Hopework-l Mailing List: "Be the change" lunch, Monday, Nov. 17

[John Wallace (walla003]

November 14, 2003

To:    Folk School folks

From: John Wallace

Invitation to:  Folk School lunch at John Wallace's office, this coming 

Monday, November 17, 11:30 -- 1:00

    Note the shift in place from the meetings we had for several Mondays 

at Trinity Lutheran Congregation.  You are welcome to bring your brown 

bag lunch.  Juice and cookies will be served.

     The purpose of these weekly lunch meetings is to dig into Gandhi's

saying, "You must be the change you seek in the world."  They are open, 

rolling conversations happening throughout this academic year, where 
people are free to come when they can, and come at any time between 
11:30 and 1:00.

     Last week we began by reading out a poem by William Stafford and a 

short text from John Woolman's Journal.  This seemed to work well 
(again).  We will start with another Stafford poem and an excperpt from 

Woolman's Journal this Monday.

     I am pasting in below the pieces we used last Monday.

     My office is 868 Heller Hall, on the U of MN West Bank campus.  
Close to Wilson Library and the Humphrey Institute.


For the Unkown Enemy

William Stafford

This monument is for the unkown
good in our enemies.  Like a picture
their life began to appear: they
gathered at home in the evening
and sang.  Above their fields they saw
a new sky.  A holiday came
and they carried the baby to the park
for a party.  Sunlight surrounded them.

Here we glimpse what our minds long turned
away from.  The great mutual
blindness darkened that sunlight in the park,
and the sky that was new, and the holidays.
This monument says that one afternoon
We stood here letting a part of our minds
escape.  They came back, but different.
Enemy: one day we glimpsed your life.

This monument is for you.


The Journal of John Woolman

John Woolman lived from 1720 to 1772.  Like many Quakers, Woolman kept
a spiritual journal, that he began writing in 1756.  The writing looks
backward, beginning with his birth, and continues until the end of his
life.  The entry below, the last paragraph of Chapter Three of the
Journal, describes events that happened around 1750.

Scrupling to do writings relative to keeping slaves has been a
means of sundry small trials to me, in which I have so evidently felt
my own will set aside that I think it good to mention a few of them.
Tradesmen and retailers of goods, who depend on their business for a
living, are naturally inclined to keep the good-will of their
customers; nor is it a pleasant thing for young men to be under any
necessity to question the judgment or honesty of elderly men, and more
especially of such as have a fair reputation. Deep-rooted customs,
though wrong, are not easily altered; but it is the duty of all to be
firm in that which they certainly know is right for them. A charitable,
benevolent man, well acquainted with a negro, may, I believe, under
some circumstances, keep him in his family as a servant, on no other
motives than the negro's good; but man, as man, knows not what shall be
after him, nor hath he any assurance that his children will attain to
that perfection in wisdom and goodness necessary rightly to exercise
such power; hence it is clear to me, that I ought not to be the scribe
where wills are drawn in which some children are made ales masters over
others during life.

About this time an ancient man of good esteem in the neighborhood
came to my house to get his will written. He had young negroes, and I
asked him privately how he purposed to dispose of them. He told me; I
then said, "I cannot write thy will without breaking my own peace," and
respectfully gave him my reasons for it. He signified that he had a
choice that I should have written it, but as I could not, consistently
with my conscience, he did not desire it, and so he got it written by
some other person. A few years after, there being great alterations in
his family, he came again to get me to write his will. His negroes were
yet young, and his son, to whom he intended to give them, was, since he
first spoke to me, from a libertine become a sober young man, and he
supposed that I would have been free on that account to write it. We
had much friendly talk on the subject, and then deferred it. A few days
after he came again and directed their freedom, and I then wrote his
will.