PHP 161-180

        

           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.

161.  The Religion of George Fox (by Howard H. Brinton; 1968)

       Introduction—In reading through the folio text of Fox’s letters I have  found him to be more philosopher than I expected, going farther toward deve-    loping a religious philosophy than do Barclay, Penn, & Pennington. 2 books of     selections from Fox’s epistles have appeared: Samuel Tukes (1825); L. Violet     Hodgkin Holdsworth, A Day-Book of Counsel & Comfort (1937). William Penn     wrote of Fox: “an original, no man’s copy; a new & heavenly minded man; an     incessant laborer; unwearied & undaunted. His presence expressed religious     majesty.”  The list of his published works occupies 53 pages. The present  pamphlet deals only with the 420 letters in the 1698 folio.

      Fox’s religion comes through most clearly in his letters, [where] he    speaks to his fellow Quakers.  In the 1698 folio epistles, Fox writes without     restraint, regardless of repetitions or formal sentence construction, and with-    out any effort to conform to schoolmen’s standards.  These letters resemble    the preaching which I remember from ministering Friends [around the turn of    the 20^th century] who still wore traditional Quaker garb. 

       The following pages are an attempt to describe George Fox’s religion in  the usual sense of that word.  In George Fox’s religion and philosophy there is     first his belief in the Christ Within every man.  2^nd, is his doctrine of 3 ages:     before Adam fell; after Adam fell, a time of Law; the coming of the Christ & the     New Covenant.  3^rd is the frequent appeal for unity. Fox’s later letters are     largely concerned with bringing unity into a group in which ecclesiastical     authority was vested in no one individual. Leaders exercised influence, not     authority.  To counteract anarchy and the effects of persecution the tone of    Fox’s letters is occasionally emphatic to the point of violence. 

       Fox uses many words to say what the Bible says briefly; he cited the     Bible in arguments, but appealed to the spirit which produced the Bible as     the final source of truth.  Fox was a radical in his religious views.  I am not     dealing here with the so-called “Letter of George Fox to the Governor of     Barbadoes.”

       The Light of Christ in Every Man—This central and best-known doc-    trine of George Fox is based on John 1:9.  Fox constantly points out that this     Light existed from eternity and was the creative power, and is the source of     knowledge of good and evil and of all religious truth.  This light is in every man  of every religion; all know something of Christ, even though they have never     had Christianity proclaimed to them. Quaker slaves held in Algiers were urged  to appeal to the knowledge of the truth in their captors. 

       This doctrine of [heathen knowledge of the truth] was particularly ob-    noxious to the Puritans.  Convincement of this truth gave the Quakers a dif-    ferent attitude from that of Puritans toward Negroes, Indians, and Muslims.   Given their belief Quakers couldn't treat the Indians as “heathen savages” as     the Puritans did in following the Old Testament (OT) precedent set by the Jews.   The Quaker was to “answer” that of God in every one. Fox used “answer” in his  own peculiar way.  To answer meant to reply to, to correspond with, or even to  develop and stimulate “that of God in other persons, whether friend or enemy,  regardless of race or creed.  To traveling ministers the instruction is given,  “walk  cheerfully over the earth, answering that of God in every one.”

       Another important element in George Fox’s religion is his “perfection-    ism,” which was based on the text: “Till we all come in the unity of the faith,  & of the knowledge of God's Son, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the  stature of the fullness of Christ.”  To be perfect, however, didn't mean to reach   a state beyond which further growth was impossible.  This meant simply to live    up to the measure of Light given you, whatever that measure might be. Fox      frequently employs symbols used in John’s Gospel (e.g. life and light of men,      Light of the world, the way the truth and the life). 

       In speaking of sanctuary to prisoners he tells them that they need not be  troubled by their outward condition for they have an inward habitation to which  they can repair and be at peace.  Fox made no attempt to take the Quakers out  of the world, but he did often tell them to live at the same time in a different  place, the inward world ruled by Christ's Spirit.  Here the dualism is sometimes  indicated by the word “pure,” meaning that which isn't mixed or contaminated     by anything worldly.  John Woolman never refers to the Inward  Light, but     always to “pure wisdom.”  George Fox’s philosophy is that instead of meeting     difficulties & persecutions head on, we should look at that which is over &     above them. 

       Fox said: “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, but there will be crying, my business, my     business; and your minds will go into things, and not over things. 

      The Three Ages—Much of Fox’s thought is based on a special philoso-    phy of history of 3 ages: before Adam fell; after Adam fell, a time of Law; the     coming of the Christ and the New Covenant.  The essence of this conception     comes from Paul’s letter to the Galatians.  John 15:15 says:  “Henceforth I call     you not servants . . . but I have called you friends: for all things that I have         heard of my Father I have made known to you.  The contrast between the     Mosaic covenant made at Mount Sinai & the New Covenant at the coming of     Christ is significant to Fox, who says:  “All the figures, shadows, and types, in     the OT & Covenant, Christ the substance is come, and abolishes them . . . the     children of the New Covenant are called, “a spiritual household, a royal and    holy priesthood. . . Christ our high priest, was made after the power of an     endless life.”

       Fox also said: Before Adam’s Fall, man & woman were equal.  After the  Fall, men dominated the women; but in the New Covenant they are again     equal.  Fox could repudiate the OT as an imperfect revelation of the Truth, and  claim for the New Testament a new & higher revelation based on the Spirit of  Truth.  By coming into unity with Christ, the Second Adam, man could rise to a  higher state than that of the first Adam.

       The Quaker case was based on an inward experience of Christ's Light   which leads to God, but it was also based on the claim it was a New Cove-    nant religion.  [The Light of the Old Covenant, compared to the Light of the    New, is] like the twilight before the dawn compared to the daylight when the     sun rises (William Penn).  Jesus came to fulfill the Law, not to end it.  On the     2 great commandments hang all the law and the prophets.  

       Even the persecutors of the Quakers who were sending them to prison  by the thousands had a Light in them which could be “answered” or appealed     to. The Quaker movement wouldn't have survived persecution had the Angli-    cans and Puritans been as ruthless as were the Lutherans in slaughtering    Anabaptists.  Fox didn't believe that the outward blood shed by Christ on the     cross was the means of salvation.  Salvation comes from the cleansing     power of the blood shed inwardly in the heart and not outwardly.  [Fox would     contest this point at] “great meetings of professors.” 

       The biblical text which appears more often than any other in his epist-    les is Genesis 3:15:  “And I will put enmity between thee (serpent) & the wo-   man, and between thy seed and her seed. . .”  This Fox believes to be a   prophecy of the coming of Christ to restore man and nature to the condition   before the Fall. The “seed” of the Inward Light will grow if it is sown in fertile   ground.    

       The Word of God as the Source of Unity—The temporal emphasis [of  the 3 Ages] is typical of Hebrew thought.  Greek thought soars to the timeless     and the eternal, and Fox soars with it, [so that] Christ appears as the “Word of     God” who existed before creation, who is still creating, & who will exist forever     after creation.  Early Quakers and the early Christians had many problems in     common. Both were “come outers,” rebels against conventional codes and     behavior.  Both depended for unity on common loyalty to Christ, not only the     human Christ, but above all the eternal Christ.  

       It is clear that Fox felt his relation to the early Quaker meetings was  analogous to what Apostle Paul had with the early Christian Churches. Fox is     Hebraic and Hellenistic in his thought. [He draws from Paul, who was Hebraic,  and John, who was Hellenic]. Fox accepted Paul’s whole message except his  apocalyptic ideas. Fox’s religion was Christ-centered in a double sense. The     Christ of history is one with the eternal Christ who created the world. Christ’s     death becomes a cosmic event. Christ the seed must die if it is to grow and     create. Fox more often quotes from John’s gospel and letters than from any     other part of the Bible; yet Fox and Quakers were closer to Hebrew prophets     than to Grecian mystics, receiving inspiration from a personal God rather than     an abstract principle.

       It should be noted that there was from the start an element of anarchy in  the Quaker movement.  Quakerism survived because it was a group mysticism  in which all sought to follow the same Inward Light and thus come into unity.   While Fox gives no evidence of familiarity with [logos], he makes frequent use     of the term “Word of God” to designate the eternal Christ through whom “all     things were created.”  Fox, in telling persecuted Friends that they can take     refuge in an inner sanctuary free from the storms of this world isn't far from     Stoic philosophy.  

       Fox unintentionally found a coherent philosophy in John, Ephesians     (1:10) and Colossians (1:12-23).  That Christ is above all principalities and     powers is often asserted in Fox’s epistles; [Fox included the persecuting     Christian churches under “principalities & powers”]. [In Colossians] Jesus was     promoted above the status of a Jewish Messiah to that of a cosmic figure.     Thus, the dramatic conception of history, the belief in 3 ages is expanded to     include the history of the universe.  The conception that there is an integra-    ting power bringing order out of chaos is characteristic of Smuts, Lloyd Mor-    gan, Alfred N. Whitehead, Samuel Alexander, [even] C. J. Jung. 
            [While Fox and Quakers] were closer to Paul and the prophets than to  Hellenistic thought, Fox made use of Hellenic elements in John’s gospels,     Ephesians, & Colossians, but he used them in a practical prophetic way.  For  the Quakers the relation to God was a person-to-person dialogue in the man-    ner of the prophets rather than dependence on philosophic speculation.  [In     today’s theological controversy], the transcendent God on his throne with    Jesus has died and has become the immanent God within us, present in the     midst of man’s daily life.  Fox would have little to learn from the most modern    theologians. William James wrote (1902): “Christian sects today are simply    reverting in  essence to the position which Fox and the early Quakers long ago  [360 years]  assumed.”

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162. Black City Stage (by Jack Shepherd; 1968)
            About the Author—Jack Shepherd (1920-2010 ) worked for most of   his life in the theater, both for the Religious Society of Friends and the larger   world. He joined the Theatre Royal in Portsmouth, England, when he was nine   years old, an age at which most children are being encouraged to keep quiet   rather than speak. This was in 1929. He came to Pendle Hill in 1966, & con-    tinued to work & study at Pendle Hill for 8 years, He retired to Kendal in 1992    and died there in 2010. This pamphlet explores a Philadelphia spontaneous    black theater.

             Joy comes when you share the curtain-call with your new family, and     you are so far in, they do not have to be polite to you any more. Jack Shepherd

       PROLOGUE—The trade where the dyer’s hands received a shading to-ward black was entertainment. The involvement in race relations was un-   planned, incidental & [surprising]; the telling carries some good entertain-   ment.  You may be anxious to know the real black people; you may have gone to black-white seminars, & come away more discouraged than ever. [None of    these were my concern] when I arrived in Philadelphia in September 1965.    

       I told the custom’s official, “I’ve come to visit my wife’s family, & teach for  a term at a college.” In January 1966 we began an exploration into random     grouping of imagination expressed in spontaneous drama. In the autumn     American Friends Service Committee asked me to conduct a drama workshop     for high school students; they happened to be black. My Anglo-Saxon condi-    tioned ideas didn’t speak to their world at all. When their ideas & interests     began to fill the action, we began to move. Once the purely human element of     a story or situation broke through they could do revealing things with it. 

      Shakespeare’s Richard III story produced Ricky the Quick, about a     frustrated young man hacking his way to control of big business, [exploiting     weakness & being brought down by his own]. In order to [get something     other than polite pedestrian responses, I had to] touch a nerve, [which I did     through] trial & error. We were on television, & the group rose splendidly to     the occasion. At the end of the project in early summer 1967, I felt bereft.

       The students were not conscious rebels; their attitude toward power     structures wasn't so much hostile as excluding. They would be polite & quiet,     & not in touch. In September I heard about Wharton Center, called & was     asked to stop by.  I found myself in [a North Central Philadelphia ghetto] by  a settlement house. [The program director hired me after 20 minutes. In the    back was a crumbling building with a small stage which had once been a     silent-movie theater. [I felt I had found something really special]. 

       THE COMPANY—At times chaos reached what I would have thought     riot proportions, but my black colleagues seemed unworried, so I just got on     with it. 20 picturesque lively noisy young black Americans faced a strange En-    glishman with graying beard & shaggy head, propped up with a cane. It didn’t     occur to them to identify me with the white power structure. I had come packed  with ideas & knew at once I would have to ditch them all.

       I said: “You are in London airport in 1977,” & started to interview them,  beginning with Tony.  They all rose to the bait willingly and with widely various     sharply-etched characterizations. From faceless strangers they shaped into     personalities, full of unique potential. As they left 2 hours later, one expressed     fear that I might try to subdue a heart-beat in which they felt confident to an     alien elegance belonging to white society.  I learned later that if that 1^st taste     had not been intriguing, they wouldn’t have worried; they would just disappear. 

       It worried me that the company never seemed to settle down to listen     quietly. Few had ever been spoken to quietly, at length, & with a new idea in all  their normal social or family exchanges. Ways of getting across what I wanted  them to know had to be instant, ad hoc, & instinctive. I happened to mention     the 400-year-old morality play Everyman. Surprisingly, it caught their interest.     They argued noisily about the notion of Death arresting somebody & that per-   son’s  struggles to make the best of it; Time to Go Joe was in the stocks. I     hovered like a midwife [& referee]. Scene by scene they built up the play, in     their own terms   & language; there was no script.

      I had to discard any dependence on patterns of behavior taken for gran-    ted in similar but Anglo-Saxon groups (e.g. attendance at rehearsal according     to plan). If I tried to explain the inconvenience, quite honestly they would not     understand what I was trying to say.  On arrival I would have to take who ever     was at hand, & play things by ear. The assembled company would sometimes     leave suddenly, cheerfully and without explanation.

       Gate-crashing began and added to the confusion. I ranted and roared,     and vowed I would walk out and never return. I was on my way to the door,     when suddenly the cast came running after me and held my arms.  We went     back to work.  I had to risk trusting their sense of overall commitment [and let   go of individual rehearsals].  Never once was it possible to hold a full rehear-    sal with everybody present and the play in proper order.  Just before curtain     rise I was in a greater state of panic than at any time of my professional life,     with a front row of formidable young men loudly announcing their intention of     barracking [i.e. heckling]. 

       TIME TO GO, JOE—All these characters are young black Americans.   They are on their way to a party, but they have forgotten to bring the drinks.     [Joe rushes off to get drinks & is hit by a car & taken to the hospital].  What     goes on now is inside Joe’s mind. Joe is appalled to find out he must be on     the 11:59 tonight. The 2 undertakers, Mr. Graves & Mr. Tombs are lost & fol-    lowing Harry by mistake; Harry gives them the slip. Joe, meanwhile, comes     to Barney’s Bar. Lola, the alcoholic, staggers in. If Joe once helped Lola,     maybe she would go with?

       On the coast-to-coast show, MAN OFF THE STREET, random people    are taken in, and their problems are solved. A singing group comes on 1^st &   Mr. Graves adds himself to the group. When Joe tells them his problem, the  studio clears of people.  Outside, Joe finds Doris of Traveller’s Aid. They hurry  to the station.  Joe’s friends assemble to see him off.  Suddenly barkeep     Barney hurries across the concourse with Lola, who is bedraggled, unsteady,     but relatively sober; she will go with Joe.  Professor Doom roars: “Change of     plan! Lola, Judge Midnight says all this reminds him of your case.  You need     more help and he reckons Joe’s the only one who can try.”  [Lola and Joe’s     friends are overjoyed]; the friends leap and dance all over the station.  

       For the record, Time to Go, Joe was created in a few weeks by the     young black Americans and performed in December 1967.  It was the 1^st and     probably the last performance in the world.  The formidable young men    laughed and applauded in the right places.  Our audience loved it; so did the     company.  The happiest guy around was me: middle-aged, Caucasian,     English, and exhausted.

       INTERVAL/STREET SCENE—Center Stage, as our venture was now  called, was launched and viable; & my hands were several shades darker. The  agency director told me that as the play proceeded, a vision grew in his mind     of a neighborhood theatre, indigenous, original, & exciting. We discussed it     with enthusiasm. I knew that its fulfillment would need a young, talented, dedi-   cated black person; eventually I would have to bow out. The program director     said: “Every February we have a Black-Heritage Festival. There will be 2 direc-    tors, Nickie and you. [I wondered] whether any Englishman had ever before  been asked to be co-director of a Black-Heritage Festival.  Nickie was from    Louisiana, in her early 20’s, a Howard graduate and a social worker.

       The Center Stage company chose the theme of gang warfare in the     streets for their next original play.  The idea did not enchant me at first, but I     realized that more could be done with their instincts than with my sophistica-    tion. I suggested a central event, such as killing a character, about which the    story would grow.  The victim was [chosen by chance.  The killer was not    known or the ending written until late in the story]. 

       Street Scene by Night became a kind of serial, twice-weekly, running     through January and February.  The demands of the story began to bring home  to its creators the bones & sinews of authentic tragedy.  [The characters are]:   Mr. Pocket, the seedy lawyer, stops for a drink and unwittingly starts a train of     events that [causes a lot of trouble for a lot of people].  Machine runs the bar &    a gang moving into the protection racket and challenging another gang run by     Duchess.  Toni is a nice girl who falls for the crook Marlo.

       Machine is attacked in the street by the rival gang and found dead. No-    body is sure if he or she is free of guilt.  The play involves the interesting device  of playing the crucial attack scene over several times [with different details de-    pending on] whoever is explaining what happened.  There is unbearable sad-    ness in knowing, even while applauding Toni’s courage [in standing up to the     police], that she is doomed to an awful suffering—because she fell in love with     someone whom the system has doomed.  Out of a climate of greed, mistrust,     and fear, a storm has broken which will grow in fury until the innocent are     brought down with the guilty.  The theme, development & values are all dis-    tinctly human, and not particularly black.  The fire catches when the humanity   flashes through. 

       FAMILY TREE—[A black person might ask]: “Who am I? Am I Ameri-    can,  African, or emotionally stateless? Authentic drama doesn’t attempt to     draw conclusions or make partisan points, but shares an experience & leaves     all concerned to their own conclusions. It occurred to us both that the action of     the drama should be inside a family. I wanted to give the players the evolution     of their own thoughts. I tried the group in sundry spontaneous arguments, but     they didn’t respond as I anticipated, but with catch-phrase attitudes [meant only]  to please me. 

       [I felt forced to do a script] What should the central crisis be? [I thought  about & dismissed a pending inter-racial marriage]. Nickie & I then thought of a  young man, troubled by his uncertain identity, who plans to live & work in Africa  to find his roots. Still I hesitated over writing a script. One day Nickie handed     me the script written by her. Chastened, but pleased, I read words I would have  groped after hopelessly. I gave it the title: Family Tree.

      She had instinctively, & with sound dramatic sense, drawn up differences  of opinion inside the “Smith” family. I questioned the roles she gave each family  member. But I liked the black American vernacular, & the authentic family     warmth. I found that most of my players weren’t comfortable with scripts. They     quickly grasped the significance of the words & attitudes offered them. The     written words, rightly chosen, sparked the humanity. 

      We were still hampered by chaos. But Nickie would get them together on  the days I was not there, [be the firm mother], and crack the whip.  Everything  was moving together beautifully, and I began to understand that I was having  very little to do with it.  I drifted around backstage on opening night.  The aver-    age theater critic would have been dazed.  Our audience loved it and asked     about repeat performances. 

      The “Who am I?” theme was stated against recorded voices singing of  Angry People.  The 1^st slave ship came in 1619; Sonny Smith listened to his     great-grandfather talking wistfully of their roots in Africa in 1968. [Sonny feels    a guest who owns nothing, and despises those held up as blacks to be proud    of.  His great-grandfather, uncle, and father feel pride in black accomplish-    ments & their own.  Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King speeches are    used. Sonny asks questions about his identity and the narrator turns the    questions to the audience.  Who can ever define precisely an audience reac-   tion? Each person carries something away.

       Whatever it did for the house and players, Family Tree rewarded me with  much learning and much self-chastening. I thought my problem would be how to  share my experience. My [actual] problem was to find graceful ways of accep-    ting enlightenment.  The process was less painful because we shared in a cre-   ative work, and because of the sweet & full humanity of my black co-workers.      In this setting, the difference their full and my partial humanity was more clearly  defined.  I could be part of this family through a sort of hand-hold adoption. 

      [I was devastated by Martin Luther King’s death] Nickie called me & said:  “You know this had to happen. A man who chooses to live like Christ—well …”  True. The world cannot bear the Word made flesh.

       At staff meeting, we talked of general things, and a kind of healing came  over me. Without specific words, to be simply in their presence and questionless  acceptance was healing.  A few nights later, policemen armed for battle waited    at a quiet intersection.  Nickie said: “I don’t think I’d ever riot, but when I see    that —I’d cheerfully pass the bricks.”  I knew what she meant. We are expert    at adding insult to injury and not knowing it.

      I was fortunate in finding healing at the best possible source—the human  compassion of those injured & bereft. Outside observers would find it hard to    equate the future of humanity with the future of Center Stage; but perhaps my     tendency to do this is now partly understandable. And it isn't news to be told   that humanity is the healing factor in racial difficulty, that both races must     transcend their racialness to a human unity. Rebirth into the other race—-   especially if that race is already richly human—can open the way. Joy comes     when you share the curtain-call with your new family, and you are so far in,     they do not have to be polite to you any more.

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163.  The Hardest Journey (by Douglas V. Steere; 1969)

     About the Author—Douglas Steere is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy  at Haverford College and Chairman of the Friends World Committee for Con-    sultation.  He has traveled to many part of the world on missions for the Ame-    rican Friends Service Committee and other Quaker organizations.  The Har-    dest Journey was delivered as a lecture in March 1968 at Whittier College in    California.  It is hoped that the description of the cost of spiritual renewal may  also speak to seekers beyond the ranks of Friends.

       [Introduction]/Proclamation/Dialogue—The Secretary of London  Yearly Meeting (Arthur White) told me of the moving requests which had come    to British Friends from Protestants and Roman Catholics for insights into our     inward experience of silent worship and the tradition of following concerns     that might come from it.  [This expectation was humbling when we know all     too well our poverty and mediocrity in this area; similar openings have been     coming from the USA. How much are we called to pray that we may be     made ready so as not to fail those who have been moved to ask for our     witness?

       In the spring of 1967, 10 Zen Buddhist personalities met 10 Christ  scholars, with 5 Quakers as host.  These were men who by experience and     study could speak to each other authentically and with an openness to each     other that was almost breathtaking.  I think Friends were given a glimpse of the  new dimension of communication between Christians and men of other world  religions that will mark the generation ahead.  

       Professor Doi speaks of transition from Proclamation to Dialogue.  It     becomes clear that the Spirit has things to say to us through Zen and things for  us to share with Zen; each of us will ignore [the other] only at our peril.  Zen     Professor Hisamatsu of Kyoto said in a message: “All we human beings are     now threatened by the crisis of the split of subjectivity.  The universal task is to     create a truthful and blessed world and to realize a stable, post-modern original  subjectivity.”  Friends ask: Do we know at first hand how true subjectivity,  awareness, attention, compassion, unlimited liability for our fellows & a  return to the infinite ground of our being can take place?

       [Holy Spirit Epoch]/Hidden Life—At Vatican Council II Cardinal  Suenens pressed for changes in the Church’s Original Schema which would     indicate the Church’s openness to charisms [such as those Quakers seek].      There was to be no abandonment of the law or the Church, but a new kindling     epoch of the Holy Spirit. It will pour through the lives of lay men and women     and through its power will release them for hallowed service in the fabric of     their world.

       The Holy Spirit is the revealer of injustice and the dissolver of men’s  reservations as to the costly correction of those wrongs.  It has been experi-    enced here and now by millions of apostles.  Quakers believe in the conti-    nual operation of this Pentecostal Spirit. What a tragedy it would be if at a     time when the way has open as at few times in history to our witness that we     not be ready to make our contribution.

       In the field of depth psychology, there is a climate of deep congeniality to  the Quaker witness.  Carl Jung wrote:  “We have built a monumental world     about us.  The divine Mediator stands outside as an image, while man remains  fragmentary; the unconscious and undeveloped psyche [remains] as pagan &    archaic as ever.  The great events of the world do not breathe the spirit of     Christianity but rather of unadorned paganism.  The inner person’s soul is out     of key with his external beliefs; in the soul the Christian hasn't kept pace with     external developments.”  Quakers know that when they yield to this “root” to     which all men are grafted, it opens them to others across all barriers.  Our     Quaker witness can be deepened and enriched by interchange with depth     psychology.

      Scientific Revolution/Sheer Activism—Islam is trying to see how it can  accommodate itself to the Western technological revolution whose fruits the     governments of its territories are determined to appropriate for their people.      Hinduism, likewise, feels threatened by the triumph of “materialism” which it     sees coming in the wake of this technological invasion. [They welcome help     with] the  vast physical needs of their people, but they see it undermining their     spiritual world-view.  

       The Quakers have felt this conflict of science and religion less than most  Christian bodies.  Quakers too have had members who feared advances in     geology, evolution, and biblical criticism.  There always seemed to be a leaven    [who were above panicking at having] to confront the new face of the physical     world.  Robert Frost said:  “We’ve been led to expect more of science than it  can perform. . .  There’s 1/2 of our lives that can’t be made a science of.”  

       The Quaker view is that people in our time may have falsely exalted the  omniscience of physical sciences and neglected to attend to the other dimen-    sions of one’s response to reality.  There needs to be an openness to that which  is creative in science and to a call to the inward life under the Spirit that may     alone save our world from destruction.

       Have Quakers found that they have been able to keep their own     share in social change disinfected from the inevitable egotism of good     works?       Have we got a word for young people in the early stages of     revulsion to killing tightly focused on the Viet Nam War?       Are we     matched to the [issues] of our time?  How may we better prepare to     respond to them?

       The Hardest Journey is the Longest Journey/Jean LeClerq—Dag  Hammarskjold uses the phrase “The longest journey is the journey inwards.”      He also said: “At one moment I did answer yes to Someone or Something—&     from that hour I was certain my existence had meaning.”  Dr. Sullivan asked:      “Have you ever had a moment of awe and glory that has cloven your life    asunder & put it back together again forever different than it was?”  John   Woolman wrote: “My heart was often tender and contrite and universal love for    my fellow creatures increased in me.”  How well do we understand and     sympathize with Jesus’ disciples who fell asleep again and again in the       night of his passion in Gethsemane?

       The Benedictine Jean Le Clerq’s object is to encourage monks in small  houses not to stop with their initial commitment to God. [He seeks] for them a  wonderful historical precedent & urges them to take the steps they long for, [in  order that these monks might enjoy God].  [A peasant who can say] “I just look  up at Him and He looks down at me,” is going on in, in terms that perfectly fit     Jean Le Clerq’s invitation to enjoy God & let the rest of the matter look after     itself.  

       [Simple May not be Easy/Still Enough…/[Busy-ness]—The hardest  journey must include getting us out of our own self-absorption, self-imprison-    ment, and self-willed determination to run our own lives in our own well-worn    grooves.  Nietzsche said that in an authentic friend one will always find a true    enemy; an enemy to that which is low in ourselves. Kierkegaard may explain   with brutal frankness why God may appear to us at moments as the enemy.       Fenelon says, “How few there are who are still enough to hear God speak.”   

       The man or woman with an eye on professional achievement is almost     sure to plead that there is simply no time for this kind of semi-rustic withdrawal,  & indicate how many nights a week they are spending in good works.  Some     of us might wonder at times about the book of life and of what is being written     about our own inward journey.  Could it be that the pain that shatters many of     us in our “midnight hours” is a moment of being “still enough to hear God     speak.”

       “Still Enough” [for] Decisions/Changes/[Consequences]—Many of  us may be trying desperately to keep from making decisions [stemming from     being “Still enough” for our Friend-Enemy to direct our path].  Is it conceivable  that “still enough to hear God speak” may require lasting, instant deci-    sions, if one dares to enjoy the company of the Friend-Enemy?      Dare     we go on beating about the burning bush?

       A veteran of prayer says that the conditions of the stillness, of the en-    joyment of God that we have been speaking about means willingness to     change, and to let go of [some of my accustomed things]. John of the Cross     says, “Learn that the flame of everlasting love doth burn ere it transforms.”     Rhodesian Bishop William Gaul suggests that it was sweeter to God to have     someone willing to walk the same mile 1,000 times than to take the more     glamorous 1,000 mile journey.

       Does the “stillness to hear God speak” reach to a willingness to     take the consequences of our actions and very possibly to be used in     [some way that we never thought] we would be willing to accept?        Is     “stillness then an almost frightening intimation that the inward journey     may ultimately sweep away our reservations and may make us both     tender and malleable, and that the prospect both terrifies and lures us     on?  Distracting thoughts do not really screen us from enjoying God if we do    not try to fight against them.  [Once I’ve] acknowledged them, they are no     longer the focus of my attention, for I am here to enjoy God. 

       Growth in Tenderness/Unused Life—[Perhaps in stillness there is  another dimension, namely a willingness to have a heart made full & tender].  If  one is to love God back there is also the need for one to understand the love     of God poured out in Jesus Christ and poured out inwardly upon us each hour     of our lives.  “Still enough . . .” may be still enough to feel what such love     costs God. 

       We carry within us [things unwritten, friendships not made or carried  forward], relationships not healed, family tenderness not shared].  What after     all is the sin against the Holy Ghost other than this unlived life, the un-       used light that may die within us?  Anyone who makes use of one’s soul no    matter how clumsily, participates in the life of the universe.  The  greatest     danger [on the hardest journey] isn't in stopping but in not setting out again.

       [Inward to Outward Bridge/ “If Thou Knowest…—Seeds of concerns  appear when we are still enough to hear God speak. These concerns are the  bridge over which the inward journey often moves outward. We may often make  fools of ourselves, often fail, & often are humiliated. I suspect that this matters  little to God if we have responded to these nudges. I think our Zen brethren     have done much to teach us that you may enter on the inward journey by 1,000  different gates.  [The conventional social ministry may] lead me to God and the    inward journey.  It also could become a routine, loveless, over-active kind of     obsession that had no more obvious Godliness than plumbing or truck driving,     or banking—each of which might become illumined vocations [with the right     attitude].

            An apocryphal story has Jesus saying to a man gathering sticks on the     Sabbath, “O man, if thou knowest what thou doest, blessed art thou; but if thou  knowest not, thou art curst.” When there comes from within that radical disin-    fection of the egotism of good works, when one “is joined to all the living, there     is hope”; then the situation is altered.  Charles Peguy writes, “We must be     saved together, we must come to God together.  Together we must be presen-    ted before God.  Together we must return to the Father’s house.” The only    real tragedy in it all would be that looking over the hardness of the journey,    and the cost of the self-spending, we should as [individuals and as a worship    community]  put back into our pockets the coin of destiny that has been given    to us and turn aside.  “Not in your skill but in your need will you be blessed.”     

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164. Why a Friends School (by Douglas H. Heath; 1969)
            About the Author—Douglas Heath studied at Amherst, and got his  doctoral degree from Harvard, and did post-doctoral work at the University of     Michigan. He is Professor of Psychology at Haverford College. This pamphlet     grew out of a deep concern about current trends in education, [as well as about  growth and maturing]. The author feels that Friends' schools can contribute to  conditions that promote healthy growth.
            I. Contemporary Threats to Friends Schools—I & others have been  skeptical about the value of Friends Schools. Intensive study of a Quaker col-    lege has convinced that the educational philosophy of Friends is more relevant  than it has been for many years. My concern is that Friends schools & colleges,  in abandoning their Quaker identities, lose their power to educate for the needs  of today. 3 threats to Quaker school identity are: secularization of society;  homogenization of values; preoccupation with materialistic value criteria.
             The Quaker presence has diminished in most Friends schools. Students  reject all religious forms and myths as irrelevant. Religious tradition, buttressed  by the progressive education philosophy, [concerned itself with developing the  "whole" child in terms of character, ethical and social values, & maturity. Intel-    lectual excellence gradually usurped our country's goal of human excellence.     No one has [questioned the effect of the drive to excel] on our students as     human beings. Test scores have replaced a student's maturity as criteria for     success.

             The heavy academic emphasis in prestigious schools & colleges is rea-    ping more & more student resistance. Genuine intellectual devotion may not     emerge for students until they have matured in social & emotional relationships.  The shift to intellectual excellence has been aided by the displacement of the  humanities by science & technology. The intellectual standards & way of life of  the scientist have overshadowed & subdued the humanist's ability to locate     science within the context of human & spiritual values. 

            Schools often refer to teachers in terms of their professional field & not     about developing intellectual & moral excellence. The only barrier I see to the     progressive narrowing of students by secularization is the student's increasing     resistance to narrowing. What should the Quaker response be to seculari-    zation? Howard Brinton said Quaker education "should be devoted to ... syn-    thesis ... integration ... sensing the meaning and goal of life ... insight and     mediation." We should keep our sciences strong but we should keep our     humanities, our religious and ethical traditions, stronger.

             Another cultural change is the homogenization of values; it destroys     distinctive group and communal values. [It can be an unintended side effect of]:  being more ecumenical; being more international; intellectualizing our schools;  mass communication; automation. The effect of insipid homogenization is to  undermine communal identification and devotion. I fear that many Friends     schools and colleges may be open to such cultural forces that could undermine  the power of their religious tradition to leaven the individualistic and anarchistic  demands of the times. 

            What is the enduring psychological strength of Quakerism? Mee-    ting for worship, while it begins with each person searching for truth in one's     own way, is an effort to experience a divine corporateness. The enduring    strength of Quakerism lies in the reciprocal and integral combination of     individualistic and communal traditions. A Friends school, deeply aware of the     Quaker assumptionthat a mature individuality develops out of corporate expe-     riences, will not abandon too readily its customs and institutions.

             The 3rd trend is the seductive philosophy of bigger & bigger, & more &     more [is better & better]. Too many of us believe schools stagnate if they don't     grow, that is, become bigger & more complicated. Too often there is no coherent  unity between our means & our goals. Our means become the measure of     quality when we aren't clear what our purposes are. 

            The power of the Quaker tradition to give a distinctive character to a  school is effectively diminished when the school becomes so large it no longer     is a coherent community. Most Friends schools don't have enough dedicated     but qualified Quaker educators & students to serve as the "critical mass" that  brings communal coherence into being. If we allow alleged economics of     expanding size & seductiveness of affluence determine our criteria of value,     we may destroy the educative potential of a Quaker sense of community.

           II. Quaker Schools and the Cool Generation—[Students are deman-    ding changes in Friends' Schools, and] our schools do need to change. How     should Friends' Schools change to better assist their students to be-    come more easily educated and mature human beings? 3 interrelated per-    sonality developments seem to describe how the graduates of secondary     schools have changed since the 1940's in response to modern society: inhi-    bitions and over-control; self-centered intellectualism; overcompensation into     uninhibited living in love-in groups. In the 1st development of inhibitions, the     immaturing effects are seen in his growing alienation from spontaneous emo-    tional expression, and in rejection of dependent, tender, and affectionate     needs and feelings.
            The scope of the current student's world seen through television is     scarcely less limited than that of adults of many years of experience. They are     having vicarious emotional experience before they are mature enough to in-    tegrate such experience into their own personalities. To protect themselves     from the ungovernable intensity of their overstimulated adolescent impulses,     they learn to cool them down. They are knowledgeable about adulthood secrets  but emotionally naive about their meanings.
             In their self-centered intellectualism, they value their own intellectual  talents & develop magical beliefs in their power to solve the world's problem.     They are more willing to accept an isolated & lonely life. Academic activity,     suburban anonymity, impersonal educational process, mobility, family activity     fragmentation, church's loss of influence all keep a young person from having     sustained productive & cooperative other-centered relations. 

            The current student restlessness & discontent in the colleges & increa-    singly in secondary schools may represent a strong reaction against "more of     the same" type of development. College students are increasingly unwilling to     continue to suppress their emotional & social needs to work long hours aca-   demically. One graduating senior said: "There is something precious in the     unenlightened man; something valuable in his ignorance. And that something     ... is his unsophisticated, unreflected upon vulnerability to emotion. His ability to  forget himself."

             Liberal Non-Quakers vs. Quaker Students—What is it our students  need to be able to grow into their full powers? We should listen closely to  those most sensitive to their own inner restlessness: our young artists & sin-    gers, designers, hippies, & political dissidents. The extreme secularization of     their great distrust of traditional political & social theologies of those over 30     perhaps testifies to the young persons' deeply suppressed needs to believe,    to participate in & devote themselves to something, their "own thing," some     genuine cause or belief that is self-transcendent. How do students learn to     be fully & trustingly with another human being?

           Quaker students seem to value an experiential religious rather than aes-    thetic way of life. They are less inhibited, intellectual, and more practical. [They  are realistic in self-assessment of their importance & their knowing. The most     dramatic difference between liberal, religious non-Quaker students, & Quakers  is the quality of their personal relationships; Quaker students were less cynical,  distrustful, and defensive in them. 

            In the case of Haverford College, its principal educational effect was to  encourage its young men to organize their identities around a concept of them-    selves as deeply ethical and principled human beings through the college's     Quaker tradition. I suggest the Friends' schools may have developed or not     discouraged, a greater sensitivity to ethical values and high ideals. Friends'     school students seem to have stronger needs to test their knowledge in action.  What educational ideas & innovations could Friends schools make that     might make them more relevant to the needs of the [sensitive, restless     student]?
            III. For What Should a Friends School Educate?—I believe that the  wisdom & full power of our Quaker tradition could creatively speak to the need     for educational experiences that help express emotions, encourage devotion to  work & service, & an increasing sense of loving corporateness & belongingness.  What insights and ideas does the Quaker way of life have that are relevant  for the problems of today? The uniqueness of Quaker educational philosophy  is found in ways it has been implemented, not in its basic assumptions.
           To become more mature is to become more able to know one's self and  other persons. A Quaker education should be a deeply reflective experience     that confronts students with themselves and their values. More maturity means  a more other-centered person who learns to tolerate, appreciate, love & com-    municate clearly with others. Friends assume that one is basically a corporate     or social person who matures not in opposition to but through his relationships     with others. The Quaker meetings for worship and business is founded on the     principle that all are one in the truth. An education should humanize; it should 

 draw out of one a potential for a more embracing identification with and respect 

 for other human beings.
             A Quaker education should be a corporate experience in which a person  senses one is part of a living community that values and respects one & other  persons as persons. More maturity means a more harmonious and integrated  person, continually open, flexible, curious and actively engaged. One seeks to  act out of wholeness, to act as one believes, to believe as one acts. It is an     experiential approach to life that protects Friends from being encrusted by their  past and which makes them deeply experiential in their life attitude. A Quaker  educator should seek to develop those attitudes and skills that will help one's  students to become more easily educated to experience the truth.
            Cultivating maturity requires the individual to become a more stable or  centered-down person, certain of one's identity, basic values and direction.     Friends would certainly reject those views which assume that one's self is     composed of only those attitudes and beliefs which others have of one. If one is  acting within the truth, then one will be tomorrow what one is today. A Quaker  education should encourage its students to shape their basic identity around the  values of integrity and honesty. 

            A more mature person becomes a more autonomous person, who can  inhibit one's egocentric and impulsive desires, & prevent the blandishments of  society from conforming them; there are no longer any irrelevant influences. To  be able to grow beyond the limits of one's personal history and one's culture in  order to live an affirmative life that is autonomous of everything including one's  self is the goal of most religious persons.
             A Quaker educator should encourage his students to develop the inner  strength to dissent maturely, and to allow themselves to be used by the enor-    mously powerful affirmative forces that are sealed up within their unconscious     lives, in order to live lives of intense passion, religious devotion, and corporate     commitment. [As it now stands], intellectual excellence is supplanting human     excellence. [An "intellectual" educator] dehumanizes the educational process,     and creates resistances in students to more intense intellectual development.     We should strive for intellectual excellence [as part of our goal; it should never     become the goal]. Intellectual excellence strives for truth; personal maturity is     learning how to live fully in the truth.
            IV. The Educative Power of a Quaker Meeting: [Compulsion]—I sug-    gest that a Friends school's most powerful means for the maturing of its stu-    dents is its meeting for worship. Quaker educators are always confronted by 2     irrelevant issues when meeting becomes an issue: compulsory attendance &     age appropriateness. Compulsion becomes a meaningful [main] issue only     when we no longer feel in harmony with the basic values or spirit of the group     to which we feel we must adjust. When someone reacts to compulsion, we        overreact, narrow our perspective, and tend to accept compulsion at face     value, failing to examine it for deeper psychological roots. When defending     compulsory attendance, I would base my arguments on educational and not     religious grounds.
           [Age Appropriate]—There is an argument that this meeting is inappro-    priate for students because they don't have capacity to use quiet worship ser-    vice & that reflective worship is irrelevant & meaningless now; if treated as in-    significant, it becomes insignificant. Educators must be clear why they require     it & devote energy & thought in preparation for it. How can educators lead     young people into meditative use of silence? Friends have always sought     to educate for the world needed for the future. Our children should learn to turn  off the world's ceaseless noise to secure a measure of peace & tranquility. We   don't educate our children in how to become sensitive to & then verbalize their   thoughts & feelings.

             Meeting also provides a time to learn how to enjoy daydreaming, how to  form inner pictures. Perhaps younger children could share their daydreams in  meeting. Could folk music lyrics be used to speak to young people's         hopes and fear? Perhaps a spontaneous, reverent use of music could help 

 bind the meeting together. Quakers need to learn how to go beyond words to    communicate their joys & sorrows as well as insights and leadings. More cre-     ative use of the form of meeting could well help some of them become more  open and responsive to their inner lives. It provides opportunities to learn how  to reflect about one's self and what one believes. 

            Perhaps a freer form of meeting can occasionally be spontaneously  converted into a meditative discussion in which a student problem is confronted.  Indirect guidance for children about how to worship in meeting may sensitize     them more clearly to the process of a Friends meeting. If students are to know     that they are worshiping or near it, they need to experience the process at the     level of their own religious maturity. Larger problems can be interpreted at a     different level of experience and meaning than is usually possible in any other     situation. Meeting, if we will let it, expands the boundaries of self.
            [Meeting Experiences]—Meeting provides an opportunity to experience  the basic Quaker values of respect, loving-kindedness, equality of individual     worth, corporateness. A student can learn that when students speak their tea-    chers listen. Even negative sharing can be used to teach. Couldn't meeting   provide an experience for both students and teachers to participate in   the lives of one another on a radically different basis between genera-    tions? Students need experiences that help them know one another more     spontaneously and intimately.

            A Friends meeting strips away the seductive external irrelevancies on  which children, depend. Integrity grows out of the courage to live our principles.  Ask the students: "What is most important in your life? What is it impor-   tant to be?      What would you be willing to give up to remain faithful to    your convictions?[Ask the questions not only in words, but] in the way you    live.  Meeting can help a student learn how to become an instrument of the     divine forces within rather than to be dependent on the secular ones without.    Non-Quaker Haverford alumni have had revelations & conversion experi-    ences in meeting. 

            The cool kid's philosophy won't let one abandon one's control to have an  emotional experience, but one's repressed need to understand the nature of     one's being leads one instead into philosophy & religion. Educators need to     educate their students about how to use the form of the meeting. We need a     meaningful psychological curricular plan through the age span for religious &     ethical development. A Quaker meeting reconciles the freedom that comes from  individual meditation with the responsibility required of corporate listening and  sharing, involving both individualizing & socializing.
           V. The Maturing Effects of a "Sense of Quaker Community"—What  educates and matures young people? Haverford's ability to create maturing     effects depended upon the combination of: openness to learning specific     maturing demands; coherence of goals and educational means based on     Quaker assumptions on the students that result from those goals; quality of     communal life. A sense of community is more important than the size of the     meeting and its surroundings. In community students deeply prize belonging to  their school and feel personally responsible for its continued vitality. How     powerful are our Friends educational communities?                 

            The potential of Quaker school community life is unexampled but we     aren't clear about how to realize it. The focal conflict for most Friends schools is  how decisions are to be made in a Quaker community. I wonder if we couldn't  be more sensitive to the wisdom contained in how monthly business     meetings are conducted. We say students aren't "mature" enough to partici-    pate in meaningful communal decisions for the school. Student participation in     such decisions might help them mature more responsibly & honestly. Other-    wise Quaker schools will suffer communal divisiveness, an enfeebled religious     life, & unenthusiastic students, less able to learn.
             I believe that just as we must help students to learn how to worship, so     we must help students to learn how to be responsible communal members if the  educative potential of a "sense of community" are to be realized. I am con-    cerned that students learn how to take into account the views of all members     of the school community in the manner of Friends in their decision-making. I  suggest we find practicable ways to involve everyone in crucial communal    decision-making. A fundamental principle of Friends, and violated in most    Friends schools, is that the ultimate responsibility for decisions rests with the    communal group itself. The School Committee should not meet separately    from students and faculty to decide issues about student life.    

            Students need contact with wisdom 2 generations removed from them,     and older Friends must learn to listen genuinely to contemporary students. This  is the only way students will learn to resolve conflicts and search for the truth,  the only way staff and committee members will understand those under  20. If    we are really open to the truth, then we have nothing to fear by sharing  some    of our decisions with others. It may be necessary that the form of business     meeting be varied to be more relevant to the developmental maturity of the     decision-making skills of different-aged children. We should experiment with     and learn how to use the form of business meeting as an educational means    and  opportunity for students to participate in communal decision-making that    will help them gain in maturity.

            [Business Meetings and Decision-Making]—Meeting issues should  include: potential conflict in basic values whose corporate discussion might     enhance the maturing of the whole community; relevance to the developmental  maturity of the participating students; those for which business meeting mem-   bers have competence and involvement; only those concerns which affect the  student members for the years they will be at the school. The community     needs to clarify what its ethical expectations will be for the school year. Lack of  clarity leads to student disorganization and moral confusion. Lack of clarity     about our educational priorities leads to decision-making conflicts. How are    Friends schools helping students mature in how to listen to others, how     to find mutually accommodating solutions to conflicts, and how to make   choices? 

             The practical limitations of Friends business meetings are real, and     solvable if we don't wed ourselves rigidly to one ideal form of decision-making.     Much frustration and conflict of opinion can be tolerated when there is a genuine  Quaker sense of community where diversity of belief flourishes. The community  should agree about how and when to limit its meetings. What is really keeping  us from arriving at some consensus?     Are there other types of proce-    dures with which we could experiment to bring better understanding?
           Headmasters are the focal point of complex and demanding pressures.  They are held responsible by every other group for what happens in their     schools, & most may not be very comfortable sharing decision-making powers     for which only they will be held responsible by others. They may find sharing     decision-making frees them from making decisions that fractures the school's     sense of community [and hurts the learning and maturing process]. Communal  decision-making on some issues could help students & educators understand     the how & the why of each other's beliefs. Through working corporately for the     community's welfare, students may learn how to have meaningful corporate     experiences, to feel they belong somewhere, and grow out of their self-cen-    teredness into an other-centered way of life, learning "skills of being" in the     process.
            VI. The Maturing Effects of Quaker Outreach—The danger that con-    fronts any mystic is that one may abandon fragile ties to the outer world, &     lose   one's desire & will to return into the lives of other people. Encouraging     too much inwardness in young persons risks intensifying their self-centered-    ness & precipitating permanent withdrawal from others. Drugs help young    people to experience suppressed feelings & have "mystical" experiences.     Drugs also encourage privatism & dropping out of involvement with others &      the world's problems.

             Friends have always expected religious experiences will lead to rea-    ching  outward into others' lives. They have a psychological assumption that     growth occurs from extending one's life inwardly beyond one's defined self &     outwardly beyond one's personal community. A Friends school must help its     students develop the desire to form strong caring ties to other persons as well     as to the world outside their school community.

            The type of community we are developing makes it harder to learn how     to care for another. Bigness so impersonalizes our relationships that we know     each other only in terms of specialized roles, in bits & pieces, not as whole    persons. The educational experiences they need most are those that have     the potential for healing: alienation from emotional needs; separation from any   transcendent meaning or ideal; & emotional isolation. When students make    self-transcendence or self-fulfillment a goal, one becomes more aware of    one's self & magnifies one's own narcissism. Educators need to help young     people devote themselves unselfconsciously to some transcending cause     where they will experience a wholeness that will free them to care for  others    even more deeply.

           [Action-Educational Projects]—Students need: action-educational pro-  jects that demand the whole person's participation; to face real problems, &    help solve them; sustained involvement with others to increase awareness of    the human problems' complexity; the project to be reflectively assimilated into     on-going curricular work of the school; the project to be a corporate one. One     such is where students live in a Negro neighborhood & work as school-com-    munity assistants to provide individual attention to the children. They learn     about a wide range of issues around race, education, economics, bureaucracy,  and so on.

             Perhaps the American Friends Service Committee could work with     schools to set up an on-site program integrated into a modified on-going     academic program. Schools could sponsor a Fall or Spring semester nature-    woods educational camp in some marginal rural area to learn 1st-hand about     nature & humankind's ability to adjust to it. There could also be field work that  provided educational and reconstruction service to the local community. Are     educators so fixated on traditional school concepts they can't consider     departures that might increase a student's ability to learn? My hunch is that  if a group of Friends schools developed an imaginative, action-educational pro-    gram that turned on students & made them better able to learn, colleges would    demand more of our students, regardless of their formal academic course     deficiencies.

             There are limited action-educational experiences that could be intro-    duced within one's own school, like older students helping younger students.     For projects out in the community, I would insist on group-organized and con-    ducted projects; we need to socialize the educational process with cooperative  projects. Let's find ways to apprentice our youth to the discipline and romance  of real problems that involve much more of them than just the cerebral parts of     their brain. They are given much more than they have the opportunity to give.    

            In the Negro neighborhood project mentioned earlier, The students lost     their "cool" very early, and became angry at the injustice they saw. They be-    came resentful of their own white exploitative heritage, and affectionately     tender with the needy children they served. The intensity of their communal     living experience, combined with their encompassing emotional involvement     in their work, welded the students together in personal ways they had never     experienced before. 

            They experienced more of themselves, their feelings, prejudices, fears.  They began to learn how to care for others and find ways to express such love.  Never again will these students passively respond to school and society. They  have developed a vision of what needs to be done and what living can be like.  We Friends must witness more forcefully & creatively to our convictions about  how one learns to live as a full human being in the truth. That is the why for a  Friends school today.
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165.  Gandhi Remembered (by Horace G. Alexander; 1969)
            About the Author—Born at Croydon, England, in 1889, Horace Alex-   ander passed from Bootham Quaker School to King’s College, Cambridge     where he received a degree in history. After 20 years as an international     relations lecturer, he was director at Woodbrroke, the English Quaker study     center. [In 1928], he was in India studying opium addiction on the spot.  [He     spent a week at] Gandhi’s ashram.  [After experiencing British arrogance], “I  [accepted] Gandhi’s view of things & worked for Indian freedom.” He lived in    India for over 10 years. 

            “Religion should pervade every one of our actions. It [is] a belief in or-    dered moral government of the universe. This religion transcends [all others]; it  harmonizes them… I would say that Truth is God.”     Gandhi
             Gandhi believed to the end that the country that can set the example of  non-violence, without waiting for its neighbors, will be able to lead the world     away from hatred, fear, and mistrust toward the true community, the harmony of  man.      Horace Alexander.

       [Beginnings]—[At Gandhi’s ashram], he invited me to join him for his     early ½-hour domestic duty, so I was able to have several casual talks with     him; he was easy & simple to talk to, [as well as very direct].  This man, the        leader of India’s revolt against British rule was the creator of a new force in    politics: disciplined, non-violent mass action against systems felt to be unjust     & immoral. When he was assassinated, people around the world wept.  

       Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born October 2, 1869. The family  were devout Hindus. It was thought that a legal training in London was likely to  be the best preparation for a successful career in India. [His mother objected,  but he went anyway, promising that he would remain vegetarian & sexually     pure. He kept his vow on the long voyage, though this meant starving himself     on the ship, which served no vegetarian food. In London he read about [&     experimented with] vegetarianism & became a vegetarian by convincement,     not merely by tradition.

       His 3 years in England helped him find himself. He was content to make  friends with a few congenial Englishmen.  He passed his examination without     difficulty and became a barrister.  Soon it appeared that his English law degree  would not help him in the Indian courts; his cases there were fiascos.  [He     couldn’t be a teacher, either].

       South Africa—He decided to try his luck as a lawyer in South Africa. He  found himself among an Indian population of many thousands. Indians were     recruited under a system of indenture which made it almost impossible to return  to India.  [Whether wealthy or poor, Indians] were still known by the white peo-    ple who ran the country as “coolies.” Gandhi sought a settlement rather than    the trying of the case, demonstrating from the beginning that his view of the    true function of a lawyer should seeking peaceful settlement rather than out-    right victory. Ultimately he stayed on in South Africa for 20 years,& led Indians     in the battle against fresh discriminatory legislation.

       There was something unique about the quality of his leadership which  enable him to achieve extraordinary results.  Gandhi was able to identify himself  closely with all the many people of different languages and religion.  When the  time came for common action, men and women cheerfully underwent prison     sentences again and again.    He settled on land and christened it “Tolstoy’s     Farm”; he became farmer, nurse, and teacher.  He was a profound believer in     the dignity and moral value of manual work. 

       He & General Smuts fought each other vigorously, but they also learnt a  high personal regard for each other.  At an earlier period, when the British were  still governing half of South Africa, [during the Boer Wars], Gandhi organized     an ambulance corps to help the British forces, even though his sympathies         were with the Boers. The Indians showed themselves well disciplined and     courageous under fire, and Gandhi received a decoration for valor. 

       Active resistance to South African law continued for some 8 years, with  intervals for negotiation. Gandhi believed that Smuts had promised to repeal the  legislation requiring Indians to carry passes. When he discovered that the     “Black Act” still existed, he gathered with other Indians to burn their passes     publicly. It can’t be said that the Indians' suffering in South Africa achieved     very much.10 years later Gandhi believed that conditions for Indians in South     Africa were worse than ever. He did demonstrate that mighty governments can    be resisted.

       Back to India—When he returned to India in 1914, Gandhi accepted the  direction & advice of G.K. Gokhale. Gandhi took his advice to keep quiet a year.  When approached on behalf of some hundreds of indigo workers, he checked  out their grievances, found they were real and encouraged resistance.  Gandhi  joined a commission of inquiry, and while he had to give up some of the pea-    sant’s claims, most abuses were swept away. Workers on strike at a cotton    factory near his home came to him for advice. Gandhi supported the workers,    [strengthened their resolve], and they won their case. He demonstrated “sat-    yagraha” [soul-force], the mighty power of truth to be set against the evil of   false hood. 

       The Indian National Congress met in annual session & urged the sharing  of authority. Others want full self-government & they wanted it now. The younger  men resorted to terrorism.  The 1919 massacre at Amritsar finally alienated him  from the British government. The movement Gandhi called for was called off     after a mob burned several police to death. [A “little violence” was acceptable to  others but not to Gandhi]. His satyagraha meant a kind of civil disobedience      that would indeed be “civil.” He was arrested after he called off the campaign,    & served 2 years of a 6 year sentence when he was suddenly stricken with     appendicitis, operated on, & released.

       The Constructive Program—Gandhi was never a politician pure &     simple. The key to all his public action was a passionate concern for the star-    ving millions in India’s villages. His main quarrel with the British Government     was that its policies, far from [making] India more prosperous, were impoveri-    shing & emasculating the Indian people. He was concerned with what he     called “the constructive program,” [which was] important economic & social    reforms. Together with Jawaharlal Nehru, he united the Indian Congress     behind a radical reform program.

       [After early medical release, Gandhi stayed out of politics for another 4   years]. [In light of the Hindu-Muslim riots], he did a 3-week fast in the home of   one of his Muslim friends in Delhi. He traveled from village to village, prea-    ching goodwill among all the people, urging them to solve their own problems,    & to spin for half an hour every day. [Health issues] forced him to a lighter     work load: helping with menial tasks; listening to many visitors to the ashram;     & editing & writing his weekly Young India, a running commentary on public     affairs.  In opposing an excessive increase in peasant land revenue, after     appeals had failed, he encouraged mass disobedience, [which forced] the     government to give way. 

       The Round Table Conferences—The British Government decided to  have a [purely British commission] decide whether India was ready for moving  toward self-government. [All of India] found the appointment method of this     commission insulting. India’s several parties formed their own commission &     made their own plan, called the Nehru report. The British Government invited     Indian leaders to London for a Round Table Conference. Since the government  wouldn’t assure them of full Dominion status, the Indian Congress refused to     take part.

       Gandhi decided to start the campaign by breaking the salt law, which  prohibited taking salt from the sea. Gandhi started the action, which stirred all     of India; many were arrested. Soon they found other laws to break.  In the     absence of the leaders still in jail, [including Gandhi], a number of Indians did     take part in a London conference in the autumn of 1930, [and made progress]     towards a free India government.  Gandhi met with the British Viceroy, Lord     Irwin [which incensed British imperialists], had long heart-to-heart talks, and    made a pact which enabled Gandhi to call off the civil disobedience, and to    take part in the Round Table Conference of 1931.

      For nearly 3 months Gandhi was in England.  Large sections of the Eng-    lish hated him as a dangerous rebel, but others were eager to meet him and to  learn from him.  The working people responded to his outspoken friendliness.      The sophisticated people of England found him difficult to appreciate. He spent  one weekend at Woodbrooke, the English equivalent of Pendle Hill. He joined  the students for the devotional meetings, and one evening visitors plied him     with questions, not all of them friendly, for well over an hour; some misunder-    stood his beliefs when he said that [there might be violence against non-violent  resisters]. 

       A Convert to Silence—I was able to be with him 1 or 2 days each week;  he was never out of temper. The Scotland Yard detectives & domestic helpers  who looked after Gandhi became his devoted friends. English Friends felt con-   cern for the conference. Meetings of silent prayer, holding the conference in    mind, were held each week at Friends House. Several years earlier I had sug-   gested silence in the ashram’s prayers. He replied he didn’t think it would suit     the ashram’s members; & that he wasn’t impressed with South African Quaker     meetings. 

       Gandhi attended 2 meetings at Friends house, in spite of having a bad     cough before the 2^nd one; he was very impressed with the 2 meetings. A few     months later I received a letter from him, now back in India & in jail again.      There had been personal difficulties at the ashram. He had suggested a few     minutes of silent meditation in the prayers each day. He wrote: “This they     have done, & they tell me that things are going better.” The 2 minutes of     silence remained a part of the ashram prayers through the rest of his life. The     work of the Round Table Conference continued in a 3^rd session, and a new    measure of self-government was actually coming into being. 

       Untouchability—[In the midst of this] was a grave & difficult issue. India  had separate electorates for Muslims & Hindus; the Depressed Classes wanted  their own separate electorate. Gandhi resisted this [condition] & reasoning in     the strongest manner. British Prime Minister’s decision was known officially    as the “communal award”; it gave the Depressed classes a separate electorate.   Gandhi declared a fast unto death in opposition. Within a few days the Hindu &  Depressed Class leaders had agreed on a modified plan, which the British go-   vernment accepted & which assured the untouchable communities reserved     seats in the legislatures for many years.

       Gandhi interpreted his release as meaning “release for the prosecution    of his campaign to destroy the system of untouchability.” His new weekly         paper was named Harijan (Children of God), because God is a friend to the     poor; only they should be known as God’s children. [In his campaign], Gandhi     was opposed by orthodox Hindus, & occasionally faced abuse & hostile de-    monstration. It may be fairly claimed that the blows struck by Gandhi in the     1930’s, & vigorously supported by Nehru & other of his colleagues have     broken the old curse of untouchability in India once for all.  

       A New Constitution & World War II—The strong & relentless govern-    ment action against civil disobedience had worn the Congress Party down. In  1937, the new constitution came into force. Elections were held throughout     British India for new provincial assemblies; the Congress won sweeping vic-    tories. In 6 provinces they were able to form ministries. The Viceroy gave as-    surance that governors wouldn’t intervene. Gandhi approved this coopera-    tion in the hope that the ministries might encourage village industries, [econo-    mic and social reforms]. 

       [Progress was made towards complete withdrawal, but when war broke  out in 1939], the Viceroy declared that India was also at war with Germany    without consulting Gandhi or any other leader of Indian opinion.  Before long     the strain between British and Indian became so acute that the Congress     leaders all withdrew from the provincial ministries.  Gandhi was led to initiate     individual disobedience.  After failure of the Cripps Mission in 1942 Congress     again declared for active opposition to British authority. 

       [The threat of Japanese invasion caused Gandhi to issue instruction to     the Indian people on methods of non-violent, non-cooperation with Japanese     invaders.  The government did not wait for the “rebellion” to get under way, but     arrested Gandhi and all the chief Congress leaders, and they remained isolated  from the world until the war was over.  Solution to the Indian government pro-    blem foundered on the Muslim League's claims, represented by M. A. Jinnah,     to a separation from India.

       Independence at Last—In 1945, a new government came into office in  Britain; its leaders were determined to bring about full Indian freedom. It was     hard to convince the Congress leaders, [including Gandhi,] that the British     meant business. A Constituent Assembly to prepare a constitution for a free     India was planned for. But August 1946 to August 1947 saw terrible bloodshed    & violence as Muslim & Hindus slaughtered one another. Gandhi toured on     foot through the countryside, trying to restore courage to the minority & rebu-    king the majority groups. 

        When Lord Mountbatten came as Viceroy in 1947, he found Congress     leaders ready to accept partition. On August 15, 1947, India & Pakistan were     proclaimed free countries. On that day Gandhi was in a deserted Muslim house  in Calcutta. I asked if I might be with him, wherever it might be; [he said yes].   In Calcutta Gandhi and Mr. Suhrawardy, leader of the Muslim League, were     entering into an extraordinary partnership.  They made a pact to live with each     other in an effort to restore peace to this city which had been approaching civil     war for a year.     

       The Miracle of Calcutta—On our arrival, we were greeted with a hostile  demonstration from a number of young Hindus.  Gandhi, with his usual frank-    ness told them how misguided their behavior really was.  When the shouting     started again the next day, he talked to the men, and brought to the window     Suhrawardy, who admitted his shame at the killings last August, adding, “we     should all be ashamed.” Gandhi was intending to spend the next day in prayer     and fasting.  At our prayers the next morning, some young girls came singing     Tagore’s beautiful songs of freedom; they joined us at prayer.  The black     clouds of fear seemed to have dissolved overnight, and the city was basking in  universal goodwill.  Efforts were made from the Hindu side to break this hard-    won unity, but the people of Calcutta would not go back to the evil days from     which they had been delivered. 

       Partition: the Aftermath—The northwest’s partition led to fresh out-    breaks of violence. Millions were driven from their homes on both sides of the  new frontier. During the last months [of his life], when Gandhi was working to     bring goodwill & make India safe for Muslims to live as 1^st-class citizens, I was     often in & out of his room in Dehli. [Many influential visitors] would come for his  advice. One could see the haggard, overwrought look on the face of the visitor  give way to repose. The problem might not have been solved, but the burden  had been lifted.  It was typical of him to find time for all his innumerable friends,  whenever they might need his help. 

       One day in the middle of January 1948, I went into see Mr. Gandhi. It     was his weekly silent day, but we laughed [over a cute photograph].  Not until     after did I realize that he had been all the while in inward agony of spirit.  With     Muslims being terrorized by Hindus and Sikhs, he felt he must begin an unli-    mited fast.  A promise to work for racial harmony led him to break his fast.  A    few days later a Hindu shot him dead.  The shock of his death did more for       the protection & security of the Muslim community than all his efforts over       many months.   

       Gandhi’s Guiding Principles—Gandhi said: “[My critics] have it the  wrong way round. I am a politician who is trying to become a saint.”  His whole     life was a protest against the idea that a religious man is one who withdraws     himself out of the world in to pray and meditate.  Gandhi said: “Religion should     pervade every one of our actions.  It [is] a belief in ordered moral government of  the universe. This religion transcends [all others]; it harmonizes them… I would  say that Truth is God.”  It is partly because the final Truth is so vast & so rich     that each man finds a different aspect of it.  His life was a pursuit of ultimate     truth, with [its] joy of discovery.

       Truth and Non-violence guided him through every crisis.  Gandhi had  strong views about ends and means.  He had no use for short cuts, [especially     violence]. He said to let each contribute all one can to the community; then only  let one begin to think of one’s rights. Let those who have faith in the justice of  their cause demonstrate their convictions by self-suffering.  His dream [was a  country] composed in the main of [productive, tight-knit village community.  His  dream was a [united world], where nations live in mutual respect, where all     obey the moral law of non-violence, and practice mutual aid.  He believed to     the end that the country that can set the example of non-violence, without     waiting for its neighbors, will be able to lead the world away from hatred, fear,    and mistrust  toward the true community, the harmony of man.   

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166.  The atonement of George Fox (by Emilia Fogelklou; 1969)

       About the Author—Born in southern Sweden in 1878. Her doctorate of  theology served as background to her career as a writer (e.g. Saint Bridget of  Sweden; William Penn; James Nayler: The Rebel Saint (1931).) [Her subject  often had to do with the relation between the individual and the group.
            Foreword—Among the earliest example of the tension between inward  guidance and corporate authority was the conflict between George Fox the     “founder” of Quakerism, and James Nayler, a quartermaster in Cromwell’s army  who was converted to Quakerism. In the autumn of 1656, under the stress of     physical & spiritual exhaustion, he allowed himself to be led by adoring, fana-    tical women through the gates of Bristol as a 2nd Messiah. George Fox only     barely pardoned him and Nayler’s name was shunned for nearly 200 years. 

       [Emilia Fogelklou Norlind’s James Nayler: The Rebel Saint (1931) pre-    sented a more just and charitable perspective of Nayler. She saw Fox as the  antagonist whose increasing assumption of authority had precipitated the disa-    ster. During the years since writing her book the author’s viewpoint had shifted  and grown, giving credit to Fox for an indispensable service. The present pam-    phlet is arranged from Emilia Fogelklou Norlind’s 1939 Pendle Hill lecture notes.
            I—So accustomed are we to think of George Fox as “Quakerism’s     Founder” that we fail to realize that his organization of the movement was an     affirmation of a social and spiritual development which had already taken place,  made possible by the emergence of 1st-hand religious experience in many     “1st Publishers of the Truth.” 1st Publishers went out to discover those who     were   already one with them in spirit. Braithwaite wrote: “Farnworth, Aldam, &   probably other members of the Balby group, had reached the Quaker ex-   perience before Fox came among them.” John Lilburne the Leveller said,    “George Fox . . . a precious man in my eyes, his particular actions being no     rules for me to walk by.” [For] the very heart of Quakerism was this: Find your     own teacher.

       The first Friends challenged the whole feudal system in church & state.  Quakers not only sought human equality on social and political grounds, as had  the Diggers and Levellers. Their goal was spiritual revolution. The Thou of a     community could not exist but for an I which had made contact with that greater  self, which tied one to one’s fellows. The feudal background of their childhood  imbued them with a tradition of loyalty & discipline, a great asset to any group     life. The earliest phase of the Quaker movement was woven through with         [these kinds of people] who had first met the spirit of God in themselves and     then in one another.

       The early pairs of messengers were: Howgill and Burrough, Camm &  Audland, Caton and Stubbs, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, and George Fox &     James Nayler. Several in the opposition to Quakerism seemed to reckon     Nayler as the chief Quaker. [He was on his farm recovering from disillusion-    ment and a breakdown after Cromwell proved to be less than the crusader he   first  seemed like. He heard a voice on his own and was further inspired by     Fox, who became his hero and Father, although Fox was younger].

       II—During stressful times Nayler faced a range of problems—family,  land, property, government—which the unlanded, unmarried, politically     indifferent Fox never faced. From 1655-56, the struggling group counted many  dead & broken among the 1st Publishers of Truth, who had lived swiftly &     dangerously. Submissive adherence or adoration from new members     menaced the spirit of Fellowship, and tempted to vanity or self-complacence.
            An unconscious victim of these forces, [an overwhelmed and adored]     Nayler struggled alone in London. It was an atmosphere breeding Messiahs     [and not just Nayler]. He allowed Martha Simmonds and her husband to     “worship” him, fearing to crush the indwelling seed in any one; [Martha’s     adoration was motivated by her resentment of Fox]. Word of these demonstra-    tions reached Fox, imprisoned at Launceston; he was greatly disturbed by the     news. From Launceston issued summons and instructions which, because they  came from a distance, took on the color of edicts. Nayler could not withstand  Simmonds and fled to Bristol.
             Fox’s suspicions of Nayler’s exalted state were for weeks based on  rumors, and aggravated by visits by [“Nayler’s women”], who upbraided him for  dominating the Quaker movement, & bade him bow down to James Nayler.     [Shortly before the extravagance at Bristol, Fox & Nayler met at Exeter. Rather  than reconciling, they dis-played neurotic and stubborn behavior, with neither  giving in to the other, and both feeling betrayed by the other].
             The adoration of Nayler by his disciples, both men and women, and his  response to that adoration, weren't isolated phenomena, nor were they limited     to the Quaker movement. He entered Bristol on a rainy October day, 1656, be-    ing led by his adorers, who chanted “Holy, holy, holy!” The Parliament con-    demned him as a blasphemer and seducer of the people. He was to be pillo-    ried, his tongue bored through with a hot iron, his forehead branded with the    letter B and public whippings in London and Bristol, followed by indefinite     imprisonment.

        III—The Nayler episode and its punishment had wide and terrible con-    sequences. Shame & derision fell over the movement in England & abroad.   Members were identified with the martyr or the survivor. [Other similar signs     had not met with such severe punishment, if any at all]. [The difference in  treatment was due to the change in political climate. There was respect for     Non-conformists when Fox was tried]. They feared plots of Fifth Monarchists     who prophesied a Messiah [when they tried Nayler].

       There was a difference in personalities. Fox was a father figure and     his outright claim to authority was less offensive than was the image of the suf-    fering son which Nayler projected. Perhaps more than any other factor the be-    havior of the hysterical and adoring women roused the fury of Nayler’s judges.   After recovering in mind during his nearly 3 years in prison, Nayler did all in     his power for reconciliation. The breach was outwardly healed thanks to     Dewsbury in 1660. Nayler spent his final months traveling, preaching, writing,     turning scoffing into deep respect. His dying words were: “There is a spirit     which I feel that delights to do no evil.”

       After the death of Hubberthorne, Farnsworth, and Dewsbury, Nayler's    name became buried in hard silence. [Some would not mention him by name].  Fox did not realize that in condemning Nayler he also condemned a blind spot    in himself. Now fear of a too immediate obedience to the Voice marred the     movement, and was destined to reveal its presence in future relationships.

       IV—From this conflict Fox emerged as the unquestioned leader of the  Quaker movement. I now clearly see that Nayler’s approach to community was  still of the medieval or feudal type. Where Fox revealed in his sense of his own  election more urge for power than need for tenderness, Nayler shunned power  and longed for affection. The need for organized action tend to evoke power,  which found its source in George Fox.
             5 years later the Quaker movement faced a 2nd challenge: the Perrot  conflict. John Perrot went to Italy in 1657 to the convert the Pope. To the dried     up meetings [back in England], his emotional fervor gave real refreshment.  Many had been cast into prison [for not removing their hat]. To have meaning,  the Quaker refusal to bow or take off the hat clearly requires that there be a     power before whom one does bow and take off the hat. To many this hat ques-    tion seemed rather futile, but to Fox it was all important, and he reproved Perrot  at length.
             The burden of Nayler must have weighed on Fox, though he says little     of the Nayler story as affecting him individually. Loyalty to Fox had grown        stronger than the sense of fellowship; but Perrot, too had many friends who     dearly loved him. This second conflict was subdued on much the same lines     as the first. Fox saw the very possible dissolution of the Quaker movement, &    he judged harshly, forcing the rejection of Perrot, [& causing a self-imposed     exile of Perrot to Barbadoes in 1662].

       V—The Nayler and Perrot conflicts had made clear the hazards of     unchecked inspiration. During George Fox’s 3 years of imprisonment in Lan-    caster & Scarborough Castles, the trend moved in the direction of corporate     authority. The Epistle of 1666 set the authority of the meeting as a whole over     the attitudes of individual members. George Fox came out of Scarborough in    September 1666 to discover a solution of another kind. He wrote: “And ye    Lord opened to me and lett me see what I must doe: and howe I must order        and establish ye men and women’s monthly and quarterly meetings . . .  every     man and woman that be heires of ye gospel they are heires of this authority.”   But authority could only be exercised by those trained for such service.

       The Quaker [“meeting for worship with attention to business”] was an  extraordinarily successful answer to a complex problem. Spiritual concern and  responsible citizenship go hand-in-hand, & debate alternates with silence. To     us is it democracy, to Fox it was the gospel order revealed again. The gospel     order gave him the fresh gladness of the early days. Because of the scars left     in the Quaker body after Fox’s summary judging in the Nayler and Perrot dis-    putes, conflicts which were subdued rather than resolved, his ordering of the   meetings was interpreted as if it were the final step in dictatorship.

        VI—The ordering was an act of renunciation. Fox dethroned himself     from a leadership that was becoming increasingly stabilized. The genius of Fox  defined in action, not in analyzing, what had already existed as a Quaker     democracy. To reach this insight he had to pass through years of darkness. He  never became conscious of the real content of the Nayler conflict. Fox, who     was “in love of God to all that persecuted me,” was blind when it came to his     old yokefellow. 

       Is it too bold to conjecture that Fox’s sacrifice of power was his uncon-    scious, unspoken but practical atonement for things past—mute in the realm of  words, very real in demonstrative action? He acts as one who has slowly but       surely digested his own sins and mistakes & their teaching. When a man’s     excellence is taken for granted, it isn't easy to conquer the superman in him,     especially in a person of mature age with an overwhelming religious experi-    ence in his youth.

       Fox is the founder, not of Quakerism as a spiritual movement, but of     the group structure through which that movement was able to survive. In orga-    nizational form Fox stated finally what had come into life as a fellowship 20         years before; it could not be quite the same. In discovering a balance be-    tween the claims of the individual and the wisdom of the group, sparked by a    strange synthesis of power & sacrifice, the great survivor rescued the Quaker    fellowship and bequeathed it to the future. Not the founder of a creed, he    provided an organization where it would be possible for living individuals to be  their creed.

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167.  William Penn: mystic as reflected in his writing (by Elizabeth  
           Gray Vining; 1969)

       About the Author—Elizabeth Gray Vining’s biographies include: Crown  Prince Akihito; Rufus Jones; John Donne, Flora McDonald.  The present work  penetrates the shadow of the political and Quaker leader William Penn to re-    veal Penn the mystic. She also adds a perceptive word on the “tender motions  of the Light” which may well be of service to present-day seekers.

       “A Man, Like a Watch. . .”—Penn would appear to have been wholly     an activist, [given his personality, his frequent travels in his world of England,   Ireland and Europe, and to the New World, and the volume of writing he did].      Yet this activist was also, like Fox, Barclay, and Penington, a mystic. He under-    stood and valued the Quaker silence and gave suggestions for its use that are  valid today. The word “mystic” was used in connection with Quakerism in the  17^th century by both Barclay and Penn. Penn wrote in 1671:  “Oh how many     profess God and Christ according to historical knowledge of both but never     come to the mystical and experimental knowledge of them.”     

       Penn’s writings fall in the categories of: letters; politics and government;  religious writing, both scholarly & reflective.  The most consistently mystical of     all these writing was No Cross, No Crown.  The 2nd version of this book was     written 12 years after the first, and has gone through several editions during the  300 years since it was published.  Penn is not easy to read, often pompous,     long-winded, and repetitious.  At its best his style is vigorous, suited to his     material occasionally simple and touching, sometimes beautiful.  [Penn’s writing  mechanics were as erratic as his writing style]. 

       Penn’s Own Experience/Inward Religion/The Nature of Light—    William Penn had a mystical experience as a child that he never forgot, while     his father was in political disgrace.  Alone in a room he experienced a strong     and comforting sense of God’s reality and presence.  He wrote: I never had     any other religion than what I felt, excepting a little profession that came with     education.  [When my soul finally] “meeting with Truth (knowledge of that in-    ward part that I was to have my regard to), I embraced it with gladness of     heart, though it was as sharp as a well-pointed dart, because of iniquity.” 

       From the “outward courts & suburbs of religion” which he equated with  historical Christianity he urged people to find true religion by turning inward:      “The world talks of God, but what do they do?  They pray for power but     reject the principle in which it is.  If you would know, [worship, and serve] God     as you should, you must come to the mean He has ordained . . . and given     for that purpose.” 

       To Penn as to other early Quakers the light within was Christ's light:      “Wherefore salvation is not yet come into thy house, though it is come to thy     door & thou has been often proffered it and professed it long.  There is hopes     thy day isn't yet over & that repentance isn't yet hid from thine eyes. His holy    invitation continues to save thee.”  The other names for it were: Seed; the         Holy Divine Principle; Word of Truth.  

       The Light was universal.  Perhaps Penn went further than many other  Friends in asserting that in all ages men had had enough of the Holy Spirit for     their salvation.  Penn set forth for his children in simple form his belief in the     Light of Christ and its universality.  [It was advice that apparently and unfortu-    nately they did not follow]:  “As you come to obey this blessed Light in its holy     convictions, it will lead you out of the world’s dark and degenerate ways and     works and bring you into Christ’s way and life.

       The Light its own Authority—Penn wrote Some Fruits of Solitude &   Essay Toward the Present and Future Peace of Europe during a time of house  arrest & enforced leisure.  Most Christians in the 17^th century denied the pos-    sibility of continuing revelation.  As Penn wrote: “The traditional Christian in     his ignorant & angry mind denied any fresh manifestation of God’s power & spi-   rit in man in these days, though never more needed to make true Christians.” 

       “[Just as manna was] it daily must be gathered & eaten, & manna     gathered yesterday cannot serve today for food.”  “The same sure principle     of Light and Truth that hath wrought a convincement upon our understan-   dings is able to give us that succor and support if our minds be but seriously     stayed therein as shall sanctify us throughout in body, soul and spirit and so   preserve us clean to God over all.”

       Preparation for the Light—“True worship can only come from a heart     prepared by the Lord.  And whatever prayer be made or doctrine be uttered &  not from the preparation of the Holy Spirit, it isn't acceptable with God, nor can  it be the true evangelical worship.  How shall preparation for the Light be  obtained?  By waiting patiently yet watchfully & intently upon God.  Stand still    in thy mind, wait to feel something that is divine to prepare and dispose thee  to worship God truly & acceptably.  It is God that discovers and presses wants    upon the soul, & when it cries it is God alone that supplies thee [i.e. “Waiting     upon the Lord, not for him” (Brinton)].

      Penn’s writings are full of admonitions to wait upon the Lord, whether  alone or in company with other worshipers.  In The Christian Quaker, Penn and  George Whitehead a nswer the arguments advanced by Thomas Hicks, a     Baptist, [with Penn responding from a philosophical standpoint].  “[In meeting]  do you sit down in true silence, resting from your own will & workings, &  waiting upon the Lord, with your minds fixed upon the Light until the Lord  refresheth you & prepares your spirits and souls, to make you fit for His  service?”  

       The Tender Motions of the Light/Silence—It is significant that the  words Penn used for the apprehension of Light are so often words suggesting     delicate, tender, almost imperceptible movements within the mind and heart.  “The still voice is not to be heard in the noises and hurries of the mind, but in   a retired frame.”  “Love silence, even in the mind, for thoughts are to that as   words to the body, troublesome.” “Beware of idolatry and worshiping images    ... the imaginations you have of God & which you conceive without inspira-    tion of the Almighty... Do not bow down . . . when on the contrary it is nothing     else but a mere picture of your own making.”

       Distractions/A Rule to Follow—Lawful as well as unlawful thoughts  are a perilous distraction in silent meditation.  “You may think about lawful     things unseasonably, when you should be wholly retired, or carelessly, with-    out regard to your guide, or excessively, more than is needful.”  “The Enemy     will seem to act to advocate for the justice of God, that he might cast you into     despondency that you may doubt of deliverance and salvation.” 

       In 1699 Penn wrote to his children simple directions for spiritual life's     daily practice.  “Read the Old Testament for history; the Psalms for meditation     and devotion, the Prophets for comfort and hope, but especially the New     Testament for doctrine, faith and worship.”  “I refer you to the light and spirit     of Jesus that is within you and to the scriptures of truth without you, and such     other testimonies to the eternal truth as have been borne in our day. . .  The     evening come, read again the Scriptures.”  It is disconcerting that Penn’s     children turned out so badly.  It's possible that they got too much good advice, 

       Withdrawl and Return/The Sum of it All—“Nor is a recluse life much     more commendable or one whit nearer to the nature of the True Cross; for if it     be not unlawful it's unnatural, which true religion teaches not...  True godliness  doesn’t turn men out of the world but enables them to live better in it & excites  their endeavors to mend it. . .  Not that I would be thought to slight a true re-    tirement, for I do not only acknowledge but admire solitude.  Christ himself     was an example of it; He loved and chose to frequent mountains, gardens,     seasides.  [Indeed, Penn thought it necessary for the afflicted, the tempted,     the solitary and the devout to be] “thereby strengthened [that they] may with     more power over their own spirits, enter into the business of the world again.”

       The inward communion with the divine led to something positive in the  outward life, not merely to comfortable and pleasant feelings.  The Light first of  all lit the dark places and revealed the sin in one’s life and then gave the power  to get rid of the sin.  The life was changed & for the better.  The soul was     called to good works.  The virtues [gained] are those of the Sermon on the     Mount & Paul’s Epistles, which early Quakers took to be not only enjoined but     possible to achieve. 

       Penn was concerned with economic justice too, [about] alleviating the     poor’s condition not by condescending gifts but by justice.  [As active as he     was], he might have been more sensitive than most to the dangers of over-    doing service.  He cautioned about the necessity of distinguishing between     that which issued from one’s own will and that which came from the will &     motion of God's spirit in oneself.  “Run not in your own wills.  Wait for His     word of command.”

       Like most true mystics Penn in the end came to the simplicity & power  of love.  “Nor can spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine  Principle, the root and record of their friendship.”  To Penn at the end of his     active and often turbulent life, the essence of all religion was the love of God:     the love of God for man, the love of man for God and for his fellow man in God:   “Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity, but for that lesson it should be most  our care to learn it.  Difficilia quae pulchara [Things that are excellent are diffi-    cult].”  “Love is above all, and when it prevails in us we shall all be lovely & in     love with God and one with another.”        
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168.  The MODERN PROMETHEAN: a dialogue with today’s youth 

    (by Maurice S. Friedman; 1969)

       About the Author—Maurice Friedman was born in Tulsa, OK in 1921.  He received a B.S. from Harvard, M.A. from Ohio State, & his Ph.D from the   Univ. of Chicago. He spent 3½ years in Civilian Public Service camps for    COs; he is on the teaching staff at Pendle Hill. This pamphlet’s substance     was given as the C. W. Gilkey Lecture in Chicago. His books: Martin Buber:     Life of Dialogue; Problematic Rebel: Melville, Dostoievsky, Kafka, Camus.

       [Youthful Dialog; Campus revolt]—If I am impelled to a dialog with  today’s youth, it is not because I believe my truth is superior, but because I     believe in the possibility of real dialog.  [I've had] a ¼ century of concern with  the absence of an image of authentic personal and social existence that might  help us find a meaningful direction.  By 1958 the [complacency of students]     changed with the civil rights movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating     Committee, and the beginnings of the “freedom rides” in the South.

       The most notorious element in the “youth scene” is the drug cult, which     spread outward from Greenwich Village & San Francisco’s North Beach &     Haight-Ashbury. Perhaps 1 reason why young people take drugs is in order    not to communicate with their parents, teachers, & the Establishment. [This    not communicating] is a negative rebellion behind a desire to have a ground  of their own. Today there is such a rapid change in all the essentials of culture     & society, there is little way parents can pass down their lifestyle to their     children. An LSD-user said to me, “You’re taking time & death much too     seriously… Those who have had enough trips tell me neither are real.”

       The congealed violence that lies just beneath the surface in family life,     civic administration, government, & international relations, gives glaring evi-    dence of how much the alternatives “violent” and “nonviolent” falsify the con-    crete situation.  One may use nonviolence as a technique, without dialog and     without love.  One Eastern college president characterized the revolt on cam-    pus with one word: “hostility.”  It is in the great Multiversities—the Berke-    leys and Columbias—that the revolt on campus has erupted into sit-ins and “confrontations.” 

       The large & impersonal nature of the multiversity plus the atmosphere     of mutual mistrust are quite as important factors in the student rebellions that     arise as any specific issues. The very essence of multiversity is an expansion of  education coupled with a contraction of mutual contact between teacher and  student.  [There is a] growing trend of “education for openness.”  There are     dynamic group processes that take place & that may be recognized & under-    stood without manipulation of or threat to the students.  The [pending] revo-    lution may lead to the release of untold potential for learning & understan-    ding.  It may also lead to a new mindlessness in which careful thought and    learning are put down in favor of easy insight or “spontaneous” feeling.

       The world that today’s youth has inherited is [one in which humanity] no  longer knows what it means to be human & we are aware that we do not.  The     death of man has come riding into our century, and each successive holocaust  (Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Vietnam, Biafra) has set the stage for a still more abys-    mal one.  The brutal murders in France and Germany have been paralleled in    our days by the assassinations of Trotsky, Gandhi, Malcolm X, Medger Evers,   Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy.

       The degradation of man is both fruit & root of the degeneration of the life  between person & person. The Jews’ & gypsies’ dehumanizing by the Nazis     was as terrible as their extermination. [Common questions used when people     interrelate is:] “What’s your line? What do you really want out of me & why?”      An even more potent source of mistrust is the polarizing of concrete reality into  catchwords [that force an either/or, for/against choice].   

       No reconciliation was ever achieved through ignoring real differences, or  attempting to impose a sense of unity where there is none.  [There is a growing  sense] of a new authoritarianism of premature certainties.  [What] today’s youth   is passing through is not just an identity crisis, but a crisis of confirmation and  the image of man.  [The confirmation is] of one’s right to exist as the unique     person that one is and can become.  Most parents have probably never been     able to give this confirmation to the children because their own needs and     anxieties in a world of depression and war have distorted [unconditional] affir-    mation into a [parent/child] contract.

       There is a dualism of thought [vs.] feeling.  In reacting against the over-    whelming mass of information, some resort to “pure feeling.”  But the sickness     of thought divided from feeling is not cured by turning the psyche upside-    down.  “Pure feeling” is as much a symptom of this illness as detached intel-    lectuality.  There is also a cult of self-realization, [in which] the relation to     others and the response to life situations [become] means to that goal.

       [Modern Man Archetypes]—Modern Vitalists=liberating vitality; Modern  Mystic=personal experience of the mystical; Modern Pragmatist= [the effects of  an object/thought are the same as the object/thought]; Problematic Rebel=     rebelling against existence.  The Modern Vitalist believes that the release of     vitality and energy into life [is the ultimate goal].  The Modern Mystic [places     the personal mystical experience as the primary concern].  The current fasci-    nation with mind-transforming drugs as a source of “religious experience” is an  excellent example of this trend.  

       The Problematic Rebel’s [resistance] is a complex, contradictory set of  attitudes and actions that reflects the problem; it is one’s reaction to one’s alie-    nation and inner division.  The Modern Rebel has neither the Greek, Biblical     Judaic, or Christian base on which to stand.  The Problematic Rebel is a     Prometheus without the order that supports Prometheus in his struggle with     Zeus; he is a Job without trust in God.  He must find his calling without knowing  even that he is being called.  There is the haunting fear that his rebellion may  be merely neurotic reaction rather than a courageous witness of man against  his destroyer.

       [Modern Promethean; Modern Job]—There is a choice between pos-    tures which deepens our alienation & [those] postures which withstand &     transform. The Modern Promethean tries to recover the true existence from     which he has been alienated by denying the reality of the independent other     that  confronts him. The Problematic Rebel’s self-affirmation undermines the     ground of his own existence by emptying the reality that confronts him of any     meaning. One alternative to denial of the absurd is the Dialog with the Absurd     which finds meaning in the very encounter. [Doctor Rieux of Camus’ The     Plague &] his affirmation is a witness to humanity wrested from the heart of     the inhuman. Rieux is a Modern Job, who as an atheist, contends with the    Absurd [rather than God].

       At Biblical faith’s center stands not belief but trust. Job rebels when life  becomes insupportable to him. Job’s temptations are that he may find it im-   possible to bring his suffering into his dialog with God, [&] that he won't stand     his ground & witness for his own innocence when no one else will. In the end     Job withstands both temptations. His protest becomes a protest against the     suffering of all people. At the heart of the Book of Job stands trusting & con-   tending, recognizing his dependence on God yet standing firm on the ground    of his created freedom.  

       Standing one’s ground before what confronts one rather than giving way  before it or trying to escape it mark the Modern Job. The Modern Job neither  accepts evil nor cuts himself off from history to avoid it.  In each new situation,  Job affirms where one can affirm and withstands where one must withstand.   Openness & dialog lead inevitably to rebellion, but one that does not reject the  reality or value of the independent other that confronts one.

       Our contrast between the Modern Promethean & the Modern Job sheds  light on the basic paradox of self-realization, namely, that it is something that     cannot be aimed at directly.  The Modern Promethean attempts to find meaning  and value in his own subjectivity.  The Modern Job finds meaning even in his  meeting with the absurd.  We know our potentiality only as it becomes actu-    ality in our response to each new situation.  The choice again and again is     between responding to the demands of the situation with the resources that     are available to us, and failing to do so.  We ought not aim directly at beco-    ming a certain sort of man or even at finding and realizing an image of man.    We must not obscure  the sober reality that an imperfect society must pro-   duce imperfect men.

            In this time of abstractions, this “vast conspiracy of silence,” some one is  needed to give a meaning [& dialog] to everyday life.  The Modern Job speaks  so concretely from his historical situation that he expresses in the same action  the duty of man as man. I also celebrate the Problematic Rebel because of     what he can become.  I trust in his courage to persevere through the dark times  ahead—affirming where he can affirm and withstanding where he must with-    stand.  From the gropings and contradictions of the Problematic Rebel there     may yet emerge a new trust in existence, a new image of man. 
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169. Holy Morality: A Religious Approach to Modern Ethics (by Carol 
           Murphy; 1970)           
            About the Author—Carol R. Murphy has written 9 Pendle Hill Pam-    phlets, the 1st being The Faith of an Ex-Agnostic (#46; 1949). Her journey has  brought her through religious philosophy and pastoral psychology to the na-    ture of man. In the present pamphlet she deals with the immediacy and simpli-    city demanded by modern ethics. 
            “Without the spring of action that arises from the deeper level, a dimen-    sion where arguments and strategies do not exist, the world solutions turn to     dust and ashes.”       Carol M. Murphy
            [Introduction]—[Immediacy & simplicity]. Now is were we live, now is     where the past must be overcome, now is where we meet others, now is where  we must find God's presence. This now is concrete & non-verbal. Our fixation  of attention on some problem presenting itself blinds us to the present reality      of now. How can we do without the problem-centered approach in the     realm of moral behavior? Can we afford to live only in the present mo-    ment? [A problem can be made irrelevant, at least in a particular situation,    by an immediate, direct, person-to-person approach. Most of the world lives on   the problematic level and looks for rational or useful solutions. But it is only       at the deepest [inner] level that the man of holy simplicity meets his fellow man. 

            Moral Dilemmas—Peculiar to the moral realm are non-rational con-    flicts of [which good to keep, which good to sacrifice], the dilemmas between     compromise and disaster. Ethical action always takes place in a concrete and     unpredictable predicament, and is not to be understood by generalizations or     even by precedent from some past decision. [If someone takes the belief of     preservation of life to what seems like an extreme to us], must we not honor the  impulse that would sacrifice self for another’s life? What we honor is a quality of  being.
            Objective and Subjective—Simplicity can be called mystical in the     sense that mystics aim at a restoration of the primal unity before [the object/     subject split]. For the Western consciousness, particularly for the Christian, it    is love which restores this mystical unity, a falling in love outwards. In the    words of The Phoenix and the Turtle: “2 distincts, division none:/ Number there  in love was slain.”

            The Christian community ideally is where the inner reality of each is as  real to [all the others] as it is to one’s self. The Christian moralist must maintain  that true life is found in outgoing love; that our lives aren't our own because we  are members one of another. It is humankind’s tragedy that this state of new,  mystical being should be a sometime thing, & so often appears to be an impos   sible ethic judging our self-divided condition.
            Religious or Non-religious—There are deeply good people who have  no name for God; [if they have] loving simplicity, they know divine reality in their  own experience. Holiness is a mark of this condition of awareness; holiness is     at the heart of religion. In this sense the morality of holiness must be religious; it  must spring from & point to a reality greater than man’s idealism. If this world is  “natural,” then the state of true being, New Being is “supernatural,” since its     appearance is miraculous to us, & supercedes the problematic life we normally  lead. The supernatural is a realm of love, [not of divine manipulation], where     every entity is valued for itself. [Holy simplicity can only answer in word & deed  that it is enough that every thing exists; they are to be wondered at & loved].

            Ends & Means—[Using pragmatism & speaking of] “the greatest good     for the greatest number,” the end must justify the means, & nothing but love is     an end in itself. This devalues all creation save God. The morality of holiness     begins with the concrete situation; it sees the situation sacramentally as afire     with God. In a realm of ends, the means is the end, & to live by the means of     love is to have attained the end. [Much of what goes on in the world is 1 person  manipulating another]. People don’t have to be manipulators; they can be     actualizers, reaching & trusting the inner core of the other. The actualizing     person values others & dwells in the kingdom of ends.
            Much of what appears to be “nonviolent” is merely carrying manipulative  war by other means. [So long as an action is run on the “I win-you lose” princi-    ple], “nonviolence” can be a kind of moral blackmail. [When] idealists become    disillusioned [& accept violence as necessary], partisanship replaces commit-    ment, and “we must win and they must lose” becomes the order of the day.          James W. Douglas points out: “The faith of nonviolence is a faith in the human    spirit’s permanent capacity to open itself to truth.” We must concede that    nonviolent methods bring visible results most surely when there is common  ground between the participants and the breach between is not too wide.  Human nature has its limitations, and the thin strand of brotherhood may snap,  and the loving approach seems to fail. How is one to define “working” or     “not working”?

            Law and Freedom—[With holy simplicity], love gives freedom from law,  but love always has its own obligations, even to the laying down of life. There     is an impersonal condition in families & societies one might call “good order.”   [The good or common order calls for the doing of chores]. The individual must  respect the common order, no matter his private “hang-ups.” [Such systems     are usually] alienated, pragmatic & manipulative. [To what degree must     those seeking transcendent values be disaffiliated from the system]?    Some practice charity to correct society’s inequities. But as Pope Pius XI   said: charity is no substitute for justice unfairly withheld.

            The revolutionary supposes himself to the advocate of a more funda-    mental change, but he usually replaces one kind of oppression with another.       John Adams said: “Power always thinks it has a great Soul and vast Views     beyond the Comprehension of the Weak, & that it is doing God Service,    when it is violating all God’s laws.” The one who dwells in holy simplicity re-   fuses to overthrow the system by violence, yet one also escapes the fate of  becoming a new establishment. He is to be a constant minority, the salt that     does not lose it savor. One must concern one’s self with the world without con-    forming to its unloving way. G. K. Chesterton said: “It is sometimes easy to    give one’s country blood & easier to give her money. Sometimes the hardest   thing is to give her truth.

            Moral Education—Traditional ways of education in morality based on  conscience are in flux, however, so we shall have to blaze a new trail, following  the positive values of peak experiences. [Our “do’s” & “don’ts came] from our     parents, who spoke with the borrowed voice of their families & cultural tradi-    tions in which they were brought up. The adolescent identifies more with his     fellows than his parents—other young people seeking to exercise their own     right of [questioning and] judgment. Parents’ laxity in asserting any values is     breeding a generation too mistrustful of any value to sacrifice a moments plea-    sure for it. Freudian maturity frees us from authority; maturity also calls us to     discipline; the 2 seem incompatible.
           Play has it relevance even for us serious humans. In making its means  its end, playfulness is natural to the state of holy simplicity. The moral integrity     & truth to vocation is not the result of moralistic indoctrination, but of growing     up in the loving matrix of family and community relationships. As the family re-    presents the relationship into which one is born, so marriage represents a     chosen and adult relationship. The immature immoralist will avoid commit-    ment, the immature moralist will to be faithful because he has taken vows, the     mature person is willing to take vows because he or she intends to be faith-    ful. The danger in marriage is in allowing rigid legalism to separate the forms     and constituents of a relationship from its heart. Be honest and faithful, and     you can be trusted to redeem the particular occasion.
           Being lies behind doing, and the particular way followed derives its value  from the manner and spirit in which it is followed. Defined in a non-legalistic     manner, poverty, chastity, and obedience are signposts on the road to a holy     morality. Poverty is both non-attachment to inner defensiveness & the depen-    dence on outward symbols of security and status; it does not necessarily mean  renouncing possessions. Chasity is the love of persons for themselves and not  for the pleasure they can arouse. Obedience is sensitivity & readiness to an-    swer to the leadings of holy simplicity. Holy simplicity must remain relevant to    the tragic complexities of life.

            This sort of growth in character & decision-making has in the religious     tradition taken place through prayer. It isn’t a matter of looking for visible signs     & wonders; something has already happened & one has only to appropriate it     in trust. Past & future are collapsed into now. [As with a cut finger], you know,  though not in detail, that certain healing processes are already at work. When  “answers” come through prayer, after a turning away from the problem to God,  one needn’t allow the skeptic to persuade us that this is “only” drawing on hu-    man creativity.

            [In holy simplicity’s decision-making process], we deal with the now—the  Kingdom of Heaven's power already at work. We go beyond the rational in     dealing with moral dilemmas; we gain help in seeing over them. The holy mo-   ralist must receive his inspiration through agony—spiritual struggle. It is only     through the courage to be imperfect & to take responsibility for one’s interpre-    tation of the Light within that we grow toward perfection.

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170. Edward Hicks: Primitive Quaker (His Religion in Relation to his 

        Art) (by Eleanore P. Mather; 1970)

       About the Author—Born a Friend, Eleanore P. Mather graduated from     Westtown School & from Mt Holyoke College. She has been editor of Pendle     Hill Pamphlets. Though the present pamphlet points out cultural and social     evidences of Quakerism in Edward Hicks’ painting, its special emphasis is on     the inward aspect of his religion.

       What is a Primitive Quaker?—Edward Hicks (1780-1849) is now re-    cognized as America’s foremost primitive painter, & his Peaceable Kingdoms     & other works are sought after by museums from coast to coast. Hicks served    his Newtown meeting as preacher, minister, committee member, as well as      sweeping & laying fires before meeting. He applied the term “primitive” to early   Christians and to early Quakers. 

       Wrote Hicks: “Under the influence of this blessed spirit my soul finds a     sweet union with all God’s children in their devotional exercises, whether . . .     Protestant . . . Roman . . . Hindoo . . . or [Native American].” Divine revelation     might be a few broken words spoken by an uneducated man, woman, or child.  It was the work of George Fox to organize these fervent seekers into a form of  church government which might serve as a balance to the extreme individu-    alism of the faith.

        Edward Hicks Becomes a Preacher—Edward Hicks wasn’t born a  Quaker; he became one at 23. His parents were Tories and Episcopalians. With  British defeat came impoverishment for Hicks’ father and his 3 children. Eliza-    beth and David Twining fostered Edward for a decade; he looked back on this     time wistfully. Isaac wanted a law education for his son, but settled for an     apprenticeship in a coach painter’s shop. His master also ran an inn. 

       Hicks wrote: “Licentious lewdness was much more a besetting sin, and  my preservation from ruin in this way appeared a miracle, for I certainly in-    dulged in lewd conservation.” He joined Middletown meeting in spring 1803;     neither his  spiritual or financial progress was smooth. “I went staggering     along, still keeping my neighbors faults in the wallet’s front end, & my own     behind my back.” A female Friend influenced him “to talk less, pray more.”
            [Hicks’ first vocal ministry] was “but a few words that I could utter, & on  taking my seat, I wept almost aloud.” [He was filled with love & concern for     everyone for 2 or 3 weeks afterward]. “I not only borrowed money but [also]     sentiments and language; hence I passed, like too many others, for more than I  was worth.” He was officially recorded a minister at Middletown in 1812. In     1815 he helped found Newtown Preparative Meeting, which was to be his     lifelong meeting.

       Edward Hicks was an outstanding traveling minister in the Friends  mis-    sionary work that lasted well into the 2nd half of the 19th century, traveling to     Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Long Island, New York, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana &  Canada at his own expense. He had a gift for preaching at funerals, and also  used his speaking talents against the hypocritical and self-righteous, against     the lukewarm and the libertine.

       Like so many old-time Quakers he was a man of one message. His  Noah’s Ark promises the serenity of a new and better order within. “Public     Friends” experienced: primitive innocence; juvenile frivolity; acceptance of the     Light after inner struggle; public testimony in meeting; adoption of plain dress,     and usually a sense of social concern. He was not a concerned abolitionist or     pacifist, but perhaps his art, a translation of spirit into action, took the place of     the more specific social concerns of his generation.
            The Preacher Becomes an Artist­­—Several years after his move to  Newtown Edward Hicks tried farming and failed miserably; he turned back to     painting. It is significant that he was a craftsman before he was an artist. [The     usefulness of his painting made his occupation more acceptable]. He referred     to his art in an apologetic parenthesis as “being the only business he was able  to follow.” Hostility to art in the early years of the republic was not confined to  Quakers, or Puritans. If his neighbors disapproved of painting, at least they did  not laugh at his. Alice Ford said: “His lack of opportunity [for training] is our     good fortune; his well spring of genius was spirit.”

       [In his painting craft, he learned to grind his own colors. He painted coa-  ches, houses sign posts to tavern signs. He used flat colors, bold and deco-    rative outlines, and a casual approach to proportion & perspective]. The pro-    duct is what Holder Cahill has defined as “folk art.” Cahill writes: “There is no    doubt that these works have technical deficiencies from the academic and    naturalistic point of view. The folk artist tried to set down not so much what     they saw as what they knew and felt.”

       His work is startlingly original, though he used time-worn themes, and  borrowed other people’s figures. With all his originality he still reveals the prac-    tical tradition of a craft rather than the academic tradition of formal art. [The     Residence of David Twining (1787)] reflects the world of an American Quaker,     with something in the mood and technique suggesting a more remote age;     there is even a touch of the Holy Family about it all.
           The Folk Artist and His Community—When Edward Hicks joined the     Society of Friends he acquired a religion and a community. He cherished this     adopted world, but he did not always get along with it; Edward wasn't a peace-    able Quaker. He berated them about their un-Quakerly behavior, higher edu-    cation, and even abolition as a political cause of factions and distraction from     the inward life. He even sharply criticized Lucretia Mott. [Even] he wrote: “I  certainly have no merit, and am really astonished that such a poor creature as   I have always been, should ever have attained to such a standing in Society,   and had so many good friends.” With his immediate family he was warm and    tender.

       Though he was obstinate, prejudiced, and contentious, his faith was     unswerving, & he became the voice of Bucks County Quakerism. His coaches     & sleighs sped over its thoroughfares; his signposts directed travelers on their     way; his tavern signs offered them refreshment; his painted furniture and easel  pictures adorned their parlors. Friends and non-Friends alike flocked to hear  his preaching. Edward Hicks might be estranged from his own time, but not     from his own people. He had his family, his church, his village, and his county,     all interwoven to form a solid social fabric which the modern [city-dweller] can    scarcely comprehend.

       The Kingdom of Conflict—Using Isaiah 11:6-9 as a text, Edward     Hicks painted numerous sermons on the peaceable kingdom they describe.  There are at least 3 ways in which these paintings relate to the artist's religious  beliefs: traditional, organizational, and inward. The traditional Quaker ideal of   peace between nations was probably a strong fact in his original choice of the   subject. Penn’s treaty with the Indians, borrowed from an earlier Quaker artist     appears in most of the Kingdoms. A strong motivation for some of the King-    doms was organizational, in particular the conflict that led to the great Separa-    tion of 1827.

       Near the end of the 18th century, Philadelphia meetings tended to lay     increasing stress on the outward atonement of the historical Christ and on the     Scriptures. Opposing this trend was Elias Hicks, Edward’s cousin. His empha-    sis on Quakerism’s mystical side caused concern to Philadelphia Yearly Mee-    ting elders. Country Friends embraced Elias, & because Edward considered    the Orthodox trend as encroaching on primitive Quakerism, and because he    was a great admirer of Elias, it was inevitable that he should be drawn into the  controversy.

       The Orthodox movement was led by a clerk and a former clerk of the  Yearly Meeting. They tried to write a creed, and take rights away from the     monthly meetings; it was a conflict between ministers and elders, between     inspiration and authority. Orthodoxy prevailed, and Elias was barred from     preaching in the Philadelphia area; Hicks' followers withdrew. Both sides be-    lieved they were defending the true faith.

       Around 1820 he produced his 1st Peaceable Kingdom. [In the left back-    ground was a representation of Penn’s treaty with the Indians. In the right fore-    ground was a group] consisting of a child with its arm around a lion’s neck, a     steer, lamb and wolf, leopard and kid. As the decade progressed Hicks painted  many variants of this simple scene. The Separation of 1827 change the back-    ground of the painting from Penn to a pyramid of Quakers, [Fox, Penn, and     Barclay at the top, George Washington and Elias Hicks at the bottom] bearing     a banner.
            In an early Peaceable Kingdom (1820), Hicks borrowed the composi-    tion from Richard Westall. To it he added Penn’s treaty with the Indians; some  of them have a lettered border with a paraphrase of the verses. The Separa-    tion of 1827 created Hicksites & Orthodox, & changed the composition of the    Peaceable Kingdoms. The animals turn sullen & defiant. Penn’s treaty gave   way to a pyramid of “Quakers Bearing Banners,” representing the Hicksites.   George Washington & Elias Hicks, cousin to Edward stands in the forefront.     

       Linking the substantial cloud of witnesses to the Light of Christ with a  banner, its inscription associated with the birth of the historical Christ, is surely  in answer to the Orthodox charge of heresy. Edward said of Jonathan Evans     that he was “too much like myself, malignant and bitter toward his enemies. I  consider him as honest as Saul of Tarsus. When Jesus Christ was revealed in  him, Jonathan Evans became a changed man.”

       The Inward Kingdom—In likening his old opponent Jonathan Evans,     to the lion and the ox Edward Hicks touched on the third and most significant     aspect of the Peaceable Kingdom, the inward one. As the years went on, his     paintings became spiritual landscapes peopled with vices and virtues of man-    kind in animal form. The soul he was most interested in saving was his own.

       Taken into the Kingdom series is a record of his spiritual growth, his  recurrent struggles & the search for harmony in reconciliation with himself. He     writes: “The lamb, the kid, the cow, and the ox are emblems of good men and     women, while the wolf, leopard, bear, and lion are figures of the wicked.” The     virtuous kid tends to decrease in size as his brilliant contrast, the sanguine     leopard, increases.
            The leopard starts out with only head and paws in the Westall compo-    sition. In the Kingdom with Quakers bearing Banners he stretches defiantly at      full length. He always retains some element of interest, if only with his eyes.     There is a peculiar identification of the artist with these great golden cats.  [Their tails seems to take the place of] the serpent, which Hicks does not     feature.Hicks puts his focus on the yoking of the lion and the fatling together    by the little child, until the lion and the leopard captured the composition. 

       To Hicks: “The leopard is the most subtle, cruel, restless creature, & at    the same time the most beautiful of all the carnivorous animal of cat kind . . .     men and women of this class in the sinful state, are not to be depended upon.”  Hicks shared the Quaker belief that the leopard’s beauty belonged in the jungle,  & the hope that it stayed there. For poor Edward the artist the leopard would     not stay in the jungle. The leopard was a part of him, and how significant a part  is suggested by the dominance and variety of its position in the paintings.

       The lion evolves from looking like a patient dog submitting to the     caresses of an importunate child. In the Separation Kingdoms his eyes harden  and glitter and he shows a choleric humor. In the middle period Kingdoms the  lion’s eyes become fearful and sorrowful. In a Middle Period Kingdom painting  (1830-40), Penn and his Indians return. The lion sits next to the ox. With the     middle period Kingdoms Hicks introduced all the figures of the prophecy, and     creates a disturbed energy. We have left the world of outer conflict and have    entered the troubled soul of the artist. 

       Beside the lion stands his great alter ego, the ox, perhaps representing  the grave, kindly elder. The ox is the only “good” animal to achieve any promi-    nence in these compositions. A portrait of Hicks at his easel shows an alert,   rugged, pugnacious face, spectacles pushed back on the forehead, brush and  palette in hand, a Bible open beside him.
            The Late Kingdom paintings (1844) show certain animals reaching their  zenith, particularly the leopard and the ox. The little child is trying to yoke the     young lion, the calf, and the fatling together with a tasseled cord. There is a     shifting, as if someone had entered or left the group. The lion has become a     mere observer. The leopard’s eyes are still piercing us with a question—or an     answer. We are not quite sure.
            Edward Hicks died on August 23, 1849. The last Kingdom was painted  for his favorite daughter, Elizabeth. The trees in the background shimmer in a     golden autumnal twilight. The wolf rises and appears to be listening. The little    child has finally yoked the young lion with the calf and the fatling, and now    marches them off, leaving the leopard to flow across the foreground  like a    skein of silk. Elizabeth encouraged him writing: “I have a firm faith thy dedica-    tion to the candle of Truth will not and cannot be lost. I believe that thou hast    been an instrument to sow seed that has taken root in different parts of the    vineyard, and will bear a rich harvest . . .”

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171. War Resistance in Historical Perspective (By Larry Gara; 1970)
            About the Author—Larry Gara is Professor of History & Government at  Wilmington College, OH. He served a 3-year prison sentence for refusing to     register for the draft during World War II, and was convicted of counseling a     young man to refuse to register. This pamphlet combines his interest in Ame-    rican history and personal concern as a war resister. The essay grew out of     talks he gave as a recent T. Wistar Brown Fellow at Haverford.

      [Introduction]—Historians have long emphasized the importance of     wars in US history; war resistance has been virtually unmentioned. Even     though violence & wars permeate much of our heritage, there is a solid tra-    dition of anti-war activity. None of [our wars] have had the support of all Ame-   ricans. The recent division of opinion over foreign policy has past parallels.    [Even John Woolman in 1757 mentions young men “tarrying abroad until it      was over.” Such historical parallels can be pressed beyond their usefulness,   yet they do point up the wide range of antiwar activity, both past and present.   [5 types of anti-war activity will be mentioned here].

       Religious Objection to War: The Quakers/Others—Religiously moti-    vated pacifism has been an important ingredient in American history from     colonial times, [especially from the Quakers]. Pennsylvania Quakers con-    fronted difficult problems & had to make compromising decisions. During the     French & Indian war, a number of Friends decided to resign rather than conti-    nue to accept measures which they couldn’t in good conscience support.
            The membership usually found itself divided on the position which indi-    viduals should take. John Woolman refused to pay war taxes; most did pay.    [He found it hard to go against the majority], “but to do a thing contrary to my     conscience appeared yet more dreadful.” [At the end of the Mexican War an     Indiana congressman said], “[Quakers] being inconsistent wasn’t the least     conspicuous [fraility] … even on the subject of war … [they were] not always as  conscientious as they claim to be.” Aiding the enemy was a charge frequently  leveled against Quakers. In recent years many Friends have served in the     military organization without jeopardizing membership.

       While the government has tried to avoid needless religious persecu-    tion by making legal provision for conscientious objection, there were Friends     who could not accept the alternatives to military service available to them.     One of those whose sufferings served as an inspiration for later war-objectors     is Cyrus Pringle, a Vermont Quaker of the Civil War era (PH pamphlet #122). 

       Pringle wrote: “I was very quiet in my mind as I lay there on the ground     [soaked] with the rain of the previous day, exposed to the heat … suffering     keenly … And if I dared the presumption, I should say that I caught a glimpse of  heavenly pity… I was sad, that one endeavoring to follow our dear Master     should be so generally regarded a despicable and stubborn culprit.” For the     most part, Quaker pacifism was more moderate, finding expression in the lives  of men working to heal the wounds of war & remove the causes of future wars     [e.g. Rufus Jones, Henry J. Cadbury, David Richie, E. Raymond Wilson].
          The 2 best known of the peace sects, other than the Friends, are the     Mennonites & the Church of the Brethren. Mennonites believed that the state  of grace they enjoyed forbade war for them. Most found themselves exempt  from military service. The Brethren had a tradition similar to Mennonites, though  they mixed more with the world & were more divided on the stand each mem-   ber should take. Very few became war resisters in the modern sense. Many   Protestants outside the 3 historical Peace Churches also came to reject war    on the basis of personal conscience. Catholic opposition to war has taken on    new significance since the founding of the Catholic Worker Movement in    1933.  Some of the more militant leaders of the war resistance movement are    Catholic (e.g. David and Philip Berrigan, David Miller, and Cornell).     

       Selective Conscientious Objection—Some individuals limit their     objection to a particular war rather than to all wars; they do not oppose war in     the abstract. [They object to]: country’s justification for involvement; method of     warfare; supporting the wrong side. The growing resistance to the Vietnam War  has brought the selective conscientious objector to the public’s notice. Histori-    cally, those who supported the other side include: Tories in the American Revo   lution; southern sympathizers in the Civil War; pro-Germans in World Wars I     and II.
            The Mexican War was a conflict which seriously divided the American  people. The best known selective conscientious objector of this war was Henry  David Thoreau. His one night in Concord jail produced the famous essay on     “Civil Disobedience,” which profoundly influenced such men as Tolstoy, Gandhi,  and Martin Luther King. It was an impassioned plea for moral commitment in    the face of injustice. More recently, Socialists, anarchists and members of the     IWW opposed WWI as an imperialist war. Carl Haessler regarded himself “as a  patriotic political objector, acting largely from public and social grounds.”
            War Resistance as a Phase of Reform—Much of the anti-war thinking  & activity in our national past has been associated with a version of another     & better plan for society than the one which persisted in the US. The 1st     peace movement coincided with such other reforms as the temperance, pri-    son reform, handicapped education, and slavery opposition movements. War   resistance was also a part of the history of those American utopian commu-         nities that tried to remake society by gathering people together and providing     the world with an example of a better social structure. [Beginning with the War    of 1812, the Shakers declared their abstinence from violence,requested draft       exemption (Civil War), & held a convention to diminish the prospects of war  (1905).   

       The Oneida & Hopedale communities also had strong anti-war over-    tones. These 3, along with other 19th century utopians had a working model     for a warless society. The Socialists & members of the IWW who refused to     fight in World War I were involved in reforming or basically changing their soci-    ety. As supporters of the international working class they would not war    against working class counterparts in other nations. [Ernest L. Meyer hoped    for an increase in war objectors]. Meyer added that if the dream should prove    idle, “Well then, in our defeat we have sacrificed no other lives. But the dream    of the militarists? … Ah, what blood is on their heads.”

       Opposition to Conscription—One of the reforms which war resis-    ters have recently emphasized is elimination of conscription from our national     life. [Conscription was resisted by New England during the war of 1812].     Although the Civil War law was more an inducement to volunteering than a     well-devised project for raising conscripts, reaction to it was swift and ex-    treme, including draft riots in various cities.

       It wasn’t until the 20th century that conscription became a big feature     of American life, permanently it would seem, after World War II. Those who     resisted the draft were perpetuating a tradition. In 1940, a peacetime conscrip-    tion bill was passed; it offered alternative service. There were objectors who     couldn’t accept alternative service; conscription itself had to be opposed. The    Union Theologians stated: “We believe that by opposing Selective Service,    we will be striking at the heart of totalitarianism as well as war …”  Current   opposition to the draft is a continuation of that war resistance phase which 1st   assumed meaningful expression during the Civil War.

       Toward a Resistance Movement/Current War Resistance—Draft     refusal is part of the program young people call “The Movement. Since the early  19th century there have been organizations dedicated just to war’s abolition,  although the members of such groups frequently were involved in other re-    form movements. [There were 3 disastrous wars after Revolutionary War, up     to & including] the War of 1812. It was shortly after these wars that 30 Ame-    ricans organized the 1st peace society in New York. The American Peace     Society was organized in 1828. William Ladd said: “We hope to… promote     the practice … of submitting national differences to amicable discussion &     arbitration … as   becomes rational creatures, & not by physical force as is    worthy of brute beasts.

       William Ladd & the American Peace Society’s mild philosophy failed to  attract those taking a stronger position against war. In 1838 William Lloyd Gar-    rison, Henry C. Wright, & others formed the New England Non-Resistance     Society. [They made an unequivocal statement against all aspects of war]. The  growing impulse towards inward civil conflict, the reformers ambivalent attitude  toward a war against slavery, & the Civil War itself seriously disrupted these     early organizations.
           In 1866 the Universal Peace Union appeared. Its scant 10,000 member-    ship kept the peace idea [& disarmament] alive, & cooperated with a French  peace society; the Union’s guiding spirit was Alfred Love. During or shortly after  World War I appeared 3 organizations most active between the wars & still     active today: Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom; Fellowship     of Reconciliation; & the War Resisters League. Since WWII new anti-war orga-    nizations include: Peacemakers; SANE; Students for a Democratic Society;     Women Strike for Peace; Quaker Action Group; Student Peace Union. These     are part of a long, erratic American tradition.    
            Today’s young war resisters are living in an age which may well be cha-  racterized as the age of the balance of terror. Never before have people wit-    nessed the stupidity and horror of war so vividly and with such dependable     regularity, every evening at the dinner hour. Television has certainly added a     new dimension to the anti-war movement. Youthful fervor, dedication & con-    cern is often expressed in emotional reaction rather than reason. 

       An increased number of older people are also alienated from our acqui-    sitive, materialistic society and from the wars which it cannot seem to avoid.  We could all, young and old, profit from a deeper understanding of the history     of war resistance as a balance to, and perhaps a corrective for our tendency     to emphasize war in our nation’s past. [Perhaps some day, peace  movement    leaders will be mentioned in textbooks alongside leaders of war].

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172. Friends & The Racial Crisis (by Richard Taylor; 1970)
            About the Author—Dick Taylor has taught at the Martin Luther King  School of Social Change at Crozier Theological Seminary, Chester, PA.   He     writes: “I feel that much of the impetus of for my concerns comes from Friends’   testimonies and from my experience with Friends. It has made me aware of     many points at which Friends are not living up to their beliefs. Most of my data     and experience has been gathered from a lifetime spent largely in the Middle     Atlantic States.”

       [Introduction]—Richard Stenhouse writes: “Friends must share with     all white Americans the very real distrust that most black Americans have of     them, [a distrust which] the white man’s dishonesty and deceit in his dealings     with Negroes forced upon them.” Are “dishonesty” and “deceit” too strong to     apply accurately to Friends? When we call to mind Friends’ involvement in     racial questions, our thinking tends to run along more positive, [historical]     lines. In modern times, we are aware of the work of the American Friends     Service Committee [among others] in building “true community among men.”

       These comforting reflections ignore another pressing reality, & must be  matched by a realization of the injury we have caused, the suffering we have     been a party to, & the wrongs we haven’t attempted to set right. This pamphlet  will review that “record” with an eye to Quaker practices which have fallen far  short of Quaker ideals. We can’t repent for our ancestors sins; we can learn     from them, & repent for those we perpetuate. If we don’t recognize the need    for repentance, [we will operate as if] all we need to be fully effective is “in-    creased dedication.”

       THE AMBIVALENCE OF & QUAKER WITNESS, PAST & PRESENT
            Friends & Slavery—Human brotherhood attracts us to the black peo-    ple’s plight. White racist attitudes and institutions have obscured our vision,        repelled us from black people, and allowed us to turn our backs on injustice.  We are proud of the fact that Quakers ended slavery within Friends Society     nearly 100 years before the Civil War. What of the more than 100 years [of     slavery] prior to that?
             Thomas Drake writes: “In Barbados … George Fox found many slave-    holders among Barbados Friends in 1671. Lewis Morris bequeathed some of  his to leading Quakers … Both William Penn & John Bowne of Flushing [had  slaves of their own]… Most Friends accepted slavery as they found it, without  much  qualm or question.” Nor was every Quaker slave-owner free of cruelty.  We cannot escape responsibility for over a century of involvement in one of  man’s inhumanity to man, including a mother cruelly and violently separated  from her children.
            After Friends Freed Their Slaves—American Quakers confined their     fellowship with red men and black men mostly to benevolences … Friends only  reluctantly opened their Society to colored members. John Woolman struggled  with his own Mount Holly Meeting over their long refusal to accept the mem-   bership of the black man William Bowen. The application of Abigail Franks, “⅛  Negro, ⅜ Indian,” took 3 years and went through Monthly, Quarterly, and     Yearly Meetings, instead of taking less than a year and being handled by the     Preparative Meeting. Henry Cadbury cites other cases of black applicants,   whose sincerity and conviction Friends did not question, but who nevertheless    faced the same kind of procrastination, perhaps for many years.

       [Exemplary black Quaker sea captains would nonetheless] have had to  face the humiliation of being assigned special separate seats in a Philadelphia  Meetinghouse. Haddonfield, NJ also had a special bench in the back of the     room which “was reserved for colored attenders.” It doesn’t take much imagi-    nation to sense the devastating, [humiliating] impact of delayed applications &     special seating must have had on black applicants and new members.
            It was just at this time that other churches were expressing the same     kind of racism, which contributed to deep bifurcation of the American Chris-    tian Church along racial lines. Ambrose Reeves, former South African Angli-    can bishop said: “In those times when the church had more freedom than it    now has, it was largely content to reproduce the social pattern of secular so-    ciety in the life of the Christian community.” Have not Friends been “content”     to do much the same? 

       As we reflect on the Quaker struggle against slavery, it is important for     us to recognize that to labor for a man’s freedom from bondage is not neces-    sarily to accept him as a human being and an equal. Beingmoved by the love     of God [in one context of suffering] does not prevent one from expressing     racist attitude toward [those same suffering children] in another context.

       The Post-Civil War Period/Friends Education—One of the often-for-    gotten periods of American history is the one just after the Civil War, when  former slaves held political office in Washington & throughout the South, were     given equal service in hotels & restaurants, & were able to travel freely on     public  transportation. The late 1800’s saw all this achievement swept away. “Jim Crow” was imposed with a vengeance. Those who objected were beaten     down by political maneuvering & the terror of the Ku Klux Klan. Examples can     be given of individual Friends and Friends’ groups who registered protests &    tried to organize against [the oppression]. In general Friends failed to respond   to the new challenge and tended to accept and become captives of the new   caste system.

       After the Civil War, Friends were very concerned about education for     former slaves, and set up a variety of institutions in which the freedmen could     be educated. Yet we only have to go back a little over 40 years [from now] to     find that no Quaker schools or colleges had any black enrollees. Swarth-    more [made the “mistake” of enrolling a light-skinned Negro] and, as Charles     Darlington write: “After much heart-searching by the college administration &  the Board, the boy and his parents were told that he could not be permitted to  enter.” In 1932, Swarthmore was still holding to the same segregationist     policy. Max Jergen, a prominent black YMCA staff person, could not get his     children into any Philadelphia Quaker school.
            Decisions to drop discriminatory policies came with agonizing slowness.  Only 4/20 Quaker schools in 1945 had any black enrollment. By 1960 black     students made up less than 2% of total enrollment. A black student’s mother       writes to Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C.: “I am shocked to know     that a Quaker institution … would reject a child on the basis of color … It     seems to me that this situation should call for a reexamination of your basic     religious teachings.” When I pressed Sidwell’s headmaster on this, he asked     me if I had a daughter & if I would want her to marry a black man, as if this,     the oldest of racist arguments, would settle the matter.

       Friends at Leisure/Friends at Home—[At camps, social clubs & or-    ganizations, Friends condone, support & even practice segregation]. A com-    bination of policies and practices guaranteed that black people would be     denied freedom of choice in housing & generally would be herded together into  inadequate ghetto areas. “Restrictive covenants” & Real estate boards adop-    ted policies [which restricted Negro access to housing]. For black home-    seekers who have tried to exercise freedom of choice in housing it means the     humiliation of constant turn-downs.

       It was not until the 1950’s that Friends began any organized efforts to  counter housing-discrimination. Before this surge of interest, it seems clear that  nearly all Friends who purchased homes in white areas either signed restric-    tive covenant, or bought through real estate brokers who discriminate racially.  Most Quakers continue to live in relatively affluent, segregated, all-white com-    munities and only a minority raise a protest against the rigid barriers that ex-    clude blacks.Quakers builders and real estate brokers either quietly go along     with the housing industry’s racism or actually help further discrimination. There  is a real estate trust, controlled by Quakers in Wilmington, DE which has been     developing housing on a completely white-only high-income basis.

       Friends and the Elderly—In 1963, a study of 12 Philadelphia-area     boarding homes run by Friends showed that none had ever had a Negro guest.  I want to explore the rationalizations we have developed which allow us to be  content with injustice. Someone almost always says that the homes are for     Friends, even though there is a black membership in the Society, and nearly all  Friends’ homes now accept non-Friends.

       Unfortunately, we have in the past given some very strong hints to the     black community that they are not wanted in our facilities. One home describes  itself as a “boarding home for white men and women 60 years and over. Most  black people who see this listing will assume that we are racially restrictive.     Another rationalization is based on a Negro’s insufficient income. Friends rarely  think in terms of providing assistance to elderly black people. [Friends seem to  think] that we have fulfilled our obligation to testimonies once we have de-   cided among ourselves that we will not continue to discriminate.

       Surely this view is an unwarranted sanctification of a bad status quo.  The fact that a practice has been in existence for decades doesn't mean that it  is right or wise, no matter how “natural” it may seem. If we now content our-    selves with letting our inner circle know that we are finally ready to act with     some measure of brother-hood, then we continue to perpetuate the old segre-   gated pattern. [It is small wonder we are] lumped with other white people as     “dishonest” and “deceitful.”

       WHERE ARE WE AS FRIENDS?/ WHAT CAN WE DO?—The exam-    ples given above show clearly that we have helped to deepen racial pro-    blems as well as having made modest attempts at solving them. [There are  further examples in Friends’ business practices and a general apathy in the     face of racism]. Assuming that we stand on a solid foundation of past achieve-    ment, too often leads to an unwarranted stance of pride and complacency, &    a sense that we have only to make minor adjustments.

       We need to drop this smugness and sense of self-satisfaction & heed     the biblical call for repentance. There is every likelihood that we will have to     radically re-structure our religious and social institutions to make them more     open to God’s voice and better vehicles for his will. [The idea that we have    contributed to the black community’s suffering must be balanced by know-    ledge of the love of God for us undeserving Quakers, which will sustain us     towards restitution and new challenges. Here are a few proposals for funda-    mental change.

       Internal Education/Striving for Institutional Integrity/New Kinds of  Friends’ Meetings—Established Quaker institutions need to implement     comprehensive education programs, aimed at Quakerdom itself, funded and     supported so that they reach the widest possible spectrum of Friends with a     message of urgency. We should educate ourselves about racism with the     same seriousness that we educate in the 3 R’s.
            How can we “operate” on ourselves & remove the cancer cells of  racism which run around in our own body? Members would do well to     commit themselves to a common discipline of study and prayer to prepare     themselves to fulfill their task with all possible love and understanding. Each  Quaker institution needs to be approached in its own individual way. [The     methods of dialogue or direct non-violent action could be used].
           Surely God is calling us to new responses in the midst of the present  racial crisis, but our ears are too easily clogged. [Perhaps] Friends should be     experimenting, with new kinds of meetings for worship whose “vocation” is to     make its members more attuned to God’s call in the crying human needs and     revolutions around us. A group in a Houston medical center found their worship  tremendously deepened when it was bracketed by hours of service to poverty-    stricken and neglected patients. A group choosing to meet in different places,     sometimes with instruments and singing has met in the midst of an urban crisis,  done a singing demonstration in front of a draft board, a silent vigil to protest  housing discrimination, met outside local prisons, and in a Black Panther     medical clinic. I urge experimentation with more relevant and open forms.
            The Broader Movement Against Racism and Poverty/ Financing  Change—It is extremely important that we recognize that racism and poverty     are closely interrelated problems in American society. [In general, the criminal      system, health insurance, pollution, housing, and tax laws are disproportionate  against the poor. Friends have an opportunity to join the struggle to work for a  society which will sustain and enhance human dignity.
            One of our most important contributions to this struggle can be in the  area of nonviolence. [We as Quakers have sympathy for nonviolent civil rights     demonstrations, but seldom act on that sympathy]. The National Committee of     Black Churchmen said of white churches: “They blessed & gave approval to     King’s nonviolence while not taking nonviolence seriously themselves.” Non-    violence involves open visible, public confrontation with injustice & oppression,  and often inspires violent retaliation on the part of those who maintain the     oppressive situation.
            [History shows us people willing to be whipped, hated, insulted & per-    secuted for the cause of right]. Where are we taking up the nonviolent     cross?       Are we too ready to be conformed to the world as it is?      Do     we shy away from action which might disrupt its so-called peace?    Friends must both participate in and initiate sustained nonviolent movements   against social injustice, and risk suffering on behalf of Truth. If  we can make   such a commitment, we will enter the struggle with  integrity and spiritual     strength. How can we re-examine our present Quaker affluence and see      how our funds can be spent less on “Quaker maintenance,” and more   on the measures which will free ourselves and our society from racism?

       IN CONCLUSION—Can Friends once again become a force for the     transformation of our religious Society and society at large?      [Or will     the transformation come from] certain individual Friends who simply will  not let the Society of Friends rest until we live up to our professions? In-    stead of having Quaker backing, they will be misunderstood and criticized by     Friends. God will not let them rest—and they will not let the Society of Friends     rest. Rabbi Abraham Heschel said that God is personally affected by what man  does to man. Reverence for God must be shown in attitudes and acts which     show reverence for man. The greatest heresy is despair.
            God is in search of humankind, urging, hoping, waiting for humankind to  do God’s will. If we rely on God, we can heal & cure. We know that God’s love     not only calls us to create more compassionate society, but that God also en-    ables us & empowers us to work for brotherhood, provided that we seek to do    God’s will. The same black friend of Friends (Richard Stenhouse), who criti-    cized at the beginning of this pamphlet, also said that there is a desperate   need today for “the historical and prophetic role of the Religious Society of   Friends.”

       We must have a new repentant concept of our ambiguous history in     racial matters, and lay aside racist attitudes and practices. [And though] there     are dark days ahead, in the words of lines from a hymn: “What though the     tempest loudly roars,/ I hear the Truth it liveth …Since Love is Lord of Heaven     and earth,/How can I keep from singing?”
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173.  Evolution and the Inward Light (by Howard Haines Brinton; 

  1970)

       About the Author—When Howard Brinton started at Pendle Hill with  Anna in 1936 as director, part of his role in a pioneer school/community was     odd jobs. His retinue included Tibbar (rabbit) and Nuto (their dog). Gerald   Heard saw this Peaceable Kingdom procession as an illustration of his     survival by reconciliation philosophy. Howard finds a place for this philosophy    in Evolution & the Inward Light, which summarizes a lifetime’s thought and     purpose.

       Introduction—The following [pamphlet] illustrates my former statement  on The Religion of George Fox (#161).  It is a simple, elemental, philosophy     easily understood by any Christian.  It is idealistic, pragmatic, and existential     [i.e.] capable of being lived, and is formulated from John’s Prologue, Ephesians  and Colossians.  Early Quakerism made a great effort to resemble early Chris-    tianity.  The unprogrammed meeting of today has the same goal as early Qua-    ker meetings, though the messages may be quite different. 

       George Fox had no conception of evolution as Darwin saw it, but he  knew about human evolution, calling it “new birth,” which brings a higher level     of life. The “new birth”'s source was “Christ, God’s Power” (Paul), or “the Word”  (John). Fox applied this doctrine only to spiritual evolution of humanity. If this  early Christian philosophy is true, then the most Christ-like are the fittest. This  essay endeavors to apply Fox’s philosophy or theology to all life. What will   enable the human species to survive?  The gospel of reconciliation will; it is     an effective creed but never easy to carry out. 

       God’s Method of Creation—George Fox believed in the Inward Light     as that which produces unity and reconciliation, indispensable in a group held     together by no human authority and only a minimum of external organization.   3 stages of [spiritual] development appear in Quaker journals: Divine Seed        begins to grow, early ecstatic experiences, feeling union with the God of Na-     ture (Ages 7-12); playfulness or useless frivolity, inevitable conflict between law   and spirit, unable to satisfy the demands of either; complete acceptance of the   leadings of the Light, no instant conversion, but a gradual change sometimes     with setbacks.  In the last state, the journal writer is to some degree in the   Kingdom of God, and is accepting of the Kingdom’s standard of conduct and   ethics.

       Many theologians do not understand the Quaker conception of perfec-   tion.  Perfection is not satisfaction with one’s own condition.  To be “perfect” in     the Quaker sense meant to live up to one’s own “measure” of the Light, how-    ever small it might be; if that is done, more is given. The Kingdom of Heaven,    if it is to begin on Earth must begin some time somewhere, so why not     with the individual who has adopted its ethical code?  Reconciliation [with     God] is God’s method of creation & marks the survival of the fittest through-   out life. 

       For Puritans, the assumption of total depravity led to searches for evi-    dence of divine favor, and resulted in continuous anxiety interrupted occasion-    ally by flashes of rapturous assurance.  Even though a “leap of faith beyond     life’s boundary may bring us face to face with God some elements of [irratio-    nal] doubt remain.  In comparison with the Puritan journals the Quaker jour-    nals are pervaded by a spirit of peace and relaxation, [not into] self-satisfac-    tion, but in a feeling of obedience to the divine will. 

      The Quaker Christology—Fox & the early Quakers derived their Chris-    tology almost entirely from John’s gospel, Ephesians and Colossians, & Paul’s  concept of the 1^st and 2^nd Adam.  They put them to vigorous use in holding     together a religious group having no human authority over it.  Translating the     Greek logos as “Word” is inadequate.  Since there is no other word in English     or in any other language that exactly corresponds to Logos, we will use it.  

       If it is true that the “Light enlightens every man” (John 1:9), than every     man is in some degree or “measure” a son of God, an incarnation of the Light.   It is obvious in our experience that the Spirit is given with various degree of  limitation, depending on the individual (John 3:34).  George Fox speaks of     Christ as possessing the Spirit without limitation.  Jesus is unique in that in him  was a full measure of Light. 

       The Functions of the Logos—In the pages following the prologue John  endeavors to describe the functions of Logos as Creator. There are no birth     stories in John, for Jesus does not feel himself to be the Logos until the Spirit     descends on him at his baptism. Jesus has always been giving the Spirit; this     eternal function is symbolized by temporal acts.  Jesus is “The Way, the Truth,     and the Life”; he is not only the goal, but the way toward it.  The creative prin-    ciple of the Logos operates in both Christ and the disciples.

       The religious philosophy of the New Testament (NT),& therefore also of   early Christianity, isn't fully given to us in any one place.  Its clearest exposition  outside of the Gospel appears in the epistles to Ephesians and Colossians.      [See Colossians 1:3-20]  The bond of unity created by the blood of a sacrificial  offering is an Old Testament (OT) idea carried over to the NT.  It comes from     the OT conception of a blood sacrifice as a means of reconciliation.  That was     the old covenant or testament.  In the new covenant or testament, Christ was     the lamb of God “slain from the foundation of the World.”  Nearly 500 Quakers     died  in English prisons because they believed that they were saved by the     Light of Christ within them & not by the death of Christ on the cross, by which    an angry OT God was appeased. 

       Philo of Alexandria—This illustrates the union of Greek immanence  &  Hebrew transcendence attained in Philo of Alexandria’s philosophy; he was  a  contemporary of Jesus. The Logos philosophy had come to its climax in Stoi-    cism, in which Logos was the Universe’s soul through which chaos could be  transformed into cosmos; it was the Immanent Reason. Whereas for the Stoics  this Immanent Reason was only a refuge from pain & trouble, for the Quakers     it was an Inner Voice calling for reconciliation and actions moving toward     reconciliation.  No philosophy was better able than that of Philo, to include     Greek metaphysical mysticism and Hebrew prophetism.  God is transcendent     beyond the reach of human knowledge and reason, but reachable by mystical     revelation.

       Wisdom and Logos are not necessarily equated.  Perhaps we could say  wisdom is a kind of model or blueprint of the universe which the Logos uses in  creative work to draw fragments into higher unity.  Confusion of wisdom and     Logos is unnecessary if we consider ourselves made in the image of God.  We  all have something with us which is transcendent and inaccessible to others.      Our persona, that part we expose to the world, is known by the sensations     which we cause in other persons.  We do have a kind of mystic knowledge of     each other quite different from the light & sound coming from another. This    knowledge of the “inside” of the other person is possible only because we all   share in the Logos of God. 

       The Light is a community-creating agent and seeks, unsuccessfully so  far,  in bringing all men into one community.  This means that creation is not yet  completed. It follows from this that the Inward Light not only unites us with God  but also with one another.  The Two Great Commandments are two sides of the  same coin.  When George Fox calls upon us to “answer that of God in every  man,” he is appealing to the creative life which is at work in every part of the  universe, and which seeks to bring all things into one universal community.    

       Evolution by the Logos—If it is true that creation has occurred & is  occurring, then personifying Logos is important to illustrating evolution’s final     goal. We are trying to show that ethics has primitive beginnings in biology. OT     myths of creation give us the conception that creation was a process. Jere-    miah states the Quaker position when he rejects cisterns of stagnant water &     accepts instead springs of living water. Logos philosophy which formulates     spiritual & psychological relationship is one of the oldest as well as the new-    est of philosophies. Many modern philosophers agree that the divine’s func-   tion is to bring orderly unity to diversified elements of being. 

       The original plan in the 1^st cell in history contained God’s Logos, or plan  of creation, an active creative power. God’s plan is in some way latent in all     creation as it slowly evolves, sometimes going backward, but mostly forward to  God’s Kingdom. If the plan for the whole is in every cell of my body then the   Kingdom of Heaven is in every individual living thing.  “Logos” and agape both   mean that which unites and reconciles.

       The Beloved Community/Quaker Perfection—Josiah Royce of Har-    vard’s ideal was the Absolute Community of Communities of the Kingdom of        Heaven.  Our main virtue must be our loyalty to our community.  For Royce     religion is loyalty to loyalty.  The “Beloved Community” can only exist in reli-    gions which seek to be universal and to redeem all mankind.  [Through it] we     can check the truth or falsity of our ideas.  For most orthodox Christians the   community which requires their loyalty is the historically unattainable King-        dom of God. 

       Atonement for Royce meant not the removal of sin but the restoration      of a redemptive community which had been broken by the sin of disloyalty.     Royce rejects the idea that Christ’s death was an offering to appease an angry  God, or that Christ suffered as an example to us.  Incarnation and atonement  have their roots in human experience.  Barclay, Penn, and Fox believed that     the Kingdom of God could be felt in mystical experience and entered in some     measure by those who lived in accord with the teachings of Jesus. 

       Quaker perfection is not arriving at the goal and remaining there, but the  intention to live up to the highest Light revealed to each individual.  Living as if     you were already in the Kingdom would at least give it a start.  The Quakers     believed that their movement was a restoration of the original structure & beliefs  of early Christianity.  The Logos creates by exerting an upward pull through love  & reconciliation. In Plato’s philosophy the Idea of the Beautiful draws the beau-    tiful  to itself in nature, but is checked by [the resistance] of matter from being    molded.

       Limits of Materialism/An Alternate Theory—[The current research     into genes] reduces life to a physical-chemical mechanism operating by the    fixed laws of mechanical causation.  The difficulty with this theory is that no one  really believes it.  [Every individual] has a sense of freedom so deeply felt that     no theory of physics or chemistry can explain or remove it.  The Eternal Christ  is the only begotten son of God because God has only one Logos. The Qua-    kers seem more orthodox than they really are because they use the same    language  regarding the Eternal Christ that the Puritans used regarding the     historical  Christ. 

       It is very difficult to imagine that evolution, the world around us has     resulted from an almost infinitely long game of dice.  Instead of [using] this     inadequate view through our senses, why not [use logos to explain creation].      Our logos makes us creators as we bring an idea to reality.  In the Community     of Communities all creation will be reconciled.  We ourselves feel, in our reli-    gious  & moral experience, a pull from in front as well as a push from behind.     We find that as evolution advances to higher and higher levels on each level    something new has been added which wasn't there before.  When an atom is     said to “desire” to combine with another atom, “desire” is only a human sym-    bol of something which it might only faintly resemble. 

       [A close examination of the relationship of matter to energy] leads to the  notion of energy being fundamental, thus displacing matter from that position.      The same relegation of matter to the background occurs in connection with the  electromagnetic field.  An intangible field does not operate by the laws of     mechanics.  Every one acquainted with genuine Quakerism knows that a     spiritual field exists in what is sometimes called “a gathered meeting,” [gene-    rated by a combined seeking of the Light or Logos by a spiritually oriented     group of people].  

       It is this spiritual field that is the community-creating agent & a mani-    festation of the Logos of God.  It is not difficult to think of the primordial Logos,  the Creator of John’s prologue, as generating a field of spiritual force to gradu-    ally pull our world toward itself into a single unity, the Community of Commu-    nities.  One difficulty is that in our efforts to understand we use only the outer,     tool-oriented cortex of the brain.  The deeper parts of the brain dominated by     feeling rather than thought, have a deeper insight into the nature of things.      

       Survival by Reconciliation—If the Logos of God is the Creator who is     still creating, and if Jesus of Nazareth was the temporal personification of the     Logos/Creator, then the words of Jesus tell us how the creative process works.   [“Survival of the fittest” by New Testament standards] is survival of the one     who best complies with the gospel of reconciliation or love, using the Sermon      on the Mount as guide.  Those who make violent changes in the organic struc-    ture of society are bound to fail.  War creates changes, but they are generally     superficial, [with serious side effects].  Arnold Toynbeehas shown that milita-      rism is a fatal disease, resulting in pride and a fall [from power].  The 2 coun-      tries whose cultures have lasted the longest are India and China.    

       We are attempting to show that in all life reconciliation is the key to sur-   vival in the long run, even though it often appears to fail in the short run.      Gerald Heard considers sensitivity and awareness the principal assets in the     struggle for survival.  When some in a species attain to new and different areas  of sensitivity and awareness it is by finding a new environment.  Adjustment to  environment may be so successful that there is no “change” to a higher spe-    cies. The lack of success the ancestor to reptiles and land animals had in one     environment enabled it to function in another.  Satisfaction with the status    quo may halt the process of further human evolution. 

       Into Higher Forms—Those forms of life which form a community either  in one physical body or in many in which the whole directs the parts and the     parts the whole, have the greatest survival possibility.  There is an optimum     size for such a community depending upon the character of the species con-    cerned.  The Greek polis, at its best was an ideal community, and Greek art &     literature reached a climax in them.  The modern nation state cannot be a     community because it is too large to function successfully as such; it is more    like a mob than a community.  Specialization is a great enemy of community   living in our modern cities.  If our large cities could be divided into small com-    munities their problems could be solved.

       Police action in a city is a mechanistic procedure; the result is a mecha-    nism too large and intricate to function as a whole.  [Man’s] tools may destroy  him if his brain is unable to carry forward the “ministry of reconciliation.”  How     can we secure the sensitivity and awareness to [evolve and] avoid cata-    strophe?  Evolution proceeds by increasing diversification, which survives     only if accompanied by increasing reconciliation and adaptation or integration.   Through small religious communities and not through Roman armies the best  part of the culture of the Graeco-Roman world passed into the culture of We-    stern Europe.

       The Quaker Community—If we consider Catholicism, Protestantism, &  Quakerism as the 3 distinct forms of Christianity [and connect them to different  types of society], then Catholicism is based on feudal society, Protestantism is     based on capitalism, & Quakerism is based on Communitarianism. 17^th Cen-    tury capitalism, [combined with] Protestantism resulted in making a religion out  of carefulness in business & prudent spending.  It is not true to say that Penn’s  Holy Experiment failed; it succeeded for as long as the English government     let it alone. 

       The social order of Pennsylvania consisted of a large number of semi-    independent contiguous communities, called monthly meetings.  They still exist,  though not so completely integrated; their members are scattered geographic-    ally, and special committees have taken over much of what was once the func-    tion of the whole meeting.  The Quaker communities never reached a decision  by taking a vote, and were held together only by the Spirit's “unity [Logos] in   the bond of peace.”  All successful communities are held together by a religion.   I found that those which had a religion lasted 10 times longer than the secular     communities.       

       The Logos philosophy is mystical, because man’s relation to the Logos  is mystical and not rational.  The Quaker meeting, [with its silent waiting for di-    vine authority to prompt vocal ministry] is a deliberate attempt to cultivate sen-    sitivity and awareness of the Light; early Quakers used the term “tenderness”     rather than sensitivity.  Becoming “tender” meant acquiring the ability to grow     spiritually and to increase one’s “measure” of light.

       Conclusion—The logos philosophy is the simplest and most profound,  the newest and the oldest of all philosophies.  The philosophy of the same     importance is materialism, [with its mechanistic definition of man & life]. Psy-    chologists & philosophers who base all reasoning [on materialism] are like     surveyors who can ignore the earth's curvature because they are surveying     only a small part of it. 

       Love permits the species to survive through cooperation & mutual sup-    port; hatred destroys the possibility of cooperation which is essential to sur-      vival.  If those who profess the Christian religion would take seriously the com-    mandments of Christ, our chances of survival would be enormously increased.   Man has a logos by which he creates.  And he creates insofar as he coope-    rates with the creative Logos of the universe.  I am known outwardly by what I     do and say.  I know myself inwardly by my hopes, despairs, my joys and pains,  my love  and anger. 

       God’s creation is not finished, and if man acts too absurdly & destruc-    tively it may never be finished.  If the ethics of Christ are not followed, the  human race and perhaps all life will become extinct.  [Actually], all the great     religions were pacifist in their beginnings except Islam.  When at their best, the  great world religions have taught not only that the results of war are always evil,  but that war itself is an evil regardless of its results.  The Supreme Being does     not work in the world as one physical force among other forces, but as an invi-    sible spiritual power which produces understanding, cooperation, and love.      Real religion always makes for peace. 

       [The great religions I speak of] all began in Asia.  When they remained  faithful to the teachings of their founders they maintain that humanity is one, &     that all life is based on & derived from a Supreme Life.  We are all branches of  the same vine, radii of the same circle, apart at the circumference, one at the     center.  The Incarnation of the Supreme Being, in the Bhagavad Gita, the Lotus  Scripture, or the Logos of the NT can say “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto     one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” 

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174. Friends, Let Us Pray (by Elsie H. Landstrom; 1970)

       About the Author—Elsie Landstrom is a member of Wellesley Monthly  Meeting, is active in Friends World Committee, and was one the original editors  of Approach, the literary magazine born at Pendle Hill.  She was writer & editor  with the American Friends Service Committee.  She said: “I hadn't meant to    write about prayer … I sat down to write letters. Hours later I got up, asto-    nished to find this meditation in my hand.”

       My Meeting—My meeting is a suburban American Meeting, 138 mem-    bers:  Indian, Mexican, Jewish, Black visitors; teachers, doctors, lawyers, busi-   nessmen, professional women & housewives. [There was] conflict between     those of us who wished to provide the setting we felt was needed for the cen-    tral place of worship, & those of us shocked by the “edifice complex” in a world  asking that our time, thought, and money be placed elsewhere. 

       Worship is the focus of being drawn together on Sunday morning. There  are times when a true gathered quality carries the meeting beyond the closing     time. They have signified that we could move from our scattered & separate     selves into a communion making of us one being. We often stand on opposite     sides [on the many issues surrounding worship]. When the meeting goes     beyond 11:30, we are met in a moment when we are gathered to a common     focus, where our varied responses in mind & spirit are stayed on an instant     beyond ourselves. 

       After meeting we hear that was a good meeting, or meeting fell short.  Both responses are often made to the same meeting.  We rightfully  bring our     concerns for national legislation & individual action [on social issues].     We     bring our anguish, intuitive insights, emotional upheavals, convictions, &         where we might go to make our world better.

       There is the feeling of imminent split in our Meeting, however, because  some members feel strongly that political issue and moralistic sermons are     contrary to the spirit of worship; [some find it a suitable place for those things].     The difference between a meeting for worship and an interesting [vocal] hap-    pening lies in the spirit in which the message is given.  If it begins in concern     and deepens into spiritual insight, it contributes well to worship. We are still too  young, in terms of worship, to reach real worship in times of stress; but we can  learn.

       Vocal prayer nearly died out of our meeting with the death of an older     member.  When group prayer was proposed, we postponed it as “too uncom-    fortable.”  Vocal prayer in meeting need not be our aim.  It will be the fruit of     time and effort we give prayer in our separate lives, the rich loam of private     devotions that gives any meeting its full depth whether voices are raised in     prayer or not. We need to understand more clearly the paradoxical place of     prayer in our lives, freeing this old word from its trap of conventional limita-    tions.  Prayer requires us to let go ourselves into the larger stream of spirit     where we can be reconciled to each other and to God. 

       This Strange and Terrible Reversal—Friends drawn from other chur-    ches to unprogrammed worship are relieved to dispense with [everything that     goes with] a planned order of worship.  Haven’t we a responsibility to  strengthen our worship with preparation? Let us siphon off our longing for  debate to coffee and desert time [afterwards]. Let us not confuse worship’s   essential purpose with argument or distress.  These have their place in mee-   ting for worship only as they open to us to vaster spiritual understandings or    the need for growth.

       Prayer is hardship. Prayer invokes dread, requires risk.  We may look  forward to the joy we intuitively know is the fruit of real contemplation, but we     avoid risking the dreadful desert that lies between.  [We busy ourselves with     social activism]. We do our share.  And we pray. Or how do we pray?      How  do I so order my life that periods of solitude & silence are given priority    every day?      How do I cultivate the attitudes of openness of faith, joy,       reverence, expectation, trust?     How do I acknowledge myself a begin-      ner in prayer all my life?

       Activists and contemplative clash in our Meeting; but Mary and Martha  need each other. They must be kept in balance in each of us if we would be     Friends.  Whatever form is natural to us, we can each profit from experiencing     other forms of worship. How do we evade the hard life of prayer?  In prayer     we face not only God, but our worst selves before him.  In prayer we learn to     strip off layer after layer of self-deceit. 

       Move over for an Attitude/Tricks of the Trade—Prayer can become  as  natural as breathing and be offered consciously in the moments between     other things. [One Friend’s prayer has] developed a theme of praise, for they  are essentially praise of God in his and all life; praise opens and closes his     prayers and lies at the heart of them.  

       Some find that ordering our lives into a formal prayer pattern does not     conform to the need of our inexplicable selves.  We need to develop a way to     prayer consistent with our own beings. We must acknowledge constantly that     we are but beginners in prayer, & turn for guidance and help to the artists of    all  times & ages. We forget that our method of worship grew out of solid litur-    gical beginnings. Those active in the world must keep in balance the inner life    of the spirit to feed his good works.  The contemplative’s prayer life is sterile    unless it springs from the everyday toils of his life and its difficult relationships.

       We need tricks, handles to grasp, images with the power to do for us  what we are too weak to do for ourselves, to open the door to prayer.  The word  is supremely powerful and can set forces going that I hardly knew were     present. To approach prayer in joy and a spirit of praise and celebration even     when I feel weighted down with woes is an important venture.  One of my     most powerful handles to prayer is an ancient Jewish prayer: “Am I willing    this day to do the will of God?”  Prayer is my mysterious relationship to the    mysterious source of power, of beauty, of joy.  The mind grasps through its     awareness of man’s qualities some intimation of the vast mystery of God, a     mystery showing itself in part in intellect, compassion, in anger and in humor.    

       A Discipline of the Spirit—To discipline the spirit is no less difficult,     tedious, and rewarding than to discipline our bodies or our minds; It sets aside  daily the time and place for personal meditation.  [It is to not] translate our gra-    titude to God into admiration for ourselves.”  To discipline the spirit is to inten-    tionally lead its 1^st anguished gropings toward God from the base of petition     where it almost invariably starts. It is to lead the more confident in prayer into     a sustained caring for others, the intercession of spirit which can and does     alter life in strange ways. To discipline the spirit, to pray, is a central way to deal  with the dark side of life, with hatred, pride, anger, self-will, jealousy, not in  others, but in ourselves where they have their roots. 

       When we meet up with all these aspects of life in our society that we     have been trying to better, we have one of the few opportunities open to us to     actually transform what we call evil into good.  In order to keep the dark     images and forces from governing our tongues and our actions, we must face     them and know them for what they are.  Disciplining the spirit means a will-    ingness to  descend into the dark of our own being where the dangers of being    swamped  are immense. The artist knows darkness as a creative source and   that what  rises through one to creation in paint or word or music feeds on   itself, creating  infinitely new possibilities.  There are no set rules governing    the fluid & difficult inner world, & we will make mistakes. May we keep open    and learning from them, distinguishing light from dark under  the hand of God.

       Wordless adoration of God, the beginning and end of prayer, cannot but  return to earth in an offering of the self to others, for every advance in prayer is  a movement in loving care.  Evelyn Underhill writes:  “If you are to love … thus,  translating your love, as you must, into unremitting intercessory work, & avoid  being swamped by the great ocean of suffering … this will only be done by  maintaining and feeding the temper of adoration and trustful adherence. This is  the heart of the life of prayer.” It is by setting aside our own will, be becoming  pliable, receptive, listening, that the fiery spirit of God acts within us. 

       But Under the Stress of Life I do Not Pray—More and more people do  not pray under the stress of life.  My husband Norman says: “But I don’t turn to  prayer when I am in trouble, and you know I have had plenty of that.  Prayer is  not natural to me although I recognize the reality and power of it in your life …     What have you got to say to people like us? … Is being moved to the depths of  [my] being prayer?... Maybe part of my problem is a hang-up on the word  ‘prayer,’ although I don’t have the same trouble with the word ‘God.”

        I said: “For me the word ‘prayer’ carries the full cultivation of inner life …  Even while I believe petition to be the easiest, simplest form of prayer, I don’t     think we should belittle it; it is often the opening to deeper prayer.  [Sometimes]  a cry for help is often all we are capable of.” 

       Norman said: I haven’t tried routine classical forms of prayer,” because     they seem irrelevant, and besides, I’m just not the type ... I have tried repeating  psalms …but they don’t seem to help. [I joined meeting] because I was sear-    ching for more adequate expression of the meaning I feel to be present in the     universe.”  He also wrote: “What is prayer to me? [It was] the prayers I  repeated as a child. I imagined God listening, never answering in words, but     perhaps intervening to make something happen.  As I grew older [these con-    cepts] seemed both inadequate and shoddy. Prayer is communication, and     communication goes beyond the verbal to the mystic experience, and also  other  forms of spiritual experience.”

       “The presence of God has never been for me a presence directed to me  as an individual but a recognition that life and the universe have a purpose &     meaning not fully revealed but which I believe exists.  I try to carry over my     religious beliefs into what I hope is a consistent attitude in my daily affairs.     [Micah says it best]:  “For what does the Lord require of thee but to do justice     and love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”

       [I said]: “Could you be a person of prayer without knowing it?  You     point skeptically toward those who go about doing dreadful things to others in     the name of their Lord. I agree that to distinguish between God’s will & my     limited self’s will is difficult indeed … I believe that I can discover something of     the will of God only for my own life, not for others’. I still find truth & a yardstick  of my self’s will in Carl Jung’s words: “God is the name I use for all things which  cross my willful path violently & recklessly, all things which upset my subjective   views, plans & intentions & change the course of my life for better or worse.”

       Another test lies in sorting through [my current] action to see whether it     chimes right on several levels, not just one. The end may still look wrong from  1 or 2 angles & be right on the major ones. It's only intuitively I know where next  to move; when the intuition is strong I must follow it. In living, intuitive & reflec-    tive understanding are equally important before taking more steps. I know the     critics’ interpretation of prayer as a crutch for the weak & the frightened. I admit  to weakness & to fright, even on those days when I feel strongest & most se-    cure  in my world. Prayer, carried silently in me, seems to me a greater gift to     others  than all my practical tasks.

       Prayer in my Life/Friends, Let us Pray—I have stumbled along this     way of prayer for many years, making all the mistakes & been recalled to it by     life over & over again when I thought I had done with it.  I veered away from    them time and again, afraid to be drawn into depths beyond me.  I count it    one of the finest gifts of my life to have been exposed to greatness in more     than one religion.  My father’s faith was rooted in experience of God and     Christ, in real and unshakeable conviction in the saving power of his Lord.  He     found brothers in Jew, Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem.  Wherever men     believed with fervor, he in delight found God.

       Like many adolescents, I fell 1^st into the role of fervent Christian, then  into the fervent role of skeptic; theological discussion bored me. I met God 1^st     in Satan’s image, God’s shadow. In every person I have met God’s image     whole, in his excellent & his terrible forms. The controversies raging over God     & God’s existence seemed irrelevant to the essential task at hand of coming     into God’s presence. I found myself [slipping] into sloth or burying myself in     work. With prayer’s return there came the conviction that love of others is no    danger to prayer.

       There were more than 20 years between my 1^st acquaintance with     Friends in a college international seminar & my joining the Society of Friends.   It was among Friends I grew up, for among them I learned some of the hard     lessons of life.  There is hardly a defect of human mind or spirit that is not bla-    zoned in some degree across the Society of Friends.  Reconciliation came. I    looked at the persons in meeting and found their strengths were my strengths,  their weaknesses my weaknesses.  These were my people. I had to wait for     that moment when I would know I am a Friend.  When I devote myself to     serving others, why is it I in the end receive the most?     Why is it this     service does not bring complete fulfillment? Life expands continually     through life’s discoveries, enriched through discard as well as accumulation. 

       There have been moments when my Meeting has waited with great care  on a right decision; this same care is not extended as often or faithfully in the  meeting worship.  It is not recognized that to wait is important, that silence is a  discipline to our distressed or eager selves that can deepen our words. Both     the waiting & the quality of the message have direct relationship to the amount  of inner preparation we have been willing to make.              

       It is in the long tradition of Friends to prepare for meeting. If we were to  look closely, we would likely find a long inner preparation behind spontaneity.  I  live in prayer, yet in prayer I am a novice, and I continually experience all the  obstacles & dangers that every novice encounters.  It is only when I am willing  to let go of myself and experience fully the meaninglessness of my life apart     from God that the activity of the Spirit within me takes over, grace comes as a     gift, and joy.

       Friends, let us pray. What matters is that we learn to pray in our solitude,  that we bring ourselves to meeting for worship in the spirit that effects recon-    ciliation among us on the deepest levels of our beings. As the London Yearly     Meeting of 1928 recorded: “In silence, without rite or symbol, we have known     the Spirit of Christ so convincingly present that his grace dispels our faithless-    ness, our unwillingness, our fears, and sets our hearts aflame with the joy of     adoration. We have thus felt the Spirit's power renewing & recreating our love     & friendship for all our fellows. This is our Eucharist & our Communion.”

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175.  Mutual irradiation: a Quaker view of ecumenism (by Douglas V. 
           Steere; 1971)

       O my God, how does it happen in this poor old world that thou art so     great & yet nobody finds thee, that thou callest so loudly & yet nobody hears     thee, that thou art so near &  yet nobody feels thee, that thou givest thyself to    everybody & yet nobody knows thy name.  Men flee from thee & say they can-   not find thee; they turn their backs & say they cannot see thee; they stop     their ears and say they cannot hear thee—(Hans Denck, 16^th century)

       How few there are who are still enough to hear God speak     (François  Fenelon, 17^th century)

            About the Author—Douglas Steere is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy  at Haverford College & Chairman of the Friends World Committee for Consul-   tation.  He has traveled to many part of the world on missions for the American  Friends Service Committee and other Quaker organizations. 

       Foreword—Douglas Steere has had a concern for what he calls “mutual  irradiation” [he prefers it to “dialogue”] for almost 2 decades, [in particular with     Zen Buddhism and Hinduism].  In 1967 he carried on two resident conferences  [as Secretary of the Friends World Committee on Consultation (FWCC)]; one in Japan with Zen Buddhists; one in India with Hindu scholars, both meeting with    an ecumenical group of Christian scholars. 

      This pamphlet is from a German lecture's English preparation. It reaches  into the rationale of the ecumenical movement, & treats of those hesitations &   roadblocks that Friends find surfacing as they develop intimate relationships,      both within the Christian communion & beyond it; it looks for Quaker opportu-    nities to serve.  

       [Introduction/Ecumenism/4 Postures/ “There but for…—I don't be-    lieve that problems that Hans Denck & François Fenelon point to [in the begin-    ning quotes] can begin to exhaust the barriers that keep us from hearing what     God has to say to us.  A message of importance for us is found in the ecume-    nical surge that has taken place among the Protestants, the Orthodox, & the     Roman Catholics. 

       New relations are emerging between Christians and Buddhists, Hindus,  and Muslims. For those of us who suffer from hardening of the categories, the  message to found in this vast ecumenical movement will cause much pain.     Arnold Toynbee said that what will most interest historians 1,000 years from     now will be what happened when Buddhism & Christianity 1^st interpenetrated     each other; he could have said as much for Hinduism & Islam.

       Ecumenism simply means “world-embracing.”  It means overcoming  several barriers and finding what embraces them all.  [It means “moving fences  outward”] to embrace but not erase the unique & very special spiritual witness     of the different religious groups.  Christianity has 4 [ways of relating to world     religions]: destroy; merge; co-exist; and mutual irradiation.  This 4^th approach     would try to provide the most congenial setting possible for releasing the deep    witness that the Buddhist or Hindu or Muslim might make to his Christian     companion, and that the Christian might share back.  [We will start with the 4     approaches within Christianity].

       [While we may tell jokes about our relationship with the “religious oppo-    sition”], we have come to realize that what happens to one segment of a peo-    ple’s religion happens to all. [The author has seen evidence that the relation-    ship between France and Germany has become ecumenical from a political,     European standpoint]. In ecumenism, each religious group feels concern for its  fellow religionists’ situation. [Co-existence is becoming more of a possibility],     but co-existence is at best only a transitional state.  [What can Quakers bring  to ecumenism]?

       Quakers: Hesitations/3^rd Stream/Revolution/Functional Ecume-    nism—Quakers have approached Protestant ecumenical negotiations with     pronounced hesitation, even though American Quaker membership is well-    represented in the World Council of Churches. At our best, Friends have  touched a spring of life that reaches beyond forms. The Ecumenical Movement  touched on issues of creed & church government, which were foreign to the     Quaker experience. British Friends were blunt and refused outright to submit to   the creedal formula that was required for World Council membership. Many    Continental & Scandinavian Friends feel themselves part of a 3^rd force, part    of a mystical stream that might one day draw all back into its current.

       [For me there has always been] a conflict in Quaker minds about in-    volvement in the Protestant coalition. They want to be a part of anything that  would heal the Christian world’s divided body.  On the other hand, many     Friends were hesitant to become identified [too strongly] with the Protestant     segment while the Protestant-Catholic breach still existed. And there is a     revolutionary element in Quakers, a movement rather than a church, that     distrust church structures of all sorts.  To enter the ecumenical association as  just another small  and insignificant church body would rob them of their    revolutionary status [and what makes them unique.] 

       [Pope John XXIII’s vision] accenting the radical universality of God’s love  is radical enough to challenge any revolutionary. The Catholic novelist Georges  Bernanos writes: “The holy invisible church which we know includes pagans,     heretics, schismatics and non-believers whom God alone knows . . . the com-    munion of Saints . . . which of us is sure of belonging to it?” John XXIII is calling  us to witness to the operative presence, here and now, of this fathomless love    and concern that is at the heart of things: a presence which is at work in the     unconscious life of every part of creation.  It would be hard to find a more     moving appeal to our own intimate experience of this [timeless] supporting     mystical stream that has been flowing always through the unconscious life of all  people everywhere, but broke out in the life of Jesus Christ.

       My notion of this vision is a functional ecumenism that begins with us  encouraging each other to practice our own religious tradition and to share our  experience with each other [without fear of being assimilated].  We should be  prepared to join with other confessions in all kinds of common explorations and  common tasks. A truly functional ecumenism wants to witness to the world     how much God cares. A functional ecumenism will open us up to [treating the     world as one global community without regard to the particular belief held by     those we help, and to the witness of our fellows of whatever religion]. 

       Zen Buddhist/Quakers/ Mutual Irradiation—In 1967, the Quakers in-    vited a small group of Zen Buddhists representing both the Rinzai & Soto per-    suasions to meet with Christians.  A small Quaker team which included a Ja-   panese and an American woman served as hosts.  The morning discussions     centered in turn upon one of the 2 stated topics:  “The Inward Journey” and     “Social Responsibility for the Ordering of Our World.” 

     Each participant had an opportunity to give an opening talk and there was  ample time for continuing the issues raised. Afternoons were left free for resting  or walking or visiting; evenings were mostly given to sharing music. The Japa-    nese Christians discovered that they have a layer of traditional Buddhism in     their unconscious.  They were able to re-assess their Buddhist past and decide  what part of it might be accepted and utilized. 

       The Zen Buddhists had nearly all encountered Jesus Christ at some  stage of their pilgrimage. Zen Buddhists were chosen for this small, elite group  because they are a living and articulate organ of the inward Japanese life, and  because they were a natural group for Quakers to turn to.  As anti-liturgical and  unconventional witnesses to the spirit rather than the law, they have a lot in  common with Quakers.  [Stories were told to illustrate Zen philosophy].   

       [With so much in common, it was challenging to find the unyielding     priority which the Zen gave to [first] “going into the mountains” [i.e.] turning in-    ward in mediation & searching to find the inward Buddhahood or the new     angle of vision.  Quakers have experienced that [meeting another’s need first     outside the mountain] may open the way to the inward “mountains.”  The con-   sciousness of what our Zen Buddhists friends would say to this and many other  issues [still comes to mind when I am trying to decide an issue].  [The insis-    tence on this priority] searched not only the Quakers but all the Christians pre-    sent.  It illustrates true ecumenism and mutual irradiation.  The Zen humor    about themselves and their professions and the openness of Christians admit-   ting to their efforts and failures [exerted an influence over the entire group]. 

       [In approaching ecumenism], Dr. Jacques Cuttat lays down as a re-    quirement that each must give to the other’s faith the amplitude of love, post-       pone value judgment, and “suspend for a time our adherence to our own com-    munion in order to understand the non-Christian brother as he understands  himself.”  When both share their experiences “we have what can be called a     truly ‘inter-religious space.”  [Having different aspects of Christianity and Zen     Buddhism present] gave a deeper cast to the witness.  Professor Hisamatsu     wrote:  To reverse the split in subjectivity and to realize a stable post-modern     original subjectivity is a universal and vital task.”

       Hindu-Christian Colloquium/Vicarious Participation—In April 1967,  FWCC hosted a meeting of Hindu and Christian scholars (Roman Catholic,     Syrian Orthodox, Mar Thoma, Protestant, and Quaker); we met in a season of     acute spiritual need. Father Klostermaier, said, “We must help each other to     preserve this precious tradition in India. Hindus and Christians here in India     may influence the whole world.” Bede Griffiths says, “The West stands in dan-    ger of neglecting the life of contemplation. It is important for it to have contact     with the revitalized life of contemplation in Hinduism. These men and women    who participated in mutual irradiation were welded together by their acute    need, confirming the promise that “not in your skill but in your need will you be     blessed.”

       A whole new literature [written by Western authors] is now giving reli-   gious insights of these great world religions [of Buddhism and Hinduism]. The  universal invitation to a vast introversion which may loosen man’s greed and  acquisitive clutching at the world of nature and of his fellows, and the loosening  of egocentric pretension may permit new awareness. Hinduism too, is marked  by this same inward-turning accent and [awareness of connection] with the soul  of the infinite Godhead. 

       Dr. Cuttat says: “The great ‘lesson’ of the spiritual East is not univer-    sality; it is spiritual concentration.” And he says, “Eastern spirituality insists that  aspirations to the Divine are inherent in the human vocation, & not a “spiri-    tual luxury.” The common people of India look for God disguised in any stran-    ger that may appear. Hinduism’s stages of life has taught its people that the    most holy ones of every generation are not to be found in great religious     organizations but hidden in unexpected places.

       Islam witnesses to what it means to live in God’s Providence.  To take     what comes as if from the hands of Allah, and to discover what message for me  is written in this event is “self-abandonment to Divine Providence.”  The 5 spo-    ken prayers and Ramadan are reminders of the [presence & care of Allah].      What is the Holy Spirit saying to me as a Christian, as a Quaker, in [wit-    nessing the practices] of this other religion?

       Every Gift…/Intellectual Task—I believe that Quakers do have a small  but a peculiarly important role to play as catalysts in the ecumenical hospitality  that has been suggested here.  At their best, I think that Friends are naturally  oriented to begin from within and to draw the whole ecumenical process in this  direction.  Marius Grout said, “If contemplation which introduces us to the very  heart of creation doesn't inflame us with . . . a love that gives us . . . the under-    standing of the infinite misery of the world, it is a vain contemplation . . . of a     false God.”  

      [Our involvement in the ecumenical process prompts the following ques   tions from other religions]: How do you find it possible to counter the dis-    persive forces of life and to keep attentive in the inward center with only     one hour a week devoted to it?  When is the time that you take for the     healing of the soul?  These questions are gifts, for there is no alternative to      being brought back into the seat of yielding and of tendering.

       On the intellectual side it is doubtful if Friends are likely to make any  decisive contribution to a deeper ecumenism.  Our only reply might be that     while we may not ourselves at this point be able to formulate a view of the     universal Christ, we can be among those who are most open to it.  Any truth     that we have found in these great world religions has only sharpened the     urgency of Christ’s inward call upon us and has given us a new sense of how     little we yet know of him, and of how much we have yet to learn. 

       [What happens] when the prophetic type of religion [with its per-    sonal responsibility meets] the profound Buddhist and Hindu concen-    tration upon consciousness and awareness and “myself” is transcen-    ded?  Ecumenical encounters may bring a realization that the stream of God’s    mercy can flow down through more than one shape of institutional river-bed.     

            There should be no minimizing of the need for a climate of sincere see-    king.  For the ecumenical encounter to be creative, there is required not only     the tender effort to understand, but also a frank & open climate that acknow-    ledges and shares genuine differences in all their starkness.  Something may  happen in understanding another’s truth that irradiates one’s own tradition and  may even hint at a hidden convergence, a truth that embraces both.   
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176.  Anna Brinton: A Study in Quaker Character (by Eleanore Price 
           Mather; 1971)

       About the Author—Eleanore Mather came to Pendle Hill in its early  days when Anna & Howard Brinton were shaping this experiment in adult edu-    cation into a community. She returned later to edit Pendle Hill Pamphlets. The  nucleus of the material used in this pamphlet was dictted by Anna Brinton in   1963 & supplemented by American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) re-   ports, & her sister Catherine Cox Miles, & Howard Brinton's reminiscences.   Other friends also contributed material. 

      We give thanks for the things that change not in the midst of man’s con-    fusion, for the beauty of the world & the upholding strength of household affec-    tion.  And we pray that we may perfect our relationships, increase our obedi-    ence to God and our serviceableness to one another, through the grace and     mercy of the ever living Christ.

       1. Youth and Aunt Kate—In 1914 Anna Cox stood at the window of her  Berlin pension. Anna was an American citizen caught in the German war zone.   Her sister lay in a nearby hospital; her mother Lydia Cox was also in Berlin.      Austria had declared war on Serbia.  Banks were not accepting letters of credit;  only gold.  A representative of the Y.M.C.A., Dr. Naismith brought them gold.  This messenger had reached them through channels opened to him by Herbert  Hoover, whom Lydia had nursed as a young student at Stanford.  Helping in  time of need regardless of circumstances was a family tradition with the Beans  and the Coxes. 

       Anna was born October 19, 1887 in San Jose, CA. [She attended] the     little Friends meeting house less than 2 blocks down the street. This meeting     had been founded by their grandparents, Joel & Hannah Bean, who were dis-    owned by Iowa YM. The girls received their elementary education at home     [from their parent-teachers]. After 6 years of intermediate work at a local school,  Anna went to Westtown, a Quaker boarding school in Philadelphia.

       Her college was Leland Stanford University. She lived at home & com-    muted.  The Earthquake of 1906 (April 18) struck campus; she still went to     school [and viewed the devastation].  By fall the university had recovered suffi-    ciently to hold classes.  Her grandmother’s sister, Aunt Kate (Catherine Ship-    ley) would take her to Europe during the summer.  She said: “It was Aunt Kate     who got me over being excessively timid. I was so timid I could hardly brace    up to anything.  It was Aunt Kate and her trips that cured me, [carrying her     luggage and buying tickets].

       Of course Aunt Kate embarrassed us all. She’d go places she wasn’t     invited, & somehow it always came off well.” The 1^st European trip in 1908     included a visit at Hannah Whitall Smith's, a popular religious writer; [she had     many well-known relatives]. Hannah was a great temperance worker. She     asked Aunt Kate to come to lunch & speak at a temperance meeting afterward.  Aunt Kate met Anna & Lydia in London after they had escaped Berlin.  Aunt     Kate, ever zealous, [cheered on the soldiers marching by]. Cousin Sue said:     “But Auntie, thee doesn’t believe in all this!” Aunt Kate respond: “Of course     not, dear.  But I thought they needed a little encouragement.”

            2. Academic & Otherwise—With a doctorate from Leland Stanford,  Anna taught Latin at Mills college. Her sister Catherine urged her to join in the     AFSC’s post-war work in Germany. Howard Brinton joined her in exploring the     needs of Upper Silesia in southern Poland. An English Friend said firmly, “If     respectable people can’t do what they want to, who can?” Anna said: “This     dictum recurred to [me] again & again at Mills College.” 

       Howard & Anna had met before without apparent effect. Helpful voices     in Quaker circles kept reminding [the couple of one another]. They walked to     the Dresden Museum of Modern Art.  Both agreed it was modern; neither     was sure it was art.  Howard had been brought up with the traditional Quaker     respect for the natural sciences, and a touch of suspicion for the arts. And     though he has spent many years in the service of religion and philosophy he     has never left the scientific outlook of his years as a physics teacher.

       In Silesia, Anna traveled from one university to another to discuss ar-    rangements for student feeding, [discussing the problem in detail with the  Rector of Koenigsburg, in Latin.  From time to time she would return to Bres-   lau. She and Howard went to opera and dinner together. Then Anna was     called home by the serious illness of her mother. [It was to be an eventful trip     home].

       AFSC's lead person in Germany asked Anna to escort 7-year-old El-    freida, who looked like an angel, to San Francisco.  [The child Rosa joined     them as far as New York].  Their behavior was anything but that of angels.  It     included: a snowstorm of goose feathers from a ripped-open pillow; filthy lan-    guage on the voyage home; stalling bedtime with prayers and hymns; killing     another passenger’s canary. A month after she delivered Elfreida to the Brau-    tigans she received 4 dozen red roses.    

       The letter which had sustained Anna’s courage during the trials of her     homeward voyage contained a marriage proposal. [Her letter of acceptance]     was followed by a silence of several months. After 3 months came a torrent of     letters 30 strong, delayed by post-war disorganization in Europe. She was a     member of 12^th Street Meeting in Philadelphia, & almost got married a con-    tinent’s breadth away in College Park without her own meeting’s sanction.     Clearance had to be sent by wire, which caught up to the wedding party on     the way to the meeting house.  

       The following autumn the young couple went to Earlham College, where  Anna was to teach the classics, Howard physics; 3 Brinton children were born  here: Lydia; Edward; and Catherine. Life was more than full for Anna, but her  energy and resources were monumental. Howard had received his doctor’s     degree in Philosophy and Physics, and extended his teaching to include Bible     & History of Religion at Mills College.  Anna returned as Professor of Archae-    ology and found herself Convener of the School of Fine Arts.  She sailed for     the Orient to study Chinese Art 6 months after Joan’s birth.  [She had a fasci-   nation with Virgil’s Aeneid, and prepared a book entitled A Pre-Raphelite     Aeneid from an old manuscript she found].

            3. Upmeads—Upmeads was a utopian land described by William Mor-    ris in his book, The Well at the World’s end. It was also the name given by     the Brintons to their Mills College home, & latter applied to the attractive stone    house at Pendle Hill to which they moved in 1936. It is entirely likely that Mor-    ris’ [appreciation of the aesthetic] & his inspiration played a part in the aesthe-    tic dimension which she brought to Pendle Hill, a school-in-community. She   brought Far Eastern art & beautifully printed editions of ancient works into    Pendle Hill life.

       Howard was Director of Studies; she was Director of Administration.     His work was contained in the daylight & early evening hours; hers knew no     bounds. All housekeeping at Pendle Hill was shared by community. Anna’s role  was to find a place for everyone. “Log Night” entertainment at the end of     summer school 1938, included a super-charade entitled “Nothing Fails Like     Success.”  On the afternoon before the performance the living room of Up-    meads was in a creative ferment.  [Howard, at a loss for how he could assist,     resorted to a comfortable chair and his well-worn copy of William James’     Varieties of Religious Experience.”]  Anna’s response to this was: “Howard, is     thee going to try to help, or is thee just going to fool? Her long-accepted role-    in the performance was the black-robed villainess “The Spirit of Organization    that Kills.”

       The heart of Pendle Hill was Upmeads, & the heart of Upmeads was     family. Anna Brinton never allowed the mothering of Pendle Hill to preclude her  mothering of Lydia, Ed, Cathie, & Joanie; her love & understanding of children  was miraculous. Edward visited Easter Island in 1957 or 1958. He traded for a  wooden lizard-like creature representing Aku-Aku, a guardian spirit of consci-    ence & imagination carved by the mayor.  Joanie asked her father permission     to go to Swarthmore with Pendle Hill men.  When asked about it she said: “I try  to [always ask Father’s permission]. It gives him a feeling of authority." 

       Community living is fraught with tension.  A group of such extreme indi-    vidualists as were gathered at Pendle Hill would have gone to pieces without     some degree of organization; Anna’s authority cured more than it killed. Harsh     words are said these days about manipulation.  Yet there is no mother of a     family worth her salt who does not exercise this technique in a benevolent way.   Benevolent manipulation requires discernment, [which] Anna Brinton had.  She  felt that each person here must be caught up in the great things of life that     one is about.  By 1950 the lure of wider horizons of service made her decide     to give her full energies to the AFSC.  It was on a perfect day in May that she    persuaded Dan Wilson to be her successor as Executive Director of Admini-    stration.

   4. Tokyo—Anna Brinton pointed out that humor is congenial with Qua-    kerism. The comic spirit has emerged from leaders as diverse in talent as     Nicholas Waln, Edward Hicks, George Fox, and Henry Cadbury.  Anna’s     humor was of a very special sort.  She was able to perceive the ludicrous in     situations which were not basically funny, and to enjoy it. [Anna went to Lon-    don to] study the Japanese language in preparation for her assignment at the     Friends Center in Tokyo.  

       Europe and its conferences were only the 1^st leg of a journey which     was to carry the Brintons from Rome to Beirut and thence to India and Japan.   [Anna’s AFSC offices included]: Commissioner for Asia, and Director of Inter-    national Relations Program.  She helped provide bees for Canning, India. 15     years later she learned of the “good honey industry at Canning,” which had     great emotional impact.    

       In Tokyo in 1952 the Brintons found the Japanese struggling to over-    come post-war humiliation & poverty, & the final trauma of Hiroshima & Naga-    saki. Esther Rhoads helped them adjust. 2 relief centers were run by Friends     in Tokyo, Setagaya & Toyama Heights. Anna wrote: “March is graduation sea-    son in Japan, from nursery school to university; formal exercises mark the tran-   sition from one education stage to the next. The charming gravity of [a cere-    mony] for 4-year-olds is indelibly fixed in my remembrance. Addresses by    grown-ups were brief & vivid.”

       She also wrote:  “Taste and appreciation are not killed by adversity …     Flower arrangement, lyrical drama, and above all calligraphy are, my mind, the  heart of our program”; for Japan, this was the way. Anna particularly prized the  religious expression of this art, joining in the crowds which visited Japan’s     temples and monasteries. [In Ise, almost 220 miles (350 km) southwest of     Tokyo], “we, with hundreds of others in kimonos viewed the sunrise beyond the  “wedded rocks,” … indeed a splendid sight.”    

       She understood the need for an affirmation of Japanese tradition at this  time; soldiers & American officials provoked resentment among the Japanese.  She felt a deep sympathy for the service man, isolated in a strange land with-    out the outlets of home & family. Personal contacts between Japanese & Ame-    ricans were good. [The local military police made friends with the children of      the Setagaya Center, celebrating Christmas with them & giving an organ to    the nursery. Anna attended a dinner where Esther Rhoads entertained the    Crown Prince].

       While Anna’s efforts were focused on the Centers in Tokyo, Howard was  visiting many schools, and university groups, institutes, and Friends meetings.   He gave the opening address at the World Pacifist Conference in April of 1954,  [& attended] the dedication of a peace monument at Yamagata.  Anna writes:  “We marched with yellow-robed priests from Ceylon; some Indians wore busi-    ness suits, others their Prince Alberts… The chant, “Hail to the Lotus [scripture]  of Perfect Truth,” gave a rhythm for our walking, and faintly or more loudly     was heard at any hour of the day or night; [it was the last sound we heard on     our departure].  

       Kimoko Nunokawa wrote a poem for Anna, including the lines: “Flowers  of love bloomed wherever you walked/Fruits of love ripened wherever you     touched// We saw—very often—that/ Your feet were carried to the sick children:  /Your eyes were put on poor people/ And a miracle of love was revealed there//   We saw—very often—that/ You were surrounded by many children:/ We felt     children’s lovely smile &/ Your noble benevolent eyes brought there heaven …”

       5. Miracles and Impediments—On their return to Pendle Hill from     Japan, Howard and Anna became Directors Emeriti.  They retired to a cottage     that they named Matsudo, in the shadow of a row of pines.  Anna, sprung of a     family of philanthropedes, was an incurable one.  She went with Barbara     Bachouseff, to visit the Dukhobors (Sons of Freedom) in British Columbia. 

       Anna Brinton was so free from the bondage of convention that she     never rebelled against it. [This included being at ease among] “2 dozen women,  old and young, stripped of their clothing, [who] sat down [by a river bank to     hear] funny stories from Russian folklore.”  Anna’s impediments made her life    harder, but they did not stop her. [She completed a book review in a few days    instead of taking the usual 6 to 8 weeks].  Anna said: “Thee said thee needed    it in a hurry, didn’t thee?” 

       At the memorial service held at 12^th Street Meeting, [many shared the     sentiment of the 1^st speaker]:  “Nobody knew Anna Brinton as I did.” Such was  Anna’s genius for human relationships that she gave to each friend a unique     part of herself.  We sat down together to go over the pamphlet manuscript “The  Atonement of George Fox,” by Emilia Norlind.  Anna had met her shortly after  she had been resuscitated.  Anna said: “I remember what a turn it gave me     when she told me she’d died.  She didn’t want to come back.  Got use to it,     though.”

       Anna lived beyond the opposites, realizing that in joy there is tragedy, &  in tragedy joy, as one who looks on the pattern from above & sees the whole.  This magnitude enabled her to [be comfortable with the Dukhobors], & to feel  spiritual empathy with communicants like the Zen Buddhists & Roman Catho-    lics, while keep her Quakerism. [She took the manuscript, even though she    had eye trouble].  I asked her how the eye was progressing.

        Anna Brinton said: “The doctor says all I’ll be able to see is light.  But I     think light’s a good thing to see!”

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177. Woolman and Blake: Prophets for Today (by Mildred Binns     

   Young; 1971)

       About the Author—John Woolman & William Blake were both pro-    phets, and so is Mildred Young. Already the author of 6 pamphlets, she wrote     this one some years ago.  Mildred has always been guided by concerns     well ahead of her own time.  She and her husband left Westtown School to    work  side by side with sharecroppers and tenant farmers in the South.   When she writes of poverty, she knows whereof she speaks. 

       I-II—There is not the least reason to suppose that John Woolman and  William Blake ever met or heard of one another.  William Blake was only 15     that summer of 1772 when, on the 6^th of June, John Woolman “landed at Lon-    don and went straight-way to the Yearly Meeting of Ministers & Elders which     had been gathered.”  I love to think that during that week in June, the grave     Quaker American may have met the visionary boy on the boy’s “playground.”    It is good to think that Woolman’s feet and Blake’s may have walked the same   paths that week in June, and that those 2 strangely clear pairs of eyes may   have met.

      I have put these 2 together because they bring us the same human land  scape and reflections upon that landscape. They spoke to their own time & the  world was not listening; [we find it hard to listen now]. Blake was to see deve-     lopment of industrialism, whose beginnings oppressed Woolman’s heart as he    walked north. Blake was to see rural England’s face entirely altered by the     Enclosure Act. The year Blake was 12, Ben Franklin wrote that he had seen,     “within a year, riots about corn, elections, workhouses; riots of colliers, weavers,  coal heavers, sawyers, sailors, Wilkites, government chairmen, smugglers.”     Blake was caught up in the Newgate Prison riot. [Corn Laws were passed &     ways of cutting bread consumption for the starving masses were sought].

       Blake was all his life to see the human waste & wreckage being thrown  off by that era change.  Woolman would never have trusted the violence of     which [The 2 revolutions & the Napoleonic period] consisted.  Blake did trust it     temporarily, though even as a boy he suspected that war serves the rich and     powerful's purposes.  In a “Prologue” he wrote:  “O for a voice like thunder, and  a tongue/ To drown the throat of war!—When the senses/Are shaken, and the  soul is driven to madness,/Who can stand? When the souls of the oppressed/  Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand?/ …O who hath caused     this?/ O who can answer at the throne of God?/ The Kings and Nobles of the     land have done! Hear it not, Heaven, thy Ministers have done it!

       III—One crucial difference between Woolman and Blake was that  Woolman was handfasted in love to a community to whom his pleadings were     addressed whereas Blake cried into the empty air, [“in the wilderness.”]  Wool,     by contrast, addressed Friends as individuals; he addressed himself as one     of them.  [He called on] the Society of Friends to resist the wrong in society     with all the weight of their own way of life. He saw the seeds of war in slavery     and destitution and saw human depravity as a fruit of war and enslavement.      On the state of the working poor he wrote: “Great numbers of poor people     live chiefly on bread and water in the Southern part of England, and some in     the northern parts … there are many poor children not even taught to Read.”

       Blake saw the conditions, and the later aggravation of the conditions,     that Woolman describes only as they were reflected in the London population     into which many of the most desperate people drifted. [Blake wrote poems     against: rich monopoly of property; neglect and exploitation of the human mind  and body, and of children; drafting of youth; degeneration of sexual morality     & family life.  Chattel slavery he did not see in London, but he knows that Eng-    land’s slave ships plied profitably between Africa and America. He raised his    voice against slavery wherever he saw it: white enslaving Negro, man ensla-    ving woman, woman enslaving man, rich enslaving poor. Blake, like Wool-    man raised his voice against exchanges that are controlled by power and     money's authority. 

       IV—Woolman’s insight into oppressions was everywhere as keen as     Blake’s except in what Blake called “Sexual Strife.” He included all relations of     men & women, economic, physical & emotional, the mis-education of girls &     boys for adult relationships; & the conflict between parents & their progeny.     [Woolman rarely mentions this issue except for feeling] “pure love, in which     desires prevail for the health & Soundness of the family.” It is likely that he     knew the problem but, having no specific answers to offer, wouldn’t try to make  recommendations.  

       Blake insists that more freedom & a complete change of attitude & edu-    cation, the unbinding of some legal change of attitude & education, the unbin-    ding of some legal restrictions, & a joyous naturalness between the sexes     would release men and women from it.  For Woolman the root was “pure wis-    dom.”  It is pure, placed in the human mind … it proceeds from God. It is deep     & inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any.

       V—Woolman was concerned with economics, convinced that the spiri-    tual life of men and women is deeply conditioned by their economic life. [Too     much or too little labor] hurt him deeply. It hurt him to see the whole life of any     person preempted by labor, whether by necessity in order to obtain a living or     by choice in order to obtain opulence. Woolman’s economic seemed unrealistic  to his contemporaries, and may seem unrealistic to us now. He thought that if  Friends would not crave surplus, or accumulate estates, they could influence  national economies & check the trend toward government based on money     and power.

       [Before] he went to England on his last journey, he left with the clerk of     the Meeting for Sufferings of Philadelphia YM, an Epistle addressed to Quar-    terly & Monthly Meetings of Friends. [The following are excerpts]:  

           “A trust is committed to us, a great and weighty trust.  [When] mem-        bers use themselves against the purity of our principles, [it is] a breach of            this trust, a step backwards, undoing what God has done through God’s            servants. Can our hearts endure if we desert a cause, if we turn aside            from a work under which so many have patiently labored. [This, Isaiah         says] is like when standard bearer fainteth … In the desire of outward                gain, the mind is prevented from a perfect attention to the voice of Christ           In the weaning of the mind from all things [not to be] enjoyed in the Divine           will, the pure Light shines into the soul …”

       “How strongly doth unfaithfulness operate against the spreading  of the peaceable, harmonious principle & Truth testimony amongst hu-    mankind? We who profess this peaceable principle may be faithful standard-    bearers under the prince of peace. Have the treasures I possess been ga-    thered in wisdom from above? Have none of my fellow-creatures an     equitable right to any part of that called mine? This condition where all our     wants & desires are bounded by pure wisdom, & our minds attentive to Christ’s  inward council, hath appeared to me as a habitation of safety for the Lord’s     people in time of outward commotion & trouble.”

            VI—[The occasion of John Woolman’s visit to London YM of Ministers &  Elders is presented in the fanciful version in Janet Whitney’s John Woolman:]  “He arrived a half-hour late after a 39-day voyage, walked in & laid his [travel]     minute on the clerk’s desk. This was the most august body to be found in that     day’s Quakerdom.  American Friends recommended John Woolman as “one in  good esteem among us.” The response was: “Perhaps the stranger Friend     might feel his dedication of himself to this apprehended service was accepted,  without further labor, & that he might feel free to return to his home.”

            John Woolman struggled with his emotion over such a rebuff in silence.  Then he rose & said that, although he couldn’t feel himself released from the  labor upon which he had come, yet he couldn’t feel free to travel in ministry     without Friends’ consent, nor was he willing to be an expense to them. He     hoped Friends would give him employment until they [were] willing for him to     carry out his concern. After a long silence he felt “that rise which prepares     [one] to stand like a trumpet through which the Lord speaks to his flock.” He    preached in full authority of the inward commission that he had left home and      crossed the ocean with. The Friend suggesting a return home confessed his      error; John Woolman was “welcomed & owned.”

       VII—[The following are excerpts from Woolman’s last four essays]:     “[Loving the Lord and all creatures], we are then preserved in Tenderness to-    ward Human & Animal. If another Spirit gets Room in our Minds, we are then      in the Way of disordering the Affairs of Society.  They may be so entangled     therein as to be estranged from the pure sympathizing Spirit.  I have had a     tender Feeling [towards] poor People, some of whom though honest & in-    dustrious, have nothing to spare towards Schooling.  Labor in the right Medi-    um is healthy, but in too much there is painful Weariness [& want]. When I     have beheld the Condition of poor, [uneducated] Children, & the Weakly and      Aged, [I think some who live in Fullness need to be put in Remembrance.    

       He who stands in the lowest Station in society, appears to be entitled to  as comfortable & convenient a Living, as he whose Gifts of mind are greater.     As we know not that our Children will dwell in that State in which Power is     rightly applied to lay up Riches for them appears to against the nature of God’s    government.  They who walk in the pure light, their Minds are prepared to     taste and relish those Blessings which are Spiritual & the Sweetness and   Satisfaction in the right Use of good Gifts in the Creation.  Happiness stands    in a Heart devoted to follow Christ in the Use of all Things.  To labor that our     Children may live comfortably appears to be a Duty. But if in striving to shun     Poverty, we do not walk in that State where Christ is our life; then we wander.    

     To keep to right Means in laboring to attain a right End is necessary.   [Those attaining Treasure], and yet being Strangers to the Voice of Christ …     Treasures thus gotten may be like Snares to the Feet of their Posterity.  Many      in striving to get Treasures, have stumbled upon the dark Mountains.”  The     shaft of the above messages’ meaning strikes through nearly 200 years of     changing conditions to the heart of much that still confounds us. 

       VIII—With the Industrial Revolution proceeding apace, and the adjust-    ments that were needed to preserve human values lagging behind. Blake     was writing his great, and greatly obscure prophetic poems.  In our own century  their own relevance glares at us out of their cloudy rhetoric.  In the years before  Waterloo, Blake was writing his immense poem called The 4 Zoas.  One para-    graph reads: “Compel the poor to live upon a Crust of bread, by soft mild arts.”  [The rest of the paragraph describes how the rich reinterpret & rationalize &   distort the condition & responses of the poor to keep them under control]. Hu-      mans have come under the dominion of their own greed & their own ma-    chines, & have lost the knack of refusing to cooperate in our own destruction.

       Within Blake’s lifetime there were 2 revolutions; in our time, how many     revolutions? And 2 World Wars. In both times rural life has been devastated, &  human life & the human-ness of life have been forfeit as “They forged the     sword, the chariot of war, the battle ax,/ The trumpet fitted to the battle & the     flute of summer,/ all the arts of life they changed into the arts of death.” We    have re-lieved the majority of hard, brutalizing drudgery, but we have tied     ourselves hand & foot to the machines that relieved us. ⅓ of the people of the    most affluent nation in the world today belong to an “other America,” rejected   into functionless neglect & living at the verge of want. 

       [IX]—Mark Schorer points out that “[Blake] points in many directions,     but for Blake all these directions pointed back to the single fact: the substitution  of mechanical for living values.”  “Attempting to be more than Man We be-    come less,” Blake makes one of his immortals say at the Great final feast.     Woolman called on Friends to put themselves into the place of those who are    oppressed, into the place of those who are being made less than men in or-    der that Man may attempt to be more than Man, where the poor prey on the     even poorer. Woolman and Blake saw that it is for man, with his God-given     grace of insight, with “Mercy, Pity, Peace, & Love,” to mitigate suffering where  he can, and never to increase it willfully.

       X—Blake’s mind was much more complex than Woolman’s, for all the     similarity of their prophetic insight. Blake had not undergone the intense inner     simplification that pure wisdom had early wrought in Woolman’s character. In     “The Divine Image,” Blake says in part: “For Mercy, [Cruelty, hungry Gorge],     has a human heart,/ Pity[, Jealousy, a Furnace sealed,] a human face,/ And       Love, [Terror, a fiery Forge,] the form divine,/ And Peace[, Secrecy, forged iron,]  the human dress.”

       All his life Blake was poor and his best work was scorned.  It was not in  the current fashion.  He kept time free for his own graphic art and for his poetry  even though he couldn't sell the pictures or publish the poetry. In his last years,  a group of young artists gathered around him, buying enough of his pictures     to keep him & Catherine in food & firing.  Samuel Palmer wrote: “He ennobled     poverty by his conversation,”

       Blake’s poverty wasn't his choice except by his refusal to cater to popu-    lar taste. John Woolman’s poverty was the expression of a conviction; he too     ennobled it. Blake knew the rejection of his best offerings, as John Woolman   knew it that day in 1772, [in the initial rejection of his English ministry.] John     Blake, near the end of his myth Jerusalem, writes: “Jesus said: ‘Wouldst thou   love one who had never died/ For thee, or ever die for one who had not died     for thee? And if God dieth not for Man & giveth not himself/ Eternally for Man,     Man couldn't exist; for Man is Love/ As God is Love: every kindness to ano-   ther is a little Death/ in the Divine Image, nor can Man exist but by Brother-    hood.”     

       XI—John Woolman wrote about a dream he had during severe illness: “I  was brought so near to death, I forgot my name. I saw [& was part of] a dull     gloomy mass of matter … An angel’s voice spake: John Woolman is dead. I     remembered that I was once John Woolman. I was carried to … where poor     oppressed people were digging treasures for “Christians.” [The heathen said     that] if Christ directed them to use us in this sort then Christ is a cruel tyrant.      At length I felt divine power, & then I said, ‘I am crucified with Christ, never-   theless I live, yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me.  And I perceived that John     Woolman is dead, meant no more than the death of my own will.”  Woolman     and Blake both submitted to a binding and chaining in tasks laid on them not     by their own choice, and in submission to the task they each found freedom.  

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178.  Violence-or Aggressive Nonviolent Resistance (by Phillips P. 

   Moulton; 1971)

       About the Author—Professor of Philosophy at Adrian College, Phillips    P. Moulton’s teaching centers around “Great Books” & great men, like So-    crates, Jesus, Pascal, & Thoreau; he has a special interest in John Woolman.     [This led him to spend] a year editing The Journal & Major Essays of John     Woolman, the aim of which was to reproduce [faithfully] Woolman’s final manu-    scripts. He now teaches a seminar on Violence & Nonviolence.

       Causes of Violence—The assassinations, riots & other forms of blood-    shed of the late 1960’s have increased the anxiety of all Americans.  Pervasive  and intense violence is nothing novel in America. By a violent revolution we     became an independent nation.  Major social [and political] issues precipitated     the savage Civil War. We became engulfed in 2 world wars.  A realistic appraisal  of contemporary civilization must take account of covert or systemic violence  woven into the very fabric of society.  [African natives are often] impoverished     by controlling the means of production, which is supported by the physical vio-    lence of police.

       What are the chief causes of violence, the extent & nature of which  are so appalling?  Largely covert or implicit, it becomes overt or explicit when     the power of the rules is threatened.  The violence of the oppressed is more     complex; its chief underlying cause is frustration.  Acute discontent depends on  a sense of moral outrage.  A significant number of religious leaders & theolo-   gians who did not previously do so have come to sanction violence. The ten-    dency today is to deny its applicability to international war but to apply it to     revolutionary struggles.  During 2 previous periods of US history [Civil War &     the Depression], even sincere pacifists have been tempted to justify violence.      When other methods seem ineffectual in achieving justice, the pacifist may     waver. 

       Benefits/Evils of Violence—To some extent violence may achieve the  aims, at least as a means of communication, [if not a spur to action and reform].  Violence sometimes gains its immediate end.  Witness the American Revolu-    tion. When systemic violence [turns people into things,] reacting violently can     have a purifying effect & a psychological release through purging themselves   of fear and giving vent to repressed rage.  In saying “No” to the oppressor he   affirms his dignity as a person with free choice. He is saying “Yes” to his essen-   tial being. 

       An assessment of [violence as a] whole indicates that the harm far out-    weighs the good. Whichever side wins [through violence], many characteris-    tics of a police state are likely to emerge. Any “law and order” achieved is by    totalitarianism. Reason becomes a casualty; fear & hostility gain the ascen-    dancy; privilege & identity are threatened. Internationally, the lack of control &   irrationality of violence are especially evident. Nearly any local war could lead   to a major nuclear holocaust. Alternative methods of handling international   problems must be adopted.

       Violence’s most pernicious evil is that it sets a precedent & example     which far outweigh the good it may accomplish. The US Revolution was one of  the most tragic catastrophes of human history. A great deal of ruthless torture  &  slaughter was practiced in the name of liberty. It is used to sanction almost  every type of violence.  [Other countries, beginning with the French Revolu-    tion,] cite the American Revolution for justification. Precedent & example    cause violence to become acclimated into our mores. This leads to the objec-    tion that  violence is morally wrong.  Many do not take such a stand. They     contend that one must do the lesser of 2 evils. If there were a course of action     as likely to achieve the goal, which would be good or significantly less evil, it     should be pursued.  

       Violence Acquired, Not Instinctive/Removing Causes/Effective     Alternatives to Violence—The evidence is reasonably clear that basically     man’s tendency to violence is learned rather than instinctive.  Pititim Sorokin in   The Ways of Power and Love, stressed the significance of love & cooperation   in the evolution of man.  Numerous research studies indicate that pre-human     primates were basically amiable and that at least some human societies value   gentleness and peace more than violence.  It is not instinctive, but emerges        during socialization and is thus largely a cultural attribute; it is learned, not       innate. Man has a capacity for violence, but he also has a capacity for friend-      liness.  We can learn to be more cooperative and constructive.    

      Strife can be diminished by removing its causes to the greatest possible  extent. This should be obvious. Yet it is not being adequately accomplished.      William James in “The Moral Equivalent of War,” accepted the martial virtues as  good, but contended that they could be developed and employed in construc-    tive projects.  Effective violence proceeds from a carefully worked out program,  which limits the violence. If the same energies and resources were used to     support peaceful means, they would be at least equally effective.

       In England in 1660, riots were triggered by poverty and labor conditions.  [The more force that was used to quell the unrest had the opposite effect] and  increased it.  Then from about 1790 to 1851 the violence gradually diminished.   The 1^st factor responsible for transmuting the tradition of violent behavior in     England was economic growth.  Labor unions were recognized and women &  children were protected from exploitation. [By the time of the WWI era], well-    established patterns of responsible behaviors enabled employers & workers to     effect viable compromises.  

      In the past 40 years in the US a similar process has taken place, as vio-    lence in labor disputes has been drastically reduced through appropriate legis-    lation and the National Labor Relations Board.  Andre Philip notes that the UN  has structures for keeping the peace & for conciliation, but not “for the peaceful  change of existing conditions.” An international body should develop a world  policy of peaceful economic change.

       Man certainly has the talents & resources adequate to reduce drastic-    ally the frustrations which generate violence.  A very effective nonviolent ap-    proach was that of John Woolman, [who worked against the evils of slavery].   His method was primarily one of face-to-face persuasion. His methods alone     would not be adequate in the far more complex world of the late 20^th century.

      Aggressive Nonviolent Resistance/Its Ethical Basis—This is a genu-    ine alternative which hasn’t been considered or employed enough; it entails re-    sistance rather than submission. It avoids deliberate destruction of life or pro-    perty but actively opposes evil. It is revolutionary, but uses nonviolent tech-    niques. Nonviolent action involves careful, disciplined preparation, planning &  organization. [Some techniques are]: persuasion; protests; demonstrations;     strikes; boycotts; sit-ins. The line between violent & nonviolent action can’t     always be sharply drawn.    

       Most leaders of such a movement believe it must be grounded in a     sound philosophy, including faith in the universe's ultimate morality.  Martin      Luther King emphasized that the means represents the end in process.  Man  has the unconditional obligation to do what is right and to refrain from doing     what is wrong.  Advocates of nonviolence conceive nonviolent resistance to    be in accord with such an imperative. Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A.D.) says     that nothing can keep us from being “just, great-hearted, chaste, wise, stead-    fast, truthful, self-respecting, and free.”  The real harm that can beset a man is   corruption of mind or soul. 

        Nonviolent resistance doesn’t allow passive acquiescence to exploita-    tion or domination. Advocates of non-violent resistance recognize that it won’t  always attain its goals, & may, in fact, preclude such attainment. In the final     analysis one must be willing to suffer. The goal of every campaign must be the  realization of truth. Another conviction of nonviolent resistance advocates is     that human life & personality are sacred. Simone Weil says that force “turns     anybody who is subjected to it into a thing.” [That is true of [victim &] agent     of violence.

        [Any] energizing effect of violence is achieved by the taking of positive  action for a definite goal. Vigorous nonviolent action should be just as liberating.  Nonviolent direct action proponents share further conviction that humankind is  essentially one. Humankind’s unity is a corollary of the Quaker belief in “that of  God in every man.” Gandhi & Martin Luther King believed that we are meant     to love our fellows. Love is viewed as a dynamic force. When one makes a     decision on ethical ground to reject violence, added insight, power & creativity     are gained for the employment of appropriate methods. Gandhi said, “I have     no ready made plan; it must be purely nonviolent … More will be revealed to     me from day to day, as all my plans have always been.”   

       Its Practical Effectiveness—Nonviolent resistance depends basically     upon what might be called ethical power—the sense of being in the right in re-    ference to goals and in the use of means.  [Potential supporters are not re-    pelled by violence, and are free to focus on the justice of the cause. [A nonvio-    lent movement has more reasoned and reasonable goals].  The goals of vio-    lent moments are prone to reflect emotional factors. Hence they are less     likely to be well-defined or subject to judicious modification. Nonviolence clari-    fies the moral distinction between the oppressor using violence, & the victim,    who is not. 

       The refusal to use violence constitutes an appeal to the conscience of     the oppressor, who is more likely to confront his own practice & see its invali-    dity. The acceptance of the idea depends partly upon prevailing currents of     thought, which may shift rather quickly.  A favorable factor is that people gene-    rally prefer peaceful means.  During the mass civil disobedience campaigns of  India, participants with little advance preparation remained nonviolent through-    out, [even supposedly] “cruel, bloodthirsty, and vindictive” Pathans on the    Northwest Frontier despite “wholesale shootings and hangings” by  British    troops.   

       The peasants in the Bardoli region sought to force the government to  launch an impartial enquiry into the recently enacted raise in taxes which the     peasants considered excessive.  Acts of protest during a 6 month period were     met by attachment of property, arrest, police brutality, false propaganda and     threats; the peasants reacted without violence.  The enquiry was made, the tax  raises were rescinded, and closer cooperation was effected between Hindus  and Muslims.  Bardoli became a sign and a symbol of hope and strength and  victory to the Indian peasant.” Other campaigns opened prohibited roadways   to untouchables, secured pay increases for textile workers, & numerous chan-    ges in the short and long-term. 

       A false impression is current that aggressive nonviolent resistance has     been tried and found wanting. To be sure, methods other than violence, inclu-    cluding: passive submission; attempts at persuasion; negotiation; protests     unrelated to a larger plan; and simple appeals to conscience have been inef-    fectual at various times. In effecting internal reforms the nonviolent (satya-    graha) campaign led by Gandhi & others produced results not previously con-   sidered possible either by its opponents or detached observers. [In civil rights]   a great deal was accomplished in a comparatively short time, particularly in    regard to education, public facilities, and extending the franchise.

      A sufficient background of experience is lacking by which to evaluate the  effectiveness of nonviolent resistance against a foreign aggressor.  Exactly     the same methods couldn't be expected to succeed under all circumstances.      Yet many methods are consistent with the philosophy of nonviolence.  It may    be assumed that with greater commitment & training nonviolent means would    be even more effective. Studies on nonviolent resistance were done by Bon-   durant, Gregg, and Miller. Specific methods of defending nations were written    by AFSC, Kinghall, Roberts, and Seifert.  One must conclude not that it has   been tried and found wanting, but that it has been surprisingly successful [the    few times it has been] tried.

       A movement or a nation relying on such methods would involve risks,     dangers, & possible suffering. In terms of producing favorable & lasting results,  nonviolent action holds greater promise. [Failure of a] nonviolent campaign     [leaves] the situation not much worse than it was. Violence usually begets     further violence. Failure of a nonviolent campaign defending the nation would     be more serious, possibly involving occupation. We would still exist & improve-    ment in the situation would be possible. Violent defense of a nation, [with its    probable nuclear response] would inflict the suffering & death of millions, and     we would suffer and die in like fashion.

       One must consider the number of nations which will eventually have the  atom bomb, the emotions of national leaders, the dangers of accidental war,     the “1^st strike” temptation. We must use all available resources to achieve con-    structive solutions to our social problems and [respond to conflict] with aggres-    sive nonviolent resistance. A large scale program of research and planning to   examine genuine alternatives to military defense is urgently needed. [Plan-    ning for nonviolent national defense would bring new insight and release ener-   gies here and abroad which could radically improve our national life and re-   lieve the whole world situation.

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179. Light and Life in the Fourth Gospel (by Howard H. Brinton;         

   1971)

       About the Author—When Howard Brinton started as director at Pendle  Hill with Anna (1936), part of his role in a pioneer school/community was odd     jobs. His retinue included Tibbar (rabbit) & Nuto (dog). Gerald Heard saw this  Peaceable Kingdom procession as illustration of his survival by reconciliation     philosophy. Howard seems indestructible, rising from ailments like the phoenix.  He continues to interpret the essential Quaker message.

       Foreword—This pamphlet deals mainly with the philosophy & psycho-    logy of early Quakerism as derived from John’s gospel & first epistle. In Qua-    kerism the Methodist revival's powerful influence gradually substituted salva-    tion through blood atonement for salvation through the Inward Light. [In the  original Quaker faith] God the Son, according to John’s Logos doctrine is God     as revealed and as creator. God the Father is God in God’s self, to be known     only through mystical intuition. I think that this faith is entirely in harmony with     modern thought in philosophy, theology, and religion. 

       I—George Fox, Robert Barclay, and William Penn all based their theo-    logy on John’s gospel. Fox [provided “leadership” and a minimum of organi-    zation in a group whose primary leader was not human]. Barclay furnished a     profound theology based on John’s gospel. Penn led the 1st active lobby in     history for Quaker prisoners. What does John mean by “eternal life?” [How     does this gospel compare to the religious classics of other religions?]       What kind of Christianity can save our modern world?

       The Inward Light which the Quakers look to as their means of “salva-    tion” is also the Inward Life; the Eternal Christ is also Life. In John’s gospel In-    ward Life reaches its highest quality in “Eternal Life,” “Life Abundant,” or “Life     Everlasting.” Life is a miracle, known only by feeling and not by an intellectual     process, it remains completely out of the reach of scientific understanding.       Eternal life is even less subject to intellectual understanding. 

      Life’s opposite is the machine which is often used as a substitute for life.  The most sophisticated machine is without those internal feelings that make up  the soul of a human being. For a machine cause always precedes effect. In an  organism, the cause may [be some desired future happening that has an effect  on present action]. [In one of John’s organic analogies], the branches depend  on the vine as the vine depends on the branches. An organism is governed by  a power within. [There's a kind of “mutual containment,” i.e. of us in the world's   and the world's soul in us]. Jesus prays that they may all be one: “. . . as thou,   Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.”

       The word “know” occurs a great many times in John’s gospel. To know  as John and Plato used the word meant to participate with what was known.  Here John’s “know” means a more intimate and organic relation than the word     “know” means today. Life as subject and life as object are no longer organic     parts of a world organism. As a result part of the world organism has become     more like an unorganized sand heap than a world soul.

       God is the bridge between one living subject & another, & without God    they would not know each other inwardly, since God is the inward life of both.    We have identified Christ with life. When Jesus speaks of eternal life he does   not mean an endless period of time. He may mean the elimination of the time   dimension. Time experienced is a variable, although clock time is a constant.       Also, it seems to some writers that Jesus overcomes the space dimension. 

       When Jesus speaks of himself as the light of the world he means a light  which can be experienced everywhere [at the same time]. We usually think     personality is something that is localized in time and space. But this limitation     may not apply to a higher form of personality. Today we have invented ma-    chines which almost overcome space and time by enabling us to travel quickly  and talk to any part of the world. 

       The word “eternal” in John’s gospel often does not mean a life which will  last forever, though sometimes it apparently does. The Greek aion refers both     to a particular quality of life in the present and also to an age of life beyond the  grave which has no definite beginning or end. In John 11:24-26, 4:14, and     8:58,  Jesus makes eternal life a present-day achievement as well as a future    event.  What then is eternal life in the present? “ . . . I am come that  they    might have life and have it more abundantly.” Life abundant has an eternal   quality. [Life lived fully has an eternal quality]. The highest forms of life, be-    cause they can produce themselves both biologically and spiritually, they    possess an eternal dimension extending without limit into the past & future. It    is only the spiritual birth which  has an eternal quality; it may a gradual or a    sudden birth. 

       II—The “Quaker” verse of John’s gospel (1:9) says that the Light “which  lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” These words show that every     human being, regardless of race or religion, possesses sufficient Light for one’s  salvation. This universalism was called “Gentile Divinity” by early Quakers. 

       John Whittier writes: “All souls that struggle & aspire/All heart of prayer  by Thee are lit/And dim or clear Thy tongues of fire/On dusky tribes & twilight     centuries sit. Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou know’st/Wide as our need     Thy favors fall;/ The white wings of the Holy Ghost/Stoop seen or unseen, oer  the heads of all.” 

       George Fox said: “. . .The gospel is to be preached to every creature; &  Christ. . . hath enlightened them with the light, which is the life in himself.” The  Greek philosophers Aristotle and Solon, and the Roman philosopher Seneca,  within the 6 centuries before and the 1st century after Christ echo the same     beliefs. 

       The universality of the light finds a high degree of confirmation when   the Gospel of John is compared to the Lotus of the Wonderful Law of Bud-    dhism, & the Bhagavad Gita of Hinduism. These 3 writings show a remark-    able  similarity to one another in some respects; their highest and most fun-    damental doctrines [remind one of climbers starting from different sides of a     mountain]. The closer they get to the top the closer they are to one another. 

       The most difficult problem in all religious theology concerns reconcili-   ation of the temporal & the eternal. How can we discover the eternal in the  temporal and the temporal in the eternal? [Perhaps] if the [eternal] cosmic     soul of the world becomes incarnated, then the problem is solved. This hap-    pens in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity, though the incarnations are not     equally historic. These 3 also describe a religion which is not confined to any     one people or one place; all 3 are universal. They all show the influence of     more primitive religions brought into a unified theory. The reconciliation of the     eternal and the temporal does not take place only in a single incarnation of the  leading figure. It takes place to some degree in every human being. The pre-    sence  of eternal life and light is never complete except in the incarnation of the  Eternal.

       Buddha and Krishna promise to return to the world whenever they are  needed to overcome evil, and they are the personification of the Absolute, the     soul of the Universe; Christ promises to remain as the Light and Life in his     followers. Jesus says in John’s gospel: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I     give  unto you.” In the Bhagavad Gita, peace is the goal, obtained by a com-    plete  freedom from samsara, the restless world of appearance which has no     reality. In Lotus Scripture peace is obtained by freedom from desire. 

       In John we can find a philosophy and theology for Christianity, and in     the first 3 gospels we can find a code of behavior; each without the other is     incomplete. Note the similarities between John, the Lotus Scripture (Buddhist),  and the Bhagavad Gita (Hindus) in the following passages.

           Lotus Scripture: The Dwelling of the Tathagata (Buddha) is the 

 compassionate heart within all. The Throne of Tathagata is the spiritu-    

 ality of all existence… The Buddha is born in the world to save all living

 creatures from fires of birth, age, disease, grief… From the rain of one

 cloud, each plant acquires its growth and the profusion of its flowers

 and fruit. 

          Though produced in the same soil and moistened by the same 

 rain, yet these plants and trees are all different… I am the Tathagata,

 the Worshipful, the All Wise, of Perfectly Enlightened Conduct, the 

 Understander of the World, the Peerless Leader … the Teacher of 

 gods and men, the Buddha, the World-honored One… The Law 

 preached by the Tathagata is of one form. If in other regions there are

 beings/reverent joying in faith/Again I am in their midst/To preach the 

 Supreme Law. 

           Bhagavad Gita: Who sees Me in all/and sees all in Me/For him 

 I am not lost/ And he is not lost for Me… Than Me no other higher 

 thing/ Whatsoever exists, Dhanamjaya;/ On Me all this (universe) is 

 strung,/ Like heaps of pearls on a string… I am the soul, Gudakesa,/ 

 That abides in the heart of all beings. 

      III—The only kind of Christianity which can be successful in Asia is that     which is present in John’s gospel, [because] of its similarity with Asian religious  classics. It would be a great mistake to endeavor to offer to the Orient a Chris-    tianity based on atonement through a blood sacrifice to an angry God. This is     very far from John’s statement that “God is love.” If Asia accepts from our     Western world only its scientific materialism and not its Christian religion, then     Asia will destroy itself just as our Western culture seems ready to do. 

       In Paul’s theology as a whole, Paul thinks that salvation occurs through  the life of Christ within, not through the blood he shed without. Paul more than     once warns us not to confuse the fleshly and spiritual. If Christianity is to be     preached successfully in Asia, it must include the great OT prophetic, ethical     writings, the first three Gospels, and the theology of the fourth. The Synoptic     gospels [reach outward to all of humankind; John reaches “inward” & “upward”    to Christ and God respectively]. John says “God is love”; but this love is best     described in the parables & sayings of the first 3 gospels; they bring us back    to earth & time, after John has led us to eternity.

       The West finds it difficult to grasp Zen Buddhism or Quakerism because  these religions represent not intellectual analysis but intuitional feelings. “You     shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). This truth     is life, known only by feeling and not by thinking. [A dead shroud of concrete     from a freeway is replacing the living fields and woods near where I am writing].  We are living in a world in which death is gradually supplanting life. The final  end of this process is predictable. Our own culture is now faced with challen-    ges which it may be unable to meet. An “interior proletariat” such as the     Benedictine monasteries of the 6th century and later, may be able carry our    Western culture into the future. 

        Past cultures passed through a spring, summer, fall, & ended in winter.  Oswald Spengler sees a materialistic philosophy, lack of a genuine religion,  skepticism regarding the value of life, & the breakdown of family life as signs of  winter. Today, the principal cause of anxiety is man’s hidden fear that he is     only a collection of atoms and therefore there is no evidence of an immortal     soul. If an interior proletariat should rise in the future to preserve a culture which  is worth preserving, it seems now that this will occur in Asia rather than in     the Western world. It may be that the Far East will be able to preserve a part of  that Western world to which the Near East contributed so much by creating     Christianity in the first century of our era. 
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180.  Apocalypso: revelations in theater (by Jack Shepherd; 1971)
            About the Author—Jack Shepherd joined the Theater Royal in Ports-    mouth, England at 9 years old; [he watched popular theater vanish from the  inside]. He has learned how to cope with the hazards of spontaneous drama.     He served in the navy in WWII, and joined the Religious Society of Friends in    1954. In Hong Kong in 1957, he produced the 1st television play in Chinese.   He came to Pendle Hill in 1966 and [sojourned until 1971].

       I-II—Note the implications of the [made-up] word apocalypso: [musical]     entertainment and story; improvisation; hints of revelation and discovery. The     final production of Center Stage at the Wharton Center in Philadelphia was     Reasons for a Rainbow, a live reconstruction of a silent-movie. Action, rather     than words had always been the dominant factor in Center Stage [productions].  I filled in for someone at the last moment, enjoyed [acting like a] Keystone     Cop, and received acclaim afterwards in the streets. At Pendle Hill I first wrote     Black City Stage. We experimented with improvisations, but mostly had not     found a way of bringing [much] spontaneity to an audience. [We were almost     always comic]. How could we be [entertaining], spontaneous, and serious?
            The next year became mostly Greek. We experimented with The Trojan  Women. We worked out the shape & sequence of events, but didn't rehearse     actual scenes. We turned Euripedes’ 2 Gods into a top CIA & Kremlin agent,     [who discussed] the disposal of Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra, & Helen.     They tried to explain to the wretched women that their fates of slavery and     worse implied nothing personal; merely the logic of war. The experience was     powerful, but could never be repeated, because much of its power came from     spontaneity.
            After the comic The Frogs by Aristophanes, we were ready for Pavene      for a Dead Princess, following the theme of Oresteiad. Agamemnon sacrifices  Iphigenia, Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon, Orestes murders Clytemnestra.  Helen appears. [Trapped in this cycle], they appeal to the audience for help.       The scripted material played for about half an hour, and the audience partici-    pation for about 10 minutes. The players needed to be able to grow together in  the performance, anticipating thoughts and feelings while still remaining in     character.

       The Apocalypso Repertory was born in April 1970. The newness [of this  idea] lies latent in each performance. The players bring their own humanity,     talent, [and feelings]. Each of the audience members brings their own humanity  and current mood. Between the alchemic compounds [of actors and audience],  communion is generated which is more than the sum of its parts; no perfor-    mance is the same as the next. We reckon ourselves well applauded when     people report a sleepless night after the show.
            III—Suddenly ideas and scripts began to pour forth; the problem was to  find occasions to bring them to life. In the summer of 1970 we did The Gods     Out at Elbow, where the gods Hera, Vulcan, & Persephone discuss what gods     should do when human needs change & humans stop paying their dues. Vul-    can comes up with the idea of doing theater. Hera wants to know, “What was    our [godly] function?” Persephone answered, “Helping people understand   themselves.” 

       The audience was invited to help in shaping the theater. The 2nd play  the same night, Help and Holy Physic, was about the daughter of Romeo and     Juliet, who objects to the [safe choices her parents made] and the “comfortable  and cautious dreams they settled for.” [She wants her parents’ original dream  back]. The audience provides her with answers; this play was shared with all  kinds of audiences.
           We could not lumber ourselves with scenery, furniture, or props which     could not easily be carried or found on the spot. We learned to achieve a     timelessness in dress and properties. [I do not choose to write a play on a     certain, chosen topic at a certain time]. Plays are born when they are ready.      [The seed for the above play was planted one Monday at lunchtime; by Wed-    nesday the script was finished]. The played touched on the problem of the  generation gap, and how a vision can decline into a dream.
             IV-V—One Sunday I was thinking of two young women [and put them  together as] Mary and Martha; and I felt like a tired Lazarus. By Tuesday     morning Fire and Fleet and Candlelight was written. [The story takes place]     10 years after Lazarus’ resurrection. Mary is off on her own; Martha is mana-    ging  Lazarus on lecture tours, but demand has fallen off. [Lazarus is afraid     death must be due again]. All 3 of them are tired, discouraged, on the edge     of despair and do not want to admit it. They have to appeal for help, for some  kind of wisdom.
            We [did the play] to a conference of about 200 non-violent-revolution     activists, [who happened to feel the same way as the characters], so our play     touched a nerve. When we appealed to them for help they could only share     their own suffering with us. None of us wanted to talk to anybody, only to live     silent for while with that agonizing and healing communion. [If that play was     designed to be performed for that group], it was beyond our awareness [and     planning]. 

       We gave it 3 performances, each different from the other because the  audiences were different. The experience confirmed for me that despair must     be engaged not by resisting it but by going right through to the point of accep-    ting bankruptcy; then one is on its far side, and closer to the truth than before.     [We also learned that] to bother about production pedantries is a waste of     time as long as the story, idea, and passion are authentic. Even in theater     you can’t keep smiles out of tragedy, nor sadness out of comedy.
            Shadow Play wrote itself in a single sitting overnight after [spending]     time with someone struggling with unhappiness & hurt. [In it] a poll-taker wan-    ders around trying to work up the courage to ask strangers dumb questions,   while a man lurks about furtively. The man is shadowing her and neither of   them knows why. [It was a comedy hit the first 3 times. In the 4th it turned into    a close & painful session of soul-searching about [how we end up preying on   others. How could the comic idea, same story, same sequence of words, sud-     denly become serious?

       The idea for Something Rich and Strange began as an excuse to enjoy  some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, especially the Dark Lady sonnets. Fred the     window-washer starts writing poetry, but it’s poetry Shakespeare has already     written. The play transmuted into a parable. The lesson was to never have     reality or illusion without the other. Just live with the ongoing dance.
           The Sleep of Wild Horses began as an intentional experiment in the  positive use of silence and darkness. A woman journalist, burdened by crazy     politics and insane violence, is anxious to start writing a book called “The     World’s End.” The inn she is staying at has a power breakdown, and there is     the unaccountable sound of galloping horses. 

       In the play there are only 3 people, 3 candles, and a Bible. It becomes  evident that the 4 Horses of the Apocalypse have returned to the inn’s stable,     and the time is at hand for opening the 7th seal (Rev. 8:1); [silence descends].     The audience is asked the question “How is the silence to be used?” The other  woman says “What is written is written” and disappears into the darkness. The  mute stableman retreats into the dark. The journalist, by the light of her solitary  candle, walks off to begin her book.
            VI—[Even though I said that plays often write themselves, & only when  they are ready] I thought about [suggested topics] of welfare-rights, poverty,     and the strange American notion that poverty is a crime calling for the punish-    ment of the poor and it began to look like a play, after all. Suppose a rich man     invites wealthy friends to dinner to discuss relieving the poor of hardship. His     wealthy friends don’t come & he invites the poor. The friends try to suppress    his efforts and prevent a poor man from coming. Title? Be My Guest.

       The 1st performance of Be my Guest took place at Philadelphia’s Arch  Street Meeting House in January 1971 and was wholly improvised. The action     was a series of attempts by the guest, aided and abetted by the kitchen-help,     to get through the doorway into the feast to which she had been invited. The     attempts were countered by technicalities produced by the doorman to keep     her out. We intended the audience to argue with the doorman, but they took     direct action instead, out of frustration with the situation. There were ingeni-    ous touches on the part of the audience. There were plenty of laughs in Be My  Guest, yet what theme could be more serious.
            [In the 1st year there were more than 30 scripts available; Devices and  Desires was only one of them. We were learning that scripts open to audience     involvement can contain unexpected dynamite; the explosion could be laugh-    able, grave, or not come at all. [After discussion of it], we could not help won-    dering what the 7 Deadly Sins thought of the New Morality. [We choose Le-    chery, Envy, and Sloth]. [They decided that New Morality was the creation of     theologians]. Their slogan to counter New Morality was “Absolution is made     meaningful by Sin.” After discussion with and suggestions from the audience,     the Sins decide to change their names. Envy becomes Criticism, Sloth be-    comes Rapture, Lechery becomes Celebration.
            VII-VIII—Certainly in life, we often make attempts to be serious, but     have to surrender to hilarity. And yet at that point, the seriousness strikes home  swiftly & relentlessly. [We were led to the 6th Beatitude: “Blessed are the pure  in heart for they shall see God]." 

        Sixth Beatitude was 1st produced in May 1971, the scene is a pro-    fessor’s farewell speech, with an unknown woman & her little girl, who in-    sists on dancing about the room during the speech. [The mother is seeking re-    sponses to her parenting fears and her “comfortable grey life.” Could purity of   heart be the answer? The professor has great enthusiasm for next year’s     course, shaped by the audience. The proof of the course is] “. . . THEY SHALL  SEE GOD!” God does show himself, but only to one person in the room. The      last, apparently absurd glimpse of  the professor shows him lurching towards     the truth about purity.

       [I am unable to] describe with precision these experiences of shared  creation. It is the nature of the experience to be indescribable, & only share-    able. Writing about the experience might serve to encourage readers to taste,    & share: laughter and tears; light and darkness; sound and silence. In each    pair the latter is thought of as the absence of the former; the first is positive,    the second negative. Apocalypso takes place when the apparent positives &    negatives are held in an embrace—a dance—wherein it is not certain which      is leading or following, or where one ends and the other begins. Much of [the    results] lies at the disposal of the audience.

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