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C h a p t e r 2 Deserts and Lonely Places: Social Diversion and Solitary Meditation I sought deserts and lonely places and there with tears did confess my sins to God and humbly craved help of him. —Woolman, Journal, chapter 1 On a spring day when he was approximately nine, Woolman was walking down the road toward a neighbor’s house when he saw a mother robin sitting by her nest. She flew off the instant she saw him, but did not go far for fear of abandoning her chicks. Instead she “flew about,” and “with many cries expressed concern” for her young ones. Woolman responded just as she feared. He began throwing stones at her and eventually hit and killed her. At first he was pleased, but then he was struck with remorse. To free the motherless chicks from a slow death, he climbed the tree and killed them. In his account of this episode, written years after the event, Woolman honored the mother bird, “an innocent creature” who cared for, nourished, and sought to protect her young. He also expressed sympathy for the suffering of the chicks. He believed that his action had confirmed a lesson from Proverbs, that the “tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” He concluded that God had placed a “principle in the human mind” directing people to “exercise goodness toward every living creature.” Those who rejected this principle, he suggested, would be shunted off into a “contrary disposition.”1 Woolman was in his thirties when he recounted this story in his journal. As a boy he may not have been able to articulate the meaning of the episode so clearly, but as an adult he found many occasions to reiterate the rule stated in 34 Chapter 2 that proverb. A “wrong beginning,” he declared, “leads into many difficulties, for to support one evil, another becomes customary. Two produces more, and the further men proceed in this way the greater the dangers, their doubts and fears, and the more painful and perplexing are their circumstances.”2 Woolman wrote his journal with didactic purposes in mind, and in this instance he was making a statement in favor of moral consistency. It was a lesson that he was careful to validate by referring to the scriptures, but there was more to the story than could be encapsulated in the language of the proverb. Woolman hoped that his readers would pay attention not only to his precepts , but also to the way that he came to them. In this instance he believed that an instructive incident had led to the discovery of a divinely sanctioned truth. Although he read widely and peppered all his writings with citations of the scriptures and other texts, he maintained that words could never adequately convey the knowledge he had gained through experience, and he thought that his discoveries could only be understood fully by those who had “trodden in the same path” as he did.3 He had faith in the value of living observantly, and this was typical of Quakers in his era. The Friends in general were adamant that no one could achieve religious understanding simply by reading books. In a similar vein they insisted that listening to the advice of one’s parents, elders, teachers, and ministers would never be enough to instill spiritual insight.4 Like other Quaker children, Woolman was taught at an early age that God could speak to him directly, and throughout his life he listened for God’s voice in his “inward ear,” in the “language of the Holy One spoken in my mind.”5 He strove to be attentive because he believed that God sent him messages in innumerable ways. Sometimes he was startled by spectacular visions and on one occasion he heard an angel chanting, but more commonly he received “the fresh instructions of Christ” through his experience of living “from day to day.”6 Those who knew Woolman remarked on the care he took in watching the world around him. His son-in-law John Comfort recalled an afternoon he spent in Woolman’s apple orchard inspecting the trees. Comfort looked at one tree and said, “This is a tree full of caterpillars.” Woolman paused before he responded, and then he said, “Not quite full.” Comfort was exasperated at being corrected. When he recounted this incident years later, he declared that his father-in-law never accepted any “inaccuracy of expression” and never said anything that was less...

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