The Quakers, as every body knows, differ more than even many foreigners do, from their own countrymen. They adopt a singular mode of language. Their domestic customs are peculiar. They have renounced religious ceremonies, which all other Christians, in some form or other, have retained. They are distinguished from all the other islanders by their dress. These differences are great and striking. And I thought therefore that those, who were curious in the development of character, might be gratified in knowing the principles, which produced such numerous exceptions from the general practices of the world.
Thus writes Thomas Clarkson, an eighteenth century abolitionist who, with William Wilberforce, worked closely with Quakers on the movement to end the English slave trade. His interest in the Quakers led him to author a three-volume book about the Society of Friends. Volume 1 was published in 1806, a year before the 1807 Slave Trade Act outlawed the slave trade (but not slavery) in the British Empire.
Clarkson explains his motivations as follows:
From the year 1787, when I began to devote my labours to the abolition of the slave trade, I was thrown frequently into the company of the people, called Quakers, these people had been then long unanimous upon this subject. Indeed they had placed it among the articles of their religious discipline. Their houses were of course open to me in all parts of the kingdom. Hence I came to a knowledge of their living manners, which no other person, who was not a Quaker, could have easily obtained.
As soon as I became possessed of this knowledge, or at least of so much of it, as to feel that it was considerable, I conceived a desire of writing their moral history. I believed I should be able to exhibit to the rest of the world many excellent customs, of which they were ignorant, but which it might be useful to them to know. I believed too, that I should be affording to the Quakers themselves, some lessons of utility, by letting them see, as it were in a glass, the reflection of their own images. I felt also a great desire, amidst these considerations, to do them justice; for ignorance and prejudice had invented many expressions concerning them, to the detriment of their character, which their conduct never gave me reason to suppose, during all my intercourse with them, to be true.
Nor was I without the belief, that such a history might afford entertainment to many.
Clarkson’s work, like Robert Southey’s Letters from England, written at almost the same time, offers a critique of English society as seen through the eyes of outsiders. Clarkson will also critique the Quakers from the point of view of a sympathetic outsider to their group.
I look forward to continuing reading this work, which can be found on-line. It will be interesting to learn more about how English Friends lived in the 18th century, not only to compare them to the “normal” English of that period, but also to compare them to Quakers in our time.
Several thoughts pop immediately to mind. First, much of my interest in Clarkson and Quakers of this period derives both from being a Quaker and from my interest in Jane Austen. Austen brushed up against Quakers during her life, and she was a great fan of Clarkson. We know she read his History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. As a Clarkson admirer and as a subscriber to circulating libraries, as well as a voracious reader, she almost certainly read A Portraiture of Quakerism.
Second, although Quaker numbers were to dwindle to dangerously low levels by the middle of the nineteenth century, at this time, Quakers seem to have been robust. Even if they were already dwindling in numbers, they were active. For example, 300 Quakers petitioned Parliament to abolish the slave trade in 1783. Though separating themselves from the rest of society, their strong objection to slavery forced them into alliances with people like Wilberforce and Clarkson, who were not barred from becoming members of Parliament as Quakers were.
A glance at the table of contents of Portraiture shows Quakers to have been, not surprisingly, “more different” from the general society than they are today: much of the first volume focuses on what Quakers prohibited: gaming, gambling, lotteries, music, drama and novels, to name a few.
A recurring question in contemporary Quakerism in this: Should we be more of a "peculiar" people? Some Quakers do adopt plain dress and use "thee" and "thou." I have no objection to these kinds of separations and believe they can provide a frame for an alternative worldview. Mostly, however, I believe that deepening our discernment as a faith group so that we can coalesce around being lights in the world from a faith, rather than a political, perspective, is our chief task.
Showing posts with label Jane Austen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jane Austen. Show all posts
Friday, August 26, 2011
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Framing Dorothy Day I
In Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, a character named Mary Crawford has grown up in the household of a corrupt uncle, a Navy admiral. At one point, she says wittily that she knows all about "rears and vices," following that with the statement "Now don't accuse me of punning." Of course, it seems obvious, even without Mary pointing to it, that she is indeed punning--she knows all about rear and vice admirals and all about their "rears and vices."
However, on the various Jane Austen lists to which I subscribe, violent fights break out periodically over this statement. One faction sees the worldly Mary punning, the other says no, of course she's not punning--look, she even says she's not punning. I have a level of frustration with this second faction, wondering how in the world they can't see the pun, especially given that Mary and her brother Henry are serpents who invade the "garden" of Mansfield Park, complete with allusions to Milton--and complete with adroit skills at manipulating language. I give enormous credit to Jane Austen for creating in Henry and Mary such well-rounded characters--they are so charming, so talented, so delightful, so capable, at times, of genuine social kindnesses--that you half fall in love with them, while at the same time knowing the "city" has twisted and corrupted them. Their vices hide in plain sight.
Dorothy Day was an enormously good woman who should, I believe, be made a saint. Her childhood contributed to that, and she's documented her tale of growing up at least three times. Yet because of the way she's framed it, the real story may be hidden in plain sight. To be continued ...(Not a tease, I'm just out of time right now ...)
Thursday, January 28, 2010
In Richmond at ESR... with Jane Austen and literature
Here I am at Earlham School of Religion and ...
I'm fascinated and somewhat amazed--though not entirely surprised--at the extent to which literary approaches and literary theory are currently permeating religious studies. Given the view of Bible as narrative and all of us as part of a larger story or discourse, this makes sense--but I didn't fully realize the impact until I got here. For me, this merging of literary approach, literature and religion is more than a touch of miracle, as it connects my passions ... leaving me in a state of near swooning euphoria--and I can, in a sense, pick up my graduate studies in English from the 1980s where they left off.
Every Tuesday, the school has a community lunch with a speaker. This week, I had the good fortune to hear Emily Townes, who teaches at Yale Divinity school. She was questioned about evil and suffering--two subjects she's written about--and she talked about the relationship between imagination and evil. I was thrilled. She discussed how cultures can create fictions that become so widely repeated they are accepted as facts--and that these fictions can obscure evil. She used as her example "Aunt Jemima" and "Mammy," cultural icons of the fat, jolly slave woman. There was no real Aunt Jemima--I knew this--(she first emerged as a former slave hired by owners of a pancake mix to make pancakes during the Chicago World's Fair in the 1890s and became wildly popular). Also, while female slaves cared for white children, the Mammy figure is another fiction. Townes pointed out that slaves were underfed (thin), and that none were truly happy with their lots. In fact, most "house slaves," contrary to our pictures of them, were likely to be the products of interracial "pairings". From what Townes said, I picture the real slaves as skinny, light-skinned, harried, overworked and unhappy rather than brilliantly brown or black, fat, cheerful, jolly and laughingly contented.
Of course--and while Townes did not say this I can imagine--cultural icons or stereotypes such as the cheery Aunt Jemima flipping buckwheat cakes in the kitchen or Mammy happily bustling around organizing the children speak to our deep desire to believe that the people who do the dirty work in our culture actually enjoy the task. And I imagine it's probable that some slaves would pretend to cheerfulness, as we all need to survive.
I also have been pursuing--of course--Jane Austen at ESR. I mentioned being a Jane Austen fan in my introduction of myself to my on-line Old Testament class and am thrilled to have fellow fans among my classmates. Naturally, Townes's talk of imagination and evil immediately made me think of Jane Austen--Austen was a woman who didn't gloss over the everyday horrors of middle-class life, the petty cruelties which she understood were worse for defenseless lower class people. Also, a book I am reading introduced me to a British Quaker author--her name evades me right now-- who wrote a children's book about Jane Austen in 1977.
I'm settled into my apartment in Richmond as I deliberately travelled light--and Roger, of course, is a wonderful moving companion.
Internet access has been a problem all week, hence my "silence." I am now--at last-- part of the Earlham College system, so I can access the Internet on my laptop, a huge boon. I still can't pick up the wireless system in my apartment, however, although I am right across the street from the campus--Roger says an enhancer of some sort might help. It isn't ALL terrible to be denied 24/7 Internet access however--it forces me to do other things. But it does impede blogging.
Otherwise, all is fine. I had to switch my schedule so now I will be in Richmond Tuesday afternoon through Friday morning. I will taking Old Testament, New Testament, Quaker History and Literature, and a class on Bonhoeffer.
I ran into a genuinely cheerful Clare Gamble, an Olney graduate and now student at Earlham College.
I hope everyone is well.
I'm fascinated and somewhat amazed--though not entirely surprised--at the extent to which literary approaches and literary theory are currently permeating religious studies. Given the view of Bible as narrative and all of us as part of a larger story or discourse, this makes sense--but I didn't fully realize the impact until I got here. For me, this merging of literary approach, literature and religion is more than a touch of miracle, as it connects my passions ... leaving me in a state of near swooning euphoria--and I can, in a sense, pick up my graduate studies in English from the 1980s where they left off.
Every Tuesday, the school has a community lunch with a speaker. This week, I had the good fortune to hear Emily Townes, who teaches at Yale Divinity school. She was questioned about evil and suffering--two subjects she's written about--and she talked about the relationship between imagination and evil. I was thrilled. She discussed how cultures can create fictions that become so widely repeated they are accepted as facts--and that these fictions can obscure evil. She used as her example "Aunt Jemima" and "Mammy," cultural icons of the fat, jolly slave woman. There was no real Aunt Jemima--I knew this--(she first emerged as a former slave hired by owners of a pancake mix to make pancakes during the Chicago World's Fair in the 1890s and became wildly popular). Also, while female slaves cared for white children, the Mammy figure is another fiction. Townes pointed out that slaves were underfed (thin), and that none were truly happy with their lots. In fact, most "house slaves," contrary to our pictures of them, were likely to be the products of interracial "pairings". From what Townes said, I picture the real slaves as skinny, light-skinned, harried, overworked and unhappy rather than brilliantly brown or black, fat, cheerful, jolly and laughingly contented.
Of course--and while Townes did not say this I can imagine--cultural icons or stereotypes such as the cheery Aunt Jemima flipping buckwheat cakes in the kitchen or Mammy happily bustling around organizing the children speak to our deep desire to believe that the people who do the dirty work in our culture actually enjoy the task. And I imagine it's probable that some slaves would pretend to cheerfulness, as we all need to survive.
I also have been pursuing--of course--Jane Austen at ESR. I mentioned being a Jane Austen fan in my introduction of myself to my on-line Old Testament class and am thrilled to have fellow fans among my classmates. Naturally, Townes's talk of imagination and evil immediately made me think of Jane Austen--Austen was a woman who didn't gloss over the everyday horrors of middle-class life, the petty cruelties which she understood were worse for defenseless lower class people. Also, a book I am reading introduced me to a British Quaker author--her name evades me right now-- who wrote a children's book about Jane Austen in 1977.
I'm settled into my apartment in Richmond as I deliberately travelled light--and Roger, of course, is a wonderful moving companion.
Internet access has been a problem all week, hence my "silence." I am now--at last-- part of the Earlham College system, so I can access the Internet on my laptop, a huge boon. I still can't pick up the wireless system in my apartment, however, although I am right across the street from the campus--Roger says an enhancer of some sort might help. It isn't ALL terrible to be denied 24/7 Internet access however--it forces me to do other things. But it does impede blogging.
Otherwise, all is fine. I had to switch my schedule so now I will be in Richmond Tuesday afternoon through Friday morning. I will taking Old Testament, New Testament, Quaker History and Literature, and a class on Bonhoeffer.
I ran into a genuinely cheerful Clare Gamble, an Olney graduate and now student at Earlham College.
I hope everyone is well.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
On Memory
The New York Times ran a story a few weeks ago (Christmas Day, to be exact) about Eleanor, a town in West Virginia begun during the Depression as a New Deal resettlement community: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/25/us/25eleanor.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Eleanor,%20West%20Virgina&st=cse
The story of the town is told largely through the eyes of a girl, Marlene Crockett Carr--now an old woman--who moved there in 1935 at age 4.
The article's author, Dan Beery, describes the town as follows: "Over the years, these New Deal towns have been praised as a sound response to paralyzing poverty and criticized as flawed, communism-tinted social experiments. But in this hard time, as half-built subdivisions stand as ghostly testaments to economic failure, a place like Eleanor reflects a government action that worked, and works."
He writes that "Ms. Carr says she fears that Eleanor’s history is being pushed aside, that someday people will not know why the main street is called Roosevelt Boulevard, or even why the town is called Eleanor."
The story brought up the memory of how much all four of my grandparents, all immigrants, revered Franklin Roosevelt. To quote Woody Allen, they not only loved him, they lurved him. One set of grandparents--I don't know which--even had a framed portrait of him, a photograph tinted with rosy cheeks and enhanced blue eyes.
My grandparents had all died by 1980, so I don't know if they would have joined the Reagan Revolution. I remember them, in the 70s, scratching their heads over some of the reforms that seemed more handout than hand up. However, I find myself pondering the way in which the New Deal is often dismissed these days, when the memories handed down to me tell a completely different story.
In Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, the heroine Fanny Price, who unites a quiet facade with a sensitive, emotionally intense nature, says the following::"If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out." Chap. 22 or Vol 2, ch 4
Mansfield Park is, on one level, a book about memory. During the course of the novel, characters remember events differently than how they occurred and we see Fanny fighing to retain memories she knows to be true in face of people, including ultimately herself, who have a vested interest in restructuring them according to a script. Fanny, significantly, owns a reproduction of one of Turner's sketches of Tintern Abbey, a ruin memorialized in a poem by Wordsworth--a poem about memory.
The Bible is about capturing the memory of "normal" events, but more so of events so elusive, so unusual, so fragile that it would be easy to dismiss them as fairy stories--or to forget them. It records the world of dreams and of God breaking through the permeable barriers of space and time into physical reality. People found it important to preserve and pass on these memories so that the powers and principalities of the world couldn't say they never happened. Or that if the powers did deny them--which they did and still do--there's an institutional memory with which to challenges the systems that pressure us to accept "reality" and nothing more.
The former publisher of International Design magazine, a publication with a long history, recently wrote about how the entrepreneurs who bought the pub a few years ago had no interest in the organization's institutional memory, firing people willy-nilly, which meant losing much of the publication's value. There's something wrong in imposing amnesia on an organization, just as it would be wrong to wipe individuals' memories to reprogram with a blank slate. In the end, the magazine itself folded--or was folded.
Something soul shrivelling--and false-- exists in presenting "now" as the only truth. George Orwell gets to heart of this in 1984.
Thus we record our thoughts because it is important to preserve --to freeze--memories that are valuable and elusive. If they are, as Fanny Price says, weak, bewildering and beyond our control, they are for that reason the stuff of the Kingdom of Heaven.
I started this, not knowing where I was going with it (the beauty of blogging!), so I'll end with a question:
Are there elusive memories you would like to preserve? What ARE the memories that are important?
The story of the town is told largely through the eyes of a girl, Marlene Crockett Carr--now an old woman--who moved there in 1935 at age 4.
The article's author, Dan Beery, describes the town as follows: "Over the years, these New Deal towns have been praised as a sound response to paralyzing poverty and criticized as flawed, communism-tinted social experiments. But in this hard time, as half-built subdivisions stand as ghostly testaments to economic failure, a place like Eleanor reflects a government action that worked, and works."
He writes that "Ms. Carr says she fears that Eleanor’s history is being pushed aside, that someday people will not know why the main street is called Roosevelt Boulevard, or even why the town is called Eleanor."
The story brought up the memory of how much all four of my grandparents, all immigrants, revered Franklin Roosevelt. To quote Woody Allen, they not only loved him, they lurved him. One set of grandparents--I don't know which--even had a framed portrait of him, a photograph tinted with rosy cheeks and enhanced blue eyes.
My grandparents had all died by 1980, so I don't know if they would have joined the Reagan Revolution. I remember them, in the 70s, scratching their heads over some of the reforms that seemed more handout than hand up. However, I find myself pondering the way in which the New Deal is often dismissed these days, when the memories handed down to me tell a completely different story.
In Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, the heroine Fanny Price, who unites a quiet facade with a sensitive, emotionally intense nature, says the following::"If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out." Chap. 22 or Vol 2, ch 4
Mansfield Park is, on one level, a book about memory. During the course of the novel, characters remember events differently than how they occurred and we see Fanny fighing to retain memories she knows to be true in face of people, including ultimately herself, who have a vested interest in restructuring them according to a script. Fanny, significantly, owns a reproduction of one of Turner's sketches of Tintern Abbey, a ruin memorialized in a poem by Wordsworth--a poem about memory.
The Bible is about capturing the memory of "normal" events, but more so of events so elusive, so unusual, so fragile that it would be easy to dismiss them as fairy stories--or to forget them. It records the world of dreams and of God breaking through the permeable barriers of space and time into physical reality. People found it important to preserve and pass on these memories so that the powers and principalities of the world couldn't say they never happened. Or that if the powers did deny them--which they did and still do--there's an institutional memory with which to challenges the systems that pressure us to accept "reality" and nothing more.
The former publisher of International Design magazine, a publication with a long history, recently wrote about how the entrepreneurs who bought the pub a few years ago had no interest in the organization's institutional memory, firing people willy-nilly, which meant losing much of the publication's value. There's something wrong in imposing amnesia on an organization, just as it would be wrong to wipe individuals' memories to reprogram with a blank slate. In the end, the magazine itself folded--or was folded.
Something soul shrivelling--and false-- exists in presenting "now" as the only truth. George Orwell gets to heart of this in 1984.
Thus we record our thoughts because it is important to preserve --to freeze--memories that are valuable and elusive. If they are, as Fanny Price says, weak, bewildering and beyond our control, they are for that reason the stuff of the Kingdom of Heaven.
I started this, not knowing where I was going with it (the beauty of blogging!), so I'll end with a question:
Are there elusive memories you would like to preserve? What ARE the memories that are important?
Monday, January 4, 2010
What are you Reading?
One of the joys of a holiday is the chance to read.
I've been reading some novels this holiday season:
In contemporary fiction:
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
The Lovely Bones
The Financial Life of Poets
Classics:
Tristram Shandy (Roger and I are reading this aloud in the car while traveling. We both read it in grad school, but that was long ago ...
The Scarlet Letter (Again, it's been a loooong time.)
The Jane Austen world:
I'm always reading Jane Austen's novels and as way of secondary sources:
Jill Heydt-Steveson's breakthrough book, Unbecoming Conjunctions
James Edward Austen-Leigh's Memoir of Jane Austen, written in 1870. I am leading a discussion of the Memoir every Wednesday on three lists: Austen-L, Janeites and WomenWritersThroughtheAges.
I also recently read my cyber-friend Diana Birchall's novel Mrs. Darcy' Dilemma, a light-hearted sequel to Pride and Prejudice.
General non-fiction:
Amish Grace (A little before the holidays, but close enough.)
Alice Seybold's memoir, Lucky.
Another book that I read six weeks to two months ago, but which is still weighing on my mind, is Middletown in Transition, a sociological study of Muncie, Indiana in the mid 1930s.
Have you read any good books lately? Any of the above books?
I've been reading some novels this holiday season:
In contemporary fiction:
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
The Lovely Bones
The Financial Life of Poets
Classics:
Tristram Shandy (Roger and I are reading this aloud in the car while traveling. We both read it in grad school, but that was long ago ...
The Scarlet Letter (Again, it's been a loooong time.)
The Jane Austen world:
I'm always reading Jane Austen's novels and as way of secondary sources:
Jill Heydt-Steveson's breakthrough book, Unbecoming Conjunctions
James Edward Austen-Leigh's Memoir of Jane Austen, written in 1870. I am leading a discussion of the Memoir every Wednesday on three lists: Austen-L, Janeites and WomenWritersThroughtheAges.
I also recently read my cyber-friend Diana Birchall's novel Mrs. Darcy' Dilemma, a light-hearted sequel to Pride and Prejudice.
General non-fiction:
Amish Grace (A little before the holidays, but close enough.)
Alice Seybold's memoir, Lucky.
Another book that I read six weeks to two months ago, but which is still weighing on my mind, is Middletown in Transition, a sociological study of Muncie, Indiana in the mid 1930s.
Have you read any good books lately? Any of the above books?
Friday, August 8, 2008
Obama as Mr. Darcy?
OK, this happened days ago and the world has so moved on, to Paris Hilton for President and beyond. But I'm ... still that slow pace! ... and STILL thinking about Maureen Dowd's editorial in the NY Times comparing Obama to Mr. Darcy.
So wrong. Obama's a smooth speaking charismatic. Mr. Darcy was always stiff and reserved, shy and uncertain, hiding behind his wealth and status, not out of arrogance or hard-heartedness but because he felt a little awkward and fearful. Endearing that someone with all his wealth, privileges of being male, rank, etc. could still feel insecure. Endearing that he could need the intangible sparkle that Elizabeth Bennett brought to the relationship. Endearing that he was probably a more decent human being that others of his ilk.
However, I AM flattered that Dowd compared "we the American people" to Elizabeth Bennett. Who could be cooler than EB? She glides through all company with equal aplomb, never (or seldom) at a loss for words, never at a loss for wit, never without a sense of who she is. Who wouldn't want to be Elizabeth Bennett? She's the best.
But I show my prejudice. So let me pose the question: who's your favorite Austen character?
So wrong. Obama's a smooth speaking charismatic. Mr. Darcy was always stiff and reserved, shy and uncertain, hiding behind his wealth and status, not out of arrogance or hard-heartedness but because he felt a little awkward and fearful. Endearing that someone with all his wealth, privileges of being male, rank, etc. could still feel insecure. Endearing that he could need the intangible sparkle that Elizabeth Bennett brought to the relationship. Endearing that he was probably a more decent human being that others of his ilk.
However, I AM flattered that Dowd compared "we the American people" to Elizabeth Bennett. Who could be cooler than EB? She glides through all company with equal aplomb, never (or seldom) at a loss for words, never at a loss for wit, never without a sense of who she is. Who wouldn't want to be Elizabeth Bennett? She's the best.
But I show my prejudice. So let me pose the question: who's your favorite Austen character?
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Jane Austen and miscellany
What's my favorite Jane Austen novel? I love Persuasion, but my favorite is Sense and Sensibility, which is not her best, I know, I know! I also love Pride and Prejudice, and have spent a lot of time struggling with Mansfield Park, so that I know it very well.
Roger is concerned that I'm losing interest in religion by blogging about Jane Austen. Nothing could be further from the case!
In fact, this morning I went with the First Day students to a three-hour service at Israel Baptist Church. It was a rousing African-American-style worship. The women wore the most beautiful hats. It was about as different from Quakerism as you can get and a treat to experience.
We continue to sort through the basement, which has the advantage of being about 30 degrees cooler than the rest of the house. We found a box of stuff we moved here 13 years ago and never opened. That will be part of the yard sale. Roger also brought a van load of stuff to the dump. As I may have said before, the overhead of keeping stuff changes when you have to move it: for example, I had about 20 spare gift boxes in the basement but there was no way I was going to move them to Barnesville, so out they went.
I am keeping the faith that we will find a renter, Sophie's situation will work out and somehow we'll arrive with our furniture in Barnesville at the appointed time. And praying that the price of crude oil doesn't inflate to $150.00 a barrel by July, as some are predicting. If so, that will make driving a moving van of furniture to Barnesville cost a small fortune. I look back with longing on the wonderful days of just a year ago, when I had no idea what the price of crude was. And as I keep saying to myself, (leaving aside the personal inconvenience to *moi!*) if spiking gas prices really do cause some changes, such as widespread use of public transportation, that would be a good thing.
I fantasize about a country in which we transport ourselves and our goods in new ways. We gently float down rivers to get from point A to point B. We travel by train. Small towns that were once fueled by train traffic are revitalized. We use the streetcar to get to work and buy our houses based on proximity to the streetcar line. This use of public transportation has the effect of bringing us together as communities, and helps the have nots and the marginalized join the larger society. The threat of global warming begins to fade. Sounds like the New Jerusalem, huh?
But as long as I'm fantasizing, I might as well get back to Jane Austen, who at least incorporated a lurking dark side into her fictions.
What is your favorite Jane Austen? And why? Maybe I'll explain my Sense and Sensibility preference in another post.
Roger is concerned that I'm losing interest in religion by blogging about Jane Austen. Nothing could be further from the case!
In fact, this morning I went with the First Day students to a three-hour service at Israel Baptist Church. It was a rousing African-American-style worship. The women wore the most beautiful hats. It was about as different from Quakerism as you can get and a treat to experience.
We continue to sort through the basement, which has the advantage of being about 30 degrees cooler than the rest of the house. We found a box of stuff we moved here 13 years ago and never opened. That will be part of the yard sale. Roger also brought a van load of stuff to the dump. As I may have said before, the overhead of keeping stuff changes when you have to move it: for example, I had about 20 spare gift boxes in the basement but there was no way I was going to move them to Barnesville, so out they went.
I am keeping the faith that we will find a renter, Sophie's situation will work out and somehow we'll arrive with our furniture in Barnesville at the appointed time. And praying that the price of crude oil doesn't inflate to $150.00 a barrel by July, as some are predicting. If so, that will make driving a moving van of furniture to Barnesville cost a small fortune. I look back with longing on the wonderful days of just a year ago, when I had no idea what the price of crude was. And as I keep saying to myself, (leaving aside the personal inconvenience to *moi!*) if spiking gas prices really do cause some changes, such as widespread use of public transportation, that would be a good thing.
I fantasize about a country in which we transport ourselves and our goods in new ways. We gently float down rivers to get from point A to point B. We travel by train. Small towns that were once fueled by train traffic are revitalized. We use the streetcar to get to work and buy our houses based on proximity to the streetcar line. This use of public transportation has the effect of bringing us together as communities, and helps the have nots and the marginalized join the larger society. The threat of global warming begins to fade. Sounds like the New Jerusalem, huh?
But as long as I'm fantasizing, I might as well get back to Jane Austen, who at least incorporated a lurking dark side into her fictions.
What is your favorite Jane Austen? And why? Maybe I'll explain my Sense and Sensibility preference in another post.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Jane Austen and Quakers
Part of my goal with for I call "my year off" (that began mid-September) was to look at what evolution would take place during this season of "life-making."
Well, I never expected to end up moving to Ohio! But certainly my being "free" has facilitated the move.
Right now, I find my cyberspace interest moving away from the Jesus Creed blog (which I will always be fond of) and toward the Janeites list serve. The Janeites are Jane Austen enthusiasts (some might call them fanatics) who love to talk about all things Austen.
I have had more than a passing interest in the great Jane, as a friend labels her, or JA, as I like to call her. My first graduate seminar in English literature was on Jane Austen and largely due to that experience I ditched my fellowship to study international relations (read: warfare) at George Washington University and made the fateful decision to throw myself into a graduate program in that lucrative field of English literature. My life has not been the same since. I hasten to add: despite a graduate degree (masters) in English, I haven't yet starved.
A part of me wants to force myself to stay with Jesus Creed. But a wiser voice says "follow your (cyberspace) passions." And so I shall. I shall continue to read JC with great interest and my heart will continue to be with those Creeders, but, for a time at least, back to the beloved Jane.
Quakerism remains a strong interest, and as fate would have it, the threads of Jane Austen and Quakerism are meeting at Olney. I read on the Olney web site that the school's name comes from a poem by a long dead Taber. I couldn't find the poem on the Web. However, out of curiosity, I googled Olney, Maryland, home of Sandy Spring Friends School, to find out the history of the town's name.
It was named, according to the site, for the poet Cowper's hometown of Olney, in England. Cowper was a great friend of the anti-slavery movement and wrote at least one poem against slavery.
The connection to JA: She was a devoted fan of Cowper's poetry.
Way cool.
Well, I never expected to end up moving to Ohio! But certainly my being "free" has facilitated the move.
Right now, I find my cyberspace interest moving away from the Jesus Creed blog (which I will always be fond of) and toward the Janeites list serve. The Janeites are Jane Austen enthusiasts (some might call them fanatics) who love to talk about all things Austen.
I have had more than a passing interest in the great Jane, as a friend labels her, or JA, as I like to call her. My first graduate seminar in English literature was on Jane Austen and largely due to that experience I ditched my fellowship to study international relations (read: warfare) at George Washington University and made the fateful decision to throw myself into a graduate program in that lucrative field of English literature. My life has not been the same since. I hasten to add: despite a graduate degree (masters) in English, I haven't yet starved.
A part of me wants to force myself to stay with Jesus Creed. But a wiser voice says "follow your (cyberspace) passions." And so I shall. I shall continue to read JC with great interest and my heart will continue to be with those Creeders, but, for a time at least, back to the beloved Jane.
Quakerism remains a strong interest, and as fate would have it, the threads of Jane Austen and Quakerism are meeting at Olney. I read on the Olney web site that the school's name comes from a poem by a long dead Taber. I couldn't find the poem on the Web. However, out of curiosity, I googled Olney, Maryland, home of Sandy Spring Friends School, to find out the history of the town's name.
It was named, according to the site, for the poet Cowper's hometown of Olney, in England. Cowper was a great friend of the anti-slavery movement and wrote at least one poem against slavery.
The connection to JA: She was a devoted fan of Cowper's poetry.
Way cool.
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