Foreword—I spent more than half of 2013 at Pendle Hill in Wallingford, PA, and fell in love with many things about it. My latest passion is with their pamphlets. Here I have, after reading them, set down the most impressive excerpts of each, with rare paraphrasing and additions of my own [in brackets]. Most of all I am impressed with the timelessness of these pamphlets, the oldest of which go back more than 80 years.
221. Harnessing Pegasus: Inspiration and Meditation (by Elizabeth
Gray Vining; 1978)
About
the Author—The actual basis &
texture of Elizabeth Vining’s life has been her writing, some 25 books (under
Elizabeth Janet Gray & Elizabeth Gray Vining), and 6 Pendle Hill Pamphlets [2
as editor, 4 as author, 1 after this one].
This pamphlet fulfills her promise to get down on paper her
contribu- tions to Pendle Hill’s “3 Writers on Writing” weekend conference in
early 1978.
Can
you write a book right off or do you have to go out into the woods & think? 5th
Grade class writing query
[Introduction]—What is inspiration? One definition is “the seemingly involuntary
element in the art of expression for which the artist holds a power outside
himself responsible. Elizabeth Drew wrote:
“The poets do seem to agree that the origin of their art lies outside
their purely conscious faculties.” [Some see in inspiration] an element of
divine revelation. In the case of
Archi- medes, it is probable that all the thinking and mental wrestling with the
pro- blem that he had done earlier had been working in the deep recesses of his
mind and threw up the answer when the surface mind had let go and was at
rest. Can Pegasus, the fiery steed of the Muses, be harnessed?
The Will?—[I had a long walk home from school on an empty
stomach]. [In passing through] “the village,” there was a penny candy store. If
I imagined myself walking quickly by it, I actually did. If I allowed myself to
picture the candy store inside, [I felt a compulsion to go in]. [I had similar
results in imagi- ning concentrating on my homework]. I wrote: “The will’s an ox. It strains and heaves/ To
drag its heavy load,/ Submits to yoke & goad,/ And massively its ends
achieves.// Imagination is a bird,/
Flying and singing high/ And free in the windy sky./ Between the two is there a
word// In common? Here is pa- radox:/ The soaring bird drops
seed/ That roots & grows to feed/ The dumb, deliberate ox.”
Imagination?/ Race Memory—Imagination
was a handmaid of inspi- ration. [I would
“mull over” a story, letting the characters act & interact as they would,
and think about their “history”; they would emerge, seemingly] of their own
volition. After a while I jumped up, sat
down at my desk & began to write. If I
omitted mulling, I found myself going through a much longer & often
fru- strating process. It was not my own
exclusive discovery. As a cartoonist put
it: “But a writer isn’t always writing when
he’s writing.”
Mary
Austin’s Everyman’s Genius defined,
explained, & developed my fumbling practice.
Mary lived for some 15 years among the Indians of the Mo- have Desert and was the autocratic “dean” of writers like D. H.
Lawrence, Willa Cather, and others.
There are repetitions and inconsistencies in Every- man’s Genius. Her best
definition of genius is: “The capacity of the immedi- ate self to make free and
unpremeditated use of racial material stored up in the deep-self, as well as
material acquired from individual experience.”
It
became clear to me that I had been skating over the surface of ano- ther
discovery: one could draw on deeper sources of imagination than I had yet
probed. E. M. Forster wrote: “What about the creative state? In it a man is taken out of himself. He lets down, as it were, a bucket into the
unconscious and draws up something which is usually beyond his reach. The deep self lies in the lowest region of
our being, below the level of our store of acquired information. This is the
level at which inspiration in the sense of a message from the divine
occurs.
Brahms
believed that a higher power was working within him to produce his music. Max Bruch spoke of “drawing on the Eternal
Energy, from which all life flows. He
who consciously appropriates the inner force is inspired, but technically he
must be adequately equipped to present the inspired ideas on paper.”
Is there such a thing as race memory? Some
of our ways of thinking may indeed come from a source deeper than early
education and the climate of thought in which we live. Something important to me was missing in my
trip to Japan
Letting Down the Bucket—Different people, of course, have done it in different
ways. Howard Pyle would go on solitary
walks, receive images, shut out distractions, process images with his keen,
disciplined intellect, shaping it into graphic realization. Thoreau would philosophize upon waking,
“having in my sleep transcended the limits of the individual and made
observations which I can neither recall nor appreciate.
Bertrand
Russell said: “I haven’t the vaguest idea either how I think or how one ought
to think. The process is as instinctive & unconscious as diges- tion. I fill my mind with relevant knowledge and
just wait. Giacomo Puccini said: “I 1st grasp the full power of the
Ego within me. [When] I feel a burning
desire I make a fervent demand for and from the Power that created me, with
full faith this will be granted. The
vibration passes from the soul-center dynamo into my consciousness, and the
inspired ideas are born.” Loren Eisley
wrote: “I do not doubt that the freedom
to create is somehow linked with facility of access to those obscure regions
below the conscious mind. Elizabeth Coats- worth, told of “taking dictation from
her subconscious, a muse [which inhabits] her home.”
[Having
difficulty writing a chapter], I deliberately asked my deep self for help, then
put the whole thing out of my mind. The
next morning, I wrote the new chapter as if I were taking dictation, & when
it was finished it carried for- ward the development of the story swiftly and
surely. The deep self may also give
warning when one is going astray or in danger of doing so.
When Early Friends “had a stop in their
mind,” & when they paid atten- tion and refrained from the action, they found
they had avoided some awkward mistake. I
was blocked from writing a teenage novel by something far down in my mind, my deep self. Then it came to me in a
rush. I should be writing my
autobiography; the structure of this book became clear to me. After Quiet
Pilgrimage was finished and off my mind, the teen-age book, The Taken Girl, went through like a
breeze.
Cooperating with the Deep Self—I have regular hours of writing. If one can’t set
aside hours for writing, one can still engage the deep self by making a
definite appointment the day before; one must be sure to keep the appointment.
The deep self contains: childhood experiences; race memories; streams from the
collective unconscious; facts; impressions; scenes; ideas. The relationship
between the surface mind & the deep self, must be tended & fed. It
means an absorbing of their essence and meaning, a making them one’s own by
thinking about them.
Any
experience, like the fodder in the silo, has to ripen and ferment in the [deep
dark] before it is brought out for use.
Experience, taken into the deep vaults of the memory, might years later
emerge in a work of substance, clothed in meaning and beauty. Experience must be aged in the wood, pondered
over, referred to other experiences.
Mary Austin wrote: “The one indispensable
talent for creative art … is the talent for experiencing.
One should: let the experience have its way
with one; not avoiding pain; after it is over, try to understand all its
meaning and implication; never shirk an experience because of unexpected
results.” An experience can leave little
trace, or it is assimilated in a way that makes it the very stuff of one’s
being. It is not the magnitude of the
happening itself but the way it is committed to the deep self. [There is no telling when or how an
experience will resurface].
Concentration/ Meditation—When the surface mind & the deep self are in
harmony, an energy results that carries one in a burst of creation that is
exhilarating & exhausting. Stephen Spender wrote: “Creative writing’s problem
is essentially one of concentration; eccentricities of poets are usually
due to mechanical habits or rituals developed in order to concentrate. [A poet
isn’t] concentrating or developing in one direction, just as a plant works in
many directions, towards the warmth & light with leaves, & towards the
water with roots, at the same time.”
William
Butler Yeats says: “When a man writes
any work of genius or invents some creative action, is it not because some
knowledge or power has come into his mind from beyond his mind? … I know now
that revelation is from the self, but from that age-long buried self.” He wrote that he “practiced medi- tations” and
as a result ideas came to him in his dreams that later he developed into
poems.
The
resources of the deep self, I believe, become available to the sur- face mind not
only through “meditations,” but through the daily practice of one or another of
the more universal types of meditation; [the good ones train the person so that
he can effectively move toward his goals.”
We are at present seeing a revival of general interest in mysticism. One
begins with meditation and goes on to contemplation and union.
In
the revival of interest in meditation, it has been secular & eastern
aspects of it that pre-dominate, although Merton’s Seeds of Contemplation & other writings have had a wide reading
& influence. Transcendental Meditation & Zen Meditation [are growing
in popularity]. Zen meditation in Japan
Laurence
LeShan” How to Meditate [talks of
structured meditation]. This includes:
mantra, breath counting, the 1,000 petal Lotus meditation, meditation of the
Bubble and others. In unstructured
meditation he says: “You think about a
subject and simply stay with the subject and your own feelings about it.”
Un- structured meditation is also one of the resources of the artist. The 14th century English Cloud of Unknowing has some excellent
hints. The Cloud states: “Try to look
as it over the distraction’s shoulders, seeking another thing.” Do not strive with them.
A mind accustomed to meditation & skilled in it, can more easily con- ceive of the special relationship with the deep self & achieve more easily the “concentration” which Stephen Spender described. Meditation takes the whole self. LeShan saw meditation as leading to understanding love. When all the roads are mapped & the signposts set in place, every one still has to find one’s own way. Pegasus may be skittish & difficult to catch. Or [if we fall into presumption we may as] Keats wrote: “sway about upon a wooden rocking horse & call it Pegasus.” Any real contact with our deep selves refreshes & strengthens. It blesses in the most profound and significant sense of the word .
A mind accustomed to meditation & skilled in it, can more easily con- ceive of the special relationship with the deep self & achieve more easily the “concentration” which Stephen Spender described. Meditation takes the whole self. LeShan saw meditation as leading to understanding love. When all the roads are mapped & the signposts set in place, every one still has to find one’s own way. Pegasus may be skittish & difficult to catch. Or [if we fall into presumption we may as] Keats wrote: “sway about upon a wooden rocking horse & call it Pegasus.” Any real contact with our deep selves refreshes & strengthens. It blesses in the most profound and significant sense of the word .
222. The family as a way into the future (by Elise Boulding; 1978)
About the Author—Elise Boulding was born in Oslo , Norway America
Mostly the family dance is just the choreography of the reserved life, of all the left-over inexpressibles from hours of duty out there in the social web. Always it is the Tao, the mirroring of the divine order, however imperfectly, as we teeter back & forth between the created & uncreated in the task of family growth. Elise Boulding
[The Tao of Family]—The future of the family is a subject often ap- proached with great anxiety in these times. I have long been convinced that families are the primary agents of social change in any society. I have come to find the phrase “the Tao of family” meaningful, because it reflects the special nature of family as directioned movement. [There is] ambivalence about whether the family is basically a good institution for human beings. The truth lies somewhere between [“families are all devotion” & “families are all pain].” Is there some better set of arrangements than the family almost within sight that will produce better human beings, more economic justice, & peace instead of war?
The art of social design is at least 10,000 years old, but social designs always misses the individual’s uniqueness. We push at the edges of custom daily by performing our various roles in our special way. The family is an an- cient social invention that provides support for the individuation process [& shelter from the harshness of social prescription]. In times of rapid social change, the shelters do not function very well. [People feeling trapped in families or the social web experiment in creating] new family forms or the mo- dification of existing ones.
The commune is an alternative family form that has been invented over and over again. The history of these experiments puts the experiments of our own times into proper perspective. A commune is even more demanding than a “kinship” family in terms of skill in social relations. They must be exhaustingly re-created each day, and most people are not prepared for that kind of effort.
[Household Patterning]—Even in more settled times, there have been many variations of household patterning. While a certain portion of any popu- lation lives in households which are standard for the society, demographic analysis is showing that fewer people lived in these standard households than had been thought. It is hard for true individuality to flourish [where there are no] others who can mirror back the growth of one’s individuality over time; [families provide that mirroring].
We worry far too much about the form of the family, as if there should be one optimum pattern answering the human condition. There have always been widows, widowers, and unmarried women rearing children. What is new is that the concepts of neighborhood have been weakened. The 2-parent family is also being inventive, moving away from a cramping “woman-in-the-home only” image. The personhood of the young and the old have also had to be redefined as we gain a better understanding of human capacity and social needs.
Is it all over with the family, or is it still a significant human enter- prise? Here I will be referring to any household grouping which involves adults and children in continuing commitment to each other over time. There may any number of adults; they may be heterosexual, gay or celibate. What makes the household a family is that each member will care about each other member and be available in time of need. A single-person household can be a “family” if there is an active network of nonresident friends and relatives in a long-term commitment.
Family life is continuous creation of human beings & of the society in which they live. It is a reflection of the divine order & a uniquely individual act. [The Tao I speak of] is: the divine order & a way; non-action and action; God the Created & Uncreated. Quaker families are rich in traditions on silent waiting. In a spiritually alive community there is seepage of the spirit from individual to family to Meeting & back again.
The Dance of Growth—For the dance of growth to go on, each member must be daily attuned to the different body signals of each other member. Part of the humor is dancing as if everyone were yesterday’s person & making be- lated adjustments to today’s person. The magic of the dance still creates its own understandings.
There are many forcible intrusions on the family ballet, but for the most part, this person-creating family dance goes on. Each creates the other in the family ballet. All movement is dance, if we but recognize it [as such; we may have more joy in the process of recognizing it]. Mostly the family dance is just the choreography of the reserved life, of all the left-over inexpressibles from hours of duty out there in the social web. Always it is the Tao, the mirroring of the divine order, however imperfectly, as we teeter back and forth between the created and uncreated in the task of family growth.
Time-Binding/Family Healing—For a child, a parent is tomorrow, a grandparent is day-after tomorrow. For a parent, a child is yesterday & tomor- row. Each of us relearns all of an entire life-span’s roles each day. In the fa- mily we cannot ignore the different memory stocks of each member. When life spaces are shared, when I-remember & I-hope enter into dialogue, each per- son gains a sense of social process. Without storytelling, there is no time-bin- ding, no coherence between past & future. Meeting death with a loved one, we travel both ways. Family acts of healing are also time-binding. We expect parents to nurture children, but forget that children also nurture parents. Con- fidence in one’s ability to heal in the family is confidence in one’s capacity for social healing.
Conflict Maturing—Maturing in the capacity to handle conflict is one of the most discussed & least understood aspects of family life. While conflict avoidance, conflict management, “fighting” skills, & communicating skills are all very important and legitimate approaches to family conflict, they must not substitute for an understanding of the basic process of conflict maturing. The more the love, the more intolerable can differences appear precisely because we have been used to seeing things in the same way in the past.
I use the analogy of 2 young trees planted close together. [They share a space and yet branches and roots reach out in different directions] A family is a small grove of trees planted close together; the newer young trees experi- ence this mingling of roots and branches, & the separateness of new growth away from the center. The more we are faithful to both our togetherness and our separateness, the more pain we feel.
The maturing of conflict means letting each element of the conflict take its own shape, and then stepping back to see this impossible, warring configu- ration as an embodiment of creation. While we must acknowledge and face contradictions, we don't have to flagellate ourselves with them. The “remem- ber-when” session of family reunions are like what we do daily in the family, evoking the familiar to smooth over the unfamiliar.
The capacity for conflict maturing between adults, and between adults & children is as necessary an ingredient for family well being as is the capa- city to love. When the family functions as I have been suggesting here, the dance permits each person to grow without trimming the edges [as one has to do to fit each social situation]. In family interaction, we must move in all kinds of ways that are not spontaneous to us. We have so much tension and tight- ness in the family, yet the spaces to pass through are there if we know how to find them. The key to envisioning the good, & our not producing enough goodness to change our social course to nonviolence, must lie as much in the family as in our capacity for social design.
The Peaceable Kingdom—We love one another beyond reason and beyond design, at the far side of hurt and anger, because there is an order of loving in creation which the Peaceable Kingdom passage (Isaiah 11:6-9) describes. It is a parable of family life, as well as a parable of nations. [As a family], we are bonded at another level. We are bonded in the knowledge of God, which is also the love of God. The teaching of love has always involved a paradoxical yoking of the cosmic & the particular. To the extent that the family is faithful to its nature and task, it is alive with love.
With God’s help, the family is the best practice-ground for love we have. From our first experience of co-creation with God and each other in the family, we stumble out into neighborhood and community, and practice co-creation there. How are we to create viable new local community structures to replace the frayed structures of industrial centralism, in a dynamic con- text of world neighborhood, world need, world service? Yet that is what we must do, and it is the high calling of family life to prepare us for this kind of co-creation.
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223. The Roots
of Pendle Hill (by Carol R. Murphy; 1979)
America Haverford College Graduate School
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About
the Author/ PREFATORY NOTE/ PROLOGUE--She
was born in Boston Massachusetts Philadelphia American University
This is essentially the 1st 3
chapters of Pendle Hill's history up to 1950. Pendle Hill was the 1st place to
which Carol Murphy turned to nurture her renewed religious faith. She drew on Pendle Hill files and: Joseph
Platt; Douglas Steere; Justice Williams; Howard and Anna Brinton; John Forbes;
Anna Broomell and PH staff.
When
you come to Pendle Hill, you drive up a tree-lined drive, past the Director’s
house to the home-like colonial style building where its life is cen- tered. [It
may seem very worldly, until something reminds you of the other- worldly
concerns that brought people here]. You may find students making bread &
carrying animated discussions [with varying degrees of foreign accents in their
English]. You think on the people that has been gathered here, & won- der
what brought them, what work they are doing, & what common purpose binds
them together in fellowship.
I. A CHALLENGE AND AN ANSWER—In the course of the 19th cen- tury,
scientific thought was forcing religion to return to its roots & realize
fresh- ly its own ultimate truth. Few
Quakers then were impassioned mystics or pro- phets. They didn't always or everywhere give a
clear answer to the challenge of scientific thought, including the newer
Biblical criticism. The more fearless Quaker minds saw that adult education was one way to better equip Friends to
face the doubts and questionings of the times.
Though called “a religiously guarded education,” Quaker schools were
among the 1st to introduce practi- cal and scientific studies.
In England Manchester Birmingham
In America
II.
WOOLMAN SCHOOL France
Caroline G. Norment came as hostess in
1923, [& served in different roles for 4 years]. The Woolman School Board
noted: “Her untiring devotion & her eager vision of the possibilities of
the School have been a source of in- spiration to the Board.” Woolman School
The
move to larger quarters seemed to open a door for future expansion and greater
responsibilities. A larger budget was needed for maintenance; stu- dents were
seldom able to pay their own way. It was no longer located near the library and
teaching facilities of Swarthmore College Woolman School Quaker Educational Center adequate to the purpose, adequately staffed and financed.”
Certainly
the need for such a school was a real one.
Caroline Norment wrote [of the approaching end of Woolman: “Perhaps we have gone from the worm stage
into the chrysalis and some day may come out a full-fledged moth with a beauty
that is as yet unsuspected.” Alexander
Purdy thought that: “We have to do 2
things at once, if we are to grasp the problem of our common life today: see life as a whole and avoid all easy
solutions of its perplexities; see life in its specific, immediate, &
hand-to-hand relationships.” Mura
Murayama wrote: “You have given me a
key, which I have lost sight of many years, to open the door between
spontaneous enjoyment and conscientious effort and control, and to find a unity
between them.”
[Some
felt the curriculum of the school was too broad, and questioned whether] it was
possible for a small school to do more than one thing well. In the last class there was 21 students & a
$5,000 deficit. This showed both the
need & the failure of Woolman School
III. THE FOUNDING OF PENDLE HILL—Many Friends felt the concern that the good work might
go on. A conference was called by Rufus
M. Jones, Clement M. Biddle, and George A. Walton among others. This conference stated that “Woolman School
A
continuation committee was appointed.
Their deliberations concluded that:
“there is a need for an educational center in which a type of special
study and research can be carried on which is not done at present in our
existing Quaker educational center. The
center can and should stimulate Quaker thought and life in our present schools.
[Here] students can live together who desire to make a study of the application
of Christianity to life. The center
should be quite free from the usual academic organization …”
A
certain amount affiliation & cooperation with colleges was envisaged. The
staff would include at least 2 full-time instructors (one as director of
stu- dies), a director of extensions, and a hostess. It was necessary to obtain the spiritual and
financial backing of the Society of Friends. The plan suggested did not receive definite
enough support to assure its carrying out. 5 men met to select an inspiring leader to direct the school in its
formative years. They put Henry T.
Hodgkin at the head of their list.
Henry
Hodgkin was born in 1877 of a Quaker family in Darlington in northern England China China US
Hodgkin
thought of the “Woodbrooke in America November 2, 1928 .
The
nucleus of the Pendle Hill Board was: Henry Cadbury, Elizabeth Furnas, Edith S.
Platt, Joseph Platt, Grace Rhoads, Wilbur Thomas, Agnes Tierney, James Vail,
Bernard Walton, and Frank D. Watson.
[Careful consi- deration was made of the character of the
instruction]. Its natural develop- ment
was not restricted to any one narrow channel; [the school didn’t have a name at
this time].
In March 1929 Henry Hodgkin
made a brief trip to America
At
the retreat Vincent D. Nicholson wrote:
“I feel that for the 1st time it has become a necessity to
make this school the expression of certain seeking elements in all groups of
the Society.” Grace E. Rhoads, Jr.
wrote: “ I don’t think of this as a
school solely for Friends, but for a group which is working together to serve
the whole world.” Douglas Steere
wrote: “I look forward to a day when
[the notable thing will be when] you have gotten some magneti- zing enrichment of
life that you can share with young people.”
Hornell Hart wrote: “If we have
prepared to call them to follow in the prophets' footsteps we have an
opportunity which transcends the rational attitude. Homer Morris wrote: “The proposed school has
little chance of suc- cess unless it does something distinctive and entirely
different from what the other Friends colleges are doing and what is being done
in existing graduate schools.” Henry
Hodgkin met with the Board before going back to England
IV. PLANTING THE
ROOTS—On the way home Henry Hodgkin
wrote: We are setting out to something
new. Even Woodbrooke with its rich
experi- ence is not to be simply repeated … [The name “Pendle Hill’s”]
suggestion of the waiting harvest & the mount of vision is all to the good;
it can be used with- out the word ‘school.’ ” Woolman School Wallingford November 21, 1929 ].
S.
Archibald Smith wrote: “There is need
for a school that does not so much aim to explain life as to impart a
reasonable and inspiring motive to live.”
The Christian Century hailed
the coming of Henry Hodgkin to America December 12th, 1929 , prospective students were already beginning to
register.
OnFebruary 23, 1930 , the Board of the old Woolman School lingford
On
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224. In the Belly of a Paradox: A Celebration of Contradictions in
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224. In the Belly of a Paradox: A Celebration of Contradictions in
the Thought of Thomas Merton (by Parker J. Palmer; 1979)
About the Author—Parker J. Palmer is Dean of Students at Pendle Hill, where he has lived with his wife & 3 children since 1974. He has a Ph.D in sociology from Berkeley Washington D.C.
Foreword (by Henri J. M. Nouwen)—Thomas Merton, who never thought of himself as a scholar, has probably inspired more theses than any other contemporary spiritual writer. Few unsystematic authors have been so thoroughly systematized. Parker Palmer has been able to evoke the caprici- ousness that made Meron such an endearing author. He was sobering & funny, strict & open, Catholic & Zen, hard working & always available to others.
Parker Palmer has found in Merton a brother whose inconsistencies in- vite us to enter deeply & to discover there, beyond all contradictions, the One who cannot be caught or understood, but only intuited & recognized with a smile. Parker Palmer knows Merton because he has an affinity with him. The greatest surprise of all is that it leads us closer to the spirit of Merton, [&] to Him in whose service Merton juggled contradiction & paradox.
Introduction—Thomas Merton said: “I feel that my own life is especially sealed with the great sign [of Jonas the prophet . . . because like Jonas, I find myself traveling toward my destiny in the belly of a paradox.” Contradiction, paradox, tensions of opposites, these have always been at the heart of experi- ence, and I think I am not alone. As I labored to remove the contradictions before presenting myself to God, my spiritual life [remained] a preliminary attraction, never quite getting to the main event. For me there was light and liberation in Merton’s image of life in the belly of a paradox, [in his saying]: “I have had to accept the fact that my life is almost totally paradoxical. I have also had to learn [not to apologize] for the fact.” Steeped in Taoism and Zen, [he is] claimed by some in the East to be an incarnate Buddha.
“I have had to accept the fact that my life is almost totally paradoxical. I have also had to learn [not to apologize] for the fact.” Thomas Merton
Contradiction, Paradox, & the Life of the Spirit—The contradictions of life are inherent in human nature & in the circumstances surrounding our lives. The things we seek consciously & with effort tend to evade us, while our bles- sings come quietly & unbidden. The contradictions of private life are multiplied when we enter the world of work & politics. [Finally, there] are religious conun- drums which have bedeviled humans for millennia.
Contradiction, Paradox, & the Life of the Spirit—The contradictions of life are inherent in human nature & in the circumstances surrounding our lives. The things we seek consciously & with effort tend to evade us, while our bles- sings come quietly & unbidden. The contradictions of private life are multiplied when we enter the world of work & politics. [Finally, there] are religious conun- drums which have bedeviled humans for millennia.
Thomas Merton has helped me understand that the way we respond to contradiction is pivotal to our spiritual lives. The ultimate contradiction is the apparent opposition between God’s light & our own shadowed lives. [We can walk in the shadows or disown the dark world and try to live in a bright, private realm]. A 3rd way is to allow tension to occupy our lives' center. By doing so we may receive the transformation of contradiction into paradox. The choices we thought we had to make, may become signs of a larger truth than we had even dreamed.
A contradiction is a statement containing elements logically at variance with one another. Paradox is a statement which seems self-contradictory, but on investigation may prove to essentially true. By spiritual standards many reli- gious insights contain paradoxical truth. In faith, rules of logic become less & less useful as questions grow deeper. Paradox's truth comes from the world being full of very real opposites pulling vigorously against each other.
[Paradox should not be used to] excuse the contradiction, sanctify it, & allow us to forget about it (Bonhoeffer’s “cheap grace”). We will become more responsive to God’s spirit as we allow ourselves to be engulfed by contradic- tions which God alone can resolve. Although Marxism, Taoism, & the way of the cross may seem contradictory ways of life, Merton shows how tensions between them open into deeper truth.
The Way of Marxism—Merton must have been attracted by the con- tradiction that was at the heart of Marx’s life & thought. Marx believed that the dialectic always develops around economic factors. Contradictions arise from the different, unequal relations people have to the center of economic power. In capitalism, the contradiction is economic injustice, which will become conflict. [Ultimately] the outcome would be a new synthesis, the classless society, in which economic injustice is eradicated.
Merton knew that Marxism & Christianity come full circle in certain re- spects. Marxism reminds us of key elements in Christian faith which Christians have a habit of forgetting. The 1st convergence is “Religion is the opiate of the people,” if by religion we mean its intellectual, institutional, [& dead] forms. The ministry of every authentic religious leader is to break people from their addic- tion to inauthentic forms of faith. A 2nd convergence between Marxism & Chris- tianity is in their concern for the poor. The religion of many middle-class Ameri- cans is designed to dull their sense of justice & allow them to live at peace with glaring economic contradictions.
A 3rd place where Marxism and Christianity converge is in the idea of the classless society. [The early church] was meant to be a sign of a world in which all will care for all. There's a major parallel between the Marxist classless soci- ety, and the Christian kingdom of God
In each of these convergences, Marxism reveals something essential to Christianity, something obscured & forgotten through centuries of inattention & distortion. How do we live in fair exchange, so that what we consume is balanced out by what we produce? How can our spiritual labors be as useful to the people who feed us as their labors are to us? What are their fruits? Merton argues that the monastery [or any spiritual endeavor] must repay its debt to world labor by “producing people” [i.e. develop the ca- pacity to love].
Where Marx spoke of labor's alienation, Merton speaks of our hearts' alienation. Where Marx argued that capitalism robbed people of the means & the benefits of their work, Merton argues that modern life robs us of our hearts [i.e.] our ability to feel connected with others has been stolen from us. Our individualized way of life makes us feel alone & unrelated; our competitive way of life makes us feel that our gains must come at the expense of others.
The theory of nonviolent change Merton is committed to is that beyond every conflict there a resolution, a synthesis, a common good, which will be obscured by violence, but revealed by patience, dialogue, and prayerful con- sideration. From Marxism Merton learned about the spiritual affairs of the heart. His understanding of action draws deeply from Taoism, misunderstood as advocating a passive retreat from life.
The Way of Chuang Tzu—Wu wei is the Chinese word for “non-action.” It occurs often in The Way of Chuang Tzu. Merton became the patron saint of social activists because he spoke so clearly to their condition: “The activist's frenzy neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys his own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work. . . He who attempts to act & do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-under- standing, freedom, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give.”
If we are tempted to use power for purposes of self-promotion and self- enhancement, not only do these tendencies deflect our action from its original aims, they lead to counter-productive actions. Taoism thus serves to criticize and clarify our action. Chuang Tzu’s poem “The Need to Win” says that the only way to victory is to forget about victory, to be indifferent to it. We should not let our desire to meet these needs drain us of the power to do so. Taoism pushes us by insisting that our actions transcend the polarity of good and evil.
From Taoism we learn that religion is a mode of connectedness with the creative force of life. When we lose this connectedness with life, with one ano- ther, then we need a code of ethics to tell us what we ought to do. The spiritual life teaches wholeness, integration with all being, and out of that wholeness comes true power and true action. In the poem “The Woodcarver,” the great artist follows the spirit, the internal flow, the nature of the thing at hand instead of rules. Only through disciplines of “detachment, forgetfulness of results, and abandonment of profit can we transcend those anxieties about self & success which distort our actions.
The action of “The Woodcarver” requires a belief that things & people do have a “nature”; that is limits & potentials. Most of our social action is based on the assumption that people can be seduced or compelled into whatever form fits the activist’s conception of how things “ought” to be. Only through concern & respect for the nature of the other can our action flow with the action of the Tao. Through Taoism Merton learned another image of action. It is one which we need to know in our own strained & frantic time. Although Taoism stands on premises quite different from Christianity, the more deeply we pursue the con- tradictions the more the paradox comes clear.
The Way of The Cross—The cross reminds us of a major, historical contradiction. Men & women yearn for truth & goodness, but feel threatened when these appear in human form, & murder the one who fulfills our wish. The cross’ structure suggests the horizontal pull between this person & that, & the vertical stretch between the demands of the divine & the fears of the flesh. To walk the way of the cross is to be impaled upon contradictions, and yet the way of the cross is also the way toward peace, toward the center where contradic- tions converge.
Marxism begins with profound sympathy for the wretched of the earth, a sympathy which has been largely been lost in affluent Christian circles. But Marxism allows pain to pursue its natural course toward anger and violence. We have no reason to believe that change by violence foreshadows anything other than more of the same.
In contrast, the cross signifies that pain stops here. When Jesus accep- ted the cross, his death became a channel for the redeeming power of love. The suffering of which Jesus spoke is not that which unwell people create for themselves. It is the suffering already present in the world which we can either ignore or identify with. The way of the cross means letting pain carve one’s life into a channel through which the healing stream of the spirit can flow to a world in need, & bring us to the cross. The way of the cross reminds us that despair and disillusionment are not dead-ends but signs of impending resurrection.
2 illusions must die on the cross: false sense of self; false conception of the world. Our “false” self separates us from God and from each other. [In or- der to go through] the spiritual struggle to become part of the “hidden whole- ness” [one must have an ego in order to lose it]. The 2 illusions are related since much of the false self is built around our notion of what “the world” wants and demands of us. Merton chides novices for thinking of the world as an independent entity, a thing “out there. The world is within each one of us.
The pain of living the contradictions is partly the pain of having our illu- sions shattered. It is somehow more comforting to believe that the world is a monolith which forces us into certain ways of life than to accept the fact that we have the freedom to respond fully to God’s will. Freedom is what the cross is all about. The cross liberates us from the idea the world in “out there,” over and against us; the experience of the cross reveals that the world is in us, in both its glory and its shame. Since the world is in us, we are responsible for the world; the shape the world takes depends on how we live our lives.
Not only are we freed from the illusion & freed to respond; we also are freed in the knowledge that the world is redeemed by a God who suffers the contradictions with us, [who] suffers brokenness, but always offers the gift of reconciliation. By living the contradictions we will be brought through to hope, & only through hope will we be empowered to live life’s contradictions. Some day, far out at sea heading away from the place where the Lord has called us & lost in contradictions, we will be swallowed by grace & find ourselves trave- ling [in distinguished company] toward our destiny in the belly of a paradox.
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225. The PeculiarMission Quaker School
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225. The Peculiar
1979)
226. Homosexuality and the Bible: An Interpretation (by Walter
About
the Author—Douglas Heath went to Swarthmore College Haverford College
Foreword—I have visited many of our Quaker schools and
colleges, some many times. One query continues to be, “What should a Friends school be?” Head masters & teachers sense
the mission of a Friends school should be much more than just academic
excellence. Friends must [better answer] & speak more nourishingly to this
query. We must implement our insights in the way we teach & organize our
schools. Those who know Quaker schools know how far they fall short of our
tradition’s ideals. This pamphlet is
only one Friend’s answer to the query.
[A Peculiar Mission
The
“peculiar mission” of a Friends school is to educate for goodness by enabling
members to live their lives in ways that reveal Truth to themselves and through
themselves to others. What do religious
purposes and words have to do with what should go on in today’s classroom? A comprehensive study of educational origins
states: “By far the most productive of the denomi- national schools are those
sponsored by the Society of Friends; only a mino- rity of the student body are
Quakers.”
[Meeting for Worship and Growth]—The Friends Meeting for Worship, their communal mode
of decision-making, & their way of reaching out to serve others combine to
create a distinctive Quaker climate in which to grow. I sus- pect that a distinctive view of
education may be embedded in Friends’ way of worshipping. Howard Brinton’s “The divine Light is a
principle of growth,” is the bridge that links for Friends the religious and
the academic. Early Friends believed they could become
perfect, and that the Kingdom was realizable.
They also believed that if they perfected that measure of talent that
they had, they would discover other talents to perfect.
The
implications of assumptions about growth are several. School cli- mate should be
one of high hopeful expectancy in the potential of its members for goodness;
our hopes can create our reality. The spoken & unspoken ex- pectations of a Friends
school must be in unity. A Friends school should be di- vinely discontented, with
innovative experiments in mind, believers in the already-arrived Kingdom. It is
growing that brings aliveness, even happiness.
To
heed the voice of Truth, “the still small voice within,” or to actualize the
self does not mean to accentuate and glorify a self-centered individualism. To live in Truth is to overcome the impetuous
claims of self. It is in Meeting for Worship that Friends seek to encounter most directly the truth of which Fox
spoke. Silent unprogrammed Meeting is
held in a plain room. The silence gradually deepens.
Someone rises to share briefly a message. Perhaps others rise to speak to the same
thought. Alexander Parker said in 1660:
“The 1st that enters into meeting … turn in thy mind to the
light & wait upon God singly, as if none were present but the Lord. Let the next that comes in, let them in simplicity of heart sit down and turn in the same light. To all the rest, in fear of the Lord sit down
in pure stillness and silence of all flesh & wait in the light… Say in your- selves, “it is good to be here.”
The
process by which productive scientists, mathematicians, artists, wri- ters and
others create are remarkably similar to those the early Friends experi- enced in
their Meetings for Worship. Should
schools nurture those qualities of mind and character that may eventually lead
to productive and creative con- tributions to others? Brewster Ghiselin,
researcher, wrote: “Yielding to the oce- anic consciousness may be a distracting
delight … [even] religious; but it is rarely so intense or so pure … More
often it is just a sense of self-surrender to an inward necessity inherent in
something larger than the ego and taking pre- cedent over established order.”
Educational Principle 1: Expectation that every member seeks to live
more fully in the Truth—At
Haverford, upperclassmen make it clear to freshmen that their honor system is
taken seriously & that students must be responsible to other students. I
expect that students genuinely want to learn & commit their optimal
energies in their work with me.
Expecting purity of moti- vation of human beings is unrealistic. Friends nevertheless do not dilute their
expectations nor abandon their hope in the face of their human frailty; they
labor patiently and try to forgive.
Creative
power’s source is deeply inward, but our path to it is cluttered by what early
Friends called “deceits.” Defensive
thickets, like our inclination to retreat into intellectual abstractions, may
protect us from knowing emotional forces that might shake our existence.
Disciplined control allows us to let go of our impulses and thoughts.
Educational Principle 2: Development
of mature self-discipline that enables deeper entry into Truth—How can we
assist a youth to so secure possession of ones own body & mind that one can
abandon the claim of both when one wishes?
Evidence is increasing rapidly
that control of disci- plined meditative forms produces health emotional
consequences that in turn could facilitate learning in the classroom.
When
we wait without deceits intruding into our silence, we may experi- ence what Fox
described as “opening,” becoming more “tender.” My hunch is that repetitive
rituals that require concentration may not have the same opening effect as either just abandoning one’s directive
control or creating an image, like that of Jesus & then letting that image
have a life of its own. Several processes occur which, when not blocked by a [conscious]
vocal ritual, are similar to dreaming, [the source of many creative insights];
Images become increasingly fused with feelings.
When
we become more tender and our crusted forms of conventional thought begin to
melt, we risk encountering symbols and images whose emo- tional power can
possess us. [Once] I was awed at the
miraculous revelation of hundreds of crosses in only seconds. To become so open we risk becoming more open
to the forces of the demonic as well. What secures Friends during their worship,
protecting them from the pull of darkness?
Quakers are more often than not sober, judicious, controlled,
patient, rightly ordered.
Such
qualities provide a massive bulwark against the forces of dark- ness. Fox exhorted Friends to gaze over such
darkness to the Light & con- centrate on that which was above. The power of [expecting goodness] can be a
guardian of one’s health when searching inward.
As more of the inner dark- ness becomes light, as more of the emotional
energy of our less conscious symbols becomes accessible to conscious control,
the power of darkness that remains becomes less. Friends learn not just how to turn in their minds to the Light but also how to reach out to others to share the strength they experience
Henri Nowen says: “The man who can articulate the different
move- ments of his inner life, who can give names to his contrasting experiences,
no longer has to be a victim of himself but is able to slowly and consistently
re- move the obstacles which prevent the spirit from entering. If there is a willing- ness to be led to a
deeper level, [it can go beyond what was said, and even what they meant to say]
“into what something beneath us all was meaning to have said.”
Educational Principle 3: Teaching Accessibility & Conscious
Con- trol of Less Conscious Modes of Thought—A Friends school should edu- cate in each classroom not
just for analysis & logic but also for imagination, re- flection, &
intuition. [Friends teachers have creative ways of helping their stu- dents use
their imaginations. I have tried to teach my students] how to step out of their
verbal experience to reflect upon it. [There needs to be more teaching that]
empowers a student to enrich & deepen ones inner life under ones own
direction and control.
Friends
believe that growth occurs most fully when an “individual is in community.” Since
Truth may be revealed through any person, Friends seek to remain empathically
open and to listen deeply to what others share.
Though each has one perspective of Truth, persons differ in their
breadth and depth of perception. George
Fox exhorted weighty, [influential], persons, “Be careful how ye set your feet
among the tender plants springing up out of God’s earth, lest ye tread
upon them, hurt, bruise, or crush them in God’s vineyard.”
Friends
believe that the more our community is able “to stand still in that which is
pure,” the more each of us is able to stand purely in the same light; each
person will become more empowered to live in Truth. It is the corporate search
for Truth that guards the more vulnerable of us from being overcome by darkness
when we turn so deeply inwards. Empathic
listening, self- restraint, patience, and ordered ways of communicating that part of the Truth we encounter anchor us to others, and they are our
life-lines.
Educational Principle 4: Strengthening
Desire & Skills for Corpo- rate Search for the Truth—Teachers are models to students. How does a Friends School
What powerful classes & schools we might have if we felt concern for
others’ growth, & the concern of others for our growth. Friends believe that it is the inner word of
their experience, not the outer word of authority that brings them “nearer to
the Lord.” To wait in pureness and
stillness was to be opened to intuitions and feelings, to surrender “to an
inward necessity,” an inner force, power, passion. Friends knew when they were in the presence
of Truth. They were moved. They
quaked. Tears coursed down their cheeks
during Meeting.
Educational Principle 5: Educating Experientially that the Word &
Life Become One—My hunch is that
Fox would call much of what goes on in our country’s schools arid theological institutions speculations. Fox would note many signs, such as lifeless
boredom, feelings of impotency, and failures of knowledge to be used outside
the classroom, that indicate our theology far outruns our experience in our
nation’s schools. I try to ground right
ideas in some immediate, direct experience that both provides the opportunity
to induce new insights and requires testing what has been learned by means of action I offer them opportunities to participate in any teaching process of
the course.
Many
Friends schools have long sought to make education more expe- riential. Oakwood School
For
Friends, such values are the eternal living word; they are universal. My own
trans-cultural studies of maturing hint that if we educate for healthy growth
we may enable students to be more honest & compassionate persons who live
with integrity, & who are committed and courageous. I believe such values may be real, immanent potentials. A growing, maturing person is more accurate in experience, more honest, compassionate, integrated, steadfast, committed, autonomous, & less self-centered. One can be courageous when one must stand
alone in witness.
Educational Principle 6: Witness
to the primacy of honesty, com- passion, integrity, commitment, & courage [5
Values]—Friends say that such
values are “caught,” not “taught.” How
do such values affect the selec- tion of the Friends school’s head &
teachers? How do the schools make clear the primacy of such values? How do the school’s
adults witness such values as they administer & teach? Does the school committee witness such values? Does the entire community stop to examine how
well it empowers its members to live in the “eternal living Word?” To what
extent has our Friends school empowered its alum- ni to live more fully in Truth?
Friends
schools have been reputed to have special effects on their stu- dents far into
their adult years. Haverford College's The enduring impact of has been studied & found to be primarily moral.
To live in “the unity of the Spirit,” to experience wholeness, is to live our
relatedness to our body, our community, others, & the natural world in
harmony. Early Friends said little about their en- vironment, [because they were
so much & unconsciously part of it]; they sup- pressed the flesh’s desires. I
remain [unclear] how whole one is who denies the vehicle of one’s spirit.
Educational Principle 7: Enables members
to make more wise value choices about each of their modes of relatedness—A Friends edu- cation is a moral one that's integrative
with the academic. They accept the me- thods of science & academic
scholarship as potential revealers of truth. Does our academic focus so obscure our mode of relation to school subjects that we ignore the moral choices involved in each mode of rela- tedness?
The purpose of a Friends school is to empower a person to live more fully
in Truth, not to prescribe that one
should do so.
President Isaac Sharpless, of Haverford College
[Conclusion]—We have been searching for clues to the “specific
Quaker influence” that unites the religious with the academic in Friends
schools. Might it not be found in the
“peculiar mission” of the Friends school to empower every member to become his
or her own seeker after Truth? The
processes of corporate silent worship provide the educational principles
ne- cessary to so bring students to their teacher within. Dr. Schweitzer said: “The witch doctor succeeds [because] … Each
patient carries his own doctor inside him.
They come to us not knowing that truth.
We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each
patient a chance to go to work.”
[A Seeker's strengths are]: high expectancy of & desire for Truth;
dis- ciplined body & mind; ability to articulate the images; desire &
ability to seek Truth in [concert with others]; testing ideas against
experience; maturity that makes the [5
Values] one’s own. These strengths can be nurtured by Friends schools; that
is their peculiar mission. It is a
vision that we make our own throughout life, that enables us to turn to the
teacher within & so become our own teacher.
Barnett; 1979)
About the Author—A Texas native Walter Bennett graduated summa cum laude from Yale University. He earned his Master’s of Law at Columbia University. He served as a legal adviser of the US Dept. of State in Washing- ton & taught law in Miami, New Mexico, Texas, & California. He is now working with Catholic Workers in California. His interest in the subject of this pamphlet goes back to 1969, when he became involved in the struggle for civil rights for Gay people. [He writes this pamphlet as a response to mounting] cam- paigns against the rights of homosexuals.
About the Author—A Texas native Walter Bennett graduated summa cum laude from Yale University. He earned his Master’s of Law at Columbia University. He served as a legal adviser of the US Dept. of State in Washing- ton & taught law in Miami, New Mexico, Texas, & California. He is now working with Catholic Workers in California. His interest in the subject of this pamphlet goes back to 1969, when he became involved in the struggle for civil rights for Gay people. [He writes this pamphlet as a response to mounting] cam- paigns against the rights of homosexuals.
[Introduction]—Most Christians, including Gay Christians, are still un- easy about homosexuality. We have all been brought up in the same Christian tradition. The most important cause of uneasiness is the conviction that the Bible condemns homosexuality in itself. A slow change has begun to occur in Christian attitudes towards homosexuality and homosexual persons. Christian churches have made formal statements supporting Gay rights. Some theolo- gians and Gay Christians have come to the conclusion that the Bible does not exclude homosexual people from Christian fellowship. Modern research has turned up considerable evidence casting doubt on the traditional interpreta- tion of the widely scattered verses dealing with homosexual behavior.
Homosexuality is something quite distinct from homosexual behavior. It is an emotional and affectional orientation towards people of the same sex. Homosexual acts can be and are performed by both homosexuals & hetero- sexual. For Gays, the word homosexual overemphasizes the specifically sexual element in their feelings; it also has pathological overtones that they reject. In general usage," Gay is replacing "homosexual."
[Gay Predispositions]—Gay people have discovered that they want & seek an intimate & loving relationship with a person of the same sex. Gay people have no conscious recollection of ever having chosen this orientation any more than the heterosexual consciously chose. It is a given in their emo- tional make-up, an integral part of the personality; nothing on earth will change this. The truth seems to be that human sexuality is initially free-floating and unattached, that an emotional interest in one sex or the other develops very early in life.
Gay people seek out others of their sex simply because the option of a heterosexual relationship and heterosexual marriage is not emotionally open to them. Such a relationship does not perform for them the function it is meant to perform. They feel completed and emotionally satisfied only by a person of the same sex. In order for there to be sin there must be a possibility of moral choice; where there is no choice there can be no sin. Making homosexual behavior invariably a sin leaves Gay people the option of total and complete lifelong celibacy. The Church would never dream of imposing such a burden on heterosexuals. Heterosexuals should beware of laying a yoke on other people they themselves could not bear, as did Pharisees of old.
Gay people seek out others of their sex simply because the option of a heterosexual relationship and heterosexual marriage is not emotionally open to them. Such a relationship does not perform for them the function it is meant to perform. They feel completed and emotionally satisfied only by a person of the same sex. In order for there to be sin there must be a possibility of moral choice; where there is no choice there can be no sin. Making homosexual behavior invariably a sin leaves Gay people the option of total and complete lifelong celibacy. The Church would never dream of imposing such a burden on heterosexuals. Heterosexuals should beware of laying a yoke on other people they themselves could not bear, as did Pharisees of old.
[Sodom and Gomorrah Revisited]—The Bible unequivocally con- demns only homosexual rape, ritual Canaanite fertility cult homosexual prosti- tution, and homosexual lust and behavior in heterosexuals. On the subject of homosexuality as an orientation, & on consensual behavior, it is wholly silent. The orientation as such was apparently unknown to or at least unrecognized by Biblical authors. Homosexuality & homosexual behavior are never men- tioned either by Jesus Christ or any of the Old Testament prophets.
In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, God informs Abraham that these 2 cities will be destroyed because of their great wickedness; the wickedness is never specified. 2 angels are given hospitality by Lot. all the townsmen both young and old surround the house and demand to "know" the 2 strangers. The angels urge Lot and his household to flee the city to escape its destruc- tion. In the Bible this Hebrew "to know" rarely means sexual intercourse. Some scholars believe that here it has only its usual meaning of "become ac- quainted with." Lot was a resident alien in Sodom [and was entertaining 2 more strangers]. The townsmen therefore had a perfectly justified excuse for demanding the strangers [establish] their identities and the purpose of their visit.
The sin of Sodom does not necessarily lie in homosexuality or homo- sexual behavior. The wicked thing that Lot enjoins the townspeople not to do is rape. In the entire ancient Near East hospitality to sojourners was seen as a sacred religious duty. Any kind of mistreatment or indignity inflicted on Lot's guests would be a sin. The idea that the Sodom story is not an indictment of homosexuality is no new-fangled interpretation; Jewish commentary names other sins, and [seldom mentions anything homosexual in connection with this story.]
In 2 New Testament passages, [there is a sexual interpretation, but it has to do with] intercourse with different orders of creation (humans & angels) as in the passage before the Flood story. This echoes the view found in apo- cryphal writing, that the Sodomites were cursed for having changed the or- der of nature by running after angels. Jesus mentions Sodom & Gomorrah only to say they will be judged less severely than the towns that rejected his disciples. [It seems] Jesus held to the more prevalent view within Jewish tradition that the sin depicted in the Sodom story was inhospitable treatment of travelers rather than homosexuality or homosexual behavior.
In 2 New Testament passages, [there is a sexual interpretation, but it has to do with] intercourse with different orders of creation (humans & angels) as in the passage before the Flood story. This echoes the view found in apo- cryphal writing, that the Sodomites were cursed for having changed the or- der of nature by running after angels. Jesus mentions Sodom & Gomorrah only to say they will be judged less severely than the towns that rejected his disciples. [It seems] Jesus held to the more prevalent view within Jewish tradition that the sin depicted in the Sodom story was inhospitable treatment of travelers rather than homosexuality or homosexual behavior.
[More Old Testament Interpretations]—The story in Judges 19 of the outrage at Gibeah is very similar to" Sodom and Gomorrah." In this story, the male guest pushes his concubine out the door, and the townsmen of Gibeah "know" and abuse her all night long, and she dies. The mischief here was not merely [heterosexual] gang rape; it was murder. Passages in Deuteronomy 23, I Kings 14,15, 22, II Kings 23, and Job 36 have references to kadesh, kede- shim, kedeshah. Bible scholars believe these terms refer to fertility cult priests and priestesses. The better translation in most of these passages would be "male cult prostitute."
In Leviticus 18 and 20, male homosexual relations are condemned. The Hebrew word to'ebah, is translated as abomination in English; elsewhere it is used in the Old Testament to refer to idolatry. The prohibition is probably direc- ted against the practice of ritual homosexual prostitution as found in Canaa- nite fertility cults. The sexual acts of women aren't mentioned, except in prohi- biting intercourse with an animal. The concern here is probably for the "seed" of life rather than a concern about homosexuality per se. Hebrews thought that the "seed" came solely from the man, and was "sowed" in woman as a seed in the earth. "Seed sowed" into an animal, or animal "seed" sown into a woman might lead to "confusion" such as a centaur.
The Hebrews unlike the Greeks may have associated male homose- xuality with disrespect and debasement of the male sex & viewed it as intole- rable for that reason. They may also tend to associate male homosexuality with effeminacy, and with assimilating the dominant sex to the status of women. Why should this injunction be deemed binding on Christians when so many others are not?
[Paul's Interpretation]—3 remaining Bibilical passages touching on homosexual behavior are found in I Corinthians 6, I Timothy 1,& Romans 1. 2 categories of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God are malakoi and arsenokoitai. We do not know whom Paul meant by these terms, because he does not elaborate. He also does not use the usual Greek words to describe homosexual intercourse. Malakoi would seem to be the passive partner in sexual intercourse between males. Arsenokoitai would seem to be male prostitutes, or perhaps the active partner in anal intercourse. They are neither clear enough or inclusive enough to encompass the entire class of people we describe today by the English word "homosexual."
[Paul's Interpretation]—3 remaining Bibilical passages touching on homosexual behavior are found in I Corinthians 6, I Timothy 1,& Romans 1. 2 categories of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God are malakoi and arsenokoitai. We do not know whom Paul meant by these terms, because he does not elaborate. He also does not use the usual Greek words to describe homosexual intercourse. Malakoi would seem to be the passive partner in sexual intercourse between males. Arsenokoitai would seem to be male prostitutes, or perhaps the active partner in anal intercourse. They are neither clear enough or inclusive enough to encompass the entire class of people we describe today by the English word "homosexual."
Paul does speak definitely about homosexual behavior in Romans 1. He is addressing himself primarily to the subject of idolatry and its consequences, namely unclean practices, disgraceful passions, and unnatural inter-course. In the case of the men, the plain meaning is a reference to heterosexual giving up intercourse with the opposite sex & turning it into perverseness to homosexual lust and behavior. To hold that this passage in Romans was meant to include all such people is to give it a coverage that the thoughts, language, and con- text will not bear. In the case of the women, this passage does not clearly bring homosexual intercourse within purview. We have no way of knowing what Paul considered to be "natural" or "unnatural. It is most likely speaking again of heterosexuals engaging in homosexual behavior.
Paul describes sexual consequences of idolatry are "unclean," "dis- graceful," "shameful," and "unseemly." It is only when he gets to greed, envy, murder, deceit, boastfulness, & mercilessness that he uses the word "wicked- ness" & "evil." Even if we take it for granted that Paul considered homose- xuality & homosexual behavior a sin, is this attitude God's own or is it cultural conditioning and Paul's predilections and prejudices?
Paul says that those who choose to marry do not sin, but those who choose not to marry do better; [they avoid troubles and diverting attention from the business of the Lord to pleasing the spouse. He said "it's good for a man not to touch a woman" but because of temptation to immorality each man should have his own wife. These statements betray a real lack of appreciation of the enormous benefits & blessings of marriage. Few Christians today would agree that marriage is merely or even primarily an antidote to the temptation to fornicate.
[Paul vs. Jesus and Today's Christians]—Paul often seems to equate sin with obedience to the body's desires. Jesus on the other hand had very little to say about sex. [Matthew has Jesus saying] that "not all men can receive this precept, but only those to whom it is given ... He who is able to receive this, let him receive it." For Jesus the word "sin" does not appear to have had, as it seems to have for us today, a primarily sexual connotation. He touches on the sin of adultery in only 3 contexts, & in all 3 his primary concern is with another issue, [i.e.] the right to judge sin, divorce & remarriage, sin in acts vs. sin in attitudes. Christians sometimes seem to think & act as if sexuality weren't one God's most glorious gifts to us, but a snare and a trap. Why would God do that?
Another area in which Paul's attitudes and emphases are rejected by many Christians today is the status of women. Woman's head is her husband; marriage is a subordination of the woman to the man in all things rather than an equal partnership. "A woman must be a learner, listening quietly and with due submission." Paul expresses no inkling of the enormous evil of human slavery. Instead of urging Christian masters to free their slaves, he only counseled them to treat their slaves fairly and the slaves to obey willingly and not to seek their freedom.
There is perhaps no Christian alive today who does not believe human slavery to be absolutely and fundamentally opposed to the will of God. A last example is Paul's attitude to civil authority. He tells Christians to submit to the authority of the state, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. [Christians today know better], and Jesus was under no such illusions about the power of the state. He realized that poli- tical power is in the Devil's keeping.
[The "Common Sense" Against Homosexuality]—To some people it is as plain as day that God made people male and female, & for good reason God creates women to be a helper fit for man, [& for] the purpose of reproduc- tion. God intended each sex for the other; therefore, homosexuality is beyond the pale of God's plan for creation & ipso facto sinful. God may very well have intended the male-female relationship to be the general plan without at the same time meaning to condemn as sin every variation from that plan found in nature.
[The "Common Sense" Against Homosexuality]—To some people it is as plain as day that God made people male and female, & for good reason God creates women to be a helper fit for man, [& for] the purpose of reproduc- tion. God intended each sex for the other; therefore, homosexuality is beyond the pale of God's plan for creation & ipso facto sinful. God may very well have intended the male-female relationship to be the general plan without at the same time meaning to condemn as sin every variation from that plan found in nature.
There are several unusual chromosome variations that surely are not cause enough to condemn them to a choice between celibacy and sin because they do not fit into the male-female dichotomy. There are also trans-sexuals, persons who physically are a normal male or female, but who develops the self-image or identity of the opposite sex. Some doctors are willing to give up their preconceived notions of what is natural and change the body to fit the mind. These variations occur because nature is not uniform. Sexual orien- tation, like gender identity is a component of personality acquired in the pro- cess of growing up. So to assert that homosexuality is normal means only that it is a variation universally found in nature.
[The Bible's and Jesus' Norms of Conduct]—The norms of conduct found in the Bible are addressed to the generality of humankind. Its failure to address specific situations & problems of minorities doesn't mean those mino- rities are excluded from God's kingdom unless & until they conform. Such is the case of the sexually sterile who can't fulfill the commandment to procreate; sterility isn't a sin or cause for a celibate life. The judgment should be the same in the case of homosexuals." The fact that homosexual behavior isn't confined to "homosexuals" accounts for what little the Bible has to say on the subject.
Some see in every practitioner of homosexual acts only a willfully perverted heterosexual.
It would be far more in keeping with the spirit of Jesus to open our eyes to the diversity in the world around and rejoice in it rather than decry it. It is just as possible for a person to be Gay or transsexual or an intersex and to follow in the pathway of Jesus Christ as for any heterosexual. Gay Christians are not free from all ethical constraints on their sexual behavior. The only purpose here is to reappraise the traditional view that homosexual genital acts are always and for all people everywhere a sin.
[The Bible's and Jesus' Norms of Conduct]—The norms of conduct found in the Bible are addressed to the generality of humankind. Its failure to address specific situations & problems of minorities doesn't mean those mino- rities are excluded from God's kingdom unless & until they conform. Such is the case of the sexually sterile who can't fulfill the commandment to procreate; sterility isn't a sin or cause for a celibate life. The judgment should be the same in the case of homosexuals." The fact that homosexual behavior isn't confined to "homosexuals" accounts for what little the Bible has to say on the subject.
Some see in every practitioner of homosexual acts only a willfully perverted heterosexual.
It would be far more in keeping with the spirit of Jesus to open our eyes to the diversity in the world around and rejoice in it rather than decry it. It is just as possible for a person to be Gay or transsexual or an intersex and to follow in the pathway of Jesus Christ as for any heterosexual. Gay Christians are not free from all ethical constraints on their sexual behavior. The only purpose here is to reappraise the traditional view that homosexual genital acts are always and for all people everywhere a sin.
Jesus quotes from the Genesis accounts of creation as proof texts for his assertion that marriage is indissoluble. To use them as evidence of another intent—to disapprove homosexuality—is stretching the point too far. In fact Jesus plainly states that heterosexual pairing is not an integral part of the spiri- tual order. There was a strong emphasis in Judaism on immortality through procreation. Barrenness was seen as a curse.
Yet in Isaiah 56 it says: "To the eunuchs who hold fast my covenant, I give in my house and within my walls a monument & a name better than sons and daughters ... I will gather yet others besides those already gathered." Is it not possible that today God's Spirit is reaching out again in a fulfillment of the prophecy, this time to gather into the kingdom another outcast—the homo- sexual, [who is similar to the eunuch]. Consensual homosexual acts between Gay people are not sinful because they hurt no one.
[Jesus' Sexuality]—There is no evidence whatever in the New Testa- ment that Jesus had a sexual relationship with anybody. It is incontestable that he experienced deep love for a member of the same sex. The incident of the disciple lying close beside Jesus at the Last Supper (John 13) makes clear that an emotional relationship existed between Jesus and the disciple closer than that which existed between him and any other, including Peter. This disciple took Jesus' mother into his care.
We do not know enough either to affirm or deny that Jesus was himself homosexual. He is universal—not the property of any group. Anybody like Jesus, who has openly & deeply loved another person of the same sex can't possibly lack sympathy for and understanding & acceptance of homosexuals. He would be bound to know and comprehend their plight. Jesus calls us to a life of love—love blocked by no barriers of any kind. Gender was no barrier for Jesus. It should not be for us either. And if for some people loving others of the same sex carries a sexual component, there should be no cause for reproach.
[The Role of Church and Christians]—The persecution of Gay people that has been characteristic of Western culture almost since the time of Con- stantine must be laid directly at the Christian Church's door. This evil record of malevolence & bigotry is hardly compatible with the life & teaching of the one that Church claims as Lord & Savior. It is likely that Jesus preferred the com- pany of prostitutes & tax collectors to that of lawyers & Pharisees who reduced the righteousness God requires to a little rule book of "Do this" & "Don't dare do that." What on earth do goodness, love, justice, mercy, & kindness have to do with which sex a person prefers?
Most Gay people end up hiding their orientation for years. [The extremes they will go to to fit in leave them mostly unchanged] and succeed only in spoi- ling other people's lives as well as their own. If the Church of Jesus Christ were really seeking to follow his leading, it would see that its traditional stance on homosexuality has caused and is still causing far more evil and suffering for homosexuals than they through their supposed sinning have ever caused. It would stop hurting them & set out to relieve their suffering & right their wrongs.
We do not know enough either to affirm or deny that Jesus was himself homosexual. He is universal—not the property of any group. Anybody like Jesus, who has openly & deeply loved another person of the same sex can't possibly lack sympathy for and understanding & acceptance of homosexuals. He would be bound to know and comprehend their plight. Jesus calls us to a life of love—love blocked by no barriers of any kind. Gender was no barrier for Jesus. It should not be for us either. And if for some people loving others of the same sex carries a sexual component, there should be no cause for reproach.
[The Role of Church and Christians]—The persecution of Gay people that has been characteristic of Western culture almost since the time of Con- stantine must be laid directly at the Christian Church's door. This evil record of malevolence & bigotry is hardly compatible with the life & teaching of the one that Church claims as Lord & Savior. It is likely that Jesus preferred the com- pany of prostitutes & tax collectors to that of lawyers & Pharisees who reduced the righteousness God requires to a little rule book of "Do this" & "Don't dare do that." What on earth do goodness, love, justice, mercy, & kindness have to do with which sex a person prefers?
Most Gay people end up hiding their orientation for years. [The extremes they will go to to fit in leave them mostly unchanged] and succeed only in spoi- ling other people's lives as well as their own. If the Church of Jesus Christ were really seeking to follow his leading, it would see that its traditional stance on homosexuality has caused and is still causing far more evil and suffering for homosexuals than they through their supposed sinning have ever caused. It would stop hurting them & set out to relieve their suffering & right their wrongs.
The church will either seek to make amends for the evil it has done them or it will continue to encourage [the hounders and persecutors] acting "in God's name." Who are heterosexual Christians to judge homosexual acts to be a sin for homosexuals? God's own Spirit within each of us is capable of doing what- ever convicting of sin needs to be done. [When] heterosexual Christians keep asserting that they know all there is to know about God's will in this matter, they will only succeed in accomplishing 2 things for sure—fanning the flames of persecution and driving more and more people away from Jesus Christ.
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227. Woman Ministers; a Quaker Contribution (by Robert J. Leach;
1979)
About the Author—Robert J. Leach is 8th generation New Englander, whose connections with Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are strong. He served as first Secretary for Pendle Hill Publications (1939-1942). As Chairman of the history department at the Écolè Internationale de Genève, he has tra- veled worldwide in the interests of international education. Bob has been clerk and historian, and is now elder for Geneva Monthly Mtg.
Preface (by Ruth A. Blattenberger)—A change in attitude regarding women in the ministry has evolved slowly during the 2nd half of the 20th century. In 1978 the National Council of Churches (NCC) released a statement showing that less than ½ of the churches in the US
[Introduction]—Both laywomen, and I as a layman feel discomfort in an ecumenical situation. As a prophetic ministry, [Quakerism faces] the old conflict of prophet versus priest. Professionalism is a serious obstacle for women in most Christian denominations. Women’s access to the professional ministry does not appear to have become any easier. Women have been recognized as ministers by the Society of Friends since the time of its beginnings.
Traditionally Friends have had grave reservations about the paid mini- stry. Our loyalty to unprogrammed meetings is a heritage of primary impor- tance. Because everyone is illumined by the Holy Spirit, the spoken ministry is, of course, not limited to men. George Fox said: “I came up by the flaming sword to the place where Adam stood before he fell,” [i.e.] Fox did not believe that Adam’s sin was inherited. Fox found man and woman equal before God, and defended women preachers.
Pioneering and justifying women’s roles—In 1652, Margaret Fell met Fox; she heard him preach in the Ulverston church near her home. She was powerfully convinced & said: “We are all thieves; we have taken the Scriptures in words, & know nothing of them in ourselves.” Margaret Fell was imprisoned several times, beginning in 1664, and forfeited her estate; later her term was reduced to 4 years, during which she wrote several books, including Women’s Speaking Justified. She protested that in rejecting woman’s preaching they re- jected the Holy Spirit and power that spoke in her.
Margaret Fell gave stability to the Quaker movement before it was orga- nized. Her home functioned as a center for the scattered group. With Fox she was instrumental in establishing an organization. To record ministers, a mee- ting would write a minute saying, “We recognize this gift in the ministry.” [A re- corded minister] or public Friend was expected to resign from all committees in order to be free to travel, [including across the Atlantic ]; mostly, 2 would travel together.
Carrying the Gospel Abroad/Discrepancies in equality—Elizabeth Hooton was George Fox’s 1st convert; she was middle-aged when Fox was only 22. She left her family when she was 61 for the 1st of 2 journeys to New England . The Puritans did not let her disembark, but she went to Virginia Massachusetts England
Armed with the king’s permission, which served as little more than a landing permit, she returned with her daughter in 1664. In Cambridge Jamaica Massachu- setts Grand Turk , Sultan Mohammed IV in 1658.
My research suggests a double standard. Women had a secondary position, even though men’s meetings & women’s meetings were set up with the intent of being equal. The difference in inequality is seen in the history of Friends on Nantucket Island New England came into existence in 1764 largely because of Nantucket women who operated so effectively while the men were away; most major decisions were handled by men.
Patterns of Change—Generally speaking, the women involved in Friends’ ministries during the first ½ century of Quakerism were humble in origin. The women generally had little involvement away from their homes, and little schooling. Even men’s education was minimal among Friends at this time. During the 18th century, the Society “settled in” as it withdrew from public life. Many families became part of the merchant class.
While some women became involved in social mission; many desired to stay within their homes, so domesticity did not carry with it a stigma of depriva- tion. Though by this time many meetinghouses had been built, certain mee- tings for worship were still held in private houses. Swarthmore Hall became a center for Friends in northern England New World . Quietism (submission to Divine Will) pervaded the Society during the 1700s, continuing into the 1800s.
The Hicksite & Orthodox Separation in 1827 was into groups of quietist & evangelicals with their programmed ministry; women were prominent in both groups. Catherine Phillips (1726-1794) & Rebecca Jones (1739-1818) are examples of traveling quietist ministers [who warned against priestcraft, ritual, & inefficacious ceremonies]. These quietist ministers referred to the Bible, but felt Biblical texts must be interpreted through the Light within.
Rebecca Jones’ ministry was of the Word, but full of social overtones. The evangelical & British Hannah Kilham (1774-1832) had a dream of an inter- national missionary community in Africa . Great dissension was roused by her plan for Gambia
Pivotal Time: new thrusts and awarenesses—By the mid-19th cen- tury, the climate was ripe for the vigorous spirit & charming personality of Lu- cretia Mott (1793-1880) to open the way for more women’s rights. Her Qua- ker heritage now discouraged women Friends from speaking in public or ad- dressing non-Quaker gatherings. Lucretia had a limited but adequate edu- cation for teaching school. But the role of abolitionist early captured her energies.
Her meeting nearly disowned her, as some pacifist Friends feared that radical abolitionist activities might lead to war. Her keen mind and serene composure in confronting outbursts of angry pro-slavery was demonstrated on at least 2 occasions. The exclusion of women from an international anti- slavery congress [aroused her interest in emancipation for women]; her spea- king inspired Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Uniqueness of the ministry of Friends/A special contribution—Various Quaker ministries include speaking through the silence, the voicing of a con- cern, & speaking to another’s condition. Silence is a part of every unpro- grammed meeting for worship. Sometimes meetings are completely silent. Out of a meeting for worship may grow a heartfelt concern. The concern is sometimes so filled with light [& clearly meant for others] that he or she is led to speak. [I once spoke using the elevation of the Host as an analogy for Inward Light, which 2 1st-time Catholic attenders found meaningful].
Prayer has a very special significance to me. It is an important part of the ministry of the Society of Friends, although not exercised now as much as formerly. Anna Brinton 1887-1969) was at her best in the ministry of the spo- ken word. She was of the tradition of those who prayed on her knees. [One of her prayers started with]: “We give thanks for the things that change not in the midst of man’s confusion, for the beauty of the world & the upholding strength of household affection.”
Prayer has a very special significance to me. It is an important part of the ministry of the Society of Friends, although not exercised now as much as formerly. Anna Brinton 1887-1969) was at her best in the ministry of the spo- ken word. She was of the tradition of those who prayed on her knees. [One of her prayers started with]: “We give thanks for the things that change not in the midst of man’s confusion, for the beauty of the world & the upholding strength of household affection.”
For many years she was a forceful presence at Pendle Hill, the direc- torship of which she shared with her husband. Anna was unusually effective in anything she set out to do. A very great woman in many ways, she went any- where that a need existed. She got from one end of China to the other by making arrangements on the spur of the moment.
Co-participation of men’s and women’s groups—The 1st combined monthly meetings of women & men happened in 1868 on Nantucket , [mostly because of decreased membership]. The London Young Friends Association did not merge their separate men’s & women’s meeting until 1920. In 1941, at a Conservative Friends Meeting, the men & women still met separately, & wo- men asked permission before addressing the whole meeting. On the other hand, women seemed to dominate a Quaker group during the 30 years that Jane Palen Rushmore (1864-1958) was General Secretary of the Hicksite branch of the Philadelphia YM. She put much effort into bringing the 2 Phi- ladelphia YMs together after more than a century of the Hicksite-Orthodox separation.
Current liberation/Universality of cultural patterns—Elise Boulding (1920-2010) is a modern friend with strong academic credentials; she has an important career in sociology & interests in community action & the dynamics of peacemaking. She has a special feeling also for the Catholic church. She lived for 5 months in New York City
In her pamphlet Born Remembering (Pendle Hill Pamphlet #200), she writes of learning to live in a new rhythm, [which includes extended retreats]. On weekends she joined her husband and other family members, attends meetings with them, or they visit her. As an activist Elise is obviously drawn to women’s liberation. The strong, independent Quaker woman in our modern day has often joined herself to the women’s liberation movement. Some of its protest [includes] no male element at all when obviously both elements are essential.
The concept of spirituality as both male & female is dealt with in Pendle Hill Pamphlet #191, Feminine Aspects of Divinity, by Ermine Huntress Lantero; she said: “In the Friends lifestyle a rare degree of equality between men & women was insured by realistic acknowledgements of ‘that of God’ in every human being.” [Neither primitive South Pacific, nor sophisticated Far-Eastern cultures can find satisfaction with a sole masculine deity. Buddhist and Chinese both see a combination of male and female aspects in the fully realized human being. Lantero interprets [the Old Testament] God as generative Spirit which mothers the world into being in the creation story in Genesis. The New Testa- ment phenomena may be interpreted as an expression of Wisdom/Spirit.
[Conclusion]—Current efforts by & for women & increased recognition of the masculine-feminine attributes of [foreign deities] are causing Christian ecumenical groups to reexamine the issue of women in the ministry. The early Friends mentioned here established a firm foundation for women’s presence in the ministry by declaring that women could speak for themselves & carry God’s message far & near; they earned increasing respect through the years. But Friends have not always granted equality to women in administrative and deci- sion-making roles.
Today we find Friends participating in ecumenical groups locally & inter- nationally. Some women friends do work with ease in the ecumenical world [e.g. Blanche Shaffer (FWCC), Tayeko Yamanouchi, and Ingeborg Borgstrom, Jean Zaru (WCC), and Lydia Stokes (NCC). Both women and men share the gifts of the spirit, and we feel that a society which accepts unequivocally the lay ministry provides a special encouragement for its members to grow in wisdom and stature. It would be desirable if the clergy in ecumenical groups would accept women in the full role of ministry. Women sense a lack of ac- ceptance, and seek a deeper understanding of their position. It is hoped that in this situation the constancy of Friends’ ongoing witness to the prophetic ministry, and its implications in regard to women as ministers, may serve as a helpful guidepost.
228. With thine adversary in the way: a Quaker witness for Reconci-
liation (by Margarethe Lachmund; 1979)
About Publication & Translator—[This pamphlet is a translation] from Margarethe Lachmund zum 80. Geburtstag, published in 1976 to commemorate her 80th birthday. The translator, Florence Kite, was at Pendle Hill as Joseph Platt’s (our business manager) secretary; she met Margarethe in 1952. She was Executive Secretary of Intergroup Relations for Philadelphia YM & visited German Friends during the ’56 &’77 Yearly Meetings; she visited East Germany in 1970. She was assisted in translating & knowledge of Margarethe by Theresa Hoehne.
Foreword (Florence Kite)—Margarethe Lachmund (1896-1985) is a German Quaker, a warm wise, loving woman held in deep affection by a host of us in Germany, in America, & wherever else we may have had the privilege of knowing her. Margarethe attended the Friends World Conference at Swarth- more in 1937. She was impressed by Frederick Libby, Rufus Jones, and Henry Cadbury. Toyohiko Kagawa said: “Only if we live in such inward relation to God that the right sort of love streams from us shall we have the courage & strength to witness for the truth.” [This piece] isn't really about agreeing with your adver- sary; it shows how to reach out to him in a spirit of trust while holding fast to truth and avoiding fear and hate. Other parts of the original include a 1946 talk given to a women’s group in Greifswald about organizing civilian relief during the Russian occupation.
Until 1946, the Lachmunds lived most of their lives in the province of Mecklenburg (East Germany) in a number of small towns. They suffered be- cause of their opposition to the Nazi party, and were separated by her hus- band’s imprisonment by the Russians for 8 years. 1948-1954 she served as executive clerk for the German YM; 1954-1962 she served as clerk of the YM’s Peace Committee. Margarethe is an extremely modest person. It was with great difficulty that she was persuaded that her story had relevance to non-German readers.
Only if we live in such inward relation to God that the right sort of love streams from us shall we have the courage and strength to witness for the truth. Toyohiko Kagawa
All My Life I have found myself placed between people of different sorts & differing views. When I had completed my professional education I went as a governess to a castle in Mecklenburg in East Germany
Hans Lachmund was a democrat, & a passionate believer in republican government. His German National, [Christian Socialist] fiancé caused surprise if not uneasiness. I left the German National party because they didn’t disavow their right-wing member’s violent attempt to overthrow the National Assembly. After our marriage, I joined the Peace Society. [I had a passionate clash with our church pastor over politics]; I gave up in tears. It was a long time before I learned to arrive at calm conversation with people of an orientation other than mine. In 1924 my husband and I [went] to a democratic Peace Congress in London
A Christian Under National Socialism?/Strained Relations—After National Socialism came to power in 1933 [I asked]: What does it mean to live now as a Christian? Our group [only wished] to keep far away from all National Socialist & withdraw to an island. Through those difficult years I had gained valuable insights: Our side is not all white & the other all black; [every- one] has the potential for good & evil; we only strengthen on his fateful way the person who uses his power for evil when we meet him with anxiety, con- tempt or bitterness. [We had a foster-daughter for 9 months from a National Socialist family & sent her to relatives to celebrate National Socialist holidays].
Official attacks on us began early, in 1933. I was pilloried in the news- paper and questioned by police about the “Socialist Friends of Children,” for whom I was being considered for its chairman. Our boy [politely greeted the policeman and he was transformed]. On April 9 my husband was suspended from his post as a judge, and later falsely accused of fraud. I had offered to help former members of the dissolved Social Democratic youth groups to keep control of themselves and not to get into ill-considered political stupidities. The SS-men surrounded my house one evening and the young people chose to go with regular police rather than the SS. [I decided to stop having the young people meet at my house until it was safe for them to do so].
[I discussed the students,] the control exercised over my mail, & socia- lism with the deputy district leader. He had had so decisive an experience of nationalism that no one could dispute it with him, [whereas I] “had the deepest human fellowship with beyond all national boundaries.” [We later had another] long political conversation, open, often sharp, and partly dangerous. I thanked him that I had been able to speak openly to him.
Hans Lachmund is Again Appointed Judge [in a Smaller Commu- nity]—My husband was appointed judge, & assigned to the court in Mecklen- burg ’s smallest town. [Our desire to take a friend’s daughter in seemed to cause problems with the National Socialists]. Her class teacher was an older woman, known as a passionate National Socialist. It couldn’t be a friendly interchange, & the teacher was right that our views would not change. But the girl stayed with us & went into a boarding school so that she was able to go on with her education.
We lived in the same apartment building as the very ambitious SS leader and the fanatical head of propaganda of the little city. [I caused] icy aversion by not responding in kind to Heil Hitler greetings. We thought of emigrating & we had to think more seriously about the need for an opposition to remain in the country. After a hard struggle I decided to concede the morning greetings in the house and to officials. Interestingly my husband wasn't required to greet with Heil Hitler. [We were pressured to listen to propaganda, &] to avoid suspicion that we listened to foreign broadcasts, we ourselves had no radio till the end of the war.
The National Socialists in the house had children. For their sake there was nothing for it but to muster all one’s strength to create a friendly atmo- sphere so they might grow up naturally and unaffectedly together. [After 2 years] some unknown but kindly court promptly transferred my husband Pomerania , where our past [including] the charges against us were not known. But now the secret police, the Gestapo, entered the picture.
From Mecklenburg to Pomerania —My husband was a Freemason, one of the 3 “international powers” which National Socialism regarded as deadly enemies. In Pomerania the local Gestapo came to us often with questions about Freemasonry. [Our local questioners seemed to have genuine insights into Freemasonry from the interrogations, but said the people at the top would not be reached with my husband’s argument]. [With considerable ef- fort], I avoided answering the question on avoiding military service for the sake of young Quakers.
[On the question of pacifism, I said that the threat of mutual destruction] was just why the pacifists tried to find other ways. [I asked]: How could na- tions live together from entirely egoistic points of view without its lea- ding to the catastrophe of war? I received no answer. [When they ques- tioned me on my stay in US, I feared they would ask if I had spoken to any emigrants deprived of their citizenship. I knew that to keep my inner sense of assurance and freedom I must not lie]. Suddenly they broke off without putting the dangerous question.
On Behalf of a Jewish Acquaintance—My relationship with the Ge- stapo official assigned to watch my husband and me developed almost nor- mally, in openness & naturalness. [But he was] outraged that Jewish families had turned to me. I said: “Make your laws humane, & not a single Jew will know my name any more.” In 1938 I had another interview with a higher offi- cial [on behalf of a Jewish doctor disabled in the war].
[I recited the battles he had taken part in and asked]: And the leg that he lost? How we can we overlook all that, which our people at that time ac- cepted as a sacrifice, Herr von Körber?” [Even though] the former legal as- surances of special treatment for Jews who had taken part in the war were of- ficially withdrawn, our acquaintance was later saved from arrest by special order from the Gauleiter’s office [& was later allowed to resettle in Hamburg
The Post War Period/In Need of Supplies—Many experiences in the post-war period gave me ever-increasing certainty that hostility can at least be modified, even if not dissolved, in spite of the greatest conflicts in men’s ideas, interests, even moral principles, [for] there is an approachability in people. When one approached Russian soldiers honestly, naturally, without aggression or fear, they reacted no differently than people brought up as Christians. They gave me food and some work to do when I was being held for crossing into West Germany
[I used this persistence in many negotiations]. The mayor made me a special commissioner, first to protect National Socialist Welfare storehouses against theft, & then to build up the welfare services. [I waited patiently and peacefully at Red Army offices to see the commandant]. We received 5,000 lbs. of dried potatoes. It would be misleading not to say how often I have been seized by a profound fear on such occasions. [I especially recall a] saying of William Penn’s, written in prison: “We can fall no deeper than God’s arms reach, however deep we may fall.”
Then I found inward peace & detachment so that I was able to see in the powerful man simply another human being trying to carry out his duty. With our weak powers we can help relieve the tensions evoked by conflict, & live in them in the right way if we seek to fulfill both of Jesus’ commandments of love & truth.
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Greenwood; 1980)
About the Author—John Ormerod Greenwood’s unusual family name comes to us through a much loved grandfather who was a minister in the Me- thodist Church. He was born in 1907, and began to attend Friends’ Meetings after WWI because of their peace witness. In 1978 he completed his Quaker Encounters, a 3-volume study of Friends’ international work. His main interests have been in theater.
About the Author—John Ormerod Greenwood’s unusual family name comes to us through a much loved grandfather who was a minister in the Me- thodist Church. He was born in 1907, and began to attend Friends’ Meetings after WWI because of their peace witness. In 1978 he completed his Quaker Encounters, a 3-volume study of Friends’ international work. His main interests have been in theater.
Foreword—This pamphlet embodies in revised form a lecture given to the Friends Historical Association and the Friends Social Union at their joint Spring Meeting at Alloway’s Creek Meetinghouse, South Jersey. It comes from Quaker Encounters, Henry T. Hodgkin: A Memoir, and Pendle Hill Archives.
“Please remember that we are learners always, and whatever helps us to see light will be welcome, whether the process be joyous or painful.” Henry Hodgkin.
[Introduction]—When Pendle Hill, the Quaker Center in Pennsylvania, was founded in 1930, it was felt that much would depend on the choice of its 1st director. Henry T Hodgkin was then in his mid-50s, [with a history of work in national Christian movements in 2 countries & missionary work in China
Henry Theodore Hodgkin was born April 21, 1877 , in the North Coun- try of England and died March 26, 1933 in Dublin
He was born among the proud Quaker clans of Darlington , “The Phila- delphia of the North.” Their energy was matched by their intellectual range and philanthropic interests. So Henry started with all the advantages of birth and breeding, belief and money; and solid advantages they are for creating confidence in a potential leader of men. Henry’s advantages carried with them their own built-in disadvantages against which he constantly struggled: a touch of arrogance & knowing better; profound ignorance of an empty belly, narrow horizons, the absence of love. He stood just under 6ft. 5in., had a powerful voice and presence and was good at sports.
[Deviations from the Norm]—Instead of any form of British football, Henry played the new Canadian game of lacrosse; instead of cricket, he played lawn tennis. Henry’s interest in Foreign Missions came to dominate his life in general; Friends Foreign Mission Association (FFMA) [was of particular impor- tance in his life]. A young Canadian Evangelical Friend, John T. Dorland was an inspiration for him. Dorland was joint secretary of the Friends Christian Fel- lowship Union, which Henry joined.
For a long time the place of youth in the Society of Friends had been to listen to their elders until age brought wisdom and they became “seasoned Friends.” Youth began to look upon itself as a separate and enviable order in Society, close to the source of inspiration and ready to criticize its hidebound elders. In 1895 at Cambridge Union found that only 20 colleges in the British Isles outside Oxford Cambridge
Hodgkin encouraged the practice of taking decisions without voting, and of preceding important steps by holding “retreats.” Henry combined personal loyalty to Christ with faith in the scientific method. He said: “Faith is not con- trary to reason but an act of reason. We use it constantly in science & without it we would never advance.”
[Married Missionary]—[He did his medical training inSt. Thomas Hos- pital East End Mission Hospital London Northern Ireland Northern Ireland December 9th 1903 . In May 1904, they offered to go to China Szechwan , the most westerly province of China
[Married Missionary]—[He did his medical training in
An ambitious scheme was formed to set up a West China Union Univer- sity China West China , and as secretary of the West China Conference [helped make progress in the Protestant ecumenical movement]. [He was greatly limited in his efforts by it being impossible for him to learn Chinese].
He had no patience with the argument that we should be Christians first and Quakers second. He said: “I am a Quaker because I am a Christian, and it is the devotion I feel towards Christ my Lord that makes me a keen Quaker. [That] prevents me from entering sympathetically into the attitude of mind that makes an antithesis where there is none.” The YMCA wanted him to run their organization in China
[Henry at the FFMA and the Fellowship of Reconciliation]—After the general secretary of the FFMA died suddenly on returning from India China Switzerland
A group that included clergymen continued to meet in London Cambridge America America
He was bound to demonstrate his faith by constant speaking at public meetings, often in personal danger; by visiting prison and working for consci- entious objectors, and by working for war relief and for civil liberties. At the end of the war he was chairman of the Jerusalem
[Back to China Shanghai China China
Henry Hodgkin abandoned hope for the Protestant church as he knew them, and began to build an alternative vision of the inter-penetration of faiths and culture, [particularly Christianity and Chinese Buddhism]; [he cited the early church’s] fusion of its Jewish inheritance with the philosophy of Greece and the organization of Rome. He hoped that: “Chinese Christianity might interpret Christianity in a far more thoroughgoing way than anything that is current in the West.” [He thought what was necessary was]: “such intimate relations with the few as will enable them to catch all that is best in our spi- rits, and to take up burdens we may have to lay down.” The FFMA Associa- tion which he had served as missionary and General Secretary had already disappeared into history. [The new Friends Service Council which he suppor- ted was inaugurated in 1926].
[The Road to Pendle Hill]—In 1918 he wrote in Lay Religion: “The way {to find the truth is for each of us to examine his own actions, & from them de- duce what his actual religion is. From that starting point & from that alone, can we begin to find our way to that religion by which we ought to live.” Pendle Hill was to be a cell provided for that starting point. [One of his issues with existing education was that]: There has been strikingly little integration of their lives around any consuming moral, social, or spiritual passion”; intellect alone was not enough.
[His vision included]: “a synthesis of religious, scientific and aesthetic thought.” Many students “will find the richest part of Pendle Hill outside the stated courses. . . There's an element of isolation or solitariness in the greatest personalities as well as development through stimulating fellowship.” [Pendle Hill was not] “a modern monastery.” The work of the house was [and is] to be “shared by all with a minimum of outside help. . . No rules, no credits, no penalties.” The fellowship was “student and faculty together working at the problems considered and share in their devotional life. . . There are resources in the spiritual world far greater than we commonly use.”
[As to the early history of Pendle Hill] I propose only to stress the stre- nuous wholeheartedness with which the Hodgkins committed themselves to the scheme, and the price they paid for it. There are still Monday night Exten- sion Lectures open to the public. As of the last active school year a student could take “2 or at most 3 classes” each 2 to 2½ hours long involving the “interplay of student and teacher.” Most of the big things that Henry T. Hodg- kin served have gone into oblivion together with the world he lived in. The Christian Revolution for which he hoped has still to take place. But the seed was planted, and grows.
230. The life of the spirit in women: a Jungian approach (by Helen
M. Luke; 1980)
M. Luke; 1980)
About the Author—Helen Luke came to the US England
I. The Spirit and the Animus—The true meaning of “spirit” is glimpsed by us only through [an experience] that can never be rationally explained in words. The most universal of all the images of the spirit is the breath, the wind. Closely related to this is the image of fire. Whenever a breath of wind or spark of fire lodges in the mind, we are immediately aware of some kind of newness in life. “Spirit” expresses that which brings about transformation. [e.g.] The Holy Spirit in the Godhead entered into a woman and transformed God into incarnate man. The spirit has usually been associated with mas- culine creative power, though its feminine aspect has been known as Sophia.
[The feminine and masculine aspects of spirit must be] experienced as separate [before they can] unite in a holy marriage. The spirit's masculinity is meaningless unless it enters into a feminine container. No man can create without the equal participation of the woman without or the woman within. In every creative act, the male and the female, the active and the passive, are of equal importance; [the feminine and masculine are of equal value]. It requires a great effort of consciousness in every individual woman to remain aware of this destructive spirit whispering [the centuries-old message] about the inferi- ority of her passive, feminine, nature.
Carl Jung’s “animus” is a personification of the unconscious masculinity in women, [& is often manifested negatively]. What the animus, [the ability knows one’s goal’s & to do what is necessary to achieve it] affirms is that the creative power in a woman can never bear fruit if she is caught in an uncon- scious imitation of men. Unrecognized & undifferentiated, he will actually destroy the possibility of her integrating her contra-sexual powers. The dan- ger of mistaking a spirits experience for The Spirit experience has always been recognized by the wise.
How then are we to test the spirits? If we find ourselves so inflated by it that we at once set out to convert others, we may be sure that we are simply possessed by the “spirits” of the [anima and animus]. We are justified in spea- king of the spirit of God only when it leads to an incarnation in us of the truth's spirit within. The true experience is a reception of the creative seed into the vessel of the feminine.
II. Women and the Earth—[Before a woman can embrace & use her masculine discrimination], she must first learn to recognize & value the nature of the principle which is dominant in her by the fact of her sex. She must re- cognize all her delusions about womanhood's nature. Often a woman will reveal that her concepts of what it means to be a woman are concocted from notions of frivolous, empty-headed pleasure-seekers pursuing sexual goals. Half-consciously it adds up to a choice between whoredom & slavery. [The mother-symbols of earth, moon, dark, & the ocean have been forced into a back seat to sun & light & air]. The way back & down [into the earth] to those springs & to the roots of the tree of life is also the way up to the spirit of air & fire in the vaults of heaven.
The Yin, feminine, receptive principle, equal & opposite of Yang the creative doesn’t lead but follows, since it is like a vessel in which the light is hidden until it appears at the right time. There are 2 dangers: inertia, or Yin taking the lead & opposing Yang. If we can learn to be still without inaction, to “further life” without willed purpose, & to nourish without domination: then we shall be women again out of whose earth the light may shine.
III. The Academic Woman [Introduction]—Very few women who have grown up in this century are free of the guilt complex [and of feeling incapable] of producing original thoughts. In a great many women the guilt produces a positively compulsive desire to go to school. The drive very often has little or no relation either to practical necessity or to a genuine love of learning. The acquisition of mental and rational skills appears to innumerable modern women as the only way to escape the sense of inferiority that besets them. The fear and anxiety of not achieving a doctorate, plus the ever-growing, unconscious resistance which made it harder and harder to write anything can affect [her entire life].
An academic woman’s neurosis usually occurs as she approaches life’s mid-point, & when she has already achieved success in her profession. [While in her dreams she seeks identity & meaning through the prestige of mental activity acceptable to male academic gatherings], it becomes clear that she was really searching for a new religious attitude to life.
[In her youth she had been unconsciously nourished by the Catholic Church’s symbolic life]. To continue to receive nourishment, one must consci- ously find faith’s living water and spirit’s flame through real self-knowledge and attention to one’s own spontaneous imagery. The negative animus uses as a weapon the mistrust and contempt for the feminine way which surrounds us all. Neither asceticism, forced meditation, short cuts to the numinous, or the at- tempt to force creation out of a sterile soil can avail until she finds and experi- ences what it means to be a woman.
No one creates anything without the co-operation of the contra-sexual element. [The woman described above in trying to work as a man would be going in a direction backwards for her]. She has then to start from the recep- tive, the hidden, the goal-less aspect of Yin. [One solution was] to resign from her job & stay at home with her children, garden, & cooking, and look inward with quiet attention to the images behind her life. I am not suggesting that all women must sacrifice in this way. But the break must be made—a defeat ac- cepted—a loss of prestige endured.
[A man in a similar situation discovered that the resistance to pursuing his doctorate was the voice of the spirit speaking to him like Balaam’s ass so that he would accept his vocation as a priest]. He gave up his job in spite of strong opposition & for 2 years taught small children in a remote place. With- out any effort on his part the way opened for him, & all he had sacrificed was restored to him in a priestly instead of in an intellectual context. His spirit was set free to grow, nourished by the earth of the feminine within him.
[While the man had mistaken his calling and rejected the feminine values, the woman had chosen the right calling, but tried to follow it at the ex- pense of her womanhood, instead of allowing it to grow out of the earth of her feminine nature. At first she felt clumsy, inept, moving in an alien ele- ment. The animus resisted, forcing her to remember and to affirm her calling to academic life and her need for it. She learned to wait until the right time would come. Thus, the cause of the neurosis in both the man & the woman lay in their subjection to the collective contempt for the feminine, “receptive devotion.”
Marie-Louise Von Franz points out how the way of the heroine often involves a time of withdrawal from the world & enduring the suffering of silent waiting. [There is eventually a] reunion with the hero, whose quest has in- volved vigorous action. [A woman sometimes has] to wait for the return of her creative spirit. [A way opened for the woman too], an opportunity to use all her exceptional qualities of mind and personality.
Let it not be supposed that through any of our human transformations we are freed from our conflicts. When women return to their calling, they can now “carry the outer world” and their own conflicts with their changed attitude to the receptive in life. The greatest contribution to this world of reason and logic comes from the feeling responses of their nature, and their thinking may well be of a clear and incisive nature. Feminine originality lies in the capacity for unique individual responses [to internal or external images, rather than thinking]. These responses are every bit as creative as the production of new ideas.
IV. Woman in the Arts—It may well be that for as long as we still live in the dimensions of time & space where differentiation between the masculine & the feminine is essential for consciousness, the number of women manifesting artistic & literary genius will remain small. [There is as much genius in woman as in men, but the feminine genius is at its greatest in the sphere of relation- ship, rather than artistic or scientific expression. Acting and dancing are in their essence arts of response. The artist becomes a vessel for the spirit of the character he or she represents.
The writing of fiction likewise depends on response [& understanding relationships. [The demand for publicity poses a danger to the creative woman], to her art & the essence of her life. One of the major psychological diseases today is the urge to make everything public. Man’s urge to share his creative thoughts is an essential good. But the extremes, sponsored by those with genuine concern for humanity as well as by the media of our society, are largely destroying the sense of mystery itself and with it the essential value of the individual “secret.” The light which is born in secret will shine out when the time is ripe and be seen perhaps by few; the number is irrelevant.
Emily Brontë & Emily Dickinson lived in extreme seclusion, withdrawn from the world; Bronte shunned even limited publicity. Jane Austen was at great pains to preserve her anonymity. Dickinson
Edward Lucie-Smith has said that poets are no longer judged by their work but by the sensational events of their lives [e.g. the suicides of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton]; their poetry is of secondary interest. In our society’s climate the feminine qualities wither and die because nothing is judged valu able unless it is known to & approved by large numbers of people. Art is born of conflict, and the outer life of the creative genius is often tragically disor- dered and imposes great suffering on those close to him or her.
We are concerned here with the many lesser talents, who are enslaved by the terrible pressure of the will to do which kills the feminine creative genius & hands it over to the negative animus & his pursuit of prestige. The woman poet may receive into the soil of her feminine earth the fire of the spirit & may know “the masculine & violent joy of pure creation [May Sarton].” We are paying a high price for freedom [from enforced servitude to “feminine roles”], but it cannot be evaded. [There is a responsibility to ask]: What kind of free spirit is it that breathes through me & is the dominant influence in my life? To discover this is a task of self-knowledge which demands courage, ho- nesty, & perseverance. We may do what we will only when we have learned the nature of love.
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231. Quaker testimonies & economic alternatives (by Severyn Ten
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231. Quaker testimonies & economic alternatives (by Severyn Ten
Haut Bruyn; 1980)
About the Author—Severyn T. Bruyn is Professor of Sociology at Bos- ton College and directs a graduate program in Social Economy and Social Policy. [He has been very involved in the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) including an Executive Committee. His interest in economic alterna- tives grew out of his search for consistency between religious testimony & the patterns of everyday life. This pamphlet describes how Friends have sought a “third way” which seems more compatible with religious principles.
There is the danger and temptation to you, of drawing your minds into your own business, and clogging them with it; so that ye can hardly do any thing to the service of God. George Fox
[Introduction]—Friends have long tried to make the conduct of their business life consistent with their religious beliefs. It hasn't been easy in capi- talist systems, which persist, in part because acceptable alternatives are not easily found. The socialist state has its own form of dominance and exploi- tation. The problems in capitalist countries is that the business systems have led historically toward bigger government; so we stand in a muddle.
We cannot remain mere observers. We forget that we are part of the continuing mystery of change itself. We either contribute toward corporate exploitation in our daily transactions or we choose to contribute toward social change & the transformation of the system. [Perhaps] people in their spiritual condition are creators of the world in which they live. Some Christians sought to overcome the dominance developing through business institutions.
Early Quaker Thought—The early Quakers testified against the exces- sive demands of business. George Fox said: “There is the danger and temp- tation to you, of drawing your minds into your own business, and clogging them with it; so that ye can hardly do any thing to the service of God.” John Woolman saw ethical problems developing early within his own business and in the business institutions of his day. His question was: Should he de- velop business for his own advantage in the light of his Christian beliefs?
He withdrew from his own business. Of the wealthy who profited from the poor’s labor he said: “there is often a danger of their being disqualified to judge candidly in their case, not knowing what they themselves would desire [laboring as the poor did].” Woolman’s universal concern for people extended to the rich as well as to the poor.
Howard Brinton studied the early Quaker journals and found that almost every one contained some reference to restrictions on business. [Since] there were no professional ministers to look after the affairs of the Society of Friends, if Friends carried on large businesses, they would not have time to perform their religious duties. Quakers were radical Christians who did not separate their religious convictions from the rest of their life and conduct.
Later Quaker Thought—In the early 19th century, Quakers like John Bright, Joseph Rowntree, & George Cadbury developed a new pattern of thought among Victorian Quakers. By the 1890s, Friends could no longer take it for granted that philanthropy was ideal or that charitable societies were an adequate response to the times. By the mid-20th century many Friends had faced directly the problem of corporate capitalism.
The Philadelphia YM Faith & Practice said: “[The importance of profit] has been based on the theory that the pursuit of self-interest will result in the greatest good. This isn't what Jesus taught. . . By his control of a business, the employer has power over the working lives of all his employees. [Some are asking]: Is it likely that wholesome conditions of work & adequate wages will be attained if the employees have no share in determining them? Will not sharing in management have great educational value & may it not release latent energies in employees?”
Quaker Experiments with Common Ownership—In the 1950s Qua- kers began experimenting in different countries with democratic forms of eco- nomic enterprise. The best known case is probably the Scott-Bader Common- wealth [still going in 2015]. Ernst Bader, its Quaker owner, gave 90% of his shares to the Commonwealth. Membership in the Commonwealth company was made open to all employees after a probationary period.
The Community Council was organized as the main administrative body. The corporate constitution lays down a maximum ratio of 7:1 between the highest and the lowest salary in the firm. Management must answer all questions raised by members. The preamble to the corporate consti- tution states: “Power should come from within the person & community, & be made responsible to those it affects. Human dignity & service to others [should be considered] instead of solely economic performance. Mutual re- sponsibility must permeate the community.”
“The Commonwealth has responsibilities to the wider community & is endeavoring to fulfill them by fostering a movement towards a new peaceful industrial & social order. [We believe in] a sharing of the fruits of our labor [with the less fortunate] & a refusal to support destructive conflicts.” The Society for Democratic Integration of Industry (1958) became Industrial Common Owner- ship Movement in 1971; [it is still going in 2015].
[When the Quaker Victor Bewley heard of a woman being fired after 30 years with a company and other injustices], he changed the structure of his own business. The company’s capital would be held in trust for every employee. After 3 years anyone could apply to become a member of the company “Com- munity.” The Articles of Association were written with a Christian motive and purpose. A business “Council” was formed consisting of the head of every department plus elected representatives from each department. The meetings are informal, and a consensus is sought in all meetings. The worker coopera- tive movement has developed significantly around the world. [There is the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives].
Another approach to economic democracy in which some Friends have been actively engaged has been the Consumer Cooperative movement. The customers gain equal votes in choosing the board of directors of their own company. Friends constituted a significant portion of the founders and leaders of co-operative grocery stores in suburban Philadelphia
Worker and consumer cooperatives do not solve all the problems of classical capitalism even though they suggest an evolutionary trend. [Since exploitation can happen in either type], many observers have argued that these 2 types should be linked together in federations. Producer and consumer cooperatives could be linked as well. The result is an economy with a social foundation.
Trends and Experiments Outside Quaker Witness—The concern for transforming economic enterprises so that they become more consistent with religious principles has been expressed widely outside the Quaker tradition. American Cast Iron Pipe Company’s owner in the 1920s and Milwaukee Jour- nal’s owner [in 1937] turned over the shares of their company to the workers [both are still operating as of 2015].
A secular trend toward employee ownership has been developing in both the US & Europe. There is Employee Stock Ownership Plan legislation (ESOP); [as of 2015 over 2,600 firms come under this plan]. A marked increase in wor- ker control over the management of European enterprises has been evident in the last 2 decades [e.g.] in West Germany
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)/New England AFSC) The AFSC appointed an Economic Exploration Committee in 1965 to look into the economic factors which were affecting their community relations efforts. Rufus Jones once wrote of [transforming humankind (see quote at beginning of last section)]. The Community Relations Division Committee followed these principles in making their suggestions: sharing of power; assistance applied directly to individual; no racial discrimination; external costs of operations should be recorded and addressed; National planning; appropriate subsidies; distinction between “work” and “job.”
The New England AFSC has formed an Economic Alternatives Com- mittee to provide opportunities for experimental social action in the field of business and labor. The AFSC argues that the participation of employees in planning for the responsibilities required in managing their own firm is impor- tant. [Experience has shown that if the purchase of shares by employees is unequal there is inequity in voting power and the temptation to “sell out” to outside investors is often irresistible].
The AFSC Committee on Economic Alternatives is designed to help employees anticipate these problems so that they can better control their own destiny. The Committee offers information to employees on systems of corpo- rate governance guided by principles of social accountability, an education involving discussion, conferences and consultation. One of their clients was Colonial Press in Clinton Massachusetts
The AFSC is interested in the social dimensions of economic alterna- tives, but members also express their spiritual concerns about how systems of production affect people. Committees member are similarly concerned with how enterprises are able to release the creative powers of employees [and in some cases the introduction of meditation into the work place]. The AFSC staff states that it is a matter of maintaining proper balance in the values of every day life.
The concern is to recognize the importance of the inner life and the spiritual needs of people at work while facing squarely, the practical need for a corporate income. The consulting staff also suggest it is possible to design job systems to maximize the release of the “creative potential of all employ- ees.” [The “mixing up” of traditional job roles may] overcome bureaucratic traps and allow people to expand their lives.
The AFSC Committee holds that high technology leads toward a cen- tralization of political power while low technology may reverse this tendency. One Committee member [developed a system involving an electric car and a windmill to charge the batteries]. The Committee is therefore seeking a who- listic approach to economics by creating bridges between the producer and the consumer; it sees this as basic to social planning on a larger scale. [Utili- zing a community development corporation, a neighborhood grocery store was bought by the workers and was able to provide profit for its employees and serving local needs at the same time].
The Committee believes that it's possible in the long run to reduce government expenditures for agencies treating environmental, labor and other public problems by planning for the systematic development of economic enterprises organized in the public interest. The Committee believes a con- cept of democratic citizenship is appropriate for economic enterprises. Qua- kers in the 17th century were calling for the development of an inner power & authority in the face of external controls. The AFSC Committee members however, do not see their primary function as that of changing the larger system.
Basic Principles of a Nonviolent Economy:
Trusteeship—developing “land trusts” [based on spirit of stewardship].
Cooperation—economy based on principles of mutual assistance and social responsibility.
Constitutional democracy—base production and distribution decisions
on [how it affects the community].
A Planned Economy—design economic alternatives based on social
development rather than “supply and demand.”
Social Development—cultivating the human resources of knowledge, skills, and social sensitivity.
A Human Orientation—using material resources and labor to meet
human needs.
Equal Access—widespread availability of resources, productive oppor- tunities, and needed goods.
Small and Global—developing regional units small enough to allow for
[widespread] effective participation and large enough to enable self-
sufficiency, & always in the context of world citizenship & responsibility.
What principles can Friends offer to business people, labor leaders, consumer advocates, anyone who is deeply involved in the management of the economy?
Community and the Economic Order—Parker Palmer, Dean of Stu- dies at Pendle Hill, posed the above query about the wholeness of life. Lon- don Yearly Meeting became concerned in the winter of 1973 about problems developing in the British economy and charged their Social Responibility Council to look at the problem. [The members sought answers on a wide range of topics dealing with economics’ effect on society. The answers were published in a volume called Public Resources & Private Lives. The authors concluded:
“The state of the economy in any western society is a central pre-occupation even for those whose primary common ground is spiritual. . . We can now see that the economic is not a peripheral concern, but central to the whole relationship between faith and practice. . . Economic affairs are now so central to our whole existence that no other aspect of personal relationships or individual life styles can be looked at without understanding what it means in terms of [individual and] national wealth and their distribution.”
In 1975 AFSC’s Marjorie Swann brought together people to develop principles on what is “the non-violent economy.” The Committee’s task was inspired in part by Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence, self-rule, and non- possession. The group considered the principles at this section’s beginning significant guides to social action. These concepts are in full accord with the testimonies of Quakers in history.
Kenneth Boulding calls Quakers “conservative radicals.” Conservative because they seek to conserve the connection to the past and to the eternal, [which they invite into meeting for worship]. “Here that which is beyond time & in every time becomes part of the present.” Radical because “their authority is the light within . . . by which past undoubted authority must be tested.” “There is a constant hunger to apply the eternal principles of love, justice & redemptive suffering to this present world”; George’s Fox’s “But what canst thou say” is a key query.
If George Fox were living in his fearless manner today, he might well suggest that we bring the creation's fire into our lives & live together without undue dependence on the corporate state. A major task of our time is to help create a new economic order. George Fox was inwardly guided by a “pure fire,” and during difficult times he walked “solitarily . . . taken up by the love of God.” I believe that these sources of guidance are the foundation on which we can build wise alternatives as we move toward the 21st century.
232. The life journey of a Quaker artist (by Dorothea Johnson
Blom; 1980)
About the Author—Teacher, writer, & artist, Dorothea Blom began her art career as a designer of batiks in a Madison Avenue studio, & later wrote on design & color. A major event changed her life, & since then she has focused on art as link between inner & outer worlds, a link which can determine our re- lation to ourselves & to culture.
The Past Changes as I change; even while I ponder & write, transfor- mations take place. There is no “objective reality,” only vantage points, or different levels in inner space, from which we see, & which transform what we see. My 1st 25 years were unmitigated depression, a “sick period.” The 2nd to my early 40s, consisted of discovering new relations to life & learning to trust inner [geography]. The 3rd period is characterized by reconciling opposites.
I. Stepchild of the Culture—As long as I, the adult, closed the little girl out (fearful I might be her), she couldn't heal; but she has healed, and I rejoice in her secrets. She has become a growing point for me. [There is a picture of a blissful Baby in Red Chair by an unknown American artist in a Williamsburg , VA folk art center]. The infant soul represents the incorruptible core of inno- cence always present in the life journey; when we lose touch, it waits within us for rediscovery. [My 1st experience with a Christmas tree in the firelight is surely where my relation to the Tree of Life began; I didn’t realize until my 30s that this experience was a religious or mystical experience. The little girl [felt distant from her godlike parents and used] her dream world as an escape. [Her mother did not believe touch was necessary if you really loved someone].
As a child she had an instinctive trust of images that came that came to her in dreams, & was even curious rather than frightened by an occasional nightmare. One lasting image was of a spring, a pond, & rich plant growth. Toward the end of pre-school years, she found that she hated oatmeal, & as a result rejected a God so stupid as to give her oatmeal, and let those who nee- ded it starve. On her aunt’s large farm she wandered in the fields. One day she crossed a boundary, through a gate down a road to the forest. She walked part way down the road and then retreated to her favorite field. It was an intense experience that must never happen again.
Entering school was a frightening experience for me, one I didn’t get over for years. I seemed introverted to others and still couldn’t read by the age of 10. Through a substitute art teacher, I found a lively satisfaction in art work, discovering in it a lifeline between me and world. After 10 the imaginary family came into competition with the world of my peers, [which I wanted to be part of]. I had a baby sister who died in infancy who was very important to me, the center of my life. I was beginning to develop close friendships with girls more stable and slightly older than I. After a summer adult art class, I was bored with high school and was allowed to enter Walden, an expensive private school on a scholarship.
The students there were the most brilliant, articulate and expressive peers I’d ever known; the students helped plan the curriculum. [While I had cultural shock and retreated into shyness] I acquired a self-motivation and excitement about learning that I never lost. I began to see life on this planet as a process, and hoped I could take part in it. One of the richest friendships of my young years was with a visiting art teacher from Vienna
But something was missing, and I began shopping around for [a place of worship]. I had severe depression, but when the doctors wanted to send to a State Hospital
In Hinduism, I found confirmation of my temperament, a sense of worth [and a living in the present] which my own culture had not validated. Three months before my 1st baby was to arrive, my father died of a heart attack. 10 years after that were to pass before I could even begin to forgive him for having withdrawn his attention from the little girl that I was. As I grew older I came to see that my introversion was discredited by an extroverted culture.
2. The Courage to Change—Life became a gradual trusting of unfami- liar states of mind. I had periods of bad depression & so did Chris. [Even as slim earners] we didn’t have any more problems than the others. One Quaker said: “The Bloms live on a shoestring, but the shoestring is always long enough.” When I first walked into the Friends Meeting of Chappaqua, NY, I said: “I’ve come home for the 1st time in my life.” My homeland in the Society of Friends opened many things, [from a Peace Forum, to Fellowship of Recon- ciliation, to AFSC, to providing rest for Nazi refugees].
[Once each in my 20s and 30s, I fell in love]. I didn’t think I could endure my marriage if I developed a sexual relationship outside of it. I have come to realize how idealized this kind of love can be, because it never gets tested [through all the hard years]. Each step my husband or I took tended to lead us away from each other. For me the raising of children was like climbing the hard stone steps of necessity, one which maybe held me together. Fritz Kunkel once said that the greatest gift a parent can give a child is the testimony of his or her continuing growth. The most significant landmark for those decades was Gerald Heard. People like Heard & Howard Brinton who move comfortably be tween science & religion, finding a relationship between the 2, appeal to me.
I was 28 when I read Heard’s Pain, Sex, and Time, a survey of Western history based on changing relations to these 3 elements in the culture. Gerald Heard has said that most illness reflects other problems. He concluded that we and our world can’t change significantly unless we make time every day for meditation. I had my 1st religious experience since I was a child as a result of meditation.
It was as if God said to me, “This is your mountain. Your are at its base, ready to climb. How can you move to higher ground without sometimes losing the view and finding the going rough? You will always be on this mountain.” The Sienese artist, Sassetta, gave me another relation to the mountain as life journey with his Meeting of St. Anthony and St. Paul
I have never completely forsaken daily meditation, even though there have been long dry periods and many half-hearted ones. [I had a difficult time being with my mother as she recovered from a broken hip but she found a miracle of forgiveness for her alcoholic mother. It improved the relationship my mother and I had]. Once on a day off I wandered around the Metropolitan Museum
III. Continuing Creation (Hilltop Experience)—I knew I must change my life. I knew I must explore the function of art as it heals and transforms. A lot of things needed sorting out, and I didn’t know how to start. I walked down the 2nd important forest road of my life. It took me to a hilltop-crowned with an open field. The sky hovered close. I discovered Mother Earth and Father Spirit as my parents, freeing my biological parents to be fallible human beings. The experience released new energy to explore “what next.”
I found a half-time job [which at times demanded I be fully present with demanding customers, often seeing through the crustiness to a little child who never grew up. The rest of the week I spent on my own custom-made educa- tion, & in the pursuit of my question: what is the inherent function of art? [It is] at its best is a by-product of religious experience. Every culture, period, and true artist educates us to a different relation to reality. Art has the power to transform both inner and outer realtity. After two years I began teaching in adult schools. This teaching arose from a place where art, religion and growth processes converge within the context of our changing world.
Increasingly I felt a “possession,” an irrational fixation I could not get rid of. A friend suggested I see Martha Jaeger, a Quaker, Jungian therapist in New York
If clay was a gift of my 40s, & free stitchery, reveling in yarns, was a gift of my 50s, water color as meditation was a gift of my 60s. But teaching re- mained my 1st art. I was teaching 3 sections of the same class each week. There always several Friends in the classes, which Martha said were a better education than I could buy, because I always had to be a step ahead of the students. The children had moved off, and Chris and I developed a relationship which became simpler and more deliberately supportive of each other in our different interests and needs.
[He died of a heart attack and a younger sister of mine died almost ex- actly 1 year later]. The presentness I had in death with these 2 that I shared much life with was surely awesome, affecting deeply my relation to death. The day before Chris died he had the 1st mystical experience of our life together, [after an argument we had]. [After the deaths], I soon noticed how the psychological space had changed. If someone’s presence is withdrawn there is an unfamiliar climate. I was told to notice the gifts of the dead. Both of us needed to forgive and be forgiven. Important life relationships continue after death. Even now, 12 years later, I dream of Chris twice a year, & I’m always amazed at what is obviously a further stage in the development of our relationship.
After Joe and Teresina Havens invited me to London
[Even I gain a new understanding, and a name to go with my lifelong handicap. One of my young students recognized my problems as dyslexia]. I was 60 when that happened, and I still enjoy laughing over it and its effects on me. I often feel younger than when I was young, physically healthier and more playful. Growing old for me is easier than growing up or being young.
From Pendle Hill I moved on to another adult learning retreat center, Koinonia Foundation in Baltimore England Finland Mecca
A word which has meant much during this decade is “convergence,” adapted from Teilhard de Chardin. Through it I find aspects of myself disco- vering one another. This culminates in the impulse toward organic wholeness of life. Teilhard says the center of the universe is where a person is, and that God is the Center of centers. When these 2 centers come together the way opens, as at a crossroad in all directions. The mandala with its center & rela- ted parts, is the ideal tool in an age of monumental convergence. It has taught me what Heaven is: a 5th dimension, encompassing and containing all les- ser dimensions.
As for simplicity, the artist in me wants to simplify, to choose what rings true, and to slough off what gets in the way. That of God within us is the crea- tive aspect of human nature. Continuing revelation is the essential partner of continuing creation. Art at its best is part of continuing revelation. Habitual, mechanical patterns of thought and action are the real enemies of revelation. Living with strong imagery through reproductions of art is an enormous help in freeing me from dead habit. My favorites of these are Michelangelo’s “Unfi- nished Statues” in Florence
Revelation sometimes comes to us in spite of ourselves, whether we can make good use of it or not. Sometimes the Christ figure stands in for My- stery, walking on the troubled waters of our world or of my troubled spirit, or leaping from the Cross to bless us. Maybe my greatest miracle of conver- gence is my relation to my own culture. I recognize the one-sided natures of both Eastern and Western culture. My culture needs the likes of me if it is to survive, just as I need my culture to be healthy and whole.
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233. Friends and the World of Nature (by Theodor Benfy; 1980)
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233. Friends and the World of Nature (by Theodor Benfy; 1980)
About the Author—Ted Benfey belongs to Friendship Meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he teaches chemistry and history of science at Guilford College. He joined Friends while a student at University College, London. He writes: “The rift between man and nature became abruptly clear to me the day I heard of the bombing of Hiroshima. This pamphlet arose during a Woodbrooke sabbatical, “where I sought for Quaker insights that would allow men and women of our time to break through to a more harmonious commu- nion with nature.”
It would go a great way to caution and direct people in their Use of the World, that they were better studied and known in the Creation of it. For how could Man find the Confidence to abuse it, while they should see the Great Creator stare them in the Face, in all and every Part thereof? William Penn
I—What's needed is a new way of looking at nature, releasing the ener- gies of those who look at nature in non-“orthodox” ways but are shackled by the fear that they may be wrong. The only sound way to hold to the particulate, mechanistic doctrine is to insist that we, [like inanimate nature], are mere parti- cles in motion, a machine part of a larger machine. All who look into themselves know they are aware of something that is not machine-like.
The suffering of countless today is a feeling of being shackled by a frag- mented, fractured world view. We have lost the art or the interest in putting the pieces of puzzles together. In fact [the spiritual pieces that are] not consonant with [modern science’s worldview is considered an illusion]. God is not to ap- pear at certain moments of evolution to breathe life into the 1st amoeba nor to endow the 1st human with a soul. All of God’s handiwork must have gone into the original design.
Around Newton Laplace ’s time many thought of God as the great clockmaker and winder-up of the universal clock. The current evolutionary view is not complete, because its initial description demands an act of faith from us and we have never yet been asked to commit ourselves to anything remotely resembling this claim. If there is no meaning [in asking what was going on before the Big Bang], there is no significance to our own lives either. We are afraid to say no to a coherent viewpoint that at least ties together all the sci- ences even if it plays havoc with our conception of ourselves, our sense of our significance, our own importance. [There can be no measurable progress towards a goal] on a time scale immeasurably long.
II—Those who are not scientists seem to assume that all scientists are committed to a view of nature that is nothing but particles linked or in motion. They were totally unlike us—for we could examine them and feel them & taste them and be nourished by them, but they could do none of those things. In the 1700s Laplace raised the possibility that if all were particles, and their laws of motion were known, [past, present, and future] locations could be calculated [without worrying about deviations]. [Even after new discoveries and theories], the basic view that nature is dead and unfeeling and soulless has not funda- mentally changed.
Those chemists who were not atomists & early North American natura- lists were not concerned with the ultimate constitution of matter, particulate or otherwise. A major motivating force behind those devoting their professional life to the study of animal behavior must be the delight and fascination in sim- ply watching the life patterns before them. Max Weber and R.H. Tawney pointed to the change in religious atmosphere which led a remarkable num- ber of religious dissidents to flock to the sciences and make significant contri- butions to them. Friends were in fact advised by William Penn to find their recreation in nature. It is unlikely anyone would have followed that path if they thought that they might in fact lay spiritual insights open to question.
III & IV—The 17th century saw not only the great Puritan hurricane engulfing England British Isles . This neo-Platonism sought for a new view of the world not grounded in pagan Greek thought but transformed by the insights and expe- rience of Christianity, which helped to raise the significance of matter and of working with materials. Christianity clearly has a doctrine of matter quite apart from its new insights about man and sin and rebirth and man’s relation to God. Quakers held that all matter was sacramental, not certain bits at cer tain times. George Fox said: “A true voice arose in me which said, ‘There is a living God who made all things,” [i.e.] all things should reveal the character of the maker.
John Woolman said: “Our Gracious Creator cares & provides for all his creatures. His tender mercies are all over his works; & so far as his love influ- ences our minds, [just that far do] we become interested in his workmanship. We as his creatures, while we live answerable to the design of our creation, we are entitled to a subsistence that no one may deprive us of.” [In his busi- ness], the material & how it was used were to be vehicles of God’s love.
[John Woolman was probably influenced by the Neo-Platonic author of The Imitation of Christ, Jacob Boehme, John Everard & William Law]. These 3 broke with the older mystical tradition of via negativa (salvation through self- denial). [There is] is an active role for the God-centered man in the world’s af- fairs, because as Boehme said: “The visible is sprung from the spiritual world ... it is a subject or object resembling the spiritual world; the spiritual world is inward ground of the visible world; the visible subsists in the spiritual.” Neo- Platonic thought was sweeping through
[V]—Boehme was interested in alchemy, & alchemists had always be- lieved that careful study of the transformations possible in the laboratory would provide hints of the transformation of which man’s soul was capable. During the 16th & 17th centuries arose the “Chemical Philosophy,” an attempt to re- write science, the description of nature, in a Christian form rather than the me- chanistic, atomistic directions that were being developed. Most chemists weren't atomists until our Friend, John Dalton (1810) showed how atoms could be useful in chemistry.
Why should a Quaker open the door to a development so destruc- tive of religious concerns? [This wasn’t the only time Quakers have opened the door to developments whose consequences were not in line with Quaker longings. The Quaker Abraham Darby & his descendants found a way of using coal for smelting iron ore. Kenneth Boulding said: “the economic base for the great upsurge of English speaking people in the last 200 years owes a great deal to 18th century Quakers in advancing science & industry. [Perhaps] Qua- kers organized their Society on the confident belief that all truth is good & new truths will enhance & enlarge understanding of truths already known.
Another Quaker opened a door to a new & destructive world. Benjamin Robbins turned his genius to the study of projectiles and military engineering. He maintained his friendships with if not his membership in the Society. I am convinced that there is more optimism than blindness underlying the enthu- siasm of these 3 Quakers. They had faith that there would always be enough individuals sensitive to God’s will to prevent that progress from leading man- kind as a whole to destruction.
VI—John Woolman must have been deeply influenced by neo-Platonic ideas regarding the material world for there was little in his Quaker reading to help him. Some believe that John Woolman was not alone in his concerns. John Woolman’s influence extended beyond Friends. Woolman had a strong influence on Emerson, and Emerson had an enormous influence on 19th cen- tury American thought. Emerson wrote: “As water to our thirst, so is the rock, the ground to our eyes and hands and feet.” Emerson felt unsettled and para- lyzed by the mechanical conception of the universe and the corresponding psychology of sensation of John Locke. Emerson provided a philosophy that not only helped to overcome the servility to tradition but taught how to use the resources of nature.
The motivation for American industrialization was the dream that through the right handling of materials a human standard of living could be provided for all citizens. Howard Brinton writes: “Emerson’s doctrine that God is present in all events in nature was similar to the Quaker belief that inspired Quakers to pursue science. . . Man, disillusioned by the extreme danger which mechani- stic science & the meaninglessness of life which it creates now placed him, is seeking some deeper, more moving & more spiritual power to give direction and goal to his life.”
VII-IX—Kathleen Lonsdale (1903-1971) said: “Friends don't accept the idea that the universe occurred by chance, that man is a chance conglomerate of molecules which has developed ideals, a conscience, humanitarian instincts merely in order to survive.” Harold Loukes stated: “The central element in the whole Quaker position is that spiritual laws are material laws as well; they are the law of the universe. [When someone uses atoms to explain man’s creation of artworks, no doubt the atoms will be endowed with even further properties].
We now know that Dalton
The Chinese made remarkable progress in science and technology be- fore 1500 on the basis of their Yin-Yang concept of alternating and comple- mentary phases. The fact that progress in understanding and manipulating the material world can be made using either a particulate and analytical, or a con- tinuous and inter-related philosophy suggests that the atomistic-mechanistic view point need not be the final one.
There is a new view of the natural world & our relation to it struggling to be born. What we need is to forge a new link between the insights of science & the deeper promptings of the human spirit. [When we see nature as part of us and ourselves as part of nature, affecting and affected by nature], then we will be moving to wholeness, to health. What we need is rebirth of love for matter, becoming friends with the rocks, heeding Emerson’s call.
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234. Lucretia Mott Speaking: excerpts from the sermons & speeches
of a famous 19th century Quaker minister & reformer (compiled
by Mary Hope Bacon; 1980)
About the [Editor]—Margaret Hope Bacon is Assistant Secretary for Information for the American Friends Service Committee, and has also been in journalism, public relations, and social work. Assignments have taken her to Africa, Europe, and the Orient; volunteer work has claimed much of her time. Her enthusiasm for Lucretia Mott grew out of her studies on Quaker women. She sees in this stalwart character the great pioneer and spiritual leader of women’s struggle for equality, and [a powerful advocate of social action] being taken by Friends.
FOREWORD—Lucretia Mott is remembered today as an abolitionist & a pioneer of the women’s rights movement. She was also a 19th century Quaker minister, blessed with a deep spiritual insight, & a keen analytic mind. She preached a social gospel, urging Friends into positive action for peace & [against society’s ills]. True to Quaker tradition, Lucretia Mott spoke only as the spirit moved. She never wrote a speech or sermon; she disliked formal writing of any sort.
About the [Editor]—Margaret Hope Bacon is Assistant Secretary for Information for the American Friends Service Committee, and has also been in journalism, public relations, and social work. Assignments have taken her to Africa, Europe, and the Orient; volunteer work has claimed much of her time. Her enthusiasm for Lucretia Mott grew out of her studies on Quaker women. She sees in this stalwart character the great pioneer and spiritual leader of women’s struggle for equality, and [a powerful advocate of social action] being taken by Friends.
FOREWORD—Lucretia Mott is remembered today as an abolitionist & a pioneer of the women’s rights movement. She was also a 19th century Quaker minister, blessed with a deep spiritual insight, & a keen analytic mind. She preached a social gospel, urging Friends into positive action for peace & [against society’s ills]. True to Quaker tradition, Lucretia Mott spoke only as the spirit moved. She never wrote a speech or sermon; she disliked formal writing of any sort.
Friends have taken down her sermons, & newspaper reporters covered her speeches. Quaker men are more often quoted than women, though women had no less access to the Inward Teacher. Their culture made them less apt to set their thoughts down, or offer them to posterity. Hopefully Lucretia Mott's words will be followed by others, so that we will begin to recover all aspects of our spiritual heritage. Margaret Hope Bacon
LUCRETIA MOTT: Memoranda on Herself—The exercise of women’s talents in the mercantile business line, as well as the general care which de- volved upon them in the absence of their husbands, tended to develop their intellectual powers and strengthen them mentally and physical. In 1804 my father’s family removed to Boston, and in the public & private schools of that city I mingled with all classes without distinction. At 15, I was chosen as an as- sistant teacher in the place of a leaving teacher. I was later offered and accep- ted a teaching position.
At 18 I married James Mott of New York. We resorted to the retail dry goods business, & I taught another year. My sympathy was early enlisted for the poor slave, influenced by Elias Hicks & other ministers. The unequal con- dition of woman in society also impressed my mind. I engaged in the mini- stry in our Society, & was encouraged by those in authority until the 1827 Separation, [when I chose] the sufficiency of light within, resting on truth as authority, rather than ‘taking authority for truth.’ I had more interest in moral movements than theological discussion.
At 18 I married James Mott of New York. We resorted to the retail dry goods business, & I taught another year. My sympathy was early enlisted for the poor slave, influenced by Elias Hicks & other ministers. The unequal con- dition of woman in society also impressed my mind. I engaged in the mini- stry in our Society, & was encouraged by those in authority until the 1827 Separation, [when I chose] the sufficiency of light within, resting on truth as authority, rather than ‘taking authority for truth.’ I had more interest in moral movements than theological discussion.
Temperance reform, oppression of the working-classes, & slavery en- gaged my attention. I have felt bound to plead the slaves’ cause, in season & out of season, & to abstain [from buying & selling] slave-grown products. The efforts of Lundy, Clarkson, Wilberforce, Heyrick, & Garrison prepared the way for a convention in Philadelphia, in 1833, calling for immediate emancipation without expatriation. I have traveled thousands of miles in this country, holding meetings in some slave states, and have shared abundantly in the odium at- tached to modern abolitionists.
[Women, including me], were denied membership in the World’s Anti- slavery Convention. I have engaged heart and hand on the Woman question, as my labor, travels and public discourses evince. The misrepresentation, ridi- cule, and abuse heaped upon this, as well as other reforms, don't, in the least, deter me from duty. This imperfect sketch may give some idea of the mode of life of one who has found it ‘good to be always zealously affected in a good thing.’ I have had 6 children. I was much confined to them during their infancy and childhood. I omitted much unnecessary stitching and ornamental work [in order to read more serious literature].
Chronology—1/3/1793: Born Lucretia Coffin on Nantucket Island
Chronology—1/3/1793: Born Lucretia Coffin on Nantucket Island
4/10/1811: Married to James Mott in Philadelphia. 1/1821: Became
recorded minister in the Society of Friends. 12/9/1833: 1st meeting
of Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. 1/15/1843: [Anti-Slavery]
Sermon delivered to U.S Congressmen in 1st Unitarian Church in Wa-
shington. 7/19/1848: Seneca Falls Convention. Declaration of the
Rights of Women.
9/1852: Women’s Rights Convention, Syracuse, New York. She
9/1852: Women’s Rights Convention, Syracuse, New York. She
also spoke at the conventions of 1853, 1854, 1856, & 1866.
5/10/1866: Organization of the American Equal Rights Association.
Lucretia Mott president. 7/4/1876: Addresses National Women’s Suf-
frage Association. Lucretia president. 11/11/1880 Lucretia dies at
Roadside, her home in Philadelphia.
LUCRETIA MOTT SPEAKING: …ON SLAVERY—Let us put our souls in their souls’ stead … Let us look at the souls who are led into hopeless cap- tivity, deprived of every right & sundered from every happy association.
There are many who won’t allow anything to be said in the slave’s be- half. I have long believed that an obedience to Christian duty required more mouths should be opened on this subject. The manufacturers of north, consu- mers of southern productions are implicated. What would this nation be … if she were free of this … injustice.
LUCRETIA MOTT SPEAKING: …ON SLAVERY—Let us put our souls in their souls’ stead … Let us look at the souls who are led into hopeless cap- tivity, deprived of every right & sundered from every happy association.
There are many who won’t allow anything to be said in the slave’s be- half. I have long believed that an obedience to Christian duty required more mouths should be opened on this subject. The manufacturers of north, consu- mers of southern productions are implicated. What would this nation be … if she were free of this … injustice.
I am glad … it is being made known that [commercial & manufacturing relations of the country] are carried on by the gain of oppression. [Abolitionists] feel they are called upon not to be partakers of other men’s sins, & to not par- ticipate in this. Let them be faithful to their trust … to the poor slave, [and] to all who are in any way …injured.
We are all guilty of our brother's blood … Everyone has a responsi- bility in it. We are called to bear our testimony against sin. Our garments are all stained with the blood of the slave. Let us then be clean handed.
We are all guilty of our brother's blood … Everyone has a responsi- bility in it. We are called to bear our testimony against sin. Our garments are all stained with the blood of the slave. Let us then be clean handed.
… ON WOMEN—Our foolish women set their faces so against any change—hugging their chains so hard I despair of advance in our day … All subjects of reform are kindred in nature; giving to each the proper considera- tion, will tend to strengthen & nerve the mind for all. We won’t love the slave the less, in loving all humanity more.
What does woman want more than she enjoys? Of what rights is she deprived? As a right, she wants to be acknowledged as a moral respon- sible human being … Let Women then go on, not asking as a favor, but clai- ming as a right, the removal of all hindrances to her elevation in the scale of being.
We are satisfied with [woman’s] nature. But how has neglect & misma- nagement increased the difference. If cultivated & refined woman would [use] her powers … she might engage in pursuits which she now shrinks from.
The oppressor does not see himself in that light until the oppressed cry for deliverance.
The idea of the leaders of this movement is not that women should be obliged to accept the privileges which we demand be open to her. [We assert the right, not the obligation, of women to do everything a man does].
On the island of Nantucket, our mothers kept small groceries and sold provisions, that they might make something in the absence of their husband. … They are not triflers, they have intelligent subjects of conversation.
We ought to put woman on a par with man, not invest her with power, or claim her superiority over her brother; she is just as likely to become a tyrant as man is. [With man & woman working together], it is hoped that there would be less war, injustice, & intolerance in the world. … The assertion of woman that she has all the rights she wants only proves how far the restrictions & disabili- ties to which she has been subjected have rendered her insensible to the bles- sings of true liberty.
… ON NATIVE AMERICANS/ … ON JUSTICE—The native Indians of our forests have their worship. I have thought that there was, perhaps as much reasonableness and rational worship in it as passing around the little bread and wine or some of our own peculiarities … Our friend has spoken of barbarities which have been practiced towards the Indians, & of their present condition of degradation. We have not considered the wronging of the Indians as our own. We have aided in driving them further and further west.
The object of our institution is to aid those whose circumstances prevent their earning a subsistence in any other way: the aged, the sick and the infirm, and widows with small children.
It is the people's heart we are to preach unto, to proclaim liberty and truth, justice and right … There is a need of preachers against the excesses of the age … We must look beyond the beggar of the day … to consider how much we have done toward causing it … It only lays the foundation for future trouble & fighting when, for reputation and to please men, reformers seek to build again the things they are called on to destroy.
What does woman want more than she enjoys? Of what rights is she deprived? As a right, she wants to be acknowledged as a moral respon- sible human being … Let Women then go on, not asking as a favor, but clai- ming as a right, the removal of all hindrances to her elevation in the scale of being.
We are satisfied with [woman’s] nature. But how has neglect & misma- nagement increased the difference. If cultivated & refined woman would [use] her powers … she might engage in pursuits which she now shrinks from.
The oppressor does not see himself in that light until the oppressed cry for deliverance.
The idea of the leaders of this movement is not that women should be obliged to accept the privileges which we demand be open to her. [We assert the right, not the obligation, of women to do everything a man does].
On the island of Nantucket, our mothers kept small groceries and sold provisions, that they might make something in the absence of their husband. … They are not triflers, they have intelligent subjects of conversation.
We ought to put woman on a par with man, not invest her with power, or claim her superiority over her brother; she is just as likely to become a tyrant as man is. [With man & woman working together], it is hoped that there would be less war, injustice, & intolerance in the world. … The assertion of woman that she has all the rights she wants only proves how far the restrictions & disabili- ties to which she has been subjected have rendered her insensible to the bles- sings of true liberty.
… ON NATIVE AMERICANS/ … ON JUSTICE—The native Indians of our forests have their worship. I have thought that there was, perhaps as much reasonableness and rational worship in it as passing around the little bread and wine or some of our own peculiarities … Our friend has spoken of barbarities which have been practiced towards the Indians, & of their present condition of degradation. We have not considered the wronging of the Indians as our own. We have aided in driving them further and further west.
The object of our institution is to aid those whose circumstances prevent their earning a subsistence in any other way: the aged, the sick and the infirm, and widows with small children.
It is the people's heart we are to preach unto, to proclaim liberty and truth, justice and right … There is a need of preachers against the excesses of the age … We must look beyond the beggar of the day … to consider how much we have done toward causing it … It only lays the foundation for future trouble & fighting when, for reputation and to please men, reformers seek to build again the things they are called on to destroy.
It is a disgrace on our profession of Christianity, these distinctions that exist in Europe between the rich and poor; how little have we really advanced … The requirements of truth have ever been similar in all ages. Why is it that your religious worship has regard to Sabbath day devotion rather than an every day truth? Why is it that you are not uplifting the poor and the lowly? Are you making the gospel “glad tidings of great joy” to all people? Let this be a country whose tendency is to equalize society. I say the only means I know of appointed by God to remove the terrible oppression in any age of the world, is the faithfulness of God’s children, those who have gone forth proclaiming greater liberty, greater truths to mankind, greater duty for that entire community.
… ON PEACE AND NON-VIOLENCE—[For those who would defend corporal punish I would say]. It is the master that isn't prepared for emancipa- tion, and the parent that is not prepared to give up punishment.
As enquiry [into the best mode of settling international disputes] pro- ceeds, men will discover the principle of forgiveness and will feel the power of the spirit of love. They will then become more consistent with the Christianity they profess … We hold it the duty of women, to look with an attentive eye upon the great events which are transpiring around them; that they may direct their moral influence against the iniquitous spirit of war. Great is the respon- sibility of women in relation to this subject [to not teach the child] to mimic war’s murderous game.
It is John Brown the moral hero, John Brown the noble confessor and patient martyr we honor. I have no idea because I am a Non-Resister of sub- mitting tamely to injustice inflicted on either on me or on the slave … I regard the abolition of slavery as being much more the result of this moral warfare which was waged against the great crime of our nation than coming from the battlefield … I lament more than I can express that a military education & training is being introduced into our public schools; it has no business there.
… ON PEACE AND NON-VIOLENCE—[For those who would defend corporal punish I would say]. It is the master that isn't prepared for emancipa- tion, and the parent that is not prepared to give up punishment.
As enquiry [into the best mode of settling international disputes] pro- ceeds, men will discover the principle of forgiveness and will feel the power of the spirit of love. They will then become more consistent with the Christianity they profess … We hold it the duty of women, to look with an attentive eye upon the great events which are transpiring around them; that they may direct their moral influence against the iniquitous spirit of war. Great is the respon- sibility of women in relation to this subject [to not teach the child] to mimic war’s murderous game.
It is John Brown the moral hero, John Brown the noble confessor and patient martyr we honor. I have no idea because I am a Non-Resister of sub- mitting tamely to injustice inflicted on either on me or on the slave … I regard the abolition of slavery as being much more the result of this moral warfare which was waged against the great crime of our nation than coming from the battlefield … I lament more than I can express that a military education & training is being introduced into our public schools; it has no business there.
While we aim to maintain the highest peace principles, at the same time we can labor with those who do not go as far as we do. England’s working men resolved they won’t submit quietly to being used in war … I hope that as lovers of peace … we shall show our love for the whole people … by a free & open recognition of the rights of all. I want that we may all show faith by our works, by our honesty, justice, mercy, & love … beginning with little children ... While I am in favor of peace, I am also in favor of war, the firmness and combative- ness that marked the anti-slavery warfare.
… ON THE INWARD TEACHER—Jesus’ simple and benign religion’s primitive beauty is obscured by creeds and dogmas, gloomy appendages of man—its investigation of honest dilemmas checked by the cry of heresy and infidelity … We urge obedience to a manifest duty as a means of acceptance with the Searcher of hearts … My faith is firm in the blessed eternal doctrine preached by Jesus … that great truth that God is the teacher of God’s people … This noble gift of God is legitimate, a part of man’s being.
I believe that man is created innately good, & his instincts are good ... We may all admit, that if we receive the Divine Spirit, in its operation in our soul, there will be no mistake, it will be a reprover of evil, & if we obey it, it will be regenerating in nature. [There are] evidences in all parts of the world … testi- mony to the teachings of the divine spirit, independent of man’s teachings ... The same divine principles of goodness & love are found wherever man is found, in whatever age, nation, or country to some extent … We must look for truth & love from the eternal source of light. Then let truth ever be our guide … We are to take truth for our authority, not authority for truth.
… ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY/ … ON PRAYER—Where God is, there must be true liberty … I love the Bible because it contains so many truths, but I was never educated to love the errors of the Bible … Religion & freedom must go together. If truth were obeyed, then we should be free indeed … If the pure principles of love, justice, mercy, & right have their place in us & are brought forth by faithfulness, by obedience, by practice, the difficulties we may have to surmount will be easily conquered … [Let the power that conquers all] be called the Great Spirit of the Indian, the Quaker “inward light,” the “Blessed Mary, mother of Jesus” of the Catholics, or Brahma, the Hindu’s God—they will all be one and there will come to be such faith and such liberty as shall redeem the world.
When I have arisen in the people's assemblies & with solemn sense of dependence upon a higher power, I have asked in humility for aid to stand by, strengthen, support me, I have been blessed, abundantly blessed. When mo- thers & fathers of the church forsake us, we may rest assured that the Lord on high will take us up, he will give us ability to do & suffer whatever may be necessary for the truth’s sake.
… ON THE INWARD TEACHER—Jesus’ simple and benign religion’s primitive beauty is obscured by creeds and dogmas, gloomy appendages of man—its investigation of honest dilemmas checked by the cry of heresy and infidelity … We urge obedience to a manifest duty as a means of acceptance with the Searcher of hearts … My faith is firm in the blessed eternal doctrine preached by Jesus … that great truth that God is the teacher of God’s people … This noble gift of God is legitimate, a part of man’s being.
I believe that man is created innately good, & his instincts are good ... We may all admit, that if we receive the Divine Spirit, in its operation in our soul, there will be no mistake, it will be a reprover of evil, & if we obey it, it will be regenerating in nature. [There are] evidences in all parts of the world … testi- mony to the teachings of the divine spirit, independent of man’s teachings ... The same divine principles of goodness & love are found wherever man is found, in whatever age, nation, or country to some extent … We must look for truth & love from the eternal source of light. Then let truth ever be our guide … We are to take truth for our authority, not authority for truth.
… ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY/ … ON PRAYER—Where God is, there must be true liberty … I love the Bible because it contains so many truths, but I was never educated to love the errors of the Bible … Religion & freedom must go together. If truth were obeyed, then we should be free indeed … If the pure principles of love, justice, mercy, & right have their place in us & are brought forth by faithfulness, by obedience, by practice, the difficulties we may have to surmount will be easily conquered … [Let the power that conquers all] be called the Great Spirit of the Indian, the Quaker “inward light,” the “Blessed Mary, mother of Jesus” of the Catholics, or Brahma, the Hindu’s God—they will all be one and there will come to be such faith and such liberty as shall redeem the world.
When I have arisen in the people's assemblies & with solemn sense of dependence upon a higher power, I have asked in humility for aid to stand by, strengthen, support me, I have been blessed, abundantly blessed. When mo- thers & fathers of the church forsake us, we may rest assured that the Lord on high will take us up, he will give us ability to do & suffer whatever may be necessary for the truth’s sake.
The great efficacy of prayer is to pray [only] that strength may be given us to do what is required of us, to stand fast, to have a conscience void of of- fense toward God & man. We may not have sins to repent … if we are every day desirous to be found doing our duty, & invoking the Divine Power to aid us in this great desire of our hearts. [Prayer as] the aspiration for divine aid, for strength to do right, the inward desire after truth and holiness is natural to man … Praying for rain in dry weather, or the removal of evils … brought on us by our own violations of health & nature’s laws …is absurd & superstitious.
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235. A.J. Muste, pacifist & prophet: his relation to the Society of
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235. A.J. Muste, pacifist & prophet: his relation to the Society of
Friends (by Jo Ann Robinson; 1981)
About the Author—Jo Ann Robinson majored in history at Knox Col- lege, Galesburg Illinois; she learned of A. J. Muste thru the Student Peace Union. She served as a Freedom School teacher, voter registration worker, & with a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The pamphlet originated as a talk sponsored by the Friends Historical Association spring 1978. She re- searched at Haverford College & the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
Introduction—In 1961 A. J. Muste observed, “I spend a good deal of time among … Unbelievers; my thoughts constantly shuttle back and forth be- tween conviction that many of these are true believers & the wish that I might give them an account of the faith that is in me, [in a way they would under- stand]. Muste was a man of religion, & the language of scripture & religious experience was not always shared by his political comrades. Quakerism & the Society of Friends played a part in the evolution of those convictions, & Muste influenced Friends. [His life & influences included the Dutch Reformed Church, Marxist thought, & the perfectionist ethic of Christian pacifism.
I: Formative Experiences—Abraham Johannes Muste (1885-1967) in his tenderest years displayed a striking sensitivity to things of the spirit. He ex- perienced a “sort of revelation” about both the otherness and the loveliness of fellow human beings. [He experienced profound grief at the death of a pet bird, which influenced his reflections on] “the heart’s awareness of the preciousness of all life.” Sensitivity & openness to religious experience continued to charac- terize the boy Muste after his family’s passage to the US
On his 14th Easter “the world took on a new brightness,” [& from that day] “God was real to me.” He officially joined his Dutch Reformed congregation at a very young age. Muste recorded experiences of divine incursion at every crucial turning point in his life. He had a deep emotional and intellectual infatuation with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who shared many Quaker beliefs.
World War I & Introduction to Quakerism—Muste was ordained as a Dutch Reformed minister in 1909. [5 years later] he underwent an “agonizing reappraisal of his beliefs and decided to seek an intellectually and theologically less restrictive denomination, [which was Congregationalism]. A searching cri- tical [examination] of World War I led to a parting of the ways with his congre- gation. In Boston
At the same time he had come upon the works of Rufus Jones on Chri- stian mysticism and was intrigued by the strain of pacifism which runs through the mystical tradition. [Its impact was inspiring and enlightening; it’s obscurity was insulting and aggravating. For the rest of his life Muste was irritated that Christian pacifism had not been accorded a place in the mainstream of religi- ous education. Muste became a founding member of the Boston
During the war the time Muste spent in FOR work increased as his pas- toral & counseling effectiveness at the church declined. [His stand upset the grieving mother of a casualty &] he offered to resign; he took a leave of ab- sence instead. He became involved with the Friends Meeting in Providence , R.I.
Involvement with Labor; Disillusion with Religion—Muste moved back to Boston Providence Lawrence
He was so involved with the workers that he had to ask Providence Meeting to let him go. His experience with the strike left Muste with the con- viction that if a religious community is to get a grip on the realities of any given political or economic situation there is no substitute for direct involvement in that situation. He spent 2 years in a “desperate effort to establish a beach- head … of unionism in a chaotic industry.
Muste became Director of [the newly opened] Brookwood Labor Col- lege, Katonah , NY
Renewal of Faith—In 1936, in the sanctuary of the St. Sulpice Catholic Church in Paris
[The ethical mystic] as Rufus Jones said, “Stands the world better & becomes a better organ & bearer of spiritual forces.” [Although he seems to fit the Quaker idea of ethical mysticism], it isn’t so easy to describe A. J. Muste as a Quaker. After this experience, he renewed his membership in FOR & took the position of Director of Labor Temple, a Presbyterian institution. In 1940 Muste became Executive Secretary of FOR for the next 20 years. He thought of himself as a Friend, but did not bother with technical problems of affiliation.
II: Interweaving the Religious & Political—Both the Labor Temple & FOR were religious centers where spiritual resources & political struggle were intertwined & from where Muste could act upon his conviction that “we must become revolutionary out of a religious philosophy.” “God created both the religious & political dimensions & placed us in a world where we need to build community that interweaves the 2 together …” [He tried to bring Presbyterians back to the New Testament Christian, & Quakers back to George Fox’s revolu- tionary consciousness]. 5 themes stand out in his interpretation & message of these spiritual forerunners: breakup of the present world order; non-conformity; pacifism; joyousness; preparation for a new Pentecost.
Breakup of the Present Order [& Non-conformity]—Whether or not human self-destructiveness ended in the final catastrophe, profound changes in human relationships to each other & the universe were unavoidable. He be- lieved that at the “burning inner core of the spiritual universe … reside silent & almighty energies which can control the atom & the suns & use them for good & not for evil.” We need to form a new community in the midst of the old or- der’s disintegration. The new community would have to break loose from the old order & refuse to conform to its patterns. Muste’s image of non-confor- ming Quakers was important to his strategies of non-cooperation.
Pacifiism, Joy, & Pentecost—“Pacifism, rejection of violence, & em- phasis upon suffering love is integral to … prophetic religion.” In the final [Viet Nam Viet Nam
He confided, “I always have a certain suspicion of any “saintliness” which lacks buoyancy & effervescence.” “Our most important responsibility is the formation of spiritual community capable of producing a pouring out of the spirit comparable to Pentecost.” A. J. Muste confronted Presidents, Prime Ministers, & premiers with his consciousness of the imperatives of Christian pacifism. Muste significantly influenced the formulation of AFSC’s seminal statement, Speak Truth to Power (1955).
III: Criticisms of Quaker Practice—Muste was wary of any human group that tended toward exclusiveness or whose member reduced their experiences of sharing to routinized patterns of meeting & worship. He said: “No churches are Christian fellowship in the true sense of the term, [including Quakers].” “The spirit has not invaded the houses where we meet. We are not on fire.” Muste was extremely critical of Quaker education for allowing the Peace Testimony to fade among its young people. [The fact that his own son joined the Navy in 1944 may have had something to do with this].
He warned that such closeness [as is found in many Meetings] has an exclusionary impact on people [“outside” the Meeting], who are people who need to be reached & included. Most of all, Muste was disturbed by the legal distinction which prevailed in the US
Interaction & the Meaning of his Life with Friends—[Muste’s answer to why he spent so much time among unbelievers was]: “Perhaps it is in the area of … looseness from the world-that-is, of experimentation [&] creativeness … that one can find the key.” Long after he ceased attending Meetings where he held memberships, Muste could draw upon support of some of the weighti- est members of those Meetings. In FOR, among conscientious objectors, wor- king for non-violent action, Church Peace, war resisters, Viet Nam
“Time & again,” a Quaker woman wrote, “when we Friends weighed & considered the course our witness was to take we have seen far off down the road ahead of us the tall spare frame of A. J., already in the Way.” His mysti- cal experience of the divine spirit led him to active prophetic witness. The sources of Muste’s religion, while varied, contained a lot of Quaker history & thought. In turn Muste encouraged Friends toward deeper appreciation of & return to their radical roots. Commitment to revolutionary change often proved stronger among “unbelievers” whose fellowship & support were also vital to him. He brought faith & politics into balance, infusing strategy with spiritual in- sight. A. J. Muste’s prophetic faith called us all to become Saints for this Age.
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236. Four Women, Four Windows on Light by (by Carol R. Murphy;
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236. Four Women, Four Windows on Light by (by Carol R. Murphy;
1981)
About the Author—Carol Murphy has written a baker’s dozen of Pendle Hill Publications. She said: “After making an attempt to pull together material for a journal of my own inward travel, I [instead] began to study the likenesses and contrasts of several lives together. [I found] Julius Silberger’s biography of Mary Baker Eddy, and it became the mosaic piece that made a pattern of communi- cation between these several lives.”
“Will you open or close the door upon the angel visitant, who cometh in the quiet of meekness, as he came of old to the patriarch at noonday?” Mary Baker Eddy
“It is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the ‘irritating details of outer life”. Evelyn Underhill
About the Author—Carol Murphy has written a baker’s dozen of Pendle Hill Publications. She said: “After making an attempt to pull together material for a journal of my own inward travel, I [instead] began to study the likenesses and contrasts of several lives together. [I found] Julius Silberger’s biography of Mary Baker Eddy, and it became the mosaic piece that made a pattern of communi- cation between these several lives.”
“Will you open or close the door upon the angel visitant, who cometh in the quiet of meekness, as he came of old to the patriarch at noonday?” Mary Baker Eddy
“It is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the ‘irritating details of outer life”. Evelyn Underhill
“The experience of the transcendent; this seems contradictory and yet the transcendent cannot be known except by contact, since our faculties can- not manufacture it.” Simone Weil
[Introduction]—Four women entered my life and sat down in my mind: a neurotic Victorian lady [Mary Baker Eddy]; a devout Anglican lover of mysti- cism; [Evelyn Underhill]; an ex-agnostic Jew [Simone Weil]; and a Southern writer, Catholic in the land of born-again Baptists [Flannery O’Connor], [brought together from a book-store]. [Are there 2 worlds, a tangible and an intangible, or only one seen in different perspectives]?
[Introduction]—Four women entered my life and sat down in my mind: a neurotic Victorian lady [Mary Baker Eddy]; a devout Anglican lover of mysti- cism; [Evelyn Underhill]; an ex-agnostic Jew [Simone Weil]; and a Southern writer, Catholic in the land of born-again Baptists [Flannery O’Connor], [brought together from a book-store]. [Are there 2 worlds, a tangible and an intangible, or only one seen in different perspectives]?
Mary Baker Eddy, 1821-1910—One guest has long been challenging me to fling aside my sense of helplessness before the material world and put my trust in the Allness of God; [I’ve never been quite willing to do that]. Mrs. Eddy did have something to say which has caused me to wrestle with the ratio- nale of religious healing. Mary Baker was the youngest of 6 on a New Hamp- shire farm. She married a man 11 years older than herself; he died 6 months later. I think it is possible that her liking to be swung or rocked, [as suscepti- ble to hypnosis as she was], aroused altered states of consciousness which opened the mystical world to her.
Her contact with the healer Phineas Quimby gave her a certain foothold on a direct way of contact with other sufferers. She fell on an icy street, and underwent a personality crisis, changing from an immensely sensitive, naturally melancholy & self-absorbed woman, to the energetic founder of a new Chris- tian sect. [She remained] constantly at war with the darker & more dependent side of her nature.
Her contact with the healer Phineas Quimby gave her a certain foothold on a direct way of contact with other sufferers. She fell on an icy street, and underwent a personality crisis, changing from an immensely sensitive, naturally melancholy & self-absorbed woman, to the energetic founder of a new Chris- tian sect. [She remained] constantly at war with the darker & more dependent side of her nature.
[She wrote the book Science and Health beginning in 1872] and pub- lished it in 1875. She died in 1910 of pneumonia. She wrote: “Life is God, good and not evil; that Soul is sinless and not in the body; that Spirit cannot be materialized; that Life is not subject to death; that the spiritual man has no birth, no material life, and no death.” “Truth is demonstrable when understood, and good is not understood until demonstrated”; healing was to be her way of demonstrating Truth.
In the past, the traditional healer had the task of restoring the patient to harmony with the cosmic forces by a combination of confession, psycho- therapy, and herbs & potions. [Later, the body was “mechanized].” Medicine captured the body, and the cure of souls was confined to a purely spiritual sphere. The sense of wholeness was lost. Mrs. Eddy proclaimed: “Instruct the sick that they are not helpless victims.” Deluded they may be, but not stricken down by God, for God is on the side of health. “Will you open or close the door upon the angel visitant, who cometh in the quiet of meekness, as he came of old to the patriarch at noonday?”
Evelyn Underhill, 1875-1941—“Christianity does not explain suffering but does show us what to do with it.” [Her serenity was hard won, coming from the many] creative conflicts in her life. [She had a brief flirtation with Catholi- cism]. [How does that] fit in with her awakening to mysticism through the Order of the Golden Dawn? There came into her life a tension between the everyday world and the mystic’s “other world” of assurance. The books she wrote about this tension come to the decision to accept the everyday, even at the sacrifice of mystical ecstasy in hope of finding the union of the two in incarnation.
[She received balanced spiritual guidance from Baron von Hugel]. She learned to accept the Anglican Church’s practices along with its often exaspe- rating officialdom. Von Hugel advised her to stop all thoughts of self and direct her attention to God. Hugel’s blend of prayerful contemplation & simple accep- tance of the dailyness of life was passed on to others in her letters and the retreat talks she gave. She said: “It is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the ‘irritating details of outer life”. In today’s revival of interest in inner disciplines, she can speak to us afresh.
Simone Weil, 1909-1943—[Beginning as an agnostic Jew, Simone Weil says]: “There is an absolutely insurmountable obstacle to Christianity’s incar- nation. It is the 2 little words ‘anathema sit’ [let him be cut off] … I remain with all things that cannot enter the Church.” Both she & her older brother Andre were precocious & great readers. Her intellect was stimulated by Alain & a philosophy that emphasized perception, will & freedom. She never joined the Communist Party because of the same truthfulness & independence that kept her out of the church.
Evelyn Underhill, 1875-1941—“Christianity does not explain suffering but does show us what to do with it.” [Her serenity was hard won, coming from the many] creative conflicts in her life. [She had a brief flirtation with Catholi- cism]. [How does that] fit in with her awakening to mysticism through the Order of the Golden Dawn? There came into her life a tension between the everyday world and the mystic’s “other world” of assurance. The books she wrote about this tension come to the decision to accept the everyday, even at the sacrifice of mystical ecstasy in hope of finding the union of the two in incarnation.
[She received balanced spiritual guidance from Baron von Hugel]. She learned to accept the Anglican Church’s practices along with its often exaspe- rating officialdom. Von Hugel advised her to stop all thoughts of self and direct her attention to God. Hugel’s blend of prayerful contemplation & simple accep- tance of the dailyness of life was passed on to others in her letters and the retreat talks she gave. She said: “It is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the ‘irritating details of outer life”. In today’s revival of interest in inner disciplines, she can speak to us afresh.
Simone Weil, 1909-1943—[Beginning as an agnostic Jew, Simone Weil says]: “There is an absolutely insurmountable obstacle to Christianity’s incar- nation. It is the 2 little words ‘anathema sit’ [let him be cut off] … I remain with all things that cannot enter the Church.” Both she & her older brother Andre were precocious & great readers. Her intellect was stimulated by Alain & a philosophy that emphasized perception, will & freedom. She never joined the Communist Party because of the same truthfulness & independence that kept her out of the church.
She combined teaching, revolutionary zeal, and politics until inevitably she outraged her superiors. She tried factory work, and there, she said, “I re- ceived the mark of slavery. Since then I have always regarded myself as a slave.” In Portugal, seeing fishermen’s wives on a religious procession, she realized that Christianity was a religion of slaves, and all slaves belonged to it.”
[After a brief time in a Spanish Civil War militia group], she had a second contact with Christianity on a trip to Italy, where in a small chapel in Assisi, “something stronger than I compelled me for the first time to go down on my knees.” After experiencing of Christ during her chronic headaches, she com- mented, “The experience of the transcendent; this seems contradictory and yet the transcendent cannot be known except by contact, since our faculties cannot manufacture it.”
She read the Bhagavad Gita, sympathizing with the plight of Arjuna. Her family fled France after the collapse of the French Army. [In Marseilles she labored in the grape harvest with others, and with Catholic clergy in discussions about beliefs]. She sailed to America, got a job with the govern- ment in exile in England, where she worked, wrote, and lived no better than the starving people of France until she died of tuberculosis in 1953.
She desired affliction, but it had to come by necessity, not choice. She believed that God is silent in the world, absent save for those human beings who turn to him with absolutely unmixed attention. She wrote: “This universe where we are living … is the distance put by Love between God and God. We are a point in this distance. Space, time and the mechanism that governs matter are the distance.”
Flannery O’Connor, 1925-1964 —“I am reading the Weil books … Her life is almost a perfect blending of the Comic and the Terrible … What is more comic and terrible than the angular proud woman approaching God inch by inch with ground teeth?” Flannery was born in Savannah, [and shortly after college and writing school, her life began to be embodied by her writings and her letters]. [She also began to be ill from lupus erythematosus]. After a struggle her condition stabilized enough for her to pursue her writing. “I am making out fine … I have energy to write with and as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.”
She felt that the religious sense was being bred out of people, so “redu- cing everything to human proportion that in time they lose even the sense of the human itself.” She herself kept her faith, though assailed by the doubts of the times. In her own ebbs and flows, she came through “always with a dee- pened sense of mystery and always several degrees more orthodox.” “It is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical.
Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of those laws.” The Eu- charist was “the center of existence to me, all the rest of life is expendable”; without it a church would become an “Elk’s Club.” [She was no good at tradi- tional prayer, meditating, or contemplation]. No doubt her real prayer was her writing, with its flashes of Spirit, like “shining from shook foil.” She was only beginning to be awakened to the meaning of the civil rights struggle [when] she died, with the troubles of others on her mind.
Conclusion—Now, I will address my guests with Quaker informality. Mary Eddy, I like you have visited the sick, and I’ve seen the need for the spiri- tual care of patients, [and perhaps the doctors too]. I think we owe to you and others, Mary Eddy, the realization of how important mental structuring of re- ality is. Your sense of the Healing Mind keeps breaking through. And yet, I can’t just dispose of the material world of things as an illusion; it’s real in its own way. As I search for some divine pattern of all patterns, I fall back on Isaac Pening- ton’s saying “All Truth is a shadow except the last … yet every truth is true in its kind. It is a substance in its own place, though it be a shadow in another place; shadow is true shadow, as the substance is true substance.”
Conclusion—Now, I will address my guests with Quaker informality. Mary Eddy, I like you have visited the sick, and I’ve seen the need for the spiri- tual care of patients, [and perhaps the doctors too]. I think we owe to you and others, Mary Eddy, the realization of how important mental structuring of re- ality is. Your sense of the Healing Mind keeps breaking through. And yet, I can’t just dispose of the material world of things as an illusion; it’s real in its own way. As I search for some divine pattern of all patterns, I fall back on Isaac Pening- ton’s saying “All Truth is a shadow except the last … yet every truth is true in its kind. It is a substance in its own place, though it be a shadow in another place; shadow is true shadow, as the substance is true substance.”
Evelyn Underhill, I sympathize with you in your championing mysticism as the radical un-selfing & union with God which is religion’s vital center. You know that God works through human nature, even such material as Mary Eddy’s paranoid sickliness. Perhaps for us in the West, we need Christ as our form of non-dualism—God & man in union without confusion; we are the bran- ches on the Vine. You who have found a home in traditional religion may find it hard to understand [how some] have to search for an inner core of commu- nion with the Ultimate prior to & at the heart of all traditional expression; [then] they may find their native religion [filled] with meaning.
I too, Simone Weil, am an intellectual whose rational mind has had to be dragged toward God with ground teeth. You never knew the full horror of the Holocaust; it would have shaken your certitude, [since “ordinary” suffering “so rends my soul that as a result God’s love becomes almost impossible.” You could have used a touch of your compatriot Colette, with her frank enjoyment of simple, sensuous things. It’s awkward for self-conscious intellectuals to try to identify with the under-classes. How I would have loved to introduced you to John Woolman, who merged his life with the poor. [As to your struggles with choice and necessity, there is a kind of meaningful coincidence that works in the lives of those who get into harmony with nature or are advanced in the life of prayer.
Like you, Flannery O’Connor, I have had to speak out in an unbelieving world. I am like you a poor prayer, & what I can’t contemplate within, I have to find in the manifold things of the outer world, if I can. There is a secular ratio- nalist part of me which I have to wrestle with. We have both secular rationalists and prophets among Quakers. Somewhere at the heart of every living religious faith is the thing itself, the Real Presence, not just a symbol of something else. I don’t think this reality can be confined to an altar in one Church, nor can we disregard the human response. The subjective and objective must be united in whole experience.
We have explored 4 different ways of approaching that Center where mind & body, God & man, will & circumstance are reconciled. Mary Eddy sought it by means of healing, Evelyn Underhill by incarnating mystical love, Simone Weil by a vocation to affliction, & Flannery O’Connor by offering her vision of the Comic & the Terrible to the Real Presence. All experienced some measure of conflict; all pointed beyond themselves to what is more real. [I will close with Simone Weil’s words]: “This obedience of things in relation to God is what the transparency of a window pane is in relation to light. As soon as we feel obedience with our whole being, we see God.”
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237. Reaching Toward God (by Michael Marsh; 1981)
About the Author—Michael Marsh is a member of Friends Meeting of Washington. He participated in an American Friends Service Committee sum- mer work camp, where he 1st met his wife. He says: “The question of God and God’s relation to us has gnawed me for a long while. I came to a partial answer in my pamphlet Philosophy of the Inner Light (#209). Inward explorations also brought me to the reality of a truly personal God.”
The Universe we Live in/ History of Life on Earth —What can one reasonably believe about the reality & nature of God? What does the awareness of a greater presence signify? Reasoning can overcome many of the intellectual barriers that block us today from full belief. An impersonal force is not the God we seek; our God holds comfort as well as power. Neither sci- ence nor Freud nor Marx nor anyone else has refuted the personal God.
Let’s 1st look at the picture of the universe offered by science. Before the Big Bang 10 or 20 billion years ago, the physical reality was of infinite den- sity compressed into infinitesimal size. From the Big Bang, the universe ex- panded; cosmologists differ as to whether the universe will continue expan- ding or whether it will begin to contract and end as it began. Our sun is about 5 billion years old. There may be other planets like ours.
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237. Reaching Toward God (by Michael Marsh; 1981)
About the Author—Michael Marsh is a member of Friends Meeting of Washington. He participated in an American Friends Service Committee sum- mer work camp, where he 1st met his wife. He says: “The question of God and God’s relation to us has gnawed me for a long while. I came to a partial answer in my pamphlet Philosophy of the Inner Light (#209). Inward explorations also brought me to the reality of a truly personal God.”
The Universe we Live in/ History of Life on Earth —What can one reasonably believe about the reality & nature of God? What does the awareness of a greater presence signify? Reasoning can overcome many of the intellectual barriers that block us today from full belief. An impersonal force is not the God we seek; our God holds comfort as well as power. Neither sci- ence nor Freud nor Marx nor anyone else has refuted the personal God.
Let’s 1st look at the picture of the universe offered by science. Before the Big Bang 10 or 20 billion years ago, the physical reality was of infinite den- sity compressed into infinitesimal size. From the Big Bang, the universe ex- panded; cosmologists differ as to whether the universe will continue expan- ding or whether it will begin to contract and end as it began. Our sun is about 5 billion years old. There may be other planets like ours.
The Earth is now thought to be about 4,600,000,000 years old. About 500 or 600 million years ago a remarkable diversification and complexification of organisms began. Today over a million species of animals and over a third as many plants have been discovered. The struggle for biological survival leads to both supportive symbiosis and deadly attacks. Out of this immensity of galaxies, out of more than 10,000,000,000 years of time, out of this swarm of sharing and competing species, perhaps 100,000 years ago, homo sapiens evolved.
Exploring the God Question/ 1st Alternative: Physical Forces— The amount of order observed makes it reasonable to think that the universe has an ultimate explanation, an integrated system of reasons why things are as they are. What is the nature of the ultimate explanation? Either the universe is made & is sustained wholly by physical forces, or the universe was made & is sustained wholly or in part by personal or impersonal mental forces.
Some of our human capacities & achievements can’t be ascribed to bio- logical evolution (i.e. even complex physical forces) or to chance. No biological explanation exists for human capacities beyond those serving the struggle for existence. Human minds at their best have a capacity for [scientific speculation] about the universe's nature & to make good predictions based on the theories. [This isn’t a survival skill]. Evolution does not explain our ability to understand somewhat the super-large & the super-small & to predict behavior. William Temple wrote: “We are so impressed by the greatness & multiplicity of the world we know, that we seldom reflect on the fact that we know it. [Apprehen- ding & comprehending] the process is the most remarkable [aspect] of the process.
Some of our human capacities & achievements can’t be ascribed to bio- logical evolution (i.e. even complex physical forces) or to chance. No biological explanation exists for human capacities beyond those serving the struggle for existence. Human minds at their best have a capacity for [scientific speculation] about the universe's nature & to make good predictions based on the theories. [This isn’t a survival skill]. Evolution does not explain our ability to understand somewhat the super-large & the super-small & to predict behavior. William Temple wrote: “We are so impressed by the greatness & multiplicity of the world we know, that we seldom reflect on the fact that we know it. [Apprehen- ding & comprehending] the process is the most remarkable [aspect] of the process.
Biological evidence may explain the human tendency to put a moral gloss on one’s own goals, & the moral imperative to obey community laws. It doesn’t explain [the moral sacrifice of those who] find & follow a higher moral law that may subvert established social rules [e.g.] Lao-Tse, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Martin Luther, Karl Marx, Abraham Lincoln. Anti-establishment moral imperatives, and the will to follow them, clearly do exist in the minds of some humans. Biology offers no explanation for the human capacity for moral independence.
Most people have a capacity to perceive and appreciate beauty [i.e.] Aesthetic experience. Yet beauty as such serves no biological function. [Time is wasted in a biological sense] when an artisan makes a beautiful chair or rug or bowl rather than a [more efficient] machine-made one. The aesthetic capacity is evidently too widespread to be a chance affair and too useless to be biologically selected. I conclude that [scientific speculation, moral sacrifice], and Aesthetic experience cannot be explained either by biological natural selection or by chance. Therefore, the universe was not made by, and is not sustained wholly by physical forces.
2nd Alternative: Mental Forces—Some kind or kinds of mental force must form part of the ultimate explanation. Is the ultimate mental force per- sonal or impersonal? If the basic mental force is impersonal, then the uni- verse has no long-term willed goal & no dialog between humans & the ulti- mate explanation. Evolutionary development with increasing complexity, & hu- man development in particular points to] some cosmic architect willing a final distant goal but operating with difficult materials. Evolution’s long devious, pain-filled path & the possibility that we are [alone] in the universe, lend weight to the hypothesis of no will & no goal; the evidence is inconclusive.
2nd Alternative: Mental Forces—Some kind or kinds of mental force must form part of the ultimate explanation. Is the ultimate mental force per- sonal or impersonal? If the basic mental force is impersonal, then the uni- verse has no long-term willed goal & no dialog between humans & the ulti- mate explanation. Evolutionary development with increasing complexity, & hu- man development in particular points to] some cosmic architect willing a final distant goal but operating with difficult materials. Evolution’s long devious, pain-filled path & the possibility that we are [alone] in the universe, lend weight to the hypothesis of no will & no goal; the evidence is inconclusive.
Thousands of people have testified to a Divine-human dialog. Pro- phets & mystics old & new claim to [have experienced God]. Countless peo- ple pray to God, & feel their prayers are heard & answered. Often an aware- ness of love accompanies the mystical experience. This dialog evidence seems suggestive but not conclusive about the reality of a personal God. In speaking of the ultimate explanation as personal, we mean it has immensely more of the unique qualities of a human person.
From what source do people get the capacity to grasp in part how the universe [i.e. ultimate explanation] works? Most plausibly, we get them from the ultimate explanation itself, [which mean] it must have personal qua- lities. How can the ultimate explanation “give” a person capacities? Some interpenetration must occur between the human mind and the ultimate expla- nation. [Organisms that reach a certain level of complexity] are able to interact with the ground of all being in a way that makes them persons.
Personhood is most remarkable thing about humans. [The creator & sustainer wouldn’t be less remarkable than humans, i.e. less than personal]. The ultimate explanation embraces the laws & logic, [energy & space] of the universe [as the] ground of all being. This isn’t a simple system. [No human mental capacities we discussed] can be explained by physical/biological forces or chance. The ultimate explanation isn’t less advanced than humans
An Upland Area—[Through this discussion I can now] freely say “God,” and can believe that willed goals and values might be more than merely human dreams. The God I had reached in my pamphlet Philosophy of the Inner Light was not a God who cared. [I expand on that idea in this pamphlet to suggest a more personal God].
God-Refuters: Marx & Freud/ Foundations for God—Karl Marx & his leading followers portray God as imaginary, projected in answer to human hopes. “The opium of the people” it was called. [Of the arguments against God, one] assumes that flaws in God’s representation by humans disprove God’s reality; the other assumes that God must be a material entity; only God’s effects can be measured. History shows the folly of entrusting great power & wealth & faith to any priesthood.
Sigmund Freud’s God is an illusion, and religion is “the universal obses- sional neurosis of humanity.” Religion embodies a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion.” Freud [questions] the motives of ordinary religious belief. But the truth of ideas rests not on purity of motives but on how well ideas fit the world. What is my motive in seeking God? [Knowing this] will instruct me on my possible bias and will help me towards objectivity and truth.
The 5 foundations we reach as we strive to explain all that happens are: laws of nature; principles of logic/ mathematics; space; temporality; & a crea- tive evolving fund of energy. Each of these 5 are limited by our understanding of them. The ultimate explanation is what lies behind them: creativity; formal structure; eternal now; true laws of nature; immensity. Where in all this is the personhood of God? It came to me strongly that always what we humans say about God is metaphorical. We all speak in ciphers. [The 5 foundations of the ultimate explanation] are metaphors. God is beyond our words.
Creative Father/ “Logos” in the Son/ Ground of our Being—I started 1st with God as creativity; source of energy for that is & was & will be. This aspect of God may be taken as the generator of space or immensity. God is also law-giver, the laws of nature & the formal structure of logic/mathematics underlying natural law. God also sets forth the laws of persons, including the moral law. I think it is like that God’s true moral laws are also hypothetical, where is A is done God’s love will be wounded. We find God’s will embodied in the laws that shape the universe, & [in the] goal, the ideal reality, the future [it points toward]. We may will this ideal reality in our in-most self when we are open toward God. Kelvin Van Nuys has described God’s will as the cosmic purpose for good.
An Upland Area—[Through this discussion I can now] freely say “God,” and can believe that willed goals and values might be more than merely human dreams. The God I had reached in my pamphlet Philosophy of the Inner Light was not a God who cared. [I expand on that idea in this pamphlet to suggest a more personal God].
God-Refuters: Marx & Freud/ Foundations for God—Karl Marx & his leading followers portray God as imaginary, projected in answer to human hopes. “The opium of the people” it was called. [Of the arguments against God, one] assumes that flaws in God’s representation by humans disprove God’s reality; the other assumes that God must be a material entity; only God’s effects can be measured. History shows the folly of entrusting great power & wealth & faith to any priesthood.
Sigmund Freud’s God is an illusion, and religion is “the universal obses- sional neurosis of humanity.” Religion embodies a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion.” Freud [questions] the motives of ordinary religious belief. But the truth of ideas rests not on purity of motives but on how well ideas fit the world. What is my motive in seeking God? [Knowing this] will instruct me on my possible bias and will help me towards objectivity and truth.
The 5 foundations we reach as we strive to explain all that happens are: laws of nature; principles of logic/ mathematics; space; temporality; & a crea- tive evolving fund of energy. Each of these 5 are limited by our understanding of them. The ultimate explanation is what lies behind them: creativity; formal structure; eternal now; true laws of nature; immensity. Where in all this is the personhood of God? It came to me strongly that always what we humans say about God is metaphorical. We all speak in ciphers. [The 5 foundations of the ultimate explanation] are metaphors. God is beyond our words.
Creative Father/ “Logos” in the Son/ Ground of our Being—I started 1st with God as creativity; source of energy for that is & was & will be. This aspect of God may be taken as the generator of space or immensity. God is also law-giver, the laws of nature & the formal structure of logic/mathematics underlying natural law. God also sets forth the laws of persons, including the moral law. I think it is like that God’s true moral laws are also hypothetical, where is A is done God’s love will be wounded. We find God’s will embodied in the laws that shape the universe, & [in the] goal, the ideal reality, the future [it points toward]. We may will this ideal reality in our in-most self when we are open toward God. Kelvin Van Nuys has described God’s will as the cosmic purpose for good.
John’s Gospel uses “Logos” to describe God; it means “Word,” reason, or explanatory principle. Can we consider God the law-giver to be God as son, [Logos] made flesh? The most plausible view is that nature’s laws de- velop (by God’s will) only as required to actualize events or entities; these laws appear as needed to deal with new situations. Nothing prevents us from accepting God as a son figure, coming after the primal generator in action, not in being. The Christ who spoke & acted in Jesus did serve as law-giver & teacher of laws new & old. Paul viewed Christ as the “first born” of God, & held that through Christ all things in heaven & earth were created. My own view is God the father as source of energy & power; God the son as source of cosmic Logos & expressed will.
I have called one realm experiential time, temporality, the ground of consciousness or the eternal now. You can think of this realm as the ground of your consciousness, the ground on which you experience all life-events. Tem- porality stretches back through our past to our earliest personal experiencing, covers the moments of our immediate awareness, and forward to our inevitable death. Paul Tillich says of the eternal now: “It is the eternal that stops the flux of time for us. It's the eternal “now” which provides for us a temporal ‘now” … Eternal life is beyond ‘past, present, & future: we come from it, we live in it pre- sence, we return to it.”
Entering the Eternal Now/ God as Mother—For God the whole past, present and future exist as now. [People seek to enter the eternal now because many have found there a kind of love. Ruysbroek wrote: “This immersion in love becomes the habit of our being, and so takes place while we sleep & while we wake, whether we know it or not.” Once you accept God as personal, the attri- bute of love can scarcely be denied.
In the ground of being into which we sink womblike, we find God as mother. St. Augustine concludes that man alone, or husband & wife together, stand as the image of God, but not woman alone; therefore the Holy Spirit can’t be woman. I find this whole argument based on false premises about the origin and inferiority of women. To those of you who have felt God’s love in your life, did it not resemble more than anything else the ideal mother’s love for her child. God’s love must exist (in the mother) before the son can function as cosmic purpose for good.
The Triune God/ Our Experience of Light—I focus on a triune God because God the father is power lacking form. God as law-giving son or Logos shapes and forms the vast evolution of actuality seeking perfection. God as mothering love influences some events but clearly is not all powerful. The triune God unites in the end as one God, one Ultimate Mind embracing all 3 aspects; without this unity we should have no universe at all. I lived far from any aware- ness of God in my dull, blind, angry moments.
God is light. God is more than candle, lantern, beacon, sun, though all of these can symbolize God’s light. Light is the interaction of electromagnetic waves with our organism and our mind that produces our experience of light. God Logos gives us of his light whenever we see how things fit, how concepts relate, or how we ought to act, or where beauty dwells. Only in God as mo- ther-ground, eternal now, do we possibly move toward more than interaction, toward possible pure participation in God’s light as such. I am loved imperi- shably, because I am part of God’s own whole; it is this that makes me safe.
Entering the Eternal Now/ God as Mother—For God the whole past, present and future exist as now. [People seek to enter the eternal now because many have found there a kind of love. Ruysbroek wrote: “This immersion in love becomes the habit of our being, and so takes place while we sleep & while we wake, whether we know it or not.” Once you accept God as personal, the attri- bute of love can scarcely be denied.
In the ground of being into which we sink womblike, we find God as mother. St. Augustine concludes that man alone, or husband & wife together, stand as the image of God, but not woman alone; therefore the Holy Spirit can’t be woman. I find this whole argument based on false premises about the origin and inferiority of women. To those of you who have felt God’s love in your life, did it not resemble more than anything else the ideal mother’s love for her child. God’s love must exist (in the mother) before the son can function as cosmic purpose for good.
The Triune God/ Our Experience of Light—I focus on a triune God because God the father is power lacking form. God as law-giving son or Logos shapes and forms the vast evolution of actuality seeking perfection. God as mothering love influences some events but clearly is not all powerful. The triune God unites in the end as one God, one Ultimate Mind embracing all 3 aspects; without this unity we should have no universe at all. I lived far from any aware- ness of God in my dull, blind, angry moments.
God is light. God is more than candle, lantern, beacon, sun, though all of these can symbolize God’s light. Light is the interaction of electromagnetic waves with our organism and our mind that produces our experience of light. God Logos gives us of his light whenever we see how things fit, how concepts relate, or how we ought to act, or where beauty dwells. Only in God as mo- ther-ground, eternal now, do we possibly move toward more than interaction, toward possible pure participation in God’s light as such. I am loved imperi- shably, because I am part of God’s own whole; it is this that makes me safe.
Dante, in Divine Comedy writes in part: “Oh grace abounding that had made me fit/ to fix my eyes on the eternal light/ until my vision was consumed in it!// I saw within Its depth how It conceives/ all things in a single volume bound by Love,/ of which the universe is the scattered leaves;// … As I grew worthier to see,/ the more I looked, the more unchanging semblance/ ap- peared to change with every change in me.”
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238. Lawrie Tatum, Indian Agent: Quaker Values and Hard Choices
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238. Lawrie Tatum, Indian Agent: Quaker Values and Hard Choices
(by Robert Hixson; 1981)
About the Author—Born in Boulder , Colorado Univ. of CO West Africa , & taught elementary grades in Philadelphia & Vermont. With a Master of Sci- ence degree in natural resources conservation from Cornell, he began writing & editing in Vermont
[Sections from original pamphlet rearranged]
[History of Kiowas and Comanches]—Before Spanish settlement in the New World the Comanches had been an obscure Shoshonean tribe living in the central Rockies . Their name for themselves was Nermernuh (The Peo- ple). The Kiowas [or Kwu’da] too started in the mountains and moved out onto the plains. With the acquisition of horses, [both tribes] transformed into a mounted military aristocracy. With the abundance of buffalo came the freedom to pursue one of their most honored traditions—warfare. Raiding, most often at night with a full moon, was the means by which a man achieved wealth and prestige.
The revolutionary effect horses had on the Kiowas and Comanches had a devastating effect on the other Indian tribes, who could not withstand the Kiowa-Comanches alliance after 1790. The Kiowas and Comanches perma- nently altered the demography of the Southwest, blocking and then containing Spanish colonization. The Spanish established lucrative trade with them in the spoils of raids into other regions. Particularly cruel was the trading and ransoming of Anglo and Mexican captives carried off in raids.
Just as the ‘Comanche barrier’ halted Spanish & Mexican colonization from the west & south, it equally blunted Anglo settlement from the east. The settlers, & even the U.S.
[Peace commission and Lawrie Tatum]—In 1867, a great peace com- mission that included General Sherman and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Nathaniel G. Taylor met at Bent Forks on the Missouri River to study the pro- blem and negotiate treaties. Their report suggested that missionary groups become more involved in working with the Indians. Bishop Henry Whipple of Minnesota
When the Quakers protested military supervision of the Indian Bureau, President Grant accepted their advice and asked for names. The Quakers were given the superintendency of the Indian Bureau, and recommended Lawrie Tatum, who had moral and religious uprightness, concern for humane treatment, interest in education & sound business judgment, as one of their agents.
So, in the Spring of 1869, a 47 year-old Quaker named Lawrie Tatum left his Springdale , Iowa
Still, Tatum was a farmer, not an administrator. Tatum wrote: “I was living on a farm in Iowa
In May 1869, Tatum and other Quaker Indian agents left their homes & began traveling west to their agencies; [Tatum traveled nearly 450 miles from eastern Iowa Junction City KS Sill Fort Sill Wichitas
[Tatum, Kiowas and Comanches: 1st 2 Years]—When Lawrie Tatum arrived to take charge of the agency, he found ambitious projects, barely be- gun. He started building a new agency building on higher ground, a school house, [residences] for a physician, carpenter, and other employees, bought a steam engine and fixtures for a sawmill and a shingle machine, and small millstones for grinding corn. Tatum had an unshakable belief in the value of Indians as human beings worthy of concern, charity, and love. [The times were such that] they could strive to preserve the human rights of the Indian, but they could not comprehend preserving the Indians’ culture.
Opposing Tatum’s efforts was the Kiowa chief Satana, [who did not like corn, and saw no point in being “civilized” when the] “wild” Indians were treated better and rewarded more, [in a misguided attempt to get them to stop raiding and taking captives]. Tatum’s answer to all these policies was simply to end them. Even though he was responsible for them, several hundred Kiowa and ⅔ of the Comanche lived wild and free. [Those on the reservation had to tolerate a lack of meat, coffee and sugar, and musty cornmeal].
In the fall of 1869, Tatum returned to the Midwest to buy farm machinery, visit with Quakers, and rejoin his family; his wife and youngest child returned to Ft. Sill Ft. Sill
He & Colonel Grierson agreed “that it wouldn’t be right to let them go without punishment after such atrocities committed, with a hope that their ra- tions be increased. My fervent desire was to be supplied heavenly wisdom sufficient for the [responsibilities] devolving upon me.” On July 1 Tatum was made responsible for the commissary stores, including over 4,000 head of cattle; Mary Tatum & the other Quaker employees left 4 days later.
When the Kiowa came, Tatum writes: “Their plan was to get their pay then (for the captives) & again when they were brought. I told them that I should give them nothing at that time, & they need not come to me again for rations until the captives were brought to me … While we were in council the Indians had their guns, bows, & arrows lying at their sides, which could be seized in an instant … I thought they were doing it to intimidate the colonel & myself… My plan of withholding rations from a tribe or band that had white captives until they were delivered was new & experimental … I thought it was right, & therefore the thing to do… it worked grandly.”
Among the captives was one Temple Friend
[Other problems arose]. Seeking to trust the Indians, Tatum left provi- sions unguarded, and they were stolen. Most Kiowa and Comanche ignored appeals to come onto the reservation. One chief told Tatum that if Washing- ton didn't want young men raiding in Texas Washington Texas
Superintendent Hoag and other Quaker officials visited, and seemed well satisfied with the way the agency was managed. Tatum reported on an agent meeting in Lawrence , KS
[Tatum, Kiowas and Comanches: 2nd 2 Years and Conclusion]— With the return of spring in 1871, the Indian ponies grew sleek & young warri- ors restless. Emboldened by lack of punishment [resulting from Quaker principles, which did not permit calling in troops], the Kiowa & Comanche in 1871 intensified Texas
[After a raid on a party right behind his own], General Sherman ordered Colonel Ranald McKenzie to meet him at Ft. Sill Sherman
[The Kiowa chiefs Satana, Eagle Heart, Big Tree, Big Bow, and 1st Bear (Satank) came to the agency]. Satana made a speech claiming credit for the raid that killed 7 men on a mule train. Tatum went to Colonel Grierson and requested the arrest of the chiefs. A general melee ensued; there was panic, disorder and one Indian killed. 3 days later Colonel McKenzie arrived and took 3 of the chiefs—Satana, Satank, and Big Tree—away in chains. [Satank ma- naged to get his handcuffs off and attacked the soldiers, forcing them to kill him]. He knew the old ways were dying, & he did not wish to live the new. He died with his honor intact.
[The remaining 2 chiefs were sentenced to hang, but the Quakers got the sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Tatum wrote: “It was right to have them arrested, & I see nothing to make me feel doubtful about it … He whom I endeavor to serve has, I believe, enlightened my understanding in times of need.” He later wrote: “The Kiowa & Quahadas are unmanage- able by me … Nothing less than military authority, with perhaps some pu- nishment by troops, will bring them into subjection as to again render the services of a civil agent of benefit to them.”
In August and September of 1872, the Quaker Indian officials convened 2 large intertribal councils, hoping the influence of the “civilized” tribes could be brought to bear on the Kiowa and Comanche. Most of the Kiowa and Coman- che stayed away; those that came only wanted to demand their chiefs back. Tatum was adamant that Satana and Big Tree not be released. [While the Friends Indian Committee felt very hopeful about the release of the chiefs, Ta- tum didn't believe their promises, based on past experience. Satana “could not keep the other Indians from raiding if he wished to, & he wouldn't do so if he could.”
When Quakers distant from the reservation continued to work for the chiefs’ release over his objections, Tatum resigned effective March 1873. The following questions that have troubled Quakers throughout their history [were confronted by Tatum as by few other Quakers]: Can military force by justified if the only alternative appears to be even more bloodshed and violence? And if not, then what methods should Quakers adopt to prevent war-like people from harming others and themselves? Does the Qua- ker insistence on principle that makes for good conscientious objec- tors, make for ineffective leaders and decision-makers? What value are Quaker ideals if they cannot be realized in society at large?
The Kiowa & Comanche were predestined to be almost totally unrecep- tive to friendly persuasion & example; [meekness was weakness; no raiding was surrender. Lawrie Tatum sought to reconcile idealism & pragmatism, but when a choice had to be made he chose pragmatism. Tatum’s Quaker suc- cessor, James H. Haworth was instructed not to countenance the use of mili- tary force; in 4 years he had no better luck than Tatum. The Peace Policy, the “holy experiment,” had been a failure. With each battle or raid, the Indians grew weaker & the whites stronger. Defeated militarily, the last of the Indian bands, led by Quanah Parker, came to the reservation in June 1875.
The tasks that Tatum “failed” at almost no human being could have accomplished, and Lawrie Tatum was just an Iowa
Although he never again became an Indian agent, Tatum remained in- terested in Indians and their welfare the rest of his life. [Both he and the In- dians were trapped in their own times and values and never really under- stood the depth of the differences between his culture and theirs. Lawrie was a sincere, deeply religious, practical man made strong and purposeful by the moral imperatives of his faith. To all difficulty and adversity he always had but one answer. “I thought it was right—and therefore the thing to do.”
Although he never again became an Indian agent, Tatum remained in- terested in Indians and their welfare the rest of his life. [Both he and the In- dians were trapped in their own times and values and never really under- stood the depth of the differences between his culture and theirs. Lawrie was a sincere, deeply religious, practical man made strong and purposeful by the moral imperatives of his faith. To all difficulty and adversity he always had but one answer. “I thought it was right—and therefore the thing to do.”
239. Growing old: A View from Within (by Norma Jacob; 1981)
About the Author—Born & educated in England, Norma Jacob came to Pendle Hill with her family in 1940. They served with the child feeding work of English & American Friends, but were expelled by the Franco forces. Now retired from the social work profession, she lives at Kendal-at-Longwood, an older people community in Kennett Square, PA. Recently she edited Quaker Roots, a book telling the story of early Friends in southern Chester County.
Should I give up driving the car? Norma Jacob
It is only by deliberately paying our attention and our primary allegiance to eternity that we can prevent time from turning our lives into a pointless or diabolic foolery. The divine Ground is a timeless reality. Aldous Huxley
[Introduction]/ The 1st Discovery—What is it really like to Grow Old? My own professional specialization was in a different field [from the el- derly], but I sympathized with those who felt unwanted and left aside. Natu- rally, I thought, too, about the approach of my own old age, [and planned for it]. The actual experience of aging, what the books can't tell, this was closed to me. On my 65th birthday I left my job & took off for my chosen place of re- tirement. I was eager to find out about being old while I was still vigorous enough in mind and body to make the most of it. What have I done thus far with the gift given to me, for which I must answer? Where do I go from here? What spiritual & material resources are available to me?
Should I give up driving the car? Norma Jacob
It is only by deliberately paying our attention and our primary allegiance to eternity that we can prevent time from turning our lives into a pointless or diabolic foolery. The divine Ground is a timeless reality. Aldous Huxley
[Introduction]/ The 1st Discovery—What is it really like to Grow Old? My own professional specialization was in a different field [from the el- derly], but I sympathized with those who felt unwanted and left aside. Natu- rally, I thought, too, about the approach of my own old age, [and planned for it]. The actual experience of aging, what the books can't tell, this was closed to me. On my 65th birthday I left my job & took off for my chosen place of re- tirement. I was eager to find out about being old while I was still vigorous enough in mind and body to make the most of it. What have I done thus far with the gift given to me, for which I must answer? Where do I go from here? What spiritual & material resources are available to me?
Growing old is liberation. No longer must one be in one's appointed place from 9 to 5, 5 days a week. I continued to do very much the same kind of work without being paid, in a different place, far away [from my old place of work], in space and emotion. Freedom from specific responsibilities is a very fine thing; [there were still those general responsibilities from] being a member of the human race. As a volunteer worker I realized that I had assumed an obligation, and I tried to honor it. Liberation from having to behave well was another joy. I could picket, dress outlandishly, and not worry about setting a good example. And liberation from the constant pressure to enhance re- wards. I could take a part time job, but this was a free choice.
For those women now approaching old age, the reality faced by our mothers & grandmothers was of a circumscribed existence; they bore & raised children, & when the children were grown & independent, they didn't feel libe- rated. They felt forsakened & lost; often their lives had no other reason; they hadn't the freedom to develop their interests & talents & reap the rewards. For my generation's women, it was possible to have motherhood, grandmother- hood, & careers, perhaps not at the same time, but within a reasonable span of years.
For those women now approaching old age, the reality faced by our mothers & grandmothers was of a circumscribed existence; they bore & raised children, & when the children were grown & independent, they didn't feel libe- rated. They felt forsakened & lost; often their lives had no other reason; they hadn't the freedom to develop their interests & talents & reap the rewards. For my generation's women, it was possible to have motherhood, grandmother- hood, & careers, perhaps not at the same time, but within a reasonable span of years.
For a man today there is very often only the one role, that of chief working member of the household. If something has to give, in most cases it can't be the job, which comes to an inexorable end on a date set without any regard to his ability to continue or his emotional needs. How can we bring to men the same kind of freedom which women are now beginning to en- joy? The liberated men are the fortunate ones who managed not to get en- tirely swallowed up by the demands placed upon them. I am sure this ques- tion is an aspect of aging which deserves a great deal more attention than our society is giving it today.
Another Side to the Coin—To set against increased freedom is the undoubted fact that growing old means losses which cannot be avoided, though surprisingly many of them can be postponed. "Diminishments" is a good name for a wide variety of small and large ways in which the body and mind no longer function as they have done so competently for so many years. [For instance], suddenly, after years of familiarity, there is an empty space where [an oft-used word] should be. Response to this varies with different individuals, from despair to wry amusement. The words aren't gone forever; they reappear quickly when the immediate need for them is past. Some mnemonic key will often allow im- portant words to be retrieved. A rather more frightening thing has been hap- pening lately: putting something down & being unable to find it 5 minutes later.
Another Side to the Coin—To set against increased freedom is the undoubted fact that growing old means losses which cannot be avoided, though surprisingly many of them can be postponed. "Diminishments" is a good name for a wide variety of small and large ways in which the body and mind no longer function as they have done so competently for so many years. [For instance], suddenly, after years of familiarity, there is an empty space where [an oft-used word] should be. Response to this varies with different individuals, from despair to wry amusement. The words aren't gone forever; they reappear quickly when the immediate need for them is past. Some mnemonic key will often allow im- portant words to be retrieved. A rather more frightening thing has been hap- pening lately: putting something down & being unable to find it 5 minutes later.
Growing old is slowing down. This can be infuriating, but the psycho- logists tell us that at 65 or later we are able to do almost everything we could do at 14, & equally well; it just takes more time. Older people in college find they do better than the regular college generation. The Elderhostel movement, with its weeklong residential courses in the summer has gained great popularity. Physical slowing down is often hard to accept. The mind runs ahead of the body & feels a furious resentment at times against muscles which don't answer im- mediately to directives from the brain. [I took up bike riding again after allowing muscles] to get in trim again. What if there is a wheelchair in my future? It may take a little while to get the hang of it but then [you'll be] off and away.
It is undeniable that losing a degree of mobility, seeing or hearing less well, things like that do mean less of things one used to enjoy. Deliberately to give up a large world for one with limited horizons seems a sin against life. When there is no choice, this smaller world can be one that is enriched from within by people who draw upon resources they scarcely knew they pos- sessed. These diminishments are one good reason for choosing to live among older people. Our contemporaries [can be with us with much less strain than young people].
Growing old is realizing reluctantly that some changes are permanent. These pills—I am not going to become independent of them, but must remem- ber to take one a day for as long as I live. My friend can walk again, but she will always need the cane. [How long does stuff I need to replace need to last]? The idea of ending, of non-renewal, is a very hard one to accept; the do-it-yourself books fail to offer any help here. Not to accept that we can bring back the past, be young again, grow back hair is un-American. Most of us try most of the time to live by the reality we know rather than by the myth which is constantly being sold to us.
Growing old is making things last longer instead of encouraging them to wear out. I'm not about to discard something which has been with me for a number of years. There are memories which these possessions carry with them. [Losing them means losing the memories that go with them]. The out- come of this entirely natural feeling is apt to be a cluttered life.
Growing old is realizing reluctantly that some changes are permanent. These pills—I am not going to become independent of them, but must remem- ber to take one a day for as long as I live. My friend can walk again, but she will always need the cane. [How long does stuff I need to replace need to last]? The idea of ending, of non-renewal, is a very hard one to accept; the do-it-yourself books fail to offer any help here. Not to accept that we can bring back the past, be young again, grow back hair is un-American. Most of us try most of the time to live by the reality we know rather than by the myth which is constantly being sold to us.
Growing old is making things last longer instead of encouraging them to wear out. I'm not about to discard something which has been with me for a number of years. There are memories which these possessions carry with them. [Losing them means losing the memories that go with them]. The out- come of this entirely natural feeling is apt to be a cluttered life.
When one moves into a smaller place there are questions: What do I keep, throw away, sell, or pass along? A great deal of secret unhappiness is hidden inside these questions, from which there's no escape. I have moved so many times—from country to country, then from state to state—that only a few small objects have stayed with me from the more distant past. The only thing that really hurt was having to abandon a library, twice: in England and in Spain, where we had to burn the "liberal" ones and bury the rest.
[1]—Growing old is loss & relinquishment. Some losses can be seen co- ming & prepared for to a certain extent. Others are fierce & cruel, like a child's death or a much-loved younger friend, [which count as outrageous & "should not happen]." How to bear it is what must be learned. Relinquishments are more subtle, ranging from colors no longer going with our changed complexion, to long walks no longer done with comfort, to giving up the vanity of high heels.
[1]—Growing old is loss & relinquishment. Some losses can be seen co- ming & prepared for to a certain extent. Others are fierce & cruel, like a child's death or a much-loved younger friend, [which count as outrageous & "should not happen]." How to bear it is what must be learned. Relinquishments are more subtle, ranging from colors no longer going with our changed complexion, to long walks no longer done with comfort, to giving up the vanity of high heels.
Should I give up driving the car? To many aging Americans, the car is part of the self-image. To lose it is to become a different person, and inevitably a lesser one. Those who play instruments come gradually to realize that stiffe- ning fingers or shorter wind mean more and more distortions of the melody. Fine needlework is harder now that needles tiresomely resist threading. The energy in fighting against diminishment is wasted, & personal energy is more & more a precious commodity.
Being Alone—Growing older means the fear of loneliness. It is inevi- table, because friends, family and lovers die or drift away. If we are open to them, we make new friends; willingness is all. People do form very solid and deep relationships in their older years. Marriage between those who have raised families and retired from careers happen more and more often these days. Pets are, of course, a wonderful source of companionship, if new peo- ple seem a little too much like hard work. People who haven't been great readers probably do not realize what joy is to be gained from books. Many can remember literary families in which they have felt really at home. There are people in the TV world, too with whom many have come to feel a real intimacy.
A Catalog of Riches—A great deal of what is believed about growing old simply isn't so. In a survey contrasting what people as a whole saw as the condition of the aging in our society, and what older people said about it, the disparity between the 2 pictures was enormous. Old people don't see them- selves at all as younger people see them. The American public has a distor- ted and unrealistic negative view of what it is like to grow old.
[1-2]—Growing old is emotion recollected in tranquility. [Many of the bad things never happened, and the stupidities were often met with good-natured tolerance]. The good things keep a kind of freshness which does not tarnish with age. They can be flashed on the screen of the mind in their primary colors with many of the shadows removed. [As for having less drive in old age], does this really matter in a world where achievers abound. Let them struggle, it's their turn and they are eager to do it, as eager as we once were, before we found out how little we really achieved over the longer perspective of life.
Another very pleasant aspect of growing old is discovering the younger generation. What interesting companions they turn out to be, now that they are adults and responsible for their own lives. And they can see a situation from a different angle and can throw a new & often startling light on what had seemed settled and dull. [I have managed to avoid becoming] financially or emotionally dependent upon my children. Is there some way of making as sure as pos- sible that the burden of caring for me doesn't fall on my children, who had their own children to care for, which must take precedence? Visits from children are wonderful; aside from these, let us by all means lead our separate lives.
A Catalog of Riches—A great deal of what is believed about growing old simply isn't so. In a survey contrasting what people as a whole saw as the condition of the aging in our society, and what older people said about it, the disparity between the 2 pictures was enormous. Old people don't see them- selves at all as younger people see them. The American public has a distor- ted and unrealistic negative view of what it is like to grow old.
[1-2]—Growing old is emotion recollected in tranquility. [Many of the bad things never happened, and the stupidities were often met with good-natured tolerance]. The good things keep a kind of freshness which does not tarnish with age. They can be flashed on the screen of the mind in their primary colors with many of the shadows removed. [As for having less drive in old age], does this really matter in a world where achievers abound. Let them struggle, it's their turn and they are eager to do it, as eager as we once were, before we found out how little we really achieved over the longer perspective of life.
Another very pleasant aspect of growing old is discovering the younger generation. What interesting companions they turn out to be, now that they are adults and responsible for their own lives. And they can see a situation from a different angle and can throw a new & often startling light on what had seemed settled and dull. [I have managed to avoid becoming] financially or emotionally dependent upon my children. Is there some way of making as sure as pos- sible that the burden of caring for me doesn't fall on my children, who had their own children to care for, which must take precedence? Visits from children are wonderful; aside from these, let us by all means lead our separate lives.
[3-5]—Growing old is coming to rely on the kindness of strangers. Young people are almost unfailingly kind, even when they think that it was our ineptitude which landed us in this mess. Older people are kind to one another, offering what comfort they can when an older stranger is in distress. Most tou- ching of all is the way older friends cherish one another. Patience is boundless; nothing is too difficult or too tiresome. This to me is a real manifestations of love. Growing old is having that sense of the transience of everything beauti- ful. Some things may not be transient, but the eye that sees them, our eye will be gone. We cherish beauty now that we are old.
Another unexpected blessing in old age is learning to live in the present. [Up until old age], we are all accustomed to take refuge in either the future or the past. This is a harmless enough delusion provided that a life-style is not built upon it. [For the old], there is no longer very much prospect of a future which will bring us what we have not been able to achieve so far. Perhaps the more we care about those for whom the present hardly exists, the more we care about what is being lost to them for not being willing to open the doors and let today in. We too are almost surely doing the same thing in more subtle ways. It is difficult to see this clearly when the problem is one's own.
When I have managed to free myself from total dependence on the standards of excellence set for me in my formative years, what riches have I discovered. I try to remind myself that the present grows organically out of the past. If something was good then, its results will be good now. [The simplistic "past good, present horrible,"] explanation for the uncomfortable and unfamiliar can't be allowed to cloud our perception of what we must live with and learn to rejoice in if we are to avoid despair. Politically, the choices we made, the poli- cies we supported, the men we elected to carry out those policies—these built the present, and if there is blame to be distributed, we cannot avoid our share. It is reassuring to see how many older people do actually take the trouble to vote and try in this way to influence events.
[6-7]--Growing old is making an opening for new things. Most aging peo- ple are so preoccupied with not losing the good things they now have that they never get a glimpse of other potentialities. Creativity can indeed be ageless; look at painters who did some of their finest work in old age, or at orchestra conductors who seem to be untouched by the passage of time. Weaving, ma- king something satisfying out of time, patience and yarns of different colors, is an experience I have had now and I can have it again; playing a recorder in a small group [is a similar experience for me].
When I have managed to free myself from total dependence on the standards of excellence set for me in my formative years, what riches have I discovered. I try to remind myself that the present grows organically out of the past. If something was good then, its results will be good now. [The simplistic "past good, present horrible,"] explanation for the uncomfortable and unfamiliar can't be allowed to cloud our perception of what we must live with and learn to rejoice in if we are to avoid despair. Politically, the choices we made, the poli- cies we supported, the men we elected to carry out those policies—these built the present, and if there is blame to be distributed, we cannot avoid our share. It is reassuring to see how many older people do actually take the trouble to vote and try in this way to influence events.
[6-7]--Growing old is making an opening for new things. Most aging peo- ple are so preoccupied with not losing the good things they now have that they never get a glimpse of other potentialities. Creativity can indeed be ageless; look at painters who did some of their finest work in old age, or at orchestra conductors who seem to be untouched by the passage of time. Weaving, ma- king something satisfying out of time, patience and yarns of different colors, is an experience I have had now and I can have it again; playing a recorder in a small group [is a similar experience for me].
Growing old is being lazy and enjoying it. One may manage not wat- ching the clock only for short periods. Perhaps we need to practice sometimes saying " I don't want to—I'm too old." I believe it was a wise choice to live among people my age or older. When I was 65, I spent many stimulating eve- nings talking with intelligent and thoughtful people in their 90's. [This wide range in ages] for group housing of old people—this is what we need. I have had occasion to observe the kind of change produced in many older people, a smoothing of some of the firmer lines of body & spirit, a fading of the need to drive others & be self-driven, so that other traits, like a delicious sense of hu- mor are free to appear. Sometimes one is the unwilling witness of the gradual fading of a loved personality. But what was once known can never be lost.
The Unanswered Question/ A Place to Stand?—We weren't wrong to welcome the coming of old age as an opportunity, an opening into the potential of a new life. There are real losses & handicaps to be met. But the good & the less-good are intermixed. Many of the good things were quite unexpected from the perspective of one's 30's, 40's, & 50's. But, what comes next? For us, death's coming is a reality to which we must all adjust our thinking & emotions.
Aldous Huxley wrote: "It is only by deliberately paying our attention & our primary allegiance to eternity that we can prevent time from turning our lives into a pointless or diabolic foolery. Divine Ground is a timeless reality." [Time has a useful purpose], but no real existence, in fact it is something from which one can & must escape. [The idea of going back in time to fix things] had its appeal, but closer inspection seemed to tell us that it simply wouldn't work. Time is a one-way street, leading eventually to a predictable end.
For older people, the end of life gains increasing imminence with each year. Everybody arrives at the possibility of hope in his or her own way. [I have the early memory of words from the Epistle of James that ring true]: "Every good thing, and every perfect thing, is from above, and cometh down from the father of lights, with whom is no ariableness, neither shadow of turning." Lately, this kind of knowledge of reality comes to me more & more through music. I have acquired many pieces of music which [serve this function, in particular] Beethoven's Quartet in C# minor, opus 131. Musical things tell one something about the nature of man and God which it is hard for me to imagine in any other way.
For older people, the end of life gains increasing imminence with each year. Everybody arrives at the possibility of hope in his or her own way. [I have the early memory of words from the Epistle of James that ring true]: "Every good thing, and every perfect thing, is from above, and cometh down from the father of lights, with whom is no ariableness, neither shadow of turning." Lately, this kind of knowledge of reality comes to me more & more through music. I have acquired many pieces of music which [serve this function, in particular] Beethoven's Quartet in C# minor, opus 131. Musical things tell one something about the nature of man and God which it is hard for me to imagine in any other way.
In religion, through beautiful music, inspired words & [sincere] ritual con- tact was made with what they felt to be ultimate truth. A Friends Meeting can serve this purpose too, though it achieves its success mostly through the inter- action of like minds brought together in one worship. What we learn alone, deepen & widen & enrich through sharing with others in some form of religi- ous observance. Offers of escape from death with a promise of everlasting life has never been anything in which I could take comfort. Nothing should be everlasting—not a flower, not a symphony, not a human life. [Everlasting isn't appealing to me]. To escape bondage from ongoing time is we need & must hope for. What friends have of each other is outside time & can't be lost.
Growing old makes it impossible any more for us to turn away from seeking out something to believe in. What was far away and indefinite has be- come close and increasingly real. We who are aging can never know, any of us, what is coming next, though we must wonder more & more. We may have intimations, flashes of seeing in a dark wood. Time must have a stop, and whatever lies over and around mortal time is not to be feared. With that, I will have to be content.
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240. 2 Moral Essays: Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations;
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240. 2 Moral Essays: Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations;
Human Personality (by Simone Weil; 1981)
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About
the Editor—Born in Casper ,
Wyoming Brandeis University
SIMONE WEIL—Simone Weil
was born in Paris Lon- don Vichy France
Concrete,
harsh, experiences gradually liberated her mind from modern ideologies. Her thinking is free of the ideas of: person
& rights; Marxist socio- economic theory.
She came upon the ancient sources of the [Old Testament Wisdom
literature] and the [un-Jewish] Gospels, Homer, & ancient Greek ideas as
something fresh and new. Simone Weil
should be listened to with careful attention.
Substantive, [liberated] morality rest on a foundation of faith. What
is the nature of faith [in a reality outside the world] & what are its
logical consequences?
DRAFT FOR A STATEMENT OF HUMAN
OBLIGATIONS: Profession of Faith—There's a reality outside any sphere that's
accessible to human fa- culties. There is
a longing for an absolute good at the human heart’s center. The other reality is the unique source of all
the good that can exist in this world. Humans have the power of turning one’s attention and love toward it;
[those that pay attention to it] are the only way good can descend from there
& come among us. Its power is only
real here in so far as it is exercised.
[When
someone] consents to directing one’s attention and love beyond the world, there
descends upon one a part of the good, [which radiates from one]. [One’s] longing for absolute good and
directing one’s attention and love beyond the world constitute a link which
attaches everyone to that other reality; every human being is something
sacred. This is the only possible motive
for universal respect towards all human beings.
If our attention is entirely confined to this world it is entirely
subject to the effect of the world’s inequalities. The only thing that is identical in all men
is the presence of a link with the reality outside the world; the link is
beyond the reach of human faculties [& direct expression]. The one possibility of indirect expres- sion of
respect for the human being is offered by [opportunities] to meet the
obligation of [responding] to the needs of the soul and its body in others.
Anyone
whose attention and love are really directed towards the reality outside the
world recognizes [one’s obligation. No
combination of circumstan- ces ever cancels this obligation. The thought of this obligation is present to
all. The proportions of good and evil in
any society depend partly on the proportion of consent to refusal [of that
obligation]. [Anyone with control over
people’s lives who refuses that obligation is committing a crime]. Any State, legal sy- stem, government,
institution, or influential man, who incites this crime or does not protect
against or denounce it lacks legitimate power and is at least an ac- cessory to
the crime. It is for the intelligence to
conceive the idea of need and to discern the earthly needs of the soul and of
the body.
Statement
of Obligations—The needs of a
human being are sacred. The limit to the
satisfaction of the needs of a human being is only legitimate if the needs of
all human beings receive an equal degree of attention. Each need is related to an obligation, and [vice versa]. The needs of the body are food, warmth,
sleep, health, rest, exercise, fresh air.
The needs of the soul, listed in pairs of opposites are: equality &
hier- archy; obedience and liberty; truth and freedom; solitude and social life;
perso- nal & collective property; punishment & honor; disciplined
participation & per- sonal initiative; security & risk. The human soul needs above all to be rooted in
several natural environments and to make contact with the universe through them. Any place where human beings' needs are
satisfied can be recog- nized by the fact that there is a flowering of
fraternity, joy, beauty, & happiness.
HUMAN PERSONALITY—There is something sacred in everyone, but it isn't
one’s person or human personality. It's
impossible to define what is meant by respect for human personality. The notion of rights, which was launched into
the world in 1789, has proved unable, because of its intrinsic inadequacy, to
fulfill the role assigned to it. To
combine rights and human personality will not bring us any further. Although the whole of one is sacred, one isn't sacred in all respects and from every point of view.
At
the bottom of the heart of every human being, there is something that expects
that good and not evil will be done to one.
This profound, childlike, and unchanging expectation of good in the
heart is not what is involved when we agitate for our rights. Every time there arises from the depths of a
human heart the childish cry, “Why am I being hurt?”, then there is
injustice. In those who have suffered
too many blows, in slaves for example, that place in the heart from which the
infliction of evil evokes a cry of surprise may seem to be dead; it is never
quite dead.
Those
who most often have occasion to feel that evil is being done to them are those
who are least trained in speaking. What is 1st needed is a system of
public education capable of providing a means of expression. Then, there needs
to be an [attentive] regime [that employs] an attentive silence in which this
faint & inept cry can be heard. Power needs to be put into the hands of
those who are able & anxious to hear & understand it. Clearly, a political party busily
seeking, or maintaining itself in power can discern nothing in cries against
evil except a noise. Its reaction will be different according to whether the
noise interferes with or contributes to its own propaganda. But it can never be
capable of the tender & sensitive attention which is needed to understand
its meaning.
When
the infliction of evil provokes a cry of sorrowful surprise from the depth of
the soul, it is not a personal thing. It
is contact with injustice through pain. It is an impersonal protest. Everything which is impersonal in one is
sa- cred, & nothing else. Above the
level where science, art, literature, and philo- sophy are simply manifestations
of personality, far above, is the level where the highest things are achieved;
they are mostly anonymous. The sacred
Truth of science and the sacred beauty or art dwell on this level of the
imper- sonal and the anonymous.
Impersonality is only reached by the
practice of attention which is rare in itself & impossible except in a mental
& physical solitude. Idolatry is that which attributes a sacred character
to the collectivity; it is the commonest of crimes. [Likewise, one who places
personality above all else] has lost all sense of the sacred. It is precisely
those artists & writers who are most inclined to think of their art as [an
outgrowth] of personality who are most in bondage to public taste. Scientists
are equally enslaved by fashion; the collective opinion of specialists is a
dictatorship.
The
human can only escape from the collective by raising one’s self above the
personal & entering into the impersonal. If one can root one’s self in the
impersonal good so as to draw energy from it, then one can bring to bear
against a collectivity, a small but real force. There are occasions when a tiny
force can be decisive. [What needs to be
safeguarded is] whatever frail poten- tialities are hidden within them for
passing over to the impersonal.
The
chief danger [of collectivities] is in the person’s tendency to immo- late one’s
self in the collective. If there are
some people who feel something sacred in their own person [that others have
also] they are under a double illusion.
The person in humans is a thing in distress; it feels cold and is always looking for warm shelter. Relations
between the collectivity and anyone should be arranged with the sole purpose of
removing [any obstacle] to the mysterious germination and growth of the
impersonal element in the soul through the opportunity to reach ever higher
levels of attention, solitude and silence.
What one needs is silence and warmth; what one is given is an icy pandemonium. [That is the case even in modern democratic societies].
Exactly
to the same extent as art & science, though in a different way, physical
labor is a certain contact with the reality, the truth, & the beauty of
this universe & with the eternal wisdom which is the order in it. It is
sacrilege to degrade labor. If the
workers felt this sacrilege [in the other reality], as an im- pulse, a cry of
hope from the depth of their being, their resistance would have a very
different force from what is provided by the consideration of personal rights.
When the focus is on wages, [workers tend to forget that what they are
bargaining for is their soul]. Such is the sinister farce which has been played
by the working-class movement & its leftist intellectuals. [By settling
for personal rights instead], the men of 1789 ensured the inefficacy of their
challenge to the world in advance.
Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention;
when this tone is adopted, it must rely on force. [There is a category of notions] which are
them- selves alien to the supernatural but nevertheless a little superior to
brute force. All of them relate to the
collective animal while it still exhibits traces of the training imposed
on it by the supernatural working of grace. To this category belongs rights,
personality, and democracy. Democracy
offers no defense against dictatorship and is dependent on force. The obscuring of this truth is dangerous
because it prevents us from appealing to that other force which is radiance of
the spirit. Ancient Rome
Justice
dictates an abundance of love. Rights
have no direct connection with love. If
you say to someone who has ears to hear:
“What you are doing to me is not just,” you may touch and awaken at its
source the spirit of attention and love.
Thanks to “rights,” what should have been a cry of protest from the
depth of the heart has been turn into a shrill nagging of claims and
counter- claims, which is both impure and unpractical.
The
full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social
prestige; it is a social privilege. To
the dimmed understanding of our age there seems nothing odd in claiming an
equal share of privilege for everybody, which is nonsense because privilege is
by definition inequality. Those who
speak for the people and to them are incapable of understanding either their
distress or what an overflowing good is almost within their reach.
Affliction
is by its nature inarticulate. Thought revolts from contemplating affliction to
the same degree that living flesh recoils from death. Supernatural good isn’t a
sort of supplement to natural good. In all the crucial problems of human
existence the only choice is between supernatural good on the one hand &
evil on the other. It is only what comes from heaven that can make a real
impress on the earth.
In order to provide an armor for the afflicted, one must
put into their mouths only those words whose rightful abode is in heaven,
beyond heaven, in the other world. The only words suitable for them are those
which express no- thing but good, in its pure state. Rights on the other hand,
imply the possibility of making good or bad use of it; therefore rights are
alien to good. It is always and everywhere good to fulfill an obligation. Truth, beauty, justice, compassion are always
and everywhere good.
A
mind enclosed in language is in prison. It is limited to the number of
relations which words can make simultaneously present to it, [& doesn’t
benefit from a greater number of thoughts]. The mind moves in a space of
partial truth. The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the
difference be- tween criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or
larger cells.
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a
[criminal] who is proud of his larger cell. One day he wakes up on the other
side of the cell. He has found the key; he knows the secret which breaks down
walls. He has passed beyond what men
call intelligence, into wisdom. The mind which is enclosed within language can
possess only opinions. A village idiot is as close to truth as a child prodigy.
Just
as truth is a different thing from opinion, so affliction is a different thing
from suffering. To acknowledge
affliction is to say to oneself: “I may lose at any moment, through
circumstances beyond my control, even those things dearest to me; there is
nothing I might not lose. What I am
could be replaced by something filthy and contemptible.” Being aware of this is experiencing
non-being. It is a death of the
soul. At the stark sight of violent death,
the flesh recoils. When affliction is
seen [up close] as a mutilation or leprosy of the soul, people shiver and
recoil. [Since to truly hear of
affliction is to be in the afflicted’s place, the afflicted are not listened
to]. The afflicted are nearly always
equally deaf to one another.
Only
by grace’s supernatural working can a soul pass through its own annihilation to
the place where alone it can get the sort of attention which can attend to
truth & to affliction, which need the same kind of attention in order to be
heard. The name of this intense pure, disinterested, gratuitous, generous
attention is love. The spirit of justice & truth is nothing else but a
certain kind of attention which is pure love; everything produced by it is
endowed with bea- uty’s radiance. Beauty is the supreme mystery of this world. It
always promises, but never gives anything; it excites desire without having
anything to be de- sired. [If we stay with the desire], it gradually transforms into love.
Sometimes it happens that a fragment of truth is reflected in words which have so perfect a formal correspondence with that truth that every mind seeking that truth finds support in them. Beauty has no language; she does not speak. But she has a voice to cry out and point to truth and justice. Justice, truth and beauty are sisters and comrades. With 3 such beautiful words we have not need to look for any others.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets Sometimes it happens that a fragment of truth is reflected in words which have so perfect a formal correspondence with that truth that every mind seeking that truth finds support in them. Beauty has no language; she does not speak. But she has a voice to cry out and point to truth and justice. Justice, truth and beauty are sisters and comrades. With 3 such beautiful words we have not need to look for any others.
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