IN SEARCH_OF PENDLE HILL ND_ GEORGE FO am lost had set out o climb Pendle il, and now I cannot even find it. ime is running out 2s well. lam due back at the Bronté Parsonage on Haworth ‘Moor in wo hours to pick up my wife and daughters ‘When I frstheard of Pendle Hillin the northwest of England, I had assumed ito be a rolling Lancashire moortop, easly accessible by foot. I should have known better. I sought Pendle Hill because ofits role in George Fox's life, and he had com- pleted the ascent only “with much ad As he recalled later in his Journal, “it was so very steep and high.” ‘An hour earlier [ had at least caught sight of Pendle Hill in the distance. Snow- David Druglas Ties in Santa Fe, N. Mex, where he writes on religious and environmental isues. A P in he heads the nonprofit “onganization WATERLINES, which works with ‘communities in developing cauneris to provide ‘lean drinking water. (© 1998 David Douglas by David Douglas ‘dusted and cloud-catching, the limestone ridge soared above small villages nea its base, rising out of the lesser hil lke the back of an enormous whale. “Moved of the Lord to climb i” in the spring of 1652, 28-year-old George Fox, son of a Puritan weaver and a mother “of the stock of the martyrs,” looked out into northwest England. “From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places He had a great people to be gathered.” + ‘The vision from Pendle Hill would orient the rest of his life George Fox, solitary wanderer and dis- illusioned seeker, had paced resdessly about England; like «fast walker to 2 dead end. Dissatisfied with tepid answers o his fer- vent questions, stung by incongruouslives of preachers, he had found, he bemoaned, no one to “speak to my condition.” Five years before Pendle Hill's commissioning Vision, Fox's anguish wich churchmen reached a climax: J cannot declare the great misery I ws in _.benal my hopes tem and wall nen ‘were gone, so that I had nothing ourwardiy co halp me, nor could cell what 10 do; then, O, then Lhearda voice which said, “There isone, even Christ Jesus that can speak to thy condi- tome” and when I ead it, my heart did lap for. x Empgy-handed and wearied, Fox en- countered Christina series of revelations he called “openings.” Like Julian of Nonwich’s “shewings,” these were not second-hand rumorsof religion but expe- riences of the immediacy of divine love. Reaching the end of his rope, Fox found it attached to God. + ‘The ecclesiastical landscape through which Fox had wandered left litte room for such first-hand experiences. Many Pu- ritan churches held “that God had spoken ‘o man through the Scriptures and in the finished work of Christ,” wrote the Quaker historian William Charles Braithwaite“They believed that He would speakagain {in judgment at the second advent; mean- while man ought not to look for further direct communication.” Ie is arid cerrain familiar to eravelers from any age: thirsting for living water, they are handed empry canteens. Fox sloughed off doctrines like road dust. He tumed his back on pastors of, «0 their consternation, confronted them in midservice, indicting them for barren theroric. Secing parishioners like sleep walkers, he roused and prodded them. Twho lean toward decorum and quiet voices would have frozen at hearing Geo: Fenris behind me THs an mein nt to let us sleep, + By the time he stood atop she 1,830- foot-high Pendle Hill, Fox had exchanged a private vision of a self to be saved for a great people tobe gathered. Asthe Quaker writer Elftida Vipont Foulds added, “Ie was as iFhe had suddenly received a new sense of direction in his wandering life.” T-do not seck my own vision (( tell myself) as I drive narrow back lanes to- wards Pendle Hill. Igo instead lured by Fox's story and his legacy ofthe Religious Society of Friends, once assumed that “Friends” derived from the Quaker hallmarks of compassion and ness for peace. But the term oF nates in “Friends of the Truth’ truth being found, wrote Fox, “in God's voice speaking tothe soul,” in an encounter with one who said “I no longer call you servants but friends.” ohn 15:15) T think of three Quakers in the south- western United States during the 1980s, welcominga 16-year-old boy from El Sal- vador, a survivor of a massacre who was tunable to enter legally into the U.S. They pressed on him coffee and blankets. All half-expected a constabulary knock at che door, handcuffs for the refugee. Years did not separate them fiom eatly Quakers. watched their quiet attentiveness, their obliviousness to the risk (born of their ith or their history—or both’). In the refugee's eyes I detected a hint of repose: he knew he had landed among fiends. * “The Quaker movement may have been founded at Pendle Hill, but now Pendle Hill cannot be found by me. A curving, road of hedges has led me down past Farms nto jangling Lancashire owns, more industrialized than they had appeared from picturesque distance. ‘No signs alere drivers to Pendle Hill or the Quakers. When | asked directions from a farmer atop Haworth Moor, his only response had been, “Aye, Pendle Fill, it’s the witchesyou'd be interested in then,” referring (0 an alleged coven during the early 17th-century when witch-hysteria triggered che hanging of several women living near Pendle Hill. My courist map fails to distinguish berween major and minor roads, and T have forgowen che name of the village nestled at the base of Pendle Hill char would offer easy foor- paths leading to the summit. (I is “Bar- fey.” Tear much later, long with the nameof the indispensable guidebook: The Birchplace of Quakerism: A Handbook for the 1652 Country, by Elfrida Vipont Foulds) Thirty minutes of frenetic driving brings me only to a cown somewhere torthwest of Pendle Hill | stop to wk rections. Noone knows, Finally, alarge, ight-cyed woman in her 60s nods when mention the name. Shifting her shop- ping bag, she beams a broad smile and begins talking, rapidly giving me appar- cently precise instructions, but in a York 7 NG: Y fa Ree eRe NNOT BI QUAKER MOVEMENT MAY oleh (LOVE aeons UE een Nas Hy f shire accent so thick as to be like Gaelic to ‘me. thank her, she smiles and moveson, and | point my car toward the nearest incline Fox once wrote reassuringly, “I saw sho that there was an ocean of dares and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love which flowed over the ocean of darkness. And in that also [ saw the ini ite love of God; and I had great open- ings’ “Temptation being what itis, Fox might Ihave begun with the experience of divine love only to disappear into the mists of uietism, like some ancient seeker of the Holy Grail inclined to “follow wandering fires los in che quagmire,” as one chroni« cler of the Grail Legend observed, “and leaving human wrongsto righ themselves, cares bur to pass into the lent life.” Butas Fox and other Quakers made clear, eran- scendenc visions are not the goal. “Let us be quite clear that mystical exaltations are notessential co religious dedication,” wrore the 20th-century Quaker Thomas Kelly. “The crux of religious living lies in the will not in transient and variable states Uster dedication of will to God is open to all... Where the will o will God's willis present, there isa child of God.” Fox's vision from Pendle Hill proved less private theophany than prophetic cal His legacy meant cells visited, hospitals cleansed, hungry fed, staves freed, and wars spurned. The view from Pendle Hill linked heaven and earth, + From my readings of Quakerism over the years (readings that skimped 0: roadmaps), one line in particular, familiar to every Quaker, resounds fiom George Fox. He wrote ic from jail, his prison letter, in che tradition of St, Paul and ‘Martin Luther King, Jr. far outlasting his pa bas . “Be patterns, be examples in all coun- tries, places, istands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and t0 them; shen you will come to walk chee tv the wold answering that foun Pr hether we meet srangers,ad- versares, o fiends, we are co dis- cern the “Light of Christ” within them, As Jessamyn West noted, “The truth Fox worked to bring to others was the possibility of a one- rness with Christ, and those who experience this ‘oneness’ would demonstrate i by growing loving.” Such recognition, undermining our penchant for scorn and contempt, runs far deeper than mere mutual respect or humanist treet and perhaps hes been practiced with the surest touch in our time by Mother Teresa. "To answer that of God in every one,” becomes a charge to the hearers, & bene~ dision, and finally, one hopes, 2 way of lit + follow slender oad leading upwards, in the general direction of Pendle Hill. A sign promising a “View” reveals moments later only a mobile home park, command- ingan airy perspective indeed bur wichour giving hint of Pendle Hill. As drive fretfully on, suddenly my tuck changes. Around a comer a country inn appears, and beside ica sign declaring“Footpath.” I park the car and enter the inn, encountering a genial pubkeeper and bis wie, Though dbo about Ey 7- ing Pendle Hill from the moortop above, they assure me of a splendid view of Yorkshire's dales, and—pointing toa table bby a wood fire—hor soup and a sandwi fon my return, T quickly ser off up the hill on an ancient stone footpath ("part of an old Roman read,” explained the innkeeper), delphed to be ou ofthe car walking briskly up the high sloping pasture as air and sunshine pour over me. Knowing time is short calculating the hour of rendezvous with my wife and daughters, | occasionally break into a run up the hill. { pass dry-stone walls that enclose farmers’ corcages. and sheep- ing lands, hen open Fields of heather Bite pook of dar ver in the grant Voices of other hillwalkers echo over the distance, along with the low churning of tractor. Climbing higher, beyond the wall, I reach what curns out o be a false sur. mic, with a higher rise of moorland yer beyond that. Pendle Hill emains hidden. T stop and turn around, breathing heavily. Inthe lear noonsky, Lean see 40 milesinco Yorkshireand Lancashire. Green and yellow fields spread wich sun run toward the Irish Sea. Thedisappointment 1 feel for missing Pendle Hill begins co bbe eclipsed by the realization that 1 am looking out on nearly the same, view Fox did, the same dales, moor, and sun- stroked land, For the frsttime in hours, stop moving and stand quictly as the wind rolls lightly over me. ° Fox looked over this same scene from his lofier vantage and saw men and women waiting “to be gathered,” to be yoked together by Christ into a people of prayer who would wait upon the Lord ‘They would know persecution. “Friends,” wrote one of the best known ones, Wiliam Penn, “suffered great hardships for cheir love and good will, being often stocked, stoned, beaten, whipped, and imprisoned.’ Defiant, iconoclastic, tipping his hat to no one, disturbing decorum, missing oaths, and rejecting taxes, Fox § offended and frightened. He himself & was brought before the courts 60 times § in 36 yean, spending atoal of 6 years Sin differen prisons for heresy, plotting ‘against authority, attendance at prohib- ited meetings, as well as refusing to take ‘oaths or eary arms. More than 15,000 Friends faced legal sentences in the early decades; jail would impelon Houses and death cook che lives of hundreds in prison. “No cross, no crown,” William Penn perceived, com memorating those who laid down lives instead of principles With Fox's emphasis on the inner life, with rejecting pastors, dectrnes, and sac- raments while secking out this mystical union, how did he hold himself account- able—and urge others to—so that it did nor become untethered exaltation leading co spiritual anarchy? For Fox, as for John Wesley nearly a century later, theanswer hy in part within the community, 2 gathering of kindred souls, wich crust that God would not let someone deep in prayer get t00 far away. “The weekly meeting would provide the framework. From his vansage on Pendle Hil, Foe might have glimpsed the folds of north- west Enghnd where the first meetings ‘would be held: villages such as Sawley, Sele, and Sedbergh, and far our of sight, Ulverston's Swarthmoor Hall, home of stalwart Margaret Fell, the “mother of Quakerism” (and eventual wife of George Fox), whose manor house would provide ahatbor for early Quaker meetings. “Quakerism is peculiarin being a group mysticism,” wrote Howard Brinton in Friends for 300 Years. Themeetings would take place each week as Friends gathered to listen, to wait upon the Lord in the corporate stillness. Accountability is one hallmark of ateue visionary: after recognizing the inner flame, «0 create boundaries to check it from be- coming wildfire. In the Quaker sense, 10 test the voices in the tincture of silence. ° The Quaker movement began here. Or near here. Ie is probably just as wel that [ cannot climb Pendle Hill, cannot find the exact spor where God granted Fox a vision of a people co be gathered Here, at 2 distance, I can only approach the outskirts of the story; disorientation keeps my presumption in check. Fox de- scended from Pendle Hill nor with sud- den faith—fath he had known before— bbur with clearer purpose thar seemed vali dad by God Fox's message would be echoed in the 20th century by such spiritual descen- dantsas Thomas Kelly (wtingin A Testa- ‘ment of Davotionthat “continuous renewed immediacy, not receding memory of the Divine vouch, lee athe base of el living") and Elton Trueblood. “We be- lieve,” Trueblood once noted with words simple in phrasing bue staggering in sig- nificance, “that Christ can be known now astruly as He was known by the disciples.” Ie is nothing less chan the essential re- discovery ofeach age, indeed each day. * 1 wait in the noon sunlight. 1 hear discane voices of people—an older couple walking dogson the high moor lard I losm fos tore procinat: intimate voice, but, chough T am un- mabmenie tee tne Te czive no commissioning vision from this hill and I begin the descent down through bracken and heather to my ear and hunch. Fox walked down from his Lancashire hill. speak God's word, 0 disturb the contented, to draw people from darknessto light. He would speak of the nearness of Christ to thousands in sereees elds, prisons, cote tages, and mansions. "As Lwalk down, a question comes to ‘mind from this pursuit of Fox and Pendle Hill: Am { willing to speak © “That what Lam lee with in the sun of northern England. Not 2 com missioning but a question. aAbout the Wider Quaker Fellowship Friends World Commitece for Consultation, Section of the Americas, works to facilitate loving understanding of diversities among Friends while we discover together, with God's help, our common spiritual ground, and co facilicate full expression of our Friends’ testimonies in dhe world. Friends World Commicte’s Wider Quaker Fellowship program is a ministry of ltera- ‘ure. Through our mailings of readings, we seek co lift up voices of Friends of different countries, languages and Quaker traditions, and invite all ro enter into spiritual community with Friends. Copyright © 1999 by Friends Publishing Corporation. Permission should be received before reprinting excerpts longer than 200 words. ‘This article appeared in the June 1999 issue of Friends Journal Reprinted 2000 with permission. Friends Journals an independent magazine serving the Religious Society of Friends. Please direct inquiries to: Friends Journad, 1216 Arch Street, Ste. 24, Philadelphia, PA 19107-2835 Telephone: 215-563-8629 * Fax: 215-568-1377 * E-mail: FriendsJnl@aol.com ‘WIDER QUAKER FELLOWSHIP 4 program of Friends World Commitee for Consultation, Scion of the Americas 1506 Race Street Philadelphia, PA 19102-1498 * USA Tel. 215-241-7293 * Fax 215-241-7285 «email clo Americas@fwee quaker-org