It’s said that John Wool­man re-wrote his _Journal_ three times in an effort to excise it of as many “I” ref­er­ences as pos­si­ble. As David Sox writes in _Johh Wool­man Quin­tes­sen­tial Quaker_, “only on lim­ited occa­sion do we glimpse Wool­man as a son, a father and a hus­band.” Wool­man wouldn’t have been a very good blog­ger. Quot­ing myself from my intro­duc­tion to “Quaker blogs”: http://​www​.quak​erquaker​.org/​q​u​a​k​e​r​_​b​l​o​gs/::
bq. blogs give us a unique way of shar­ing our lives—how our Quak­erism inter­sects with the day-to-day deci­sions that make up faith­ful liv­ing. Quaker blogs give us a chance to get to know like-minded Friends that are sep­a­rated by geog­ra­phy or arti­fi­cial the­o­log­i­cal bound­aries and they give us a way of talk­ing to and with the insti­tu­tions that make up our faith com­mu­nity.
I’ve read many great Wool­man sto­ries over the years and as I read the Jour­nal I eagerly antic­i­pated read­ing the orig­i­nal account. It’s that same excite­ment I get when walk­ing the streets of an iconic land­scape for the first time: walk­ing through Lon­don, say, know­ing that Big Ben is right around the next cor­ner. But Wool­man kept let­ting me down.
One of the AWOL sto­ries is his arrival in Lon­don. The _Journal’s_ account:
bq. On the 8th of Sixth Month, 1772, we landed at Lon­don, and I went straight­way to the Yearly Meet­ing of min­is­ters and elders, which had been gath­ered, I sup­pose, about half an hour. In this meet­ing my mind was humbly con­trite.
But set the scene. He had just spent five weeks cross­ing the Atlantic in steer­age among the pigs (he doesn’t actu­ally spec­ify his non-human bunk­mates). He famously went out of his way to wear clothes that show dirt _because they show dirt_. He went straight­away: no record of a bath or change of clothes. Sto­ries abound about his recep­tion, and while are some of dubi­ous ori­gin, there are first hand accounts of his being shunned by the British min­is­ters and elders. “The best and most dubi­ous story is the theme of another post”:.
I trust that Wool­man was hon­estly aim­ing for meek­ness when he omit­ted the most inter­est­ing sto­ries of his life. But with­out the con­text of a lived life he becomes an ahis­tor­i­cal fig­ure, an icon of good­ness divorced from the minu­tiae of the daily grind. Two hun­dred and thirty years of Quaker hagiog­ra­phy and latter-day appeals to Woolman’s author­ity have turned the tai­lor of Mount Holly into the oth­er­worldly Quaker saint but the process started at John’s hands him­self.
Were his strug­gles merely inte­rior? When I look to my own min­istry, I find the call to dis­cern­ment to be the clear­est part of the work. I need to work to be ever more recep­tive to even the most unex­pected prompt­ing from the Inward Christ and I need to con­stantly prac­tice humil­ity, love and for­give­ness. But the prac­ti­cal lim­i­ta­tions are harder. For years respectibil­ity was an issue; rel­a­tive poverty con­tin­ues to be one. It is ask­ing a lot of my wife to leave respon­si­bil­ity for our two small boys for even a long week­end.
How did Wool­man bal­ance fam­ily life and min­istry? What did wife Sarah think? And just what was his role in the sea-change that was the the “Ref­or­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism” (to use Jack Marietta’s phrase) that for­ever altered Amer­i­can Friends’ rela­tion­ship with the world and set the stage for the schisms of the next cen­tury.
We also lose the con­text of Woolman’s com­pa­tri­ots. Some are named as trav­el­ing com­pan­ions but the col­or­ful char­ac­ters go unmen­tioned. What did he think of the street-theater antics of “Ben­jamin Lay”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lay, the Abbie Hoff­man of Philadel­phia Quak­ers. The most widely-told tale is of Lay walk­ing into Philadel­phia Yearly Meet­ing ses­sions, open­ing up a cloak to reveal mil­i­tary uni­form under­neath, and declar­ing that slave-made prod­ucts were prod­ucts of war, plunged a sword into a hollowed-out Bible full of pig’s blood, splat­ter­ing Friends sit­ting nearby.
What role did Wool­man play in the larger anti-slavery awak­en­ing hap­pen­ing at the time? It’s hard to tell just read­ing his _Journal_. How can we find ways to repli­cate his kind of faith­ful­ness and wit­ness today? Again, his _Journal_ doesn’t give much clue.
h3. Next time: I Really Do Like Wool­man!
h3. Read­ing John Wool­man:
* Part One: “The Pub­lic Life of a Pri­vate Man”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/reading_woolman_part_one_the_public_life_of_a_private_man.php
* Part Two: “The Last Safe Quaker”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/reading_woolman_part_two_the_last_safe_quaker.php
* Part Three: The Iso­lated Saint (this page)
* Part Four (forthcoming)

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Picked up today in the “Philadel­phia Yearly Meet­ing Library”:http://www.pym.org/pm/lib.php:
* The Ref­or­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism, by Jack Mari­etta
* _John Wool­man Quin­tes­sen­tial Quaker_, by David Sox
* The Ten­der­ing Pres­ence: Essays on John Wool­man, edited by Mike Heller
PYM Librar­ian Rita Var­ley reminded me today they mail books any­where in the US for a mod­est fee and a $50/year sub­scrip­tion. It’s a great deal and a great ser­vice, espe­cially for iso­lated Friends. The PYM cat­a­log is online too!