelling in the rock,/ The poem lurking in the brain,/ Await the small persistent shock/ Of love to set them free again ... Half human, half immortal, gleam/ The hybrid children of delight."
"Meditation": "I love people whom I know./ Love bubbles up for those who share/ My life and give me of their/ Joy or grief, their need or overflow./ Friendship is love/ And people whom I do not know ... Who'd make the world a better place; ... The rough, the strong, the sensitive the bold ... Interest is love ... And those who sit in doorways in the slums/ Listlessly waiting till the white drug comes ... These I could love, ashamedly. Pity is love./ But how to love [the loveless ones] ... Who scorn the good, drive trust and truth away?/ It would take a god to love such as they./ Stop. Be still. Drain the mind/ Of crowding images, nor seek to find/ Mind's reasons for loving what is unlovely still ... Deeper than symbols, deeper than prayer,/ Within the center, where is no below, above—/ Light./ It is gone. I felt its might/ An instant. I think that it was love."
[TREE LEANING AWAY-"Is it Calamity"]—TREE LEANING AWAY: "The old tree leaned over the old road,/ I went by so fast I hardly saw ... It stood with trunk erect a yard or two/ Then horizontally it leaned away ... Then reared its branches upwards straight enough./ It had the look of sheltering the dim/ Forgotten road ... An apple tree quite likely dying, still/ Alive enough to lean away at will."
"Whose Song": "... Whose song?/ Mine?/ Or those great [or small] celestial harmonies/ Too faintly heard,/ Whose music in transposing/ My fingers blurred?/ Whose song? ... All those who stopped to listen—/ Their song, I say."
THE COMMITTEE MEETING: "The circle forms, our masks are all in place ... [The chairman] executes each step;/ And we respond, our stylized posturing by precedent perfected ... The ballet-master warns: '... No innovations, please!' ... And then you spoke ...../ Our masks lie at our feet./ Your faltering words, your fallible, human voice/ Have stopped this numbing round,/ Have halted time,/ Have shown the one releasing rhythm:/ The human heart-beat and the human breath."
Nearly all of us have alternately fertile & dry spells. What I have tried to record & analyze is how a group of people through poetry can share experience, past & present, & through shared delight, sorrow, searching, understanding, can reach a truer sense of poetry & of community, without being centered in success or failure.
"Is it Calamity?": "..... Is it calamity/ We leave no footprints where we walk,/ That tide has washed our little prints away/ And time has blown our words to naught? I say/ It is enough that we have chanced to talk/ Together and have learned to know/ Our grains of thought—not to aspire/ To set the sea or even Thames on fire:/ Content to share, and so by sharing grow."
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About the Author—Dorothy Lloyd Gilbert Thorne (1902-1976) is widely known to Friends for her service as Recording Clerk in North Carolina Yearly Meeting and the Five Years Meeting of Friends, for her writing, and for her contributions to the Friends World Committee and the United Society of Friends Women. She taught at Guilford College from 1926 to 1954. This pamphlet grew out of a 1959 lecture given at Guilford College, concerning the growing number of poets now being nurtured in the Quaker tradition.
Friends have rarely been poets in the past. The only name that arises naturally is that of Whittier (e.g. “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind”; “Eternal Love Forever Full. [Now] poetry begins to be “a friend with Friends,” and Friends in turn are somewhat more receptive to the arts. [Most of the poems in this pamphlet were printed in] Friends Journal, Quaker Life and Approach, a quarterly founded in 1947.
In both Quakerism & poetry the worshipper & the reader, touched by the power & beauty which gives life, may perceive the likeness without putting it into words. Dorothy Mumford Williams writes: “Both the poem and the wordless prayer derive their shape out of a yearning to experience perfection.” Quakerism as George Fox and Thomas Kelly prove is Poetic. The Quaker poet often finds a poem in the Quaker meeting. Barbara Hinchcliffe believes that the message of a poem or a meeting happens in a way neither foreseen nor directed.
Modern poets are also writing about the great Quaker figures of the past, and although these men are well known through journals and biographies, the poet can still add that touch of interpretation which makes the reader realize that the vitality of Fox and Woolman and Nayler is not spent. Although Sam Bradley’s poem. “The Standing Forth of George Fox,” has some superficial resemblances to his appearance before the Court of the Star Chamber in 1660, the poem is built from symbols rather than from the specific historical occasion.
The reading of the words of James Nayler spoken about 2 hours before his death in 1660 became for Kenneth Boulding an illuminating spiritual experience; he wrote 26 sonnets inspired by the phrases of James Nayler. A number of modern Quaker poets are entirely at home within the sonnet’s narrow bounds, among them E. Mer-ril Root, Gerhard Friedrich, Sam Bradley, John McCandless, Euell Gibbons, Bruce Cutler, & William B. Evans.
[In the 1950s and early ‘60s, Dorothy Mumford Williams wrote] a series of poems, collected under the title of John Woolman: Mapmaker—A Meditation on Landmarks on His Journey. She says: “Writing like tailoring requires an integrity of craftsmanship which comes only in a spirit of prayer and the word seen with the inner eye takes the same kind of invisibility as the stitch. When a poet tries to get inside another person’s mind, he may begin to show the effects of another personality in his style.
Poetry is communication. Sam Bradley wrote: “There are some who say that a public for poetry no longer exists. To me this is like saying the spirit no longer creates and sings. No matter how Herculean the poet’s art, he fails if he does not find understanding hearers . . . Neither poetry nor religion is what a man does with his solitary self; it is a happy heaven-and-earth involvement with others.” Albert Fowler, an accomplished writer, believes that a poem is no better than its best reader.
[The following queries by Barbara Hinchcliffe address the general attitude among Friends towards the arts]: Do Friends have a concern to seek out & mature the flame of creativity that burns in all? Do we provide an atmosphere in Meetings for Worship, & in schools which helps us to discover creative abilities, discipline them, & exercise them to the fullest power God has given us? Is a vision of Truth advanced among us, & let to shine before all so they may be led to clearer knowledge of their Father?
The Quaker poet believes in the disciplines of thought and form. He knows how to keep technique under his feet; he is apt to achieve his individuality of expression with the more conventional verse forms or by skillful adaptation; he values his sincerity and the integrity of his thought and there is, in his work, a sense of the eternal goodness of life. For them the writing of poetry is a way of life and a sounding joy.
In the period when art and literature and music were avoided, Quakers produced a number of fine naturalists. The art of the poet is just as satisfying as the skill of the naturalist. Nature poetry is rarely objective. The poet looks on nature and what he sees revealed is his own thought. Much of the nature poetry written by Friends opens with a perception in nature which leads into the moment of insight, [writing a poem of both nature and religion]. The Quaker poets’ descriptions of person are also often filled with insight.
At the very center of Quakerism there is a place of utter quietness where spirit with spirit can meet. Poems which speak from that center are a benediction on the troubled spirit. Winifred Rawlins says:
“All things that are speak with a tender voice./ Life speaks to life, existence speaks to being;/ Only our ears are closed, our eye too dim/ For this compassionate seeing."
The poet brings her guest bowls of beauty and quiet to renew the spirit’s life, honors his humanness to give him fortitude, with him discovers first hidden beauties and forces of the earth and then “the shadow of joy at midnight and intimation of cosmic bliss which enfolds both men and the stars.”
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About the Author—At last, Elizabeth Gray Vining has written a sequel to The World in Tune. This pamphlet is a collection of quotations from some of her favorite mystics, accompanied with interpretive comment. They offer glimpses into her personal life, and reveal a lover of birds and beasts, with an ever present awareness of the spirit embodied in substance.
That a quest there is and an end is the single secret spoken (Quote from Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism). When I first encountered it, I was drowning in grief, reaching desperately for a hold on some meaning in life. I expected to be told something elaborate, final, and incredible; I found instead this simple assurance. There is a search; there is a purpose. That is all you need to know. The rest you must find out for yourself.
To think well is to serve God in the interior court.
You are as prone to love as the sun is to shine, it being the most delightful and natural employment of the Soul of Man, without which you are dark and miserable. Thomas Traherne.
Thomas Traherne was a shoemaker’s son in Hereford, 10 years younger than George Fox. Like George Fox he wandered England for a year looking for truth. He took orders in the Church of England & became rector of a small church in Herefordshire & later a chaplain. He wrote poetry & a book called Centuries of Meditation. The “centuries” were collections of 100 meditations each; he wrote 510 such collections. They were not published until 230 years after his death. Traherne had the insight that one must love oneself before one can love others. “By choosing, a man may be turned and converted into love.”
What a wonderful now! It is surely eternity. Kanjiro Kawai
Kanjiro Kawai was a great modern potter & poet of Japan. We visited him 1 day in March 1950. His house was built in Japanese style, but was sturdy & solid where others were fragile in their beauty. He found the pioneers’ joy a beautiful thing & wanted to know about America’s pioneer spirit today. I quickly answered that it came out mostly in love of freedom. Kawai showed us his wheel, which he powered by kicking it vigorously & then working till it ran down. We left with a copy of his short poems, & each of us received a piece of pottery. The poems had to do with fire, clay & light, wood & stone, an insect & the moon, art & life, with eternity.
Saint Benno and the Frog—[St. Benno would often pray as he walked in the fields. One day he bade the frogs be quiet. Upon further reflection that frogs might be more agreeable to God than his prayer, he bade them continue their praise]. St. Benno was born early in the 10th century of a noble family in Swabia. He was happiest as a hermit in the Swiss mountains. To most of us today the sound that frogs make beside streams and ponds in the early spring is cheerful and welcome. Henry Waddell, an Irish scholar and poet, translated this story from the Acta Sanctorum, (Acts of Saints), a collection of stories and legends about saints, began early, in the 17th century.
Power said to the World, “You are Mine./ The World kept it Prisoner on his Throne.
Love said to the World, “I am Thine./ The World gave it the Freedom of her House. Rabindranath Tagore
[The 3 temptation in the desert changed Jesus from an admirable, lovable young man to a strong, purposeful, inspired prophet]. In modern times the 3 temptations might be interpreted as wealth, prestige, and power. Power is the most dangerous because of its very attractiveness and the seductive idea that one can use it for good. Certainly St. Francis was able to avoid all 3 temptations, but not St. Teresa of Avila, who as Mother Superior had unquestioned power over sisters sworn to obedience.
The Donkey: [1st, there is an unflattering description in the 1st person, then]: Fools! I also had my hour/ One far fierce hour & sweet/ There was a shout about my ears/ & palms about my feet. Gilbert K. Chesterton
Exasperating donkeys may be, but still somehow they are lovable and, in simpler countries than ours, still useful members of society. The donkey is a small, humble animal, used for humble purposes, [especially in Greece]. [The donkey also played key roles in Jesus’ early life, by carrying her “safely to Bethlehem town,” and safely to Egypt after his birth]. There are wild donkeys on Ossabaw Island of the coast of Georgia, with dark markings on their backs that resemble a cross. In spite of the cloud of forgetfulness under which Chesterton is at present obscured, his poem about the donkey still is found in anthologies.
[Old English poem from young widow to her husband begins & ends with]: Here, Shadowe Lie/ Whilst life is Sadd/ Still Hopes to Die/To him She had…Love made me Poet/& this I Writt/ My Harte did do it/ not my Wit.
Many years ago I met the author of these artless but poignant lines in the parish church at Burford in the Cotswolds. My own handsome and brilliant young husband had been killed in an automobile accident less than 3 years before. The fellowship of the sorrowful I have called it, that little spring of understanding that flows between people who lost some one very dear. Earlier I met Ela, another grieving young widow at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. She was under great pressure to remarry, but in the 13th century established a nunnery instead at Lacock where she and William had lived. I saw the cloisters, the abbess’ parlor with 2 fireplaces and a tiled floor. Something of her steadfast soul spoke to me intimately over the centuries.
One God there is, greatest of men and mortals,/ Not like to man in Body or in Mind.
All of him sees and hears and thinks. Xenophanes of Colophon (6th century B.C.) Xenophanes of Colophon offered the proposition that man creates God in his own image; his own belief is stated in the quote beginning this paragraph; he was probably exiled for this belief. William Butler Yeats, around 1890 wrote a poem that the moorfowl, lotus, roebuck, & peacock each imagine God in their own image. William Blake is probably the most mystical & mysterious of all the great English poets. He wrote volumes of visionary, prophetic poems. [From a long poem called The Everlasting Gospel this pamphlet’s author selected a passage that observes how different interpretations of the Gospels can be incompatible with each other]. When shall we learn to pray not to “what I think Thou art but what thou knowest Thyself to be?”
Pile the bodies High . . . /Shovel them under and let me work/I am the Grass; I cover all . . ./ I am the Grass/let me work. [From Grass, by Carl Sandburg]
Summer Grass;/ of stalwart Warriors’ Dreams/The Aftermath Haiku by Basho (17th century)
They Hated and Killed and Men praised them/ But God in His shame hastens to hides its memory under the green grass. Rabindranath Tagore (19th -20th century)
When I was in Japan, I used to drive several times a week through one of the most devastated parts of Tokyo. [In one large, burned-over place there were waste metal piles, carefully stacked; eventually the piles were taller than 2-story houses; I went away for the summer]. I returned to discover that vines & creepers had grown, spreading over the great masses of wreckage a curtain of living green. The grass has begun to work, I thought.
… Provide for the aged homes of dignity & peace; give them understanding helpers, & willingness to accept help. As their strength diminishes, increase their faith & their assurance of your love. Episcopal Prayer Book.
From 65 to 95 is 30 years, as great a distance as from 20 to 50; but they call us all old. I am fortunate to live in a loving community, where we all enjoy dignity and peace. A few are weak but none is isolated. Age comes, and without jobs, without the energy to fill all our hours with activity, with decreased ability to read, to travel, or even to knit, we have much more time to think, [especially through increasingly sleepless nights]. Some of us find that what we thought was faith was not much more than well-being , that our realization of God and his love was academic, unreal, unconvincing. [The end of [the author’s] prayer for the aged would be]: “Grant them courage in the face of pain or weakness, and always a sure knowledge of thy presence.”
At the Flower Vase/ The butterfly seems to be listening/ To the One Great Thing. Issa (18th century Japan)
Beautiful flower arrangements are an important part of every Japanese house and store. [To Issa, the butterfly might have been listening to Buddha]. To us it would be God. Issa’s experience of homelessness helped him to understand the fears and sufferings of all small, weak things.
I and my white Pangur/ Have each his special art./ His mind is set on hunting mice./ Mine is on my special craft./ … He is master of the work/ which every day he does,/While I am at my own work/ To bring difficulty to clearness. Anonymous (translated by Kuno Mayer)
The monk’s work in the 8th century was in Ireland copying the books of the Bible in beautiful handwriting. In Ireland the monks lived in separate cells scattered about the woods and fields near a church or a cathedral. This monk with a cat must have rested his pen many times while he watched the movements of his cat and smiled as he watched. We do not know his name; but his cat’s name has become immortal.
[I said to Love]Let my shame/ go where it doth deserve/And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?/My dear, then I will serve./You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat./ So I did sit and eat. George Herbert.
The monk’s work in the 8th century was in Ireland copying the books of the Bible in beautiful handwriting. In Ireland the monks lived in separate cells scattered about the woods and fields near a church or a cathedral. This monk with a cat must have rested his pen many times while he watched the movements of his cat and smiled as he watched. We do not know his name; but his cat’s name has become immortal.
[I said to Love]Let my shame/ go where it doth deserve/And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?/My dear, then I will serve./You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat./ So I did sit and eat. George Herbert.
The scene is the great hall of an English manor house of the 17th century. The humbler ones sit below the salt cellar in the middle of the long table. [The speaker is asking to be seated at the humble end] when the noble host came down from his place at the high table to welcome the traveler.
George Herbert looked forward to a political career. And then he felt a call to the spiritual life and the ministry; he obeyed, but not without a struggle. He became rector of a little country church in Bemerton. His one indulgence was to walk into Salisbury twice a week to hear Cathedral music and to make music with friends. Once he came upon a poor man with a horse that had fallen down. He pitched in and unloaded the horse, got him up and reloaded him. When his appearance was criticized, he gave a spirited homily on prayer and practice.
His poems were published after he died and in the 20th century became important to a brilliant young French Jewish woman, Simone Weil, whose life and writings have meant much to Friends, especially because of her compassion for the poor. She memorized the whole short poem and used it to deal with agonizing headaches. Once when she used it, “In the sudden possession of me by Christ . . . I felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love, like that which one can read in the smile on a beloved face.” In its own way this poem bears a resemblance to the lofty scene in the upper room in Jerusalem, when Jesus tied a towel around his waist and, kneeling before each one, washed the disciples’ feet.
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337. There is a Spirit: The Nayler Sonnets (by Kenneth Boulding; 1998)
His poems were published after he died and in the 20th century became important to a brilliant young French Jewish woman, Simone Weil, whose life and writings have meant much to Friends, especially because of her compassion for the poor. She memorized the whole short poem and used it to deal with agonizing headaches. Once when she used it, “In the sudden possession of me by Christ . . . I felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love, like that which one can read in the smile on a beloved face.” In its own way this poem bears a resemblance to the lofty scene in the upper room in Jerusalem, when Jesus tied a towel around his waist and, kneeling before each one, washed the disciples’ feet.
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About the Author—Kenneth E. Boulding (1910-1993) was born in England and educated at New College, Oxford and the University of Chicago. Raised a Methodist, he joined the Religious Society of Friends when he was an undergraduate at Oxford in the 1930's. He served the League of Nations. He is a member of the Committee on Research for Peace of the Institute for International Order, and full time Director of the Center for Research in Conflict Resolution of the University of Michigan; he is also Professor of Economics there. These sonnets by Kenneth Boulding were first published nearly 50 years ago. This is the 4th edition.
INTRODUCTION—I wrote the 1st 5 or 6 of these sonnets as a instructor at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, from 1939-41. [I switched to] Sonnets on Courtship, Marriage, & Family [while I met & married Elise Biorn-Hansen]. The Nayler sonnets crept in among the love sonnets. It was at Fisk University, 1942-43, that I finished the Nayler sonnets. Their 1st edition was published in 1945, to express hope that lies beyond despair. [Today] wars multiply in both hemispheres, but so do visions of a more humane & peaceful world order.
PREFACE—I have written these sonnets in the hope they may call the attention of others to the depths of truth in the passage which inspired them. The intellectual and aesthetic effort required to compress an explosive idea into a sonnet's formal limits may cause the truth within the words to ring out all the more clearly. [The summary editor further compressed them into excerpts]. Writing the significance of Nayler's phrases into sonnets has been a joyful and illuminating spiritual experience. I hope they lead others to dig in the same mines of truth.
At the height of his followers' hysterical enthusiasm in 1656, Nayler allowed himself to be led into Bristol in a blasphemous re-enactment of the original Palm Sunday. He was brutally punished by an illegal act of Parliament & jailed for 3 years. The passage which follows was spoken by him about 2 hours before his death. It is a classic expression of a spirit too close to the source of truth to have a name. Here we are close to Christ's spirit. [Hopefully], its truth will burn through the plausible lies which form the principal furniture of our minds.
[Summary Editor's Note—The Roman numerals stand for the sonnet each phrase inspired].
I. There is a spirit which I feel (II.) that delights to do no evil, (III.) nor to revenge any wrong, (IV.) but delights to endure all things, (V.) in hope to enjoy its own in the end. (VI.) Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, (VII.) and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, (VIII.) or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. (IX.) It sees to the end of all temptations. (X.) As it bears no evil in itself, (XI.) so it conceives none in thoughts to any other. (XII.) If it be betrayed, it bears it, (XIII.) for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. (XIV.) Its crown is meekness, (XV.) its life is everlasting love unfeigned.
(XVI.) It takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, (XVII.) and keeps it by loudness of mind. (XVIII.) In God alone it can rejoice, (XIX.) though none else regard it, or can own its life. (XX.) It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it, (XXI.) nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. (XXII.) It never rejoiceth but through sufferings (XXIII.) for & with the world's joy it is murdered. (XXIV.) I found it alone, being forsaken. (XXV.) I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens & desolate places in the earth, (XXVI.) who through death obtained this resurrection & eternal holy life. James Nayler (1660)
[Excerpts]: I. Can I, imprisoned, body bound, touch ... & spread my Little to the Infinite Much ... & what I take indeed, I do but dole/ In cupfuls from a rimless ocean-bowl ... & Yet, some Thing that moves among the stars,/ & holds the cosmos ... Moves too in me ... As I, a member of creation sing/ The burning one-ness binding everything.
II. Shall I be good because of rewards... [a] virtuous act [paying] dividends/ In approving... friends,/ tongues to praise, hands to applaud ...honors? ... Shall I be good to gain the greatest end,/ A crown of bliss that Heaven affords?... No conscious end can drag us out of sin, Unless [deep pressure], clear goodness wells up from within.
III. ... Is love indeed the end & law of life,/ When lush, grimacing hates quickly sprout?/ I thought in ignorance I had cast out... devils ... [but] revenge my sword of reason flouts./ Though hate rises in enfolding flame ... soon it dies... [&] love's small constant light burns the same... Love's weak, hate's strong; hate's short, love's long
IV. How to endure, when all around us die/ Nations, gracious cities, homes & men... [while above] belching vultures fly ... How to endure darkness ... evil's eclipse ... Must we be hard, [stiff, pitiless as stone... oak... steel]? These things crumble, break, rust ... In violence, decay, starvation, need, What can endure? Only the living Seed.
V. Small flowers there are beside the stoniest way,/ Some breaths of air are sweet and some birds sing ... new goals are reached ... Yet for the unknown end we wait and pray,/ When ... every evil thing is redeemed in heaven's undisputed sway./ We know not how the day is to be born ... in [glorious] tongues of flame ... or imperceptibly as dawn;/ But as the seed must grow into the tree, So life is love and love the end must be.
VI. ... Who worships proud imperious Caesar now?/ The wreath ... is trampled in oblivion's mire... Beneath the lonely peasant's plough/ Lies splintered shards of heathen altars ... Lava sears the mountainside,/ & leaves [a stony scar] among the green/ Sun, frost, rain, & roots unseen/ Advance the slow resistless verdant tide ... [so] That life may grow, but wrath and hatred cool.
VII. What patience must we cherish, to out-wear/ Sleepless hosts of hell, who ... wait/ With perseverance more than we can bear... Who can blame us if we lose trust/ In love's slow ways, & hastily rush to blast/ [pride-] rock to pieces ... into barren dust./ Only by endless rain the soil is given,/ Endless patience is the way to heaven.
VIII. If God be All in All, must all be good?/ What then of evil? ... [the harsh deaths of the weak] ... [Does] death shine with its holy light ... reflecting the underside of Right,/ & Life exult [under] Death's ... hood?/ Are there contraries at the heart of things?... If in... life love wearies out/ The staunchest evil: Does God lie in doubt?
Queries—[How can I be sure I am performing a "virtuous" act for the "crown of bliss that Heaven affords," rather than "approving friends,/ tongues to praise, hands to applaud, and honors? Shall I be good because of rewards... [a] virtuous act [paying] dividends/ In approving... friends,/ tongues to praise, hands to applaud ...honors? ... Shall I be good to gain the greatest end,/ A crown of bliss that Heaven affords?... How "is love the end & law of life, when lush, grimacing hates quickly sprout?" How can we endure, when all around us nations, gracious cities, homes & men die? How do we endure darkness ... evil's eclipse ... without being hard, stiff, pitiless as stone... oak... steel? What can endure? Who worships proud imperious Caesar now? How and where do we find the patience to trust in love's slow ways? If God be All in All, where does good end and evil begin? How are there contraries at the heart of all things?]
INTRODUCTION—I wrote the 1st 5 or 6 of these sonnets as a instructor at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, from 1939-41. [I switched to] Sonnets on Courtship, Marriage, & Family [while I met & married Elise Biorn-Hansen]. The Nayler sonnets crept in among the love sonnets. It was at Fisk University, 1942-43, that I finished the Nayler sonnets. Their 1st edition was published in 1945, to express hope that lies beyond despair. [Today] wars multiply in both hemispheres, but so do visions of a more humane & peaceful world order.
PREFACE—I have written these sonnets in the hope they may call the attention of others to the depths of truth in the passage which inspired them. The intellectual and aesthetic effort required to compress an explosive idea into a sonnet's formal limits may cause the truth within the words to ring out all the more clearly. [The summary editor further compressed them into excerpts]. Writing the significance of Nayler's phrases into sonnets has been a joyful and illuminating spiritual experience. I hope they lead others to dig in the same mines of truth.
At the height of his followers' hysterical enthusiasm in 1656, Nayler allowed himself to be led into Bristol in a blasphemous re-enactment of the original Palm Sunday. He was brutally punished by an illegal act of Parliament & jailed for 3 years. The passage which follows was spoken by him about 2 hours before his death. It is a classic expression of a spirit too close to the source of truth to have a name. Here we are close to Christ's spirit. [Hopefully], its truth will burn through the plausible lies which form the principal furniture of our minds.
[Summary Editor's Note—The Roman numerals stand for the sonnet each phrase inspired].
I. There is a spirit which I feel (II.) that delights to do no evil, (III.) nor to revenge any wrong, (IV.) but delights to endure all things, (V.) in hope to enjoy its own in the end. (VI.) Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, (VII.) and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, (VIII.) or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. (IX.) It sees to the end of all temptations. (X.) As it bears no evil in itself, (XI.) so it conceives none in thoughts to any other. (XII.) If it be betrayed, it bears it, (XIII.) for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. (XIV.) Its crown is meekness, (XV.) its life is everlasting love unfeigned.
(XVI.) It takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, (XVII.) and keeps it by loudness of mind. (XVIII.) In God alone it can rejoice, (XIX.) though none else regard it, or can own its life. (XX.) It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it, (XXI.) nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. (XXII.) It never rejoiceth but through sufferings (XXIII.) for & with the world's joy it is murdered. (XXIV.) I found it alone, being forsaken. (XXV.) I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens & desolate places in the earth, (XXVI.) who through death obtained this resurrection & eternal holy life. James Nayler (1660)
[Excerpts]: I. Can I, imprisoned, body bound, touch ... & spread my Little to the Infinite Much ... & what I take indeed, I do but dole/ In cupfuls from a rimless ocean-bowl ... & Yet, some Thing that moves among the stars,/ & holds the cosmos ... Moves too in me ... As I, a member of creation sing/ The burning one-ness binding everything.
II. Shall I be good because of rewards... [a] virtuous act [paying] dividends/ In approving... friends,/ tongues to praise, hands to applaud ...honors? ... Shall I be good to gain the greatest end,/ A crown of bliss that Heaven affords?... No conscious end can drag us out of sin, Unless [deep pressure], clear goodness wells up from within.
III. ... Is love indeed the end & law of life,/ When lush, grimacing hates quickly sprout?/ I thought in ignorance I had cast out... devils ... [but] revenge my sword of reason flouts./ Though hate rises in enfolding flame ... soon it dies... [&] love's small constant light burns the same... Love's weak, hate's strong; hate's short, love's long
IV. How to endure, when all around us die/ Nations, gracious cities, homes & men... [while above] belching vultures fly ... How to endure darkness ... evil's eclipse ... Must we be hard, [stiff, pitiless as stone... oak... steel]? These things crumble, break, rust ... In violence, decay, starvation, need, What can endure? Only the living Seed.
V. Small flowers there are beside the stoniest way,/ Some breaths of air are sweet and some birds sing ... new goals are reached ... Yet for the unknown end we wait and pray,/ When ... every evil thing is redeemed in heaven's undisputed sway./ We know not how the day is to be born ... in [glorious] tongues of flame ... or imperceptibly as dawn;/ But as the seed must grow into the tree, So life is love and love the end must be.
VI. ... Who worships proud imperious Caesar now?/ The wreath ... is trampled in oblivion's mire... Beneath the lonely peasant's plough/ Lies splintered shards of heathen altars ... Lava sears the mountainside,/ & leaves [a stony scar] among the green/ Sun, frost, rain, & roots unseen/ Advance the slow resistless verdant tide ... [so] That life may grow, but wrath and hatred cool.
VII. What patience must we cherish, to out-wear/ Sleepless hosts of hell, who ... wait/ With perseverance more than we can bear... Who can blame us if we lose trust/ In love's slow ways, & hastily rush to blast/ [pride-] rock to pieces ... into barren dust./ Only by endless rain the soil is given,/ Endless patience is the way to heaven.
VIII. If God be All in All, must all be good?/ What then of evil? ... [the harsh deaths of the weak] ... [Does] death shine with its holy light ... reflecting the underside of Right,/ & Life exult [under] Death's ... hood?/ Are there contraries at the heart of things?... If in... life love wearies out/ The staunchest evil: Does God lie in doubt?
Queries—[How can I be sure I am performing a "virtuous" act for the "crown of bliss that Heaven affords," rather than "approving friends,/ tongues to praise, hands to applaud, and honors? Shall I be good because of rewards... [a] virtuous act [paying] dividends/ In approving... friends,/ tongues to praise, hands to applaud ...honors? ... Shall I be good to gain the greatest end,/ A crown of bliss that Heaven affords?... How "is love the end & law of life, when lush, grimacing hates quickly sprout?" How can we endure, when all around us nations, gracious cities, homes & men die? How do we endure darkness ... evil's eclipse ... without being hard, stiff, pitiless as stone... oak... steel? What can endure? Who worships proud imperious Caesar now? How and where do we find the patience to trust in love's slow ways? If God be All in All, where does good end and evil begin? How are there contraries at the heart of all things?]
IX. What is the end of greed but emptiness,/ And what the end of a determined lust/ But staleness, unfulfillment, sick disgust ... Not sight alone, but Will, by love made free/ Can make us walk the pilgrim way we see.
X. If soul be soil what may not grow therein?/ The indifferent ground cares not what plant it feed; Both good grain & lean poisoned weed ... Can there then be a soil that grows no sin ... [but only] for the need/ Of the good gardner & his humble kin? ... Out of harrowed heart & broken will/ Ground is prepared at last that grows no ill.
XI. Is there indeed a river that can clean/ The stable of my thought? Can't I hide ... In virtuous act, the dismal inward scene? [&] wall out God with deeds. [But] my soul blazes God's light despite my screen. Torrential seas of brightness round me press ... Till in the fullness of Thy light no room/ Is left for cherished walled gloom.
XII. It is not hard to turn the other cheek/ after an insult, or hot tempered blow ... easier far to go/ The 2nd mile with enemies, than show/ Love to deceitful friends ... Yet, Lord, do I not ... betray Thee oft, with word or sneer/ of silence—and Thou bearest it, content/ To wait in long love on my betterment.
XIII. My Lord, Thou art in every breath I take ... With buoyant mercy Thou enfoldest me,/ And holdest up my foot each step I make./ Thy touch is around me when I wake,/ Thy sound I hear ... by Thy light I see/ The world is fresh with Thy divinity ... Thy creatures flourish for Thy sake ... So cleanest Thou this House I have defiled ... [Mercy I show] is Thy mercy, Lord, in overflow.
XIV. How every virtue casts a mimic shade/ Of subtle vice, so like in form & face/ shadow oft usurps royal place ... in unholy masquerade ... [Love's] gold, is by lesser love betrayed ... Meekness is pursued ... [in seeking to comply] bland & lewd ... No deceit of words can hide long/ Life's seed, [true] meekness of the strong.
XV. ... [In] groping movements of the intellect,/ bounds are smudged where fact & shadow meet ... [Then], Love scents a wind, blowing from God ... And senses, deeper laid than sight, direct/ To free air once-bewildered feet./ Love must be made pure to be our guide ... our spirit lifts/ To love for Love alone, not for God's gifts.
XVI. Are there no armies, no angelic hosts,/ Invincibly arrayed in awful might/ To battle with the shape-less forms at night? The slimy writhing ranks that Satan boasts? ... Can Hell be taken with thin wisps of light ... [or] entreating ghosts? ... What know ye, ye blind lords of strife,/ About the secret Kingdom of [Human] life!
XVII. No kingdom falls before it is betrayed/ By inward enemies—no outward foe/ Can deal the last and only fatal blow ... [Have] I laid/ Thy Kingdom in me open to a slow/ Unseen decay? ... My inmost stronghold is rebellious still/ Against the peaceful envoys of Thy will. / Lord, run through me with Thy sudden tide,/ For this proud heart can never be Thy throne/ Unless its pride be pride of Thee alone.
XVIII. I plunge [my self], shouting, in the fertile tide/ Of vast creation; lave myself in light, [in senses] ... With [sound], scent, taste, touch: all senses sanctified./ What?! In God alone I must rejoice?/ Not in God's creatures, abounding gifts?/ Seek 1st the Kingdom—for thy joys are dim/ Until thou findest all things new, in Him.
XIX. Are not my friends built around me like a wall?/ We stand together in a firm stockade/ Around the cheerful fire our faith has made ... Beyond the glow ... Slide shadows ... Of unacknowledged doubt ... [Beyond the] fire, and friends at call ... [If I am left] shivering in the bleak, immense,/ Dark Otherness—will not my fire go out? Gathered sticks [of fire] are scattered, but the sun/ Warms many no more certainly than one.
XX. Must every joy spring rash from beds of pain? ... And songs of joy to mournful chants be sung? ... Can the chain/ of golden love the pearl of price sustain ... the weight of woe? ... Could'st Thou not have brought [Thy] Life ... at a cost less great? ... Did'st Thou give us night/ For stars, and give us suffering for Thy light?
XXI. Wrapped [up] in God, must we then blandly bless/ Wretchedness, pain, disease, as Heaven-sent ... And channel our intent/ Away from Earth, [while] power and lust oppress/ The ancient-suffering seed of gentle-ness ... [If] we are but cattle, tortured that God's grace May shine—I would deny that God to God's face ... If God should suffer too ... and love, and die—may we not see/ The paradox blaze into Mystery.
XXII. Can grief be gift ... Divine Love's gift? ... Vital-tearing agonies ... Of choking pain? Ah ... dare we sift/ An abyss of suffering [&] take [up] our cross ... The very tongue ... [that spoke of suffering] was bored with blackening flame ... [It says] there's joy greater than joy can know,/ Through suffering on the far side of woe.
XXIII. I won't shout for victory, nor praise/ The bloody laurels of returning hosts ... Neither will I mourn defeated days ... Not with the world's joy will I raise my heart,/ Nor with the world's grief bow it down to dust ... For earthly love is kin to lust./ The living soul must find securer worth/ In grief of heaven than joy of earth.
XXIV. There is not death but this, to be alone,/ Outside the friendly room of time, space, [& friendly face] ... Where in the vision nought but self is shown/ From the last despair, the extremest cry,/ Flows the great gain that swallows all our loss./ From the towers of heaven calls the bell/ That summons us across the gulf of Hell.
XXV. Can I have fellowship with them that fed/ On desert locust, husks of swine,/ Or slept without a tent [on hard earth] ... When I on easy [banquet] couches [have eaten and] reclined ... and slept comforted? How can we from a lofty table feel/ With Lazarus the glow of friendship,/ Unless with spirits destitute, we find/ Fellowship in the deserts of the mind.
XXVI. While yet we see with eyes, must we be blind?/ Is lonely mortal death the only gate/ To holy life eternal ... [Death] "too early" or "too late"/ [has] no meaning in the Eternal Mind ... Death ... bars our way, unless ... We give our self, will, heart, and fear./ And then ... from above/ Is poured upon us life, will, heart and love.
Queries—How & Where can I find "a river to clean the stable of my thought? How often do I betray thee, with word or sneer/ of silence? How do I invite God "to clean this House I have defiled?" How do all our virtues "cast a mimic shade of subtle vice that often usurps" the place of actual virtue? How do we access "senses, deeper laid than sight, to receive guidance from Love made pure? How do we "love for Love alone, & not for God's gifts." How can Hell be taken with thin wisps of light, without using invincible force? How have I laid Thy Kingdom in me open to betrayal & a slow unseen decay? How do I first rejoice in God alone, so that I truly enjoy & rejoice in God's gifts? How are friends "built around me like a wall, so we stand together in a stockade around the cheerful fire our faith has made?
How do we access joy that "springs rash from beds of pain? How can the chain of golden love sustain the weight of woe? How do we access light that is the product of our suffering? How may we see the paradox & mystery of our suffering & God suffering with us? How can grief & "vital-tearing agonies be Divine Love's gift, & be used to reach the joy "on the far side of woe? How do we "find securer worth in heaven's grief," & resist the temptations of earth's lesser joys? How can I have fellowship with them that are poorly fed & housed, if I live in comfort? How can we see with the Kingdom's eyes, while we still have worldly vision? How do we access the eternal Kingdom before reaching the gate of death?
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X. If soul be soil what may not grow therein?/ The indifferent ground cares not what plant it feed; Both good grain & lean poisoned weed ... Can there then be a soil that grows no sin ... [but only] for the need/ Of the good gardner & his humble kin? ... Out of harrowed heart & broken will/ Ground is prepared at last that grows no ill.
XI. Is there indeed a river that can clean/ The stable of my thought? Can't I hide ... In virtuous act, the dismal inward scene? [&] wall out God with deeds. [But] my soul blazes God's light despite my screen. Torrential seas of brightness round me press ... Till in the fullness of Thy light no room/ Is left for cherished walled gloom.
XII. It is not hard to turn the other cheek/ after an insult, or hot tempered blow ... easier far to go/ The 2nd mile with enemies, than show/ Love to deceitful friends ... Yet, Lord, do I not ... betray Thee oft, with word or sneer/ of silence—and Thou bearest it, content/ To wait in long love on my betterment.
XIII. My Lord, Thou art in every breath I take ... With buoyant mercy Thou enfoldest me,/ And holdest up my foot each step I make./ Thy touch is around me when I wake,/ Thy sound I hear ... by Thy light I see/ The world is fresh with Thy divinity ... Thy creatures flourish for Thy sake ... So cleanest Thou this House I have defiled ... [Mercy I show] is Thy mercy, Lord, in overflow.
XIV. How every virtue casts a mimic shade/ Of subtle vice, so like in form & face/ shadow oft usurps royal place ... in unholy masquerade ... [Love's] gold, is by lesser love betrayed ... Meekness is pursued ... [in seeking to comply] bland & lewd ... No deceit of words can hide long/ Life's seed, [true] meekness of the strong.
XV. ... [In] groping movements of the intellect,/ bounds are smudged where fact & shadow meet ... [Then], Love scents a wind, blowing from God ... And senses, deeper laid than sight, direct/ To free air once-bewildered feet./ Love must be made pure to be our guide ... our spirit lifts/ To love for Love alone, not for God's gifts.
XVI. Are there no armies, no angelic hosts,/ Invincibly arrayed in awful might/ To battle with the shape-less forms at night? The slimy writhing ranks that Satan boasts? ... Can Hell be taken with thin wisps of light ... [or] entreating ghosts? ... What know ye, ye blind lords of strife,/ About the secret Kingdom of [Human] life!
XVII. No kingdom falls before it is betrayed/ By inward enemies—no outward foe/ Can deal the last and only fatal blow ... [Have] I laid/ Thy Kingdom in me open to a slow/ Unseen decay? ... My inmost stronghold is rebellious still/ Against the peaceful envoys of Thy will. / Lord, run through me with Thy sudden tide,/ For this proud heart can never be Thy throne/ Unless its pride be pride of Thee alone.
XVIII. I plunge [my self], shouting, in the fertile tide/ Of vast creation; lave myself in light, [in senses] ... With [sound], scent, taste, touch: all senses sanctified./ What?! In God alone I must rejoice?/ Not in God's creatures, abounding gifts?/ Seek 1st the Kingdom—for thy joys are dim/ Until thou findest all things new, in Him.
XIX. Are not my friends built around me like a wall?/ We stand together in a firm stockade/ Around the cheerful fire our faith has made ... Beyond the glow ... Slide shadows ... Of unacknowledged doubt ... [Beyond the] fire, and friends at call ... [If I am left] shivering in the bleak, immense,/ Dark Otherness—will not my fire go out? Gathered sticks [of fire] are scattered, but the sun/ Warms many no more certainly than one.
XX. Must every joy spring rash from beds of pain? ... And songs of joy to mournful chants be sung? ... Can the chain/ of golden love the pearl of price sustain ... the weight of woe? ... Could'st Thou not have brought [Thy] Life ... at a cost less great? ... Did'st Thou give us night/ For stars, and give us suffering for Thy light?
XXI. Wrapped [up] in God, must we then blandly bless/ Wretchedness, pain, disease, as Heaven-sent ... And channel our intent/ Away from Earth, [while] power and lust oppress/ The ancient-suffering seed of gentle-ness ... [If] we are but cattle, tortured that God's grace May shine—I would deny that God to God's face ... If God should suffer too ... and love, and die—may we not see/ The paradox blaze into Mystery.
XXII. Can grief be gift ... Divine Love's gift? ... Vital-tearing agonies ... Of choking pain? Ah ... dare we sift/ An abyss of suffering [&] take [up] our cross ... The very tongue ... [that spoke of suffering] was bored with blackening flame ... [It says] there's joy greater than joy can know,/ Through suffering on the far side of woe.
XXIII. I won't shout for victory, nor praise/ The bloody laurels of returning hosts ... Neither will I mourn defeated days ... Not with the world's joy will I raise my heart,/ Nor with the world's grief bow it down to dust ... For earthly love is kin to lust./ The living soul must find securer worth/ In grief of heaven than joy of earth.
XXIV. There is not death but this, to be alone,/ Outside the friendly room of time, space, [& friendly face] ... Where in the vision nought but self is shown/ From the last despair, the extremest cry,/ Flows the great gain that swallows all our loss./ From the towers of heaven calls the bell/ That summons us across the gulf of Hell.
XXV. Can I have fellowship with them that fed/ On desert locust, husks of swine,/ Or slept without a tent [on hard earth] ... When I on easy [banquet] couches [have eaten and] reclined ... and slept comforted? How can we from a lofty table feel/ With Lazarus the glow of friendship,/ Unless with spirits destitute, we find/ Fellowship in the deserts of the mind.
XXVI. While yet we see with eyes, must we be blind?/ Is lonely mortal death the only gate/ To holy life eternal ... [Death] "too early" or "too late"/ [has] no meaning in the Eternal Mind ... Death ... bars our way, unless ... We give our self, will, heart, and fear./ And then ... from above/ Is poured upon us life, will, heart and love.
Queries—How & Where can I find "a river to clean the stable of my thought? How often do I betray thee, with word or sneer/ of silence? How do I invite God "to clean this House I have defiled?" How do all our virtues "cast a mimic shade of subtle vice that often usurps" the place of actual virtue? How do we access "senses, deeper laid than sight, to receive guidance from Love made pure? How do we "love for Love alone, & not for God's gifts." How can Hell be taken with thin wisps of light, without using invincible force? How have I laid Thy Kingdom in me open to betrayal & a slow unseen decay? How do I first rejoice in God alone, so that I truly enjoy & rejoice in God's gifts? How are friends "built around me like a wall, so we stand together in a stockade around the cheerful fire our faith has made?
How do we access joy that "springs rash from beds of pain? How can the chain of golden love sustain the weight of woe? How do we access light that is the product of our suffering? How may we see the paradox & mystery of our suffering & God suffering with us? How can grief & "vital-tearing agonies be Divine Love's gift, & be used to reach the joy "on the far side of woe? How do we "find securer worth in heaven's grief," & resist the temptations of earth's lesser joys? How can I have fellowship with them that are poorly fed & housed, if I live in comfort? How can we see with the Kingdom's eyes, while we still have worldly vision? How do we access the eternal Kingdom before reaching the gate of death?
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