"The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel."

I decided to start, once again, rereading John Woolman's Journal and was struck by the famous story of the young Woolman killing the baby birds after he had killed their mother. This is a story that is so familiar that the last few times I have read the journal, my eyes have slipped over it unreflectively.

I have read or heard that Quaker children, when they are distressed and ask why Woolman killed the baby birds, are told he was a farm boy, understood without sentimentality the death of animals, and was trying to by merciful, because he knew the baby birds would die without their mother. He was being kind.

Yet, in the text, Woolman himself describes his act as cruel. What comes to his mind about what he has done is a scripture verse: "The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel."

This story is crucial, not just because Woolman was a tender-hearted and empathetic child who felt badly about causing distress to innocent creatures. That is a fine morality tale as far as it goes. It's heart-warming to see someone have the goodness of heart to regret the cruel results of an impulsive act of killing. It shows that the young Woolman already had an advanced moral sense: He was able to put himself, even as child, in the shoes (or nest) of more vulnerable Others and see the world from their perspective. He cared about the birds even without fear of outward negative consequences to himself for his act. This is a beautiful, St. Francis of Assisi-like tale.

Yet, I think his purpose from the very beginning was more than to tell a confessional story. With this tale, he establishes from the outset a theme that runs throughout the entire journal and pertains to all creation: Once you or I start doing even one evil thing, we create a chain reaction. It's never just one thing, period. Killing the mother bird for "sport" meant bringing suffering to her babies, which led to a "cruel mercy," and then to an anguish that might have led to hardness of heart. What we do reverberates beyond itself. I think he wants, from the start, for his readers to dwell on the paradox of a world where societies become so messed up that even mercies are cruel.Taken to it's extreme, it's the "mercy" of the torturer we know from spy movies, who warns his victim: By the end, you will be begging me for death.

"The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel." This is an unsentimental statement, a quote from Proverbs 12:10 that begins with "a righteous man regards the life of his beasts..." (Obviously, there was a childlike literalism that led Woolman to think this after killing the birds.)

What worries me about this Proverb is the application to charity. If we move to a system a individual charity, and away from the government system, what about the mercies of the wicked? Will everyone treat the poor and vulnerable with justice and compassion? History tells us no.

However, I am reading Woolman for another purpose, two, in fact. One is for the benefits that always come with reading the words of a person of universal compassion. The second it in search of the literary influences on Woolman. Certainly, the Bible as an influence hits us from the beginning as an explosion. He starts off, like a good Quaker, with "the pure river of the water of life" in Revelation. He mentions reading "some religious books" as a youth. Do we know what they were? I strongly suspect George Fox's Journal, but what else? What, beside the Bible, structures the narrative of his life?

Arriving in a Lear jet

Sometimes an image jumps out. Here's this from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/opinion/28iht-edcohen.html?hp):

The share of national income held by the top 1 percent of American families has doubled in recent decades to 20 percent. That’s a huge shift. I spoke to Doug Severance, a Vietnam vet who’s a hotel employee in Aspen, Colorado. "When I moved here in 1984 we were all family,” he said. “Now either you arrive in a Lear Jet or you’re a servant.”


“Now either you arrive in a Lear Jet or you’re a servant.”


Unfortunately, this seems all too true. I've thought about this often as I ponder the state of air travel ("as if" I do much of it) and wonder if it would be in this state (even first class, I hear, is a mess) if the rich actually still flew on commercial flights.

In Maryland, our family lived in Columbia, a planned community developed by James Rouse, a visionary who wanted to mix all races and economic classes, back at a time when segregation was still legal, and who thought, rightly, that this could be done by the private sector at a profit.

A few years ago, the Columbia Historical Society (Columbia goes back all the way to 1966!) had a tour of early homes, including those of James Rouse and one of his corporate cronies (and neighbor) Padraic Kennedy. They moved to Columbia in the 1960s. Their houses crystallized the opposite of the image of the rich arriving in Aspen in private jets and the rest of us (and it IS the REST of us) arriving as the "help." Rouse and Kennedy lived IN their communities, in houses that were slightly (but not much) bigger than the average single family home, beautifully custom designed and on a lakefront--but a block away from townhouses and apartments. These "big executives" were not removed from their communities in gated enclaves. They were not living in MacMansions. By the standards of today's rich, their homes were beyond modest--small lots, four bedrooms, a combined living/dining room in the Rouse home--comfortable but not ostentatious. And the Rouses opened their home frequently for parties to which the entire community was invited. This was just 40 years ago. Even 35 years ago. Black women my husband used to ride the commuter bus to Washington to work with joyfully remember attending these parties.

It's almost unimaginable now that chief executives would live that way. Now they seem more like royalty, completely removed from everyday life and the average trials and tribulations of the rest of us. I remember the heads of the auto companies flying to Washington two years in private jets to receive their bailouts. They seemed entirely clueless about how this level of privilege might look.

This kind of disparity in wealth does not reflect the Quaker equality testimony or simplicity testimony and ultimately sows the seeds of war. Yet there's a rhetoric that supports this inequality running through our culture that we need to push back against. It's not "socialism" to ask for social justice. How do we, in the words of Dorothy Day, create a society where it's easier to be good? How do we sow love (not fawning) for the very rich and in the very rich?

John Woolman writes:

When I ate, drank, and lodged free-cost with people who lived in ease on the hard labor of their slaves I felt uneasy; and as my mind was inward to the Lord, I found this uneasiness return upon me, at times, through the whole visit. Where the masters bore a good share of the burden, and lived frugally, so that their servants were well provided for, and their labor moderate, I felt more easy; but where they lived in a costly way, and laid heavy burdens on their slaves, my exercise was often great, and I frequently had conversation with them in private concerning it. Secondly, this trade of importing slaves from their native country being much encouraged amongst them, and the white people and their children so generally living without much labor, was frequently the subject of my serious thoughts. I saw in these southern provinces so many vices and corruptions, increased by this trade and this way of life, that it appeared to me as a dark gloominess hanging over the land; and though now many willingly run into it, yet in future the consequence will be grievous to posterity. I express it as it hath appeared to me, not once, nor twice, but as a matter fixed on my mind.

Woolman's point is that a few living in too much ease on the backs of the miseries of others has a corrupting effect on the rich that makes them unhappy as well.

And this, which speaks to our condition of high unemployment today:

In my youth I was used to hard labor, and though I was middling healthy, yet my nature was not fitted to endure so much as many others. Being often weary, I was prepared to sympathize with those whose circumstances in life, as free men, required constant labor to answer the demands of their creditors, as well as with others under oppression. In the uneasiness of body which I have many times felt by too much labor, not as a forced but a voluntary oppression, I have often been excited to think on the original cause of that oppression which is imposed on many in the world. The latter part of the time wherein I labored on our plantation, my heart, through the fresh visitations of heavenly love, being often tender, and my leisure time being frequently spent in reading the life and doctrines of our blessed Redeemer, the account of the sufferings of martyrs, and the history of the first rise of our Society, a belief was gradually settled in my mind, that if such as had great estates generally lived in that humility and plainness which belong to a Christian life, and laid much easier rents and interests on their lands and moneys, and thus led the way to a right use of things, so great a number of people might be employed in things useful, that labor both for men and other creatures would need to be no more than an agreeable employ, and divers branches of business, which serve chiefly to please the natural inclinations of our minds, and which at present seem necessary to circulate that wealth which some gather, might, in this way of pure wisdom, be discontinued. As I have thus considered these things, a query at times hath arisen: Do I, in all my proceedings, keep to that use of things which is agreeable to universal righteousness? And then there hath some degree of sadness at times come over me, because I accustomed myself to some things which have occasioned more labor than I believe Divine wisdom intended for us.

Quaker Education 2

I'm here at the beach, thinking about Quaker education and John Woolman.

In "Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes," written in 1746 and published in 1754, Woolman argued that one of the drivers of slavery was parents' overblown affection for their children. The natural desire to give one's children good things--including a comfortable inheritance--helped people rationalize the slave trade.The economics of slavery allowed people to amass fortunes from the profits of the cheap labor of slaves, and people justified this ownership by contending they had to take care of their families.

"If we do not consider these things aright, but ... conceive views of interest separate from the general
good of the great brotherhood, and, in pursuance thereof, treat our
inferiors with rigour, to increase our wealth and gain riches for
our children; What then shall we do when God riseth up?
and when he visiteth, what shall we answer him ? did not he that
made us, make them? and did not one fashion us?"

Earlier in the essay, he writes:

" It appears by experience, that where children are educated in
fulness, ease, and idleness, evil habits are more prevalent than
is common amongst such who are prudently employed in the
necessary affairs of life. If children are not only educated in
the way of so great temptation, but have also the opportunity of
lording it over their fellow-creatures ... how can we expect otherwise than that their
tender minds will be possessed with thoughts too high for them ;
which gaining strength by continuance, will prove like a slow
current, gradually separating them from or keeping from acquaint-
ance with that humility and meekness in which alone lasting hap-
piness can be enjoyed.

Man is born to labour, and experience abundantly showeth,
that it is for our good : but where the powerful lay the burden
on the inferior, without affording a Christian education, and suit-
able opportunity of improving the mind, and a treatment which
we, in their case, should approve, in order that themselves may
live at ease, and fare sumptuously, and lay up riches for their
posterity; this seems to contradict the design of Providence, and,
I doubt not, is sometimes the effect of a perverted mind ; for wdiile
the life of one is made grievous by the rigour of another, it entails
misery on both."


Do we also make idols of our families?

And does this get to the heart of Quaker education?

I have read in the newspaper quotes from administrators at elite Quaker schools distressed about helicopter parents who want their teenage children protected from facing any of life's rigors. Of course, we don't want our children abused by teachers or classmates, but graduating entitled nincompoops who think life will give them special protection might not be the best idea either.

I was an education reporter for a few years, covering a county with a large minority population. That meant witnessing white flight from that school system to nearby school systems with "higher test scores" and "safer schools" and white flight to "independent" schools. Of course, the question frequently arose: shouldn't families support the public schools instead of fleeing? Yes, but having covered public education, I would say that individual families simply can't take on the school system. I've seen many families try valiantly, with mothers (it's usually mothers) heading PTAs, safe school programs, working on academic committees and fundraising drives, and ultimately having to throw up their hands and yank their children from the schools. The schools' problems are a symptom of a deeper social and spiritual malaise that must be addressed first.

I would also say that entering elite public or private schools isn't totally the answer either. What we need, for starters, I would argue, is an "independent" school option that's less elitist than much of the private (and elite) public school strata. Many Catholic schools, I believe, do this well. Some are elite schools, but many are modest schools serving average people. Of course, it could be argued that Catholics--here I speak of Roman Catholics--who comprise a quarter of all Christians in the United States, have vastly greater resources than Quakers. At the same time, Quakers have a history of achievements disproportionate to their numbers.

Another thing we possibly need to rethink is pitting public versus private (they're now called "independent") schools. There are elite public and independent schools and down-to-earth public and independent schools. Public is not necessarily more virtuous than private and vice versa. If we have our children in public schools in an affluent county (as our family did for years) or in a top magnet program in a less affluent county, we could be more elitist than a family sending its children to a modest independent school. I have heard parents say things to their magnet school children such as "You are in a school where the kids really want to learn." What does this teach but that "you are more deserving and kids who don't achieve don't want to." Is either true?

Quaker schools can excel, I believe, by practicing the Quaker testimonies, putting Christ at their center and emphasizing education--and life-- not as a way to get "a competitive advantage" over others, but as training to serve. They could change the world. I dream, but enough independent schools practicing Woolman-like principles could at least gradually change the education system in this country. But how many do? Olney does, yet does that fact mean many parents will reject it for its simplicity?

Conversely, to the extent that Quaker schools appeal to the social or economic elite, does that mean they are not in full compliance with Quaker values? Would Quaker schools that really practiced the Quaker values espoused, say, by John Woolman, appeal to elites? Or would they flee from such schools as too austere? Not taking good enough care of their children?