The Message and Life of Quaker Thomas Kelly
The Message
Edited by Kathleen B. Wilson
The Life Story
By Kathleen B. Wilson
LIFE FROM THE CENTER, The Message and Life of Quaker Thomas Kelly. Copyright © 2015 by Kathleen B. Wilson. quakerthomaskelly.org.
Numerous excerpts [pp. 1-100: 2000 words] from A TESTAMENT OF DEVOTION by THOMAS R. KELLY. Copyright © 1941 by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. Renewed 1969 by Lois Lael Kelly Stabler. New introduction Copyright © 1992 by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. See endnote 6.
Numerous excerpts [pp. 3-97: 2364 words] from THE ETERNAL PROMISE: A SEQUEL TO A TESTAMENT OF DEVOTION by THOMAS KELLY. Copyright © 1966 by Richard M. Kelly. Copyright © renewed 1994 by Richard M. Kelly. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Numerous excerpts [pp. 10-125: 820 words] from THOMAS KELLY: A BIOGRAPHY by RICHARD M.
KELLY. Copyright © 1966 by Richard M. Kelly. Copyright © renewed 1994 by Richard M. Kelly. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Excerpts [pp. 88, 90, 91:344 words] from THE ETERNAL PROMISE: A SEQUEL TO A TESTAMENT OF DEVOTION by THOMAS KELLY. Copyright © 1966 by Richard M. Kelly. Second Friends United Press edition 1988. Published by arrangement with Harper & Row. Used by permission of Friends United Press.
REALITY OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD by THOMAS R. KELLY. Copyright © 1942 by Pendle Hill. Used by permission of Pendle Hill Publications.
THOMAS R. KELLY, AS I REMEMBER HIM by T. CANBY JONES. Copyright © 1988 by Pendle Hill. Used by permission of Pendle Hill Publications.
NEW LIGHTS AND INNER LIGHT by RICHARD M. KELLY. Copyright © 1995. Used by permission of Quaker Religious Thought.
THREE RAVENS AND TWO WIDOWS: A PERSPECTIVE ON CONTROVERSY AMONG FRIENDS by
RICHARD MACY KELLY. Copyright © 2009 by Pendle Hill. Used by permission of Pendle Hill Publications.
THEN AND THE ETERNAL NOW: THOMAS KELLY IN AND BEYOND HISTORICAL CONTEXT by
GUY AIKEN. Copyright © 2010. Used by permission of Canadian Friends Historical Association.
PRAYER AS BALLAST, RUDDER, AND SAIL by IRA G. ZEPP, JR. Copyright © 2003 by Ira G. Zepp, Jr. Published by One Tree Productions. Used by permission.
EXPLANATION AND REALITY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF EMIL MEYERSON by THOMAS KELLY.
Copyright ©1937 by Princeton University Press. Printed at the Princeton University Press.
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INTRODUCTION
Many share a longing to know faith that is core, vital and true. Despite many important years in several churches, I found myself still searching. It was then that I discovered Thomas R. Kelly in a book by professor, Methodist minister, and family friend Dr. Ira G. Zepp. Introducing Thomas Kelly, Ira wrote: “In his all too brief a life (1893-1941), this brilliant Quaker taught us how to center our lives and discover the Light within.”1
In Kelly’s writing I find words that ring clear and true to my own experience. He writes of God, the Light, Love, Presence, the Power, the Living Christ, the Eternal One, Reality, the Other––beyond word or image. He writes of the Inner Light, within me and within all people. He writes of God speaking, even now, to me and to all who listen in the silence. He writes of surrender to God and of the resulting simplification of life.
So profound are his books A Testament of Devotion (TD) and The Eternal Promise (EP), I am led to introduce them to others through selected passages. His words are quoted, including italics, exactly as he wrote (except as indicated by ellipses or brackets). The format, however, is converted from prose to free verse, consistent with the poetic nature of his devotional writing.2 Selections from both books are organized together by topic and speak to me directly and personally of the Light Within and life lived from the Center.
Although the biographical details of his life are specific to him, the path taken by Thomas Kelly is not unlike that of other seekers of Truth. And on reading both his life story and the message, it is clear they cannot be separated. His story speaks to the authenticity of his words by confirming that when he refers to “I,” “we,” “us,” and “our” throughout his devotional writing, he expresses the message in the words of his own experience.
It is hoped readers will find this introduction helpful and that you will hear Thomas Kelly saying:
I want to speak, as simply, as tenderly, as clearly as I can.
For God can be found. . . .It is as St. Augustine says:He was within and we mistakenly sought Him without.EP p. 68KBW April 7, 2017
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THE MESSAGE OF THOMAS KELLY
[Introductory Words]
Quakers4 appeared in history at just such a time as this,
when the experience of deep religion had grown thin. . . .
[Their] purpose was not to form another sect and to justify it by a peculiar tenet. Friends came to dig down
to the wellsprings of spiritual immediacy, holding that religion means that which you know, feel, experience within yourself. . . . Religion means living and walking with God; experiencing the power and triumph of knowing Him
–in short, living in the sense of the imminence of God.
EP p. 18
The paradox of true mysticism is that individual experience leads to social passion, . . . Love of God and love of neighbor
are not two commandments, but one.
It is the highest experience of the mystic, when the soul of man [or woman] is known to be one with God himself,
that utility drops off
and flutters away, useless, to earth, that worldshaking consciousness
of [humankind] in need arises in one
and [one] knows [oneself] to be the channel of Divine Life.5
EP p. 3
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True decidedness is not of doctrine,
but of life orientation.
It is a commitment of life,
thoroughly, wholly, in every department and without reserve, to the Inner Guide.
It is not a tense and reluctant decidedness,
an hysterical assertiveness.
It is a joyful and quiet
displacement of life from its old center
in the self,
and a glad and irrevocable replacement of the whole of life in a new and divine Center.
EP p. 4
To you who may not know vividly such a life
I hesitantly, yet also boldly, offer a description, not an argument. For a description rests primarily upon experience while an argument from postulates. . . . Mystical religion is everywhere grounded in the experimental [experiential] base. But descriptions themselves are always fragmentary substitutes . . . . Therefore these words are not meant to be merely intellectual, static word-pictures; a burning urge
toward completion in immediacy underlies them.
May these words and this speaker step aside, having sowed their mission, and the Life and Light itself be your guide.
EP p.6
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The Light Within
Deep within us all
there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return.
Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives,
warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions,
gladly committing ourselves in body and soul,
utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us.6
You who read these words already know this inner Life and Light.
For by this very Light within you, is your recognition given.
In this humanistic age we suppose man is the initiator and God is the responder.
But the Living Christ within us is the initiator and we are the responders.
God the Lover, the accuser, the revealer of light and darkness presses within us.
“Behold I stand at the door and knock.” [Rev. 3:20]
And all our apparent initiative is already a response, a testimonial to His secret presence and working within us.
The basic response of the soul to the Light is internal adoration and joy, thanksgiving and worship, self-surrender and listening.
TD p. 4
What is here urged are internal practices and habits of the mind. What is here urged
are secret habits of unceasing orientation of the deeps of our being
about the Inward Light,
ways of conducting our inward life
so that we are perpetually bowed in worship,
while we are also very busy in the world of daily affairs.
What is here urged
are inward practices of the mind at the deepest levels,
letting it swing like the needle, to the polestar of the soul.
And like the needle, the Inward Light
becomes the truest guide of life, showing us new and unsuspected defects in ourselves and our fellows, showing us new and unsuspected possibilities in the power and life of goodwill among men [and women].
But, more deeply,
He who is within us urges,
by secret persuasion,
to such an amazing Inward Life with Him, so that, firmly cleaving to Him, we always look out upon all the world through the sheen of the Inward Light, and react toward [all people]
spontaneously and joyously from this Inward Center.
TD pp. 5-6
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Seeking and Being Found
The Quaker discovery and message has always been that God still lives and moves, works and guides, in vivid immediacy, within the hearts of men [and women].
For revelation is not static and complete, like a book,
but dynamic and enlarging, as springing from a Life and Soul of all things. This Light and Life is in all men [and women], ready to sweep us into its floods, illumine us with its blinding, or with its gentle guiding radiance, send us tendered but strong into the world of need and pain and blindness. Surrender of self to that indwelling Life is entrance upon an astounding, an almost miraculous Life. . . .
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” [Rev. 3:20]
In the silence of your hearts
hear Him knock.
Outward teachers can only lead us to the threshold. But “God Himself has come to lead His people.” [George Fox]
Such men and women must be raised up, heaven-led souls who are not “seekers” alone, but “finders,”
finders who have been found by the Father of all the world’s prodigals.
EP pp. 6-7
For there is a life beyond earnestness to be found.
It is
the life rooted and grounded in the Presence, the Life which has been found by the Almighty.
Seek it, seek it.
Yet it lies beyond seeking.
It arises in being found.
To have come only as far as religious determination is only to have stood in the vestibule. But our confidence in our shrewdness, in our education, in our talents, in some aspect or other of our self-assured self, is our own undoing.
So earnestly busy with anxious, fevered efforts for the Kingdom of God have we been, that we failed to hear the knock upon the door, and to know that our chief task is to open that door and be entered by the Divine Life.
EP pp. 9-10
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Self-Surrender
There is an old, old story that the gateway to deep religion is selfsurrender. Dr. Coomaraswamy, writing upon the art of India, says that all developed religions have as their center the experience of becoming unselfed.
. . . according to our
Christian conception of the unselfing in religion, to become unselfed is to become truly integrated as a richer self. The little, time-worn self about which we fretted– how narrow its boundaries, how unstable its base, how strained its structure. But the experience of discovering that life is rooted and grounded in the actual, active, loving Eternal One is also to experience our own personal life firm-textured and stable. For we are no longer imprisoned between birth and death, between yesterday and tomorrow, but Eternity is our home,
while our daily affairs are coordinated in that supernal light. Profound immersion in the Divine Love is a shaking experience.
But it is not an unsettling experience; one becomes at last truly settled, a coordinated, integrated personality. EP p. 10
Is religion subjective? Nay, its soul is in objectivity,
in an Other
whose Life is our true life, whose Love is our love, whose Joy is our joy, whose Peace is our peace, whose burdens are our burdens, whose Will is our will.
Self is emptied into God, and God in-fills it. TD p. 31
To find this “indwelling Christ” actively, dynamically working within us, is to find the secret that Jesus wanted to give to [all people]. It isn’t a matter of believing in the Inner Light, it is a matter of yielding your lives to Him.
EP p. 68
I have found
that in the center of the religious life,
on our part,
is a continuous and quiet willing away of our lives, a willing of all that we are and all that comes to us, into the heart and the will of God, utter dedication of will, utter surrender of oneself into God’s care, as a child trustingly surrenders to a father. Down beneath the fluctuating changes of heavenly elation and hellish discouragement we can carry on
a well-nigh continuous prayer life of submission, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
[Luke 23:46] EP pp. 90-91
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The Eternal Now and Social Concern
THERE IS AN EXPERIENCE OF THE ETERNAL breaking into time, which transforms all life into a miracle of faith and action. Unspeakable, profound, and full of glory as an inward experience,
it is the root of concern for all creation, the true ground of social endeavor. This inward Life and the outward Concern are truly one whole, and, were it possible, ought to be described simultaneously. But linear sequence and succession of words is our inevitable lot and compels us to treat separately what is not separate: first, the Eternal Now . . . and second, . . . Social Concern.
TD p. 65
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I. The Eternal Now
. . . I am persuaded
that in the Quaker experience of Divine Presence there is a serious retention of both time and the timeless, with the final value and significance located in the Eternal, who is the creative root of time itself. For “I saw also
that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love
which flowed over the ocean of darkness.” [George Fox] The possibility of this experience of Divine Presence, as a repeatedly realized and present fact, and its transforming
and transfiguring effect upon all life– this is the central message of Friends. . . . we no longer live merely in time but we live also in the Eternal. The world of time is no longer the sole reality of which we are aware.
A second Reality
hovers, quickens, quivers, stirs, energizes us, breaks in upon us
and in love embraces us, together with all things, within Himself.
We live our lives at two levels simultaneously, the level of time and the level of the Timeless. . . . But, fluctuating in predominance though the two levels be, such a discovery of an Eternal Life and Love breaking in, nay, always there,
but we were too preoccupied to notice it, makes life glorious and new.
TD pp. 67-68
Between the relinquished past and the untrodden future stands this holy Now,
whose bulk has swelled to cosmic size, for within the Now is the dwelling place of God Himself.
In the Now we are at home at last. The fretful winds of time
are stilled,
the nostalgic longings of this heaven-born earth-traveler come to rest.
For the one-dimensional ribbon of time has loosed its hold.
It has by no means disappeared.
We live within time, within the one-dimensional ribbon.
But every time-now is found to be a continuance of an Eternal Now, and in the Eternal Now receives a new evaluation. We have not merely rediscovered time; we have found in this holy immediacy of the Now the root and source of time itself.
TD pp. 71-72
An invariable element in the experience of Now is that of unspeakable and exquisite joy, peace, serene release.
A new song is put into our mouths. No old song ever has caught the glory and the gladness of this Now; no former Now can be drawn upon to give perfect voice to this Now.
The well-springs of Life are bubbling up anew each moment. When the angel is troubling the waters,
it is no time to stand on the bank and recite past wonders.
[continued]
But the main point
is not that a new song is put into our mouths; the point is that a new song is put into our mouths. We sing, yet not we, but the Eternal sings in us. . . . It is the joy and peace and serenity which is in the Divine Life itself, and we are given to share in that joy which is eternally within all Nows. The song is put into our mouths, for the Singer of all songs is singing within us. It is not we that sing;
it is the Eternal Song of the Other,
who sings in us, who sings unto us, and through us into the world.
TD pp. 73-74
In the Eternal Now all [persons] become seen in a new way. We enfold them in our love, and we and they are enfolded together within the great Love of God as we know it in Christ. . . .
They aren’t
just masses of struggling beings, furthering or thwarting our ambitions, or, in far larger numbers, utterly alien to and insulated from us. We become identified with them and suffer when they suffer and rejoice when they rejoice.
TD p. 74
II. Social Concern
The experience of Divine Presence wholly satisfies, and there are a few who,
like those on the Mount of Transfiguration, want to linger there forever and never return to the valleys of men, where there are demons to be cast out. But there is more to the experience of God than that of being plucked out of the world. The fuller experience, I am sure, is of a Love which sends us out into the world.
“As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you” [John 20:21]
becomes, not an external,
Biblically authorized command, but a living, burning experience.
For the experience of an inflooding, all-enfolding Love, which is at the center of Divine Presence, is of a Love, which embraces all creation, not just our little, petty selves.
TD p. 80
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We have tried to discover the grounds of social responsibility and social sensitivity of Friends.
It is not in mere humanitarianism.
It is not in mere pity.
It is not in mere obedience to Bible commands. . . .
The social concern of Friends is grounded in an experience– an experience of the Love of God. . . . Social concern is the dynamic Life of God at work in the world,
made special and emphatic and unique, particularized in each individual or group who is sensitive and tender in the leading-strings of love.
A concern is God-initiated, often surprising, always holy, for the Life of God is breaking through into the world.
TD pp. 84-85
It is a great message which is given to us
–good news indeed– that the Light overcomes the darkness. But to give the message we must also be the message!7
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Suffering and Springs of Hope
To you I speak with much hesitation about suffering. For I am only in middle years, and for me life has not been hard. But there is an introduction to suffering which comes with the birth pains of Love. And in such suffering one finds for the first time how deep and profound is the nature and meaning of life.
EP pp. 13-14
. . . the Inner Light illumines not only God but the world.
Its discovery within ourselves does not insulate us, together with the Eternal, in solitary ecstasy,
away from the poverties of earth;
it opens our eyes to the old world and shows it to us in a new way.
Formerly the world spread itself out before us, focused about ourselves.
We were the center.
All our enjoyment, of things and [people] was for us, to exploit, to rearrange, to clamber over, to conquer.
The effective limits of our world were the limits of its utility or importance for us. . . . But in the Eternal Presence, the world spreads itself out,
not as our little world, but as the world of God.
EP pp. 11-12
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. . . with the great unselfing, the center of concern for suffering is shifted outside ourselves and distributed with breadth unbounded among all, friends and so-called enemies.
For a few agonized moments we may seem to be given to stand within the heart of the World-Father
and feel the infinite sufferings of love toward all the Father’s children.
EP 13
The heart is stretched through suffering, and enlarged. But O the agony of this enlarging of the heart, that one may be prepared to enter into the anguish of others! Yet the way of holy obedience leads out from the heart of God and extends through the Valley of the Shadow.
TD p. 43
Through the inner revelation of the living Christ there has begun to dawn in us something of the communion between Love and Suffering and Burden-bearing. . . . In Him one sees these things grasped and embodied and lived out in time so amazingly that we stand in reverence and awe. And although we understand Him in part, through the Living Christ, yet we do not understand all. For the communion
of Love and Suffering... and victory on the Cross contains the secret
which leads back into the very nature of God Himself.
EP pp. 14-15
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Take a young man or young woman in whom Christ is only dimly formed, but one in whom the seed of Christ is alive. . . . Let [them] go into the world’s suffering, bearing this seed with [them] and in suffering it will grow, and Christ will be more and more fully formed in [them]. . . . This is one of the springs of hope– the certainty that the seed of Christ is in us all (Quakers have also called it the inner light) and the confidence that many of those
who call themselves Christian
will enter suffering, bearing this seed with them, daring to let it germinate,
daring to let it take them through personal risk and financial loss and economic insecurity, up the steep slopes of some obscure Calvary. . . .
The second spring of hope is this:
We simple, humble [people] can bear the seed of hope. No religious dictator will save the world; no giant figure of heroic size
will stalk across the stage of history today, as a new Messiah.
But in simple, humble, imperfect [persons]
like you and me wells up the spring of hope. We have this treasure of the seed in the earthen vessels– very earthen vessels.
EP p. 22-23
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Yield yourselves to the growth of the seed within you, in these our days of suffering. Sow yourselves into the furrows of the world’s pain, and hope will grow and rise high.
Be not overcome by the imposing forces of evil and of might. Be of good cheer, says Jesus, I have overcome the world. But there is no hope if Calvary is only an external Calvary. Within you must the living Christ be formed, until you are led within yourselves to die wholly that you may wholly live.
Then will Christ again walk the ways of the world’s sorrows.
In Him alone,
and in you so far as Christ is formed in you, is the hope of the world.
EP pp. 23-24
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Worship and Fellowship
In the practice of group worship on the basis of silence come special times when the electric hush and solemnity and depth of power steals over the worshipers.
A blanket of divine covering comes over the room, a stillness that can be felt is over all, and the worshipers are gathered into a unity and synthesis of life which is amazing indeed.
EP p. 43
For mystical times are capable of all gradings and shadings,
from sublime heights to very mild moments of lift and very faint glimpses of glory.
In the gathered meeting the sense is present that a new Life and Power has entered our midst. And we know
not only that we stand erect in the holy Presence, but also that others sitting with us are experiencing the same exaltation and access of power.
We may not know these our neighbors
in any outwardly intimate sense,
but we now know them, as it were, from within,
and they know us in the same way, as souls now alive in the same areas
and as blended into the body of Christ, which is His church.
[continued]
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Again and again
this community of life and guidance
from the Presence in the midst is made clear by the way the spoken words uttered in the meeting join on to one another and to our inward thoughts. . . .
We are in communication with one another
because we are being communicated to,
and through, by the Divine Presence.
EP pp. 45-46
This unity with our fellow worshipers, such that we are “written in one another’s hearts,”
is in one sense created and instituted in the hour of worship. But in a deeper sense it is discovered in that hour that we are together in one body . . . . And in a fashion
the vividness of our unity fades, is transient, grows weaker after the rise [end] of the meeting. But the fact disclosed in the meeting,
namely, that we are one body, hid with Christ in God, remains, secure from the ebb and flow of feelings and emotion.
Recall the counsel of George Fox,
“But all Friends, mind that which is eternal,
which gathers your hearts together up to the Lord, and lets you see that ye are written in one another’s heart . . . .”
. EP p. 48
And as individual mystics
who are led deep into the heart of devotion learn to be weaned away from reliance upon special vision, learn not to clamor perpetually for the heights but to walk in shadows and valleys, dry places, for months and years together,
so must group worshipers learn that worship is fully valid when there are no thrills, no special sense of covering, but chiefly valleys and dry places. . . .
I am persuaded that a deeper sifting of religion
leads us down to the will, steadfastly oriented toward the will of God.
In that steadiness of will
one walks serene and unperturbed, praying only “Thy will be done,” confident that we are in His hands and He educates us in ways that we do not expect, but by means of dryness as well as by means of glory, we walk
in gratitude if His sun shines upon us, and in serenity if He leads us in valleys and dry places. EP p. 55
The final grounds of holy Fellowship are in God.
Lives immersed and drowned in God are drowned in love,
and know one another in Him, and know one another in love.
God is the medium, the matrix, the focus, the solvent; . . .
Such lives have a common meeting point . . . . They go back into a single Center where they are at home with Him and with one another.
It is as if every soul had a final base, and that final base of every soul is one single Holy Ground, shared in by all. Persons in the Fellowship are related to one another through Him,
as all mountains go down into the same earth. TD p. 56
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Listening
We don’t begin religion;
God begins it, knocking within, in faint promptings, in inward appeals in the silences of our hearts. . . . For the listening to the eternal involves a silence within us,
a relaxed receptivity, a listening and an expectancy directed to a still small voice within.
Periods of quiet and meditation . . . should be a part of normal living for all who would go down into central silences which are to be found in the Heart of God.
And then steals in, again and again, a heavenly warmth,
a sweet assurance, an invigorative solidity, a constructive integration of the will, a burning love for God, a falling of the scales from the eyes, so that one sees the world anew, simply, directly, as if through the eyes of the God of Love.
I have no interest in silence as a form.
But I know that devotion and dedication arise
in the deep communing of the heart, in dwelling with a Silence in the center of our being.
In periods of relaxed listening and expectancy the silence within us seems to merge with a creative silence within the heart of God and we hear Eternity’s whispers,
and we become miracles of Eternity breaking into Time.
Live a listening life.
Order your outward life
so that nothing drowns out the listening. EP p.88
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The Simplification of Life
Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints
that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power.
If only we could slip over into that Center!
If only we could find the Silence which is the source of sound!
TD p. 92
Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center. . . .
There is a divine Abyss within us all, a holy Infinite Center, a Heart, a Life who speaks in us and through us to the world. We have all heard this holy Whisper at times. At times we have followed the Whisper, and amazing equilibrium of life, amazing effectiveness of living set in.
TD p. 93
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I find that a life of little whispered words of adoration, of praise, of prayer, of worship can be breathed all through the day. One can have a very busy day, outwardly speaking, and yet be steadily in the holy Presence. We do need a half-hour or an hour
of quiet reading and relaxation.
But I find that one can carry the recreating silences within oneself, well-nigh all the time. . . .
Religion isn’t something to be added to our other duties, and thus make our lives yet more complex.
The life with God is the center of life, and all else is remodelled and integrated by it. TD p. 97
Now out from such a holy Center come the commissions of life.
Our fellowship with God issues in world-concern.
We cannot keep the love of God to ourselves.
It spills over.
It quickens us.
It makes us see the world’s needs anew.
We love people and
we grieve to see them blind
when they might be seeing,
asleep with all the world’s comforts when they ought to be awake and living sacrificially,
accepting the world’s goods as their right when they really hold them only in temporary trust.
It is
because from this holy Center
we relove people, relove our neighbors as ourselves,
that we are bestirred
to be means of their awakening. TD p. 98
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Much of our acceptance of multitudes of obligations is due to our inability to say No. . . . But when we say Yes or No to calls on the basis of inner guidance and whispered promptings of encouragement from the Center of our life,
or on the basis of a lack of any inward “rising”
of that Life
to encourage us in the call,
we have no reason to give, except one– the will of God as we discern it. Then we have begun to live in guidance.
TD pp. 99-100
Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power.
It is simple. It is serene.
It is amazing. It is triumphant. It is radiant. It takes no time, but it occupies all our time.
And it makes our life programs new and overcoming.
We need not get frantic.
He is at the helm.
And when our little day is done we lie down quietly in peace, for all is well.
TD p. 100
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THE LIFE STORY OF THOMAS KELLY
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HIS EARLY YEARS
Thomas Raymond Kelly was born in 1893 on a farm near Chillicothe, Ohio. His father Carlton died when he was just four, but he, his mother Madora, sister, and grandmother Kelly continued to live there with extended family nearby until he was ten. There his formative years were spent in a family religious atmosphere that had been a long time in the making.
At the beginning of the 1800s a Protestant revival movement known as the “Second Great Awakening” had spread across the country, including the area where Kelly’s ancestors settled. It reenergized various Protestant churches, greatly increased membership, and brought about new denominations and sects, including a schismatic Presbyterian group known as New Lights. Although descendants of Quakers, his grandfather Thomas William Kelly and members of the Kelly family became New Lights, steeped in the experience of revival and conversion.8
In 1868, 25 years before Thomas Kelly was born, Quaker evangelists also came to the area, reaching out in visitation and revivals to isolated Friends, descendants of Friends, and non-Friends alike.9 The Kellys soon became members and pillars of the new Londonderry Friends Meeting. Thomas Kelly’s grandfather, who was already a Christian evangelist, became a member and “was recorded as a ‘minister’ and designated as pastor.”10 Uncles and an aunt served the meeting as treasurer, elder, and clerk. His father Carlton served as Sunday school superintendent, assistant clerk, and clerk briefly before he died; and his mother served as clerk after that.11
Kelly’s son Richard later wrote of his father’s childhood: “His first experiences of public worship were not in the silence of a traditional Quaker meeting, but in the singing, preaching, teaching, praying of a holiness Quaker church.”12 He further wrote that the impact of New Light Kellys and Revivalist Friends would not be found “in the philosophical content of [Thomas Kelly’s adult] message. But it is still seen, full blown, in his personality, in the emotional content of his message, in the old time evangelical phrases, and the rhythm of the language.”13
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In 1903 Madora Kelly moved her children to Wilmington, Ohio so they could attend high school. She was determined that they would be educated and successful, and to that end she completed a business course and took a job to support her family. She had to be away a great deal, and it made home life difficult. Nevertheless, Thomas Kelly “recalled his life in Wilmington as so happy, compared to the early [lonely] days on the farm, that he felt his real life had begun there.”14 A fun-loving youth, he played baseball and tennis with passion, greatly enjoyed playing practical jokes, and showed a “sense of humor . . . [that] remained a prominent feature of his personality in the following years.”15
At the same time he worked hard and was highly focused on academic excellence and achievement. He became skilled as a sheet metal worker, working part-time to support his education, and graduated from Wilmington College, a Quaker institution, in 1913 with a degree in chemistry.
After the move to Wilmington, Thomas Kelly became immersed in the Orthodox
Quakerism of his mother’s family. Her brother had been clerk of Wilmington Yearly Meeting; she had attended Wilmington College, founded by Quaker evangelists; and the meeting and college “became the focus of the Kellys’ religious and cultural life.”16 During college Kelly became actively involved in the student Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.) and Young Friends Movement. Then after graduating, he spent two summers working with Young Friends in Ohio and Indiana, traveling on his motorcycle Jenny.
It was during an additional year at the Quaker Haverford College in Pennsylvania that the seeds of change in both his academic and religious lives were planted. At Haverford he was introduced by Rufus Jones to mysticism and a Quakerism different than he had known in the Midwest and also to philosophy, a field that appeared to be a means of bringing together his interests in religion and science.17
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WHICH PATH TO TAKE?
After the year at Haverford, Thomas Kelly taught English and science at a Quaker preparatory school in Ontario, Canada and there became involved with Quakers who supported a mission to Japan. Becoming committed to missionary service, he entered Hartford Theological Seminary (Connecticut) in 1916 and absorbed himself in Hebrew and New Testament studies. That same year he met his future wife Lael Macy, daughter of the minister of a nearby Congregational church.
Following the U.S. declaration of war on Germany, Kelly interrupted his seminary work to go to England, explaining that he wanted to go and bring “something of the spirit of Christ to other people.”18 He was assigned by the Y.M.C.A. to the canteen service and later to work with German prisoners of war. After six months, however, he and others were relieved of their duties as a result of the military’s extreme hostility toward pacifism. He returned home and to seminary.
During that period he mulled seriously over whether he should go into religious or academic work. Shortly after entering seminary he had described his thinking in a letter to his mother:
I sometimes wonder if I do wrong in opposing my nature continually, as I do in planning to go into religious work that is dependent upon the social brilliancy of a man’s personality for some of its success. At times I feel it is the thing, and at others, that I might become more restless in such work, because technical study and teaching are so admired. I realize that direct personal work is the highest form of work, and always will feel that way, but I sometimes wonder if I don’t do it simply because it is the greatest, and not because I am best fitted for it. I think I can make a success of such work, and am not selfish in wanting to gratify my natural tendency toward the intellectual stuff. Sometimes, some days, I feel sure of one view, and in a few days the preference is reversed.19
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Later writing Lael Macy from England, he referred to “a feeling that is getting stronger and stronger. It is the desire to get into a college. . . . a big ‘ache’ for me, for I want so badly to do it.”20
Amazingly, a few months later Kelly received a letter from the president of
Wilmington College, asking if he would be interested in teaching philosophy and Bible. After completing the Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1919 and marrying Lael Macy that May, he took the position. His mother was delighted to have him return to Wilmington, but he found the small town atmosphere very limiting after his experiences of the previous five years. His desire to teach, however, was confirmed, and he became focused on obtaining the doctorate needed for an academic career.
THE PATH TAKEN
In the fall of 1921 Thomas Kelly returned to Hartford Theological Seminary to begin work on a Ph.D. in philosophy. At the same time he served as pastor of an interdenominational church in order to support his wife and himself. His dissertation concerned the work of a German physician turned philosopher and was titled The Place of Value Judgments in the Philosophy of Hermann Lotze.
After receiving his doctoral degree, he and Lael went to Germany for over a year to close the American Friends Service Committee’s Child Feeding Program at the end of its physical relief effort following World War I. During that time he was also involved in peace work and in the founding of an independent German Yearly Meeting. As he later wrote:
I found there in Germany a new Quaker movement. Men in it were squarely facing essentials in a way I never had. They were inquiring regarding the essence of religion and coming to conclusions far more daring than I had ever dreamed for myself. . . . I had little to give, but much to learn. . . .
But it was after leaving Germany and getting a perspective upon it that I found within myself that Quakerism is essentially a mystical fellowship, which transcends the ordinary barriers of religious organizations. The
[continued]
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meaning of the universal presence of the Inner Light, the Logos, in every man, the essential Christ in all people, glowed out suddenly. I saw that something of the God-life and God-character . . . was planted in every man, not artificially, but at the very core of his being, his ideal potential self. . . . I suddenly felt a great nearness to people of all religions who ‘lifted hands in prayer.’21
When they returned in 1925, Kelly began teaching at Earlham College, a Quaker institution in Richmond, Indiana. Initially, he was happy with life there; they built a house; and he enjoyed the teaching as well as the students. However, as time continued, his views related to his deep experience with German Friends, his understanding of the Inner Light, and his love of scholarship in search of truth caused him to feel estranged and frustrated with the Quakerism of the Midwest.22 Dissatisfied, he eventually began thinking of other options while during that same period also experiencing the joy of the birth of their daughter Lois in 1928.
In 1930 Kelly took a leave of absence to work on a Ph.D. at Harvard. He would later write to the chairman of its philosophy department: “My desire above all else is to be a genuine scholar in philosophy, not merely in intention, but achievement, and I have looked upon the Harvard Ph.D. as indicating the close of a satisfactory apprenticeship.”23
After two gratifying years studying at Harvard and teaching at nearby Wellesley College, Thomas Kelly returned to Earlham to teach while working on his dissertation. He maintained an exhausting schedule, returning from classes to work on the dissertation and spending his summers in libraries. As a consequence, existing health problems were exacerbated: he suffered from headaches; fatigue; extreme, incapacitating hay fever; and a serious attack of kidney stones. He also experienced a return of “ ‘woozy spells,’ as Lael Kelly termed them. These were times when his mind would nearly blank, and he would lose his coordination and strength.”24 The “spells” had resulted in an initial failure of oral examinations for the Ph.D. from Hartford Seminary before he received the doctoral degree.
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After Kelly suffered a severe nervous breakdown in late 1934, he managed to miss only a few classes and to complete and submit his Harvard dissertation. It was accepted and approved and was titled Explanation and Reality in the Philosophy of Emile Meyerson. The dissertation examined whether reality can be wholly explained and identified. Kelly found that because reality is ever expanding through time while explanation is ever contracting–aimed at elimination of time and difference–there can be no convergence; and he concluded, “Reality is that which cannot be, yet is.”25 Later “Reality” would be prominent in his devotional writing and particularly in the essay The Eternal Now and the pamphlet Reality of the Spiritual World.
In 1935 Kelly accepted a position at the University of Hawaii where he was able to pursue his longtime interest in Chinese and Indian thought. As later described by professor T. Canby Jones, “he was strongly attracted to the oriental tradition where philosophy is always engaged in seeking enlightenment, in finding the lifegiving connection between our finite souls and the soul of the universe and putting it into practice.”26
Along with teaching, that year also included the birth of son Richard, involvement in the revival of a Friends Meeting, persistent sinus problems that resulted in surgery, and an unexpected but long-desired offer of a position at the prestigious Haverford College. The family of four left Hawaii in 1936.
EXPERIENCE OF PRESENCE AND THE LAST YEARS
At last Thomas Kelly saw his life working out as he had hoped. He enjoyed living in Haverford and teaching courses such as traditional ones in philosophy and Quaker history and thought, as well as one in Eastern philosophy that he introduced. At the same time he prepared to take the final step toward the highly valued doctorate. In the fall of 1937 he returned to Harvard for the oral examinations. During that questioning, however, he suffered another “woozy” spell, and his mind blanked. He was told “[h]is performance was so entirely unsatisfactory . . . that he would never be permitted to come up for the degree again.”27
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It was devastating, and he sank into such dark despair that his wife “feared he might take his own life. . . .”28 He had failed to attain the authentication he sought as a “genuine scholar” and at the cost of enormous debt, deteriorated health, years of work and struggle, and continuous strain on his family.
There is no exact explanation of what happened in the last months of 1937, but according to his colleague Douglas Steere, others heard in his messages new authenticity–that of personal experience, beyond knowledge.29 T. Canby Jones, then a student of Thomas Kelly, remembered: “The ‘fire’ of the Holy Spirit illuminated his life. Friends could see it in his eyes, we could hear it in his gales of laughter, we witnessed that ‘joy of the Lord’ had become ‘his strength.’ ”30 While in Germany during the summer of 1938, Kelly wrote of it to his wife:
This summer has opened up what was already opening up before, a new sense of unreserved dedication of oneself to a life of childlike dedication to God. . . . What I want to say . . . seems to grow out of an internal influence, which is so overwhelming that I can only recognize it as God working within me. Last winter you know I was much shaken by the experience of Presence–something that I did not seek, but that sought me. It was that which underlay the lecture on the Eternal Now. . . . this is the real root. And the work here [with German Friends] this summer, or, in the midst of the work here this summer, has come an increased sense of being laid hold on by a Power, a gentle, loving, but awful Power. And it makes one know the reality of God at work in the world. And it takes away the old self-seeking, self-centered self, from which selfishness I have laid heavy burdens on you, dear one.31
During that summer of 1938, Thomas Kelly had gone on behalf of American
Friends to visit the German Yearly Meeting, learn of the horrifying situation in Nazi Germany, and share love and fellowship. He wrote of many people in letters to his wife as in one from Nürnberg, August 31:
I have met some giant souls, . . . and one can’t be the same again. One thing I have learned, or feel, so overwhelmingly keenly, is the real pain
of suffering with people. Sometimes it is suffering of a physical,
[continued]
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financial kind; sometimes of a spiritual kind, . . . baffled, no outlet, no hope, no point to life . . . no chance to help others bear the burdens of
life . . . . 32
It was a difficult transition from the suffering and the deep inner fellowship he knew in Germany back to the comfort of Haverford. Still feeling the impact of that intense experience, he returned to teaching, writing, giving lectures, conducting workshops, working with the American Friends Service Committee, and greatly enjoying increased time with family.
This was the period during which most of his devotional writing was done. Describing his father’s work, Richard Kelly wrote: “When he speaks, for example, of the ‘Eternal breaking into time,’ he is referring to his own experience. . . . A Testament of Devotion is implicitly autobiographical.”33 Thomas Kelly himself had written: “God experienced is a vast surprise. . . . a vast, soul-shaking surprise. God’s peace, God’s power–the old words flame with meaning, or are discarded as trite, and one gropes for new, more glorious ways of communicating the reality.”34
On January 17, 1941, less than three years after returning from Germany, he began the day exclaiming to his wife, “Today will be the greatest day of my life.”35 Later that day he wrote the religious books editor of Harper Publishers to tell him how glad he was for the possibility of making several of his lectures into a small devotional book. He concluded, yes, in the next two weeks he could come to New York and discuss it at any time available. That evening while drying dishes, Thomas Kelly died suddenly after a massive heart attack.
THROUGH HIM INTO THE WORLD
The message that came through Thomas Kelly was expressed in the words of his experience. He shared them in essays, speaking presentations, articles for Quaker publications, and other writings. Some were published separately, but originally they had not been intended to be books. Only after his death were they put together by family and friends as A Testament of Devotion and The Eternal Promise. Except for two articles that totaled four pages, all the works were written in the period after his spiritual renewal near the end of 1937.
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A Testament of Devotion (100 pages by Thomas Kelly) includes five essays and “A Biographical Memoir” of Kelly by Haverford professor Douglas Steere.36 It was published just a few months after his death in 1941 and, according to Steere, without the cutting or revision Kelly likely would have done.37 TD is the book by which Thomas Kelly is best known and has repeatedly been recognized as a spiritual classic, a message that is core, whole, and powerful.38
The Eternal Promise (97 pages by Thomas Kelly) was edited by Richard M. Kelly and published in 1966. The essential companion to A Testament of Devotion, it both completes the message expressed by Thomas Kelly and expands our understanding of his thinking and of the person he was. Constituting nearly all his remaining devotional writing, The Eternal Promise includes fifteen varied essays, articles and reflections.
Reality of the Spiritual World (39 pages) originated as a series of four addresses Kelly made during the winter of 1940-41 at Pendle Hill, a Quaker center for study and contemplation. After he died, Lael Kelly gave those manuscripts to Pendle Hill where they were put into pamphlet form and published in 1942.
Writing out of both his faith and extensive academic experience, Kelly began:
“How can we be sure that God is real, and not just a creation of our wishes? . . . We are such creatures as demand to build upon the Truth.”39 After examining various pragmatic arguments for the reality of God as well as their fallacies, Kelly wrote:
And this is the ground of religion. It rests upon a trust and a faith that for the religious [person] have become his [or her] deepest certainty, the certainty of faith, not the certainty of logic. The certainties of faith call out our whole selves
in wholehearted and unreserved dedication. The certainties of logic
leave our wills untouched and [unsurrendered].40 Be not disturbed by the intellectual criticism of subjectivity and of mystic experience
which I have given.41
[continued]
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I am persuaded that God is greater than logic, although not contrary to logic, and our mere inability to catch Him in the little net of our human reason is no proof of His non-existence, but only of our need
that our little reason shall be supplemented
by His tender visitations,
and that He may lead and guide us to the end of the road in ways superior to any that our intellects can plan. This is the blindness of trust,
which walks with Him, unafraid, into the dark.42
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Richard Macy Kelly, Thomas Kelly’s son, is very gratefully recognized both as the editor of The Eternal Promise and as the primary source of the biographical information provided here. His work is critical to our understanding: the message needs the life story, and the story needs the message.
Thomas Kelly, A Biography was written by Richard M. Kelly who was not quite five years old when his father died. As a young adult he began reading old letters and papers his mother had saved and, as he described, “became seriously
interested in constructing a complete picture of Thomas Kelly in my own mind.”43 The resulting biography was published in 1966 and includes both important background information and excerpts from many letters written by Thomas Kelly.
“New Lights and Inner Light” is a major paper he presented in 1993 at
Wilmington College upon the one-hundredth anniversary of his father’s birth. There he discussed the Kelly family’s revivalist New Light and holiness Quaker heritage, important information that was discovered only after A Biography was written. Following more research, he wrote the pamphlet Three Ravens and Two Widows: A Perspective on Controversy Among Friends. It addresses another subject but also provides more family history and stories from the lives of his mother Lael Macy Kelly and grandmother Madora Kersey Kelly Linton; empathetic perspective on different strands of Quakerism; and additional insight into Thomas Kelly’s background and life experience.44
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ENDNOTES
1Ira G. Zepp, Jr., Prayer as Ballast, Rudder, and Sail (New Windsor, Maryland: One Tree Productions, 2003), p. 86.
2 Guy Aiken, “Then and the Eternal Now: Thomas Kelly In and Beyond Historical Context,” Canadian Quaker History Journal Vol.74 (2009).
Aiken wrote: “History and biography mold Kelly’s devotional writing. Yet Kelly’s smoldering experience of Presence evinces from him remarkable literary expressions that, like poetry, may burn through the mold of time and place and seep into the soul of anyone with ears to hear.” (p. 43)
3 Thomas Kelly, The Eternal Promise: A Sequel to A Testament of Devotion. Edited by
Richard Kelly (New York: Harper & Row, 1966. Richmond, Indiana: Second Friends United Press edition, 1988), p. 65. Subsequent references will be cited with EP and the page number(s).
This 1988 Second Friends United Press edition includes two important selections that were not in earlier editions.
4 “Quakers” is a commonly used name for Friends, members of the Religious Society of Friends. It is a faith community that emerged in England with leadership from George Fox during the 1600s, a time of exceptional religious upheaval and ferment.
5 Often but not always, Kelly used “man,” “men,” or “he” to represent all persons, as was done in his time. Today he would have written it differently. In this document inclusive language is used with brackets except where “men” or “man” is used as expressed in the Bible to represent all mortal humans in contrast to God.
6 Thomas R. Kelly, A Testament of Devotion (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1941), 1996 edition, p. 3. Subsequent references will be cited with TD and the page number(s).
A Testament of Devotion (124 pages) was originally published in 1941 in hardcover and with a biography of Kelly at the beginning of the book. However, the paperback 1996 TD edition (126 pages), referenced throughout Life from the Center, has the biography at the end of the book. Therefore, the pagination differs in the two books although the text is exactly the same.
Please be aware there is also a second hardcover edition (1992) of TD (only 86 pages) from which 50% of the words were removed, including 40% of the TD selections used here. However, it is not indicated on the book’s title page that it is abridged. Although no longer in print, it is still sold on the internet. NOTE: When purchasing TD on line, it is advisable to buy it in paperback to ensure it is complete. Many hardback copies sold on the internet are the abridged version but are often presented in ways that seem to indicate–incorrectly–they are the original, complete 1941 edition. When buying a hard cover edition on line, examine the provided description carefully.
7 Richard M. Kelly, Thomas Kelly: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1966), p. 125. Later these words were also published in The Eternal Promise, Second Friends United Press edition, page 97.
Thomas Kelly: A Biography includes numerous quotes from many of Kelly’s letters, now archived in the Quaker & Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania. They are part of the Thomas R. Kelly Papers, a collection that includes correspondence (1915-1941), studies, sermons, photographs, materials for The Eternal Promise and A Testament of Devotion, etc.
8 Richard M. Kelly, “New Lights and Inner Light,” Quaker Religious Thought Vol. 85 (1995), p. 49.
9 Richard M. Kelly, “New Lights and Inner Light,” pp. 43 and 50.
10 Three Ravens and Two Widows: A Perspective on Controversy Among Friends (Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #40l, 2009), p.19.
11 “New Lights and Inner Light,” p. 51.
12 “New Lights and Inner Light,” pp. 44-45.
13 “New Lights and Inner Light,” p. 53.
14 “New Lights and Inner Light,” p. 44.
15 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 23.
16 “New Lights and Inner Light,” p. 52.
17 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 25.
18 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 34. From a letter to Lael Macy just before sailing to Europe in June 1917.
19 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 28. From a letter dated Nov. 24, 1916.
20 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 39.
21 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, pp. 54-55. From a letter written in 1928 to Harold H. Peterson, a Quaker and American Y.M.C.A. Secretary in Lahore, India.
22 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, pp. 57-60.
23 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 68. From a letter to Professor Woods, Nov. 30,1932.
24 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 69.
25 Thomas R. Kelly, Explanation and Reality in the Philosophy of Emile Meyerson (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1937), pp.1-2 and 123.
26 T. Canby Jones, Thomas R. Kelly As I Remember Him (Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #284, 1988), pp. 27-28.
27 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 90.
28 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 91.
29 A Testament of Devotion, pp. 118-119.
30 Thomas R. Kelly As I Remember Him, p. 31.
Canby Jones was a member of the student worship-sharing group that had met at Kelly’s Haverford home for over two years, and he remembered Thomas Kelly in that pamphlet as his “beloved teacher and spiritual guide.” (p. 4) He would go on to become professor emeritus of religion and philosophy at Wilmington College, author, Quaker theologian, and peacemaker.
A note by K. B. Wilson: Although I did not know him in November 2012, I sent
Canby a draft of “The Message” portion of Life from the Center. He quickly responded: “I am just thrilled with the selections you have made and beg you to keep it up. Any additional help I can be, I joyfully offer! Your choices of selections are all just right on!! With Love and Encouragement . . . .” Before he became sick, we shared for six months, what he called, “our TRK type correspondence,” and I was blessed to meet him shortly before he died in February 2014 at age 92. He was a radiant soul who still called Thomas Kelly his “dear mentor and spiritual guide.”
31 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p.102. From a letter dated Aug. 16, 1938.
32 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 105.
33 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 93.
34 Thomas R. Kelly, Reality of the Spiritual World (Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill Pamphlet # 21, 1942), p. 21.
35 Thomas Kelly: A Biography: p. 122. Words recounted by Lael Kelly and quoted by her son Richard Kelly.
36 Richard Kelly noted in The Eternal Promise on page xvi that it was Douglas Steere who had compiled A Testament of Devotion.
37 A Testament of Devotion, p. 126.
38 In mid-January 1941 Kelly wrote a letter to his brother-in-law Robert C. Whitehead, close friend and Congregationalist minister, telling him of Harpers’ interest in publishing a small book of his essays. Continuing, he shared that he had just spent a week writing what came to be sections of “The Light Within,” the first chapter of A Testament of Devotion. He explained that he wanted it to be a devotional book of practice, not theory– or, as he wrote, that was his intention. See Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 122 or the entire letter to Bob Whitehead, dated Jan. 16, 1941, in the Thomas R. Kelly Papers, Quaker & Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania.
39 Reality of the Spiritual World, pp. 3-4.
40 “Unsurrendered” replaces the word “unenslaved.” Coming from the Greek Biblical text, the word “doulos” translates in English as “slave” but also as “servant.” Some versions of the Bible use one translation and some the other; “servant” is used in the King James Version and “slave” in the Revised Standard. Here and a few other places in
Kelly’s devotional writing, he saw “enslavement to God” in the same way as did Paul in
Romans 6:15-23, “a slave of God” being the supreme opposite of “a slave of sin.” Today, however, using the word “slave,” as in “slave of God,” is jarring and inconsistent with the modern understanding of its meaning. We understand a person who is enslaved to be the property of and dominated by another wholly against his or her will. That meaning diverts the reader from Kelly’s message of wholly, freely, and willingly yielding oneself to God.
“Surrender” is a word Kelly used often in reference to utter submission of one’s will and oneself to God. “Unenslaved” is replaced here by “unsurrendered” in deference to Kelly who himself wrote that words are symbols and that over time symbols are no longer useful in representing reality. See The Eternal Promise, pp. 38-39.
41 In Reality of the Spiritual World Thomas Kelly’s analytical thinking is clearly evident. In that pamphlet he wrote:
When a good Catholic like Joan of Arc has a mystical opening, she reports that St. Catherine is speaking to her. . . . It is well-nigh impossible to get experience in the raw. Whatever it is in the raw, it is instantly caught up into a scheme of interpretation already in the mind of the experiencer. . . . The vast cultural background in which each of us is immersed sets a broad pattern of expectation and furnishes the material for interpretation, . . . A Quaker immersed in Quaker literature, Quaker silence, Quaker service, will reflect these things in his reports of his inner experience. (pp. 19-20)
Especially in Reality of the Spiritual World but also in his two devotional books, Kelly recognizes a place for logic and writes of the religious mind embracing the whole of a person. The upper level of the mind manages daily affairs, thinking, communicating, seeing, and computing, while at the deepest levels those affairs are brought into the Light so that they may be seen and responded to in love and faith. See TD, pp. 9-11.
42 Reality of the Spiritual World, p.15.
43 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p.10.
44 In Three Ravens and Two Widows: A Perspective on Controversy among Friends Richard Kelly adds particulars and personal stories regarding the different sides of his family.
Madora’s Kersey side was a longtime Orthodox Quaker family that came from
Pennsylvania, went south, and moved on to the farmland of Ohio and away from slavery. The history of her husband Carlton Kelly’s Scotch Irish family includes R. Kelly’s great, great, great, great grandfather’s disownment from a West Jersey Friends meeting after he had attended a public meeting regarding the approaching War of Independence. Later, it was the descendants of one of his daughters who would be drawn to the New Lights and then holiness Quakers.
On his mother’s Congregationalist Macy side of the family, R. Kelly discovered deep Quaker roots on Nantucket Island that went back to the early 1700s. Three generations before Lael’s birth, however, the Macys lost formal connection with Quakers, due to the self-destruction of the Nantucket Friends Meeting that resulted from the discord of the 1827-1828 Separation. They became members of the Congregationalist church while continuing serious commitment to peace and social concern: Lael’s grandfather worked in New York City immigrant tenements and in the early settlement house movement; her brother and brother-in-law were World War I conscientious objectors; and her father and brother-in-law, both ordained ministers, took conscientious stands on fair treatment of immigrants and on the violence of World War II, respectively, actions that contributed to losses of their pastorates. See pp.12, 16-17, and 22-23.
LIFE FROM
THE CENTER
` The Message
and Life of Quaker Thomas Kelly
The Message
Edited by Kathleen B. Wilson
The Life
Story
By Kathleen B. Wilson
LIFE FROM
THE CENTER, The Message and Life of
Quaker Thomas Kelly. Copyright ©
2015 by Kathleen B. Wilson. quakerthomaskelly.org.
Numerous excerpts [pp. 1-100: 2000 words] from A
TESTAMENT OF DEVOTION by THOMAS R. KELLY.
Copyright © 1941 by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. Renewed 1969 by
Lois Lael Kelly Stabler. New
introduction Copyright © 1992 by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. See
endnote 6.
Numerous excerpts [pp. 3-97: 2364 words] from THE
ETERNAL PROMISE: A SEQUEL TO A TESTAMENT
OF DEVOTION by THOMAS KELLY.
Copyright © 1966 by Richard M. Kelly. Copyright © renewed 1994 by
Richard M. Kelly. Reprinted by
permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Numerous excerpts [pp. 10-125: 820 words] from THOMAS
KELLY: A BIOGRAPHY by RICHARD M.
KELLY.
Copyright © 1966 by Richard M. Kelly.
Copyright © renewed 1994 by Richard M. Kelly. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins
Publishers.
Excerpts [pp. 88, 90, 91:344 words] from THE ETERNAL PROMISE: A SEQUEL TO A TESTAMENT OF DEVOTION by THOMAS
KELLY. Copyright © 1966 by Richard M.
Kelly. Second Friends United Press
edition 1988. Published by arrangement
with Harper & Row. Used by
permission of Friends United Press.
REALITY OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD by THOMAS R. KELLY.
Copyright © 1942 by Pendle Hill. Used by
permission of Pendle Hill Publications.
THOMAS R. KELLY, AS I REMEMBER HIM by T. CANBY
JONES. Copyright © 1988 by Pendle
Hill. Used by permission of Pendle Hill
Publications.
NEW LIGHTS AND INNER LIGHT by RICHARD M. KELLY. Copyright © 1995. Used by permission of
Quaker Religious Thought.
THREE RAVENS AND TWO WIDOWS: A PERSPECTIVE ON
CONTROVERSY AMONG FRIENDS by
RICHARD MACY KELLY.
Copyright © 2009 by Pendle Hill.
Used by permission of Pendle Hill Publications.
THEN AND THE ETERNAL NOW: THOMAS KELLY IN AND BEYOND
HISTORICAL CONTEXT by
GUY AIKEN. Copyright © 2010. Used by permission of Canadian Friends
Historical Association.
PRAYER AS BALLAST, RUDDER, AND SAIL by IRA G. ZEPP,
JR. Copyright © 2003 by Ira G. Zepp,
Jr. Published by One Tree
Productions. Used by permission.
EXPLANATION AND REALITY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF EMIL
MEYERSON by THOMAS KELLY.
Copyright ©1937 by Princeton University Press. Printed at the Princeton University Press.
INTRODUCTION
Many share a longing to know faith that is core, vital and
true. Despite many important years in
several churches, I found myself still searching. It was then that I discovered Thomas R. Kelly
in a book by professor, Methodist minister, and family friend Dr. Ira G. Zepp. Introducing Thomas Kelly, Ira wrote: “In his
all too brief a life (1893-1941), this brilliant Quaker taught us how to center
our lives and discover the Light within.”1
In Kelly’s writing I find words that ring clear and true to
my own experience. He writes of God, the
Light, Love, Presence, the Power, the Living Christ, the Eternal One, Reality,
the Other––beyond word or image. He
writes of the Inner Light, within me and within all people. He writes of God speaking, even now, to me
and to all who listen in the silence. He
writes of surrender to God and of the resulting simplification of life.
So profound are his books A Testament of Devotion (TD) and The Eternal Promise (EP), I am led to introduce them to others
through selected passages. His words are
quoted, including italics, exactly as he wrote (except as indicated by ellipses
or brackets). The format, however, is
converted from prose to free verse, consistent with the poetic nature of his
devotional writing.2
Selections from both books are organized together by topic and speak to
me directly and personally of the Light Within and life lived from the Center.
Although the biographical details of his life are specific
to him, the path taken by Thomas Kelly is not unlike that of other seekers of
Truth. And on reading both his life
story and the message, it is clear they cannot be separated. His story speaks to the authenticity of his
words by confirming that when he refers to “I,” “we,” “us,” and
“our” throughout his devotional writing, he expresses the message in the
words of his own experience.
It is hoped readers will find this introduction helpful and
that you will hear Thomas Kelly saying:
I want to
speak, as simply, as tenderly, as clearly as I can. For
God can be found. . . .3 It is
as St. Augustine says:
He was within and we mistakenly sought Him
without.
EP p. 68
KBW April 7, 2017
(1)
THE MESSAGE OF THOMAS KELLY
[Introductory Words]
Quakers4 appeared in history at just such a time
as this,
when the experience of deep religion had
grown thin. . . .
[Their] purpose was not to form another sect and to
justify it by a peculiar tenet. Friends came to dig down
to the wellsprings of spiritual
immediacy, holding that religion means that which you know, feel,
experience within yourself. . . . Religion means living and walking with
God; experiencing
the power and triumph of knowing Him
–in short,
living in the sense of the
imminence of God.
EP p.
18
The paradox of true mysticism is
that individual experience leads to social passion, . . . Love
of God and love of neighbor
are not two commandments, but one.
It is the highest experience of the mystic, when the soul of man [or woman] is known to
be one with God himself,
that
utility drops off
and flutters away, useless, to earth, that
worldshaking consciousness
of [humankind] in need arises
in one
and [one] knows [oneself] to be the channel of Divine Life.5
EP p. 3
(2)
True decidedness is not of doctrine,
but
of life orientation.
It is a commitment of life,
thoroughly, wholly, in every
department and without reserve, to the Inner Guide.
It is not a tense and reluctant decidedness,
an
hysterical assertiveness.
It is a joyful and quiet
displacement
of life from its old center
in
the self,
and a glad and irrevocable replacement
of the whole of life in a new and divine Center.
EP p. 4
To you who may not know vividly such a life
I hesitantly,
yet also
boldly, offer
a description, not an argument. For a description rests primarily upon
experience while an argument from postulates. . . . Mystical religion is
everywhere grounded in the experimental [experiential] base. But descriptions themselves are
always fragmentary substitutes . . . . Therefore these words are
not meant to be merely intellectual, static word-pictures; a burning
urge
toward completion in immediacy underlies them.
May these words and this speaker step aside, having
sowed their mission, and the Life and Light itself be your guide.
EP p.6
*****************
(3)
The Light Within
Deep within us all
there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a
holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which
we may continuously return.
Eternity is at our hearts, pressing
upon our time-torn lives,
warming us with intimations of an
astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these
persuasions,
gladly committing ourselves in body and soul,
utterly and completely, to the
Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a dynamic center, a
creative Life that presses to birth within us.6
You who read these words already
know this inner Life and Light.
For by this very Light within you, is your recognition
given.
In this humanistic age we
suppose man is the initiator and God is the responder.
But the Living Christ within us is the initiator and we
are the responders.
God the Lover, the accuser, the revealer of light and
darkness presses within us.
“Behold I stand at the door and knock.” [Rev. 3:20]
And all our apparent initiative is already a
response, a testimonial to His secret presence and
working within us.
The basic response of the soul to the Light is
internal adoration and joy, thanksgiving and worship, self-surrender
and listening.
TD
p. 4
What is here urged
are internal practices and
habits of the mind. What is here urged
are secret habits of unceasing
orientation of the deeps of our being
about
the Inward Light,
ways of
conducting our inward life
so
that we are perpetually bowed in worship,
while we are also very busy in
the world of daily affairs.
What is here urged
are inward practices of the mind at the
deepest levels,
letting it swing like the needle, to the
polestar of the soul.
And like the needle, the Inward Light
becomes the truest guide of life, showing
us new and unsuspected defects in ourselves and our fellows, showing
us new and unsuspected possibilities in the power and life of goodwill among
men [and women].
But, more deeply,
He who is within us urges,
by
secret persuasion,
to such an amazing Inward Life with
Him, so
that, firmly cleaving to Him, we always look out upon all the world through
the sheen of the Inward Light, and react toward [all people]
spontaneously and joyously from
this Inward Center.
TD
pp. 5-6
*****************
(5)
Seeking and Being Found
The Quaker discovery and message has always been that
God still lives and moves, works and guides, in
vivid immediacy, within the hearts of men [and women].
For revelation is not static and complete, like a book,
but dynamic and enlarging, as
springing from a Life and Soul of all
things. This Light and Life is in all men [and women], ready
to sweep us into its floods, illumine us with its blinding, or
with its gentle guiding radiance, send us tendered but strong into the
world of need and pain and blindness. Surrender of self to that indwelling
Life is
entrance upon an astounding, an almost miraculous Life. . . .
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” [Rev. 3:20]
In the silence of your hearts
hear
Him knock.
Outward teachers can only lead us to the threshold.
But “God Himself has come to lead His people.” [George Fox]
Such men and women must be raised up, heaven-led
souls who are
not “seekers” alone, but “finders,”
finders who have been found
by the Father of all the world’s
prodigals.
EP pp. 6-7
For there is a life beyond earnestness to be found.
It is
the life rooted and grounded in the Presence, the
Life which has been found by the
Almighty.
Seek it, seek it.
Yet it lies beyond seeking.
It arises in being
found.
To have come only as far as religious
determination is only to have stood in the vestibule. But our confidence in our shrewdness, in our
education, in our talents, in some aspect or other of our
self-assured self, is our own undoing.
So earnestly busy
with anxious, fevered efforts for the
Kingdom of God have we been, that we failed to hear the knock upon the
door, and
to know that our chief task is to open that door and
be entered by the Divine Life.
EP pp. 9-10
*****************
(7)
Self-Surrender
There is an
old, old story that the gateway to deep religion is selfsurrender. Dr. Coomaraswamy, writing upon the art of
India, says that all developed religions have as their center the experience of
becoming unselfed.
. . .
according to our
Christian
conception of the unselfing in religion,
to become unselfed is to become truly integrated as a richer self.
The little, time-worn self about which we fretted– how
narrow its boundaries, how unstable its base, how
strained its structure. But the
experience of discovering that life is rooted and grounded in
the actual, active, loving Eternal
One is
also to experience our own personal life firm-textured and
stable. For we are no longer
imprisoned between birth and death, between yesterday and tomorrow, but Eternity
is our home,
while
our daily affairs are coordinated in that supernal light.
Profound immersion in the Divine Love is a shaking experience.
But it is not an unsettling
experience; one becomes at last truly settled,
a coordinated, integrated
personality. EP p. 10
Is religion subjective? Nay, its
soul is in objectivity,
in an
Other
whose
Life is our true life, whose Love is our love, whose
Joy is our joy, whose Peace is our peace, whose burdens are our burdens, whose
Will is our will.
Self is
emptied into God, and God in-fills it.
TD p. 31
To find this “indwelling Christ” actively,
dynamically working within us, is to find the secret that Jesus wanted to give
to [all people]. It isn’t a matter of believing in the Inner Light,
it is a matter of yielding your lives to Him.
EP p. 68
I have found
that in the center of the religious life,
on
our part,
is a continuous and quiet willing away
of our lives, a willing of all that we are and
all that comes to us, into the heart and the will of God, utter
dedication of will, utter surrender of oneself into
God’s care, as a child trustingly surrenders to a father. Down beneath the
fluctuating changes of heavenly elation and hellish discouragement
we can carry on
a well-nigh continuous prayer life of submission, “Father,
into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
[Luke 23:46] EP pp. 90-91
*****************
(9)
The Eternal Now and Social Concern
THERE IS AN EXPERIENCE OF THE ETERNAL breaking
into time, which transforms all life into a miracle of faith and action.
Unspeakable, profound, and full of glory
as an
inward experience,
it is the root of concern for all
creation, the true ground of social endeavor. This inward Life and the outward
Concern are
truly one whole, and, were it possible, ought to be described simultaneously.
But linear sequence and succession of words is our inevitable lot and compels
us to treat separately what is not separate: first, the Eternal Now . . . and second, . . . Social Concern.
TD p. 65
(10)
I. The Eternal Now
. . . I am persuaded
that in the Quaker experience of Divine
Presence there is a serious retention of both time and the timeless, with
the final value and significance located in the Eternal, who is
the creative root of time itself. For “I saw also
that there was an ocean of darkness and
death, but
an infinite ocean of light and love
which flowed over the ocean of
darkness.” [George Fox] The possibility of this experience of Divine
Presence, as a repeatedly realized and present fact, and
its transforming
and transfiguring effect upon all
life– this
is the central message of Friends. . . . we no longer live merely in time but
we live also in the Eternal. The world
of time is no longer the sole reality of which we are aware.
A second Reality
hovers, quickens, quivers, stirs,
energizes us, breaks in upon us
and in love embraces us, together
with all things, within Himself.
We live our lives at two levels simultaneously, the
level of time and the level of the Timeless. . . . But, fluctuating in
predominance though the two levels be,
such a discovery of an Eternal Life and Love breaking
in, nay,
always there,
but we were too preoccupied to notice
it, makes
life glorious and new.
TD pp.
67-68
Between the relinquished past and the untrodden future stands
this holy Now,
whose bulk has swelled to cosmic
size, for
within the Now is the dwelling place of God Himself.
In the Now we are at home at last. The
fretful winds of time
are
stilled,
the nostalgic longings of this heaven-born
earth-traveler come to rest.
For the one-dimensional ribbon of time has loosed its hold.
It has by no means disappeared.
We live within time, within the one-dimensional ribbon.
But every time-now is found to be a
continuance of an Eternal Now, and in the Eternal Now receives a new
evaluation. We have not merely rediscovered time; we have found in this holy
immediacy of the Now the root and source of time itself.
TD pp.
71-72
An invariable element in the experience of Now is
that of unspeakable and exquisite joy, peace, serene release.
A new song is put into our mouths. No old song ever
has caught the glory and the gladness of this Now; no former Now can
be drawn upon to give perfect voice to this Now.
The well-springs of Life are
bubbling up anew each moment. When the angel is troubling the waters,
it is no time to stand on the bank and
recite past wonders.
[continued]
But the main point
is not that a new song is put into our mouths;
the point is that a new song is put into our mouths. We sing, yet not
we, but
the Eternal sings in us. . . . It is the joy and peace and serenity which
is in the Divine Life itself, and we are given to share in that joy which
is eternally within all Nows. The song is put
into our mouths, for the Singer of all songs is singing within
us. It is not we that sing;
it
is the Eternal Song of the Other,
who sings in us, who
sings unto us, and through us into the world.
TD pp.
73-74
In the Eternal Now all [persons] become seen in a new way.
We enfold them in our love, and we and they are enfolded together within
the great Love of God as we know it in Christ. . . .
They aren’t
just masses of struggling beings, furthering
or thwarting our ambitions, or, in far larger numbers, utterly
alien to and insulated from us. We become identified with them and
suffer when they suffer and rejoice when they rejoice.
TD p. 74
II. Social Concern
The experience of Divine Presence wholly
satisfies, and there are a few who,
like those on the Mount of
Transfiguration, want to linger there forever and
never return to the valleys of men, where there are demons to be cast
out. But there is more to the experience
of God than
that of being plucked out of the world. The fuller experience, I am sure, is of
a Love which sends us out into the world.
“As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you” [John 20:21]
becomes, not an external,
Biblically authorized command, but a
living, burning experience.
For the experience of an inflooding, all-enfolding
Love, which
is at the center of Divine Presence, is of a Love,
which
embraces all creation, not just our little, petty selves.
TD p. 80
(14)
We have tried to discover the
grounds of social responsibility and social sensitivity of Friends.
It is not in mere humanitarianism.
It is not in mere pity.
It is not in mere obedience to Bible commands. . . .
The social concern of Friends is
grounded in an experience– an experience of the Love of God. . . . Social concern is the dynamic Life of
God at work
in the world,
made special and emphatic and
unique, particularized
in each individual or group who is sensitive and tender in
the leading-strings of love.
A concern is God-initiated, often
surprising, always holy, for the Life of God is breaking through into
the world.
TD pp. 84-85
It is a great message which is given to us
–good news indeed–
that the Light overcomes the
darkness. But to give the message we must also be the message!7
*****************
(15)
Suffering and Springs of Hope
To you I speak with much hesitation about suffering.
For I am only in middle years, and for me life has not been hard. But there is
an introduction to suffering which comes with the birth pains of Love. And
in such suffering one finds for the first time
how deep and profound is the
nature and meaning of life.
EP pp.
13-14
. . . the Inner Light illumines not only God but the
world.
Its discovery within ourselves does not insulate
us, together
with the Eternal, in solitary ecstasy,
away
from the poverties of earth;
it opens our eyes to the old world and shows
it to us in a new way.
Formerly the world spread itself out before us, focused
about ourselves.
We were the center.
All our enjoyment, of things and [people] was for
us, to
exploit, to rearrange, to clamber over, to conquer.
The effective limits of our world were
the limits of its utility or importance for us. . . . But in the Eternal Presence, the world
spreads itself out,
not as our little world, but as
the world of God.
EP pp.
11-12
(16)
. . . with the great unselfing, the
center of concern for suffering is shifted outside ourselves and distributed with breadth unbounded
among all, friends and so-called enemies.
For a few agonized moments we may
seem to be given to stand within
the heart of the World-Father
and feel the infinite sufferings of
love toward
all the Father’s children.
EP 13
The heart is stretched through suffering, and
enlarged. But O the agony of this enlarging of the heart, that
one may be prepared to enter into the anguish of others! Yet the
way of holy obedience leads out from the heart of God and
extends through the Valley of the Shadow.
TD p. 43
Through the inner revelation of the living Christ
there has begun to dawn in us something of the communion between
Love and Suffering and Burden-bearing. . . . In Him one sees these things
grasped and embodied and lived out in time so amazingly that
we stand in reverence and awe. And although we understand Him in part, through
the Living Christ, yet we do not understand all. For the
communion
of Love and Suffering... and victory on
the Cross contains the secret
which leads back into the
very nature of God Himself.
EP pp.
14-15
(17)
Take a young man or young woman in
whom Christ is only dimly formed, but one in whom the seed of Christ is alive. .
. . Let [them] go into the world’s suffering,
bearing this seed with [them] and
in suffering it will grow, and Christ
will be more and more fully formed in [them]. . . . This is one of the springs
of hope– the certainty that the seed of Christ is in us all (Quakers
have also called it the inner light) and the confidence that many of those
who
call themselves Christian
will enter suffering,
bearing this seed with them, daring to let it germinate,
daring
to let it take them through personal risk and
financial
loss and economic insecurity, up the steep slopes of some obscure
Calvary. . . .
The second spring of hope is this:
We simple, humble [people] can bear the seed of hope.
No religious dictator will save the world; no giant figure of heroic size
will stalk across the stage of history
today, as
a new Messiah.
But in simple, humble, imperfect [persons]
like you and me
wells up the spring of hope. We
have this treasure of the seed in the earthen vessels– very
earthen vessels.
EP p. 22-23
(18)
Yield yourselves to the growth of the seed within
you, in
these our days of suffering. Sow yourselves into the furrows of the world’s
pain, and
hope will grow and rise high.
Be not overcome by the imposing
forces of evil and of might. Be of good cheer, says Jesus, I have overcome the world. But there is no hope if Calvary is only an external
Calvary. Within you must the living Christ be formed, until
you are led within yourselves to die wholly that you may wholly live.
Then will Christ again walk the
ways of the world’s sorrows.
In Him alone,
and in you so far as Christ is formed in
you, is
the hope of the world.
EP
pp. 23-24
******************
(19)
Worship and Fellowship
In the practice of group worship on the basis of
silence come special times when
the electric hush and solemnity and depth of power steals
over the worshipers.
A blanket of divine covering comes over the
room, a
stillness that can be felt is over all, and the worshipers are gathered into
a unity and synthesis of life which is amazing indeed.
EP p. 43
For mystical times are capable of all gradings and
shadings,
from sublime heights to
very mild moments of lift and very faint glimpses of glory.
In the gathered meeting the sense is present that a
new Life and Power has entered our midst. And we know
not only that we stand erect in the holy
Presence, but also that others sitting with us
are
experiencing the same exaltation and access of power.
We may not know these our neighbors
in
any outwardly intimate sense,
but we now know them, as it were, from
within,
and they know us in the same way, as souls
now alive in the same areas
and as blended into the body of
Christ, which
is His church.
[continued]
(20)
Again and again
this community of life and guidance
from the Presence in the midst is
made clear by the way the spoken words
uttered
in the meeting join on to one another and to our inward thoughts. . . .
We are in communication with one another
because
we are being communicated to,
and through,
by the
Divine Presence.
EP pp.
45-46
This unity with our fellow worshipers, such
that we are “written in one another’s hearts,”
is in one sense created and
instituted in the hour of worship. But in a deeper sense it is discovered in that hour that
we are together in one body . . . .
And in a fashion
the vividness of our unity fades, is
transient, grows weaker after the rise [end] of the meeting. But the fact disclosed in the meeting,
namely, that we are one body, hid with
Christ in God, remains, secure from the ebb and flow of feelings and emotion.
Recall the counsel of George Fox,
“But all Friends,
mind that which is eternal,
which gathers your hearts together up to
the Lord, and lets you see that ye are written in one another’s heart .
. . .”
.
EP p. 48
And as
individual mystics
who are led deep into the heart of
devotion learn
to be weaned away from reliance upon special vision, learn
not to clamor perpetually for the heights
but to walk in shadows and
valleys, dry places, for months and years together,
so must group worshipers learn
that worship is fully valid when
there are no thrills, no special sense of covering, but
chiefly valleys and dry places. . . .
I am
persuaded that a deeper sifting of religion
leads
us down to the will, steadfastly oriented toward the will of God.
In that
steadiness of will
one
walks serene and unperturbed, praying
only “Thy will be done,” confident that we are in His hands and
He educates us in ways that we do not expect, but by means of dryness as well
as by means of glory, we walk
in gratitude if His sun shines upon
us, and
in serenity if He leads us in valleys and dry places. EP p. 55
The final
grounds of holy Fellowship are in God.
Lives
immersed and drowned in God are drowned in love,
and know
one another in Him, and know one another in love.
God is the
medium, the matrix, the focus, the solvent; . . .
Such lives have a common meeting
point . . . . They go back into a single Center
where they are at home with
Him and with one another.
It is as if every soul had a final
base, and
that final base of every soul is one
single Holy Ground, shared in by all. Persons in the Fellowship are
related to one another through Him,
as all mountains go down into the same
earth. TD p. 56
*******************
Listening
We don’t
begin religion;
God begins it, knocking within, in
faint promptings, in inward appeals in
the silences of our hearts. . . . For the listening to the eternal involves
a silence within us,
a
relaxed receptivity, a listening and an expectancy directed
to a still small voice within.
Periods of quiet and meditation . .
. should
be a part of normal living for all who would go down into
central silences which are to be found in the Heart of God.
And then steals in, again and
again, a
heavenly warmth,
a
sweet assurance, an invigorative solidity,
a constructive integration of
the will, a burning love for God, a falling of the scales from the eyes, so that
one sees the world anew, simply, directly, as
if through the eyes of the God of Love.
I have no
interest in silence as a form.
But I know
that devotion and dedication arise
in the
deep communing of the heart, in dwelling with a Silence in
the center of our being.
In periods of relaxed listening and
expectancy the silence within us seems to merge with
a creative silence within the heart of God
and we hear Eternity’s
whispers,
and
we become miracles of Eternity breaking into Time.
Live a listening life.
Order your
outward life
so that nothing drowns out the
listening. EP p.88
******************
The Simplification of Life
Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer
burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have
hints
that there is a way of life vastly richer and
deeper than all
this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and
power.
If only we could slip over into that Center!
If only we could find the Silence which is the source of
sound!
TD p. 92
Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a
divine Center. . . .
There is a divine Abyss within us all, a holy
Infinite Center, a Heart, a Life who speaks in us
and through us to the world. We have all heard this holy Whisper at times. At
times we have followed the Whisper, and
amazing equilibrium of life, amazing
effectiveness of living set in.
TD p. 93
(24)
I find that a life of little whispered words of
adoration, of praise, of prayer, of worship
can be breathed all through the
day. One can have a very busy day, outwardly speaking, and yet
be steadily in the holy Presence. We do need a half-hour or an hour
of
quiet reading and relaxation.
But I find that one can carry the
recreating silences within oneself, well-nigh
all the time. . . .
Religion isn’t something to be added to our other
duties, and
thus make our lives yet more complex.
The life with God is the center of life, and
all else is remodelled and integrated by it.
TD p. 97
Now out from such a holy Center come the
commissions of life.
Our fellowship with God issues in world-concern.
We cannot keep the love of God to ourselves.
It
spills over.
It
quickens us.
It
makes us see the world’s needs anew.
We love people and
we grieve to see them blind
when
they might be seeing,
asleep with all the world’s comforts when
they ought to be awake and living sacrificially,
accepting the world’s goods as their right when
they really hold them only in temporary trust.
It is
because from this holy Center
we relove people, relove
our neighbors as ourselves,
that we
are bestirred
to
be means of their awakening. TD p. 98
(25)
Much of our acceptance of multitudes of
obligations is due to our inability to say No. . . . But when we say Yes or
No to calls on the basis of inner guidance
and
whispered promptings of encouragement from the Center of our life,
or on
the basis of a lack of any inward “rising”
of that
Life
to
encourage us in the call,
we have no reason to give, except one– the
will of God as we discern it. Then we have begun to live in guidance.
TD pp. 99-100
Life from the Center
is a life of unhurried peace and
power.
It is simple. It is
serene.
It is amazing. It is triumphant. It is radiant. It
takes no time, but it occupies all our time.
And it makes our life programs new and overcoming.
We need not get frantic.
He is at the helm.
And when our little day is done we lie
down quietly in peace, for all is well.
TD p. 100
****************
(26)
THE LIFE STORY OF THOMAS KELLY
(27)
HIS EARLY YEARS
Thomas Raymond Kelly was born in 1893 on a farm near
Chillicothe, Ohio. His father Carlton
died when he was just four, but he, his mother Madora, sister, and grandmother
Kelly continued to live there with extended family nearby until he was
ten. There his formative years were
spent in a family religious atmosphere that had been a long time in the making.
At the beginning of the 1800s a Protestant revival movement
known as the “Second Great Awakening” had spread across the country, including
the area where Kelly’s ancestors settled.
It reenergized various Protestant churches, greatly increased
membership, and brought about new denominations and sects, including a
schismatic Presbyterian group known as New Lights. Although descendants of Quakers, his
grandfather Thomas William Kelly and members of the Kelly family became New
Lights, steeped in the experience of revival and conversion.8
In 1868, 25 years before Thomas Kelly was born, Quaker
evangelists also came to the area, reaching out in visitation and revivals to
isolated Friends, descendants of Friends, and non-Friends alike.9 The Kellys soon became members and pillars of
the new Londonderry Friends Meeting.
Thomas Kelly’s grandfather, who was already a Christian evangelist,
became a member and “was recorded as a ‘minister’ and designated as pastor.”10 Uncles and an aunt served the meeting as
treasurer, elder, and clerk. His father
Carlton served as Sunday school superintendent, assistant clerk, and clerk
briefly before he died; and his mother served as clerk after that.11
Kelly’s son Richard later wrote of his father’s
childhood: “His first experiences of
public worship were not in the silence of a traditional Quaker meeting, but in
the singing, preaching, teaching, praying of a holiness Quaker church.”12 He further wrote that the impact of New Light Kellys and Revivalist Friends would
not be found “in the philosophical content of [Thomas Kelly’s adult]
message. But it is still seen, full
blown, in his personality, in the emotional content of his message, in the old
time evangelical phrases, and the rhythm of the language.”13
(28)
In 1903 Madora Kelly moved her children to Wilmington, Ohio
so they could attend high school. She
was determined that they would be educated and successful, and to that end she
completed a business course and took a job to support her family. She had to be away a great deal, and it made
home life difficult. Nevertheless, Thomas Kelly “recalled his life in Wilmington
as so happy, compared to the early [lonely] days on the farm, that he felt his
real life had begun there.”14
A fun-loving youth, he played baseball and tennis with passion, greatly
enjoyed playing practical jokes, and
showed a “sense of humor . . . [that] remained a prominent feature of
his personality in the following years.”15
At the same time he worked hard and was highly focused on
academic excellence and achievement. He
became skilled as a sheet metal worker, working part-time to support his
education, and graduated from Wilmington College, a Quaker institution, in 1913
with a degree in chemistry.
After the move to Wilmington, Thomas Kelly became immersed
in the Orthodox
Quakerism of his mother’s family. Her brother had been clerk of Wilmington
Yearly Meeting; she had attended Wilmington College, founded by Quaker
evangelists; and the meeting and college “became the focus of the Kellys’
religious and cultural life.”16
During college Kelly became actively involved in the student Young Men’s
Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.) and Young Friends Movement. Then after graduating, he spent two summers
working with Young Friends in Ohio and Indiana, traveling on his motorcycle
Jenny.
It was during an additional year at the Quaker Haverford
College in Pennsylvania that the seeds of change in both his academic and
religious lives were planted. At
Haverford he was introduced by Rufus Jones to mysticism and a Quakerism
different than he had known in the Midwest and also to philosophy, a field that
appeared to be a means of bringing together his interests in religion and
science.17
(29)
WHICH PATH
TO TAKE?
After the year at Haverford, Thomas Kelly taught English
and science at a Quaker preparatory school in Ontario, Canada and there became involved with Quakers who
supported a mission to Japan. Becoming
committed to missionary service, he entered Hartford Theological Seminary
(Connecticut) in 1916 and absorbed
himself in Hebrew and New Testament studies.
That same year he met his future wife Lael Macy, daughter of the
minister of a nearby Congregational church.
Following the U.S. declaration of war on Germany, Kelly
interrupted his seminary work to go to England, explaining that he wanted to go
and bring “something of the spirit of Christ to other people.”18 He was assigned by the Y.M.C.A. to the
canteen service and later to work with German prisoners of war. After six months, however, he and others were
relieved of their duties as a result of the military’s extreme hostility toward
pacifism. He returned home and to
seminary.
During that period he mulled seriously over whether he
should go into religious or academic work.
Shortly after entering seminary he had described his thinking in a
letter to his mother:
I sometimes wonder if I do wrong in opposing my
nature continually, as I do in planning to go into religious work that is
dependent upon the social brilliancy of a man’s personality for some of its
success. At times I feel it is the thing, and at others, that I might
become more restless in such work, because technical study and teaching are so
admired. I realize that direct personal work is the highest form of work, and
always will feel that way, but I sometimes wonder if I don’t do it simply
because it is the greatest, and not because I am best fitted for it. I think I can make a success of such work,
and am not selfish in wanting to gratify my natural tendency toward the
intellectual stuff. Sometimes, some
days, I feel sure of one view, and in a few days the preference is reversed.19
(30)
Later writing Lael Macy from England, he referred to “a
feeling that is getting stronger and stronger.
It is the desire to get into a college. . . . a big ‘ache’ for me, for I
want so badly to do it.”20
Amazingly, a few months later Kelly received a letter from
the president of
Wilmington College, asking if he would be interested in
teaching philosophy and Bible. After
completing the Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1919 and marrying Lael Macy that
May, he took the position. His mother
was delighted to have him return to Wilmington, but he found the small town
atmosphere very limiting after his experiences of the previous five years. His desire to teach, however, was confirmed,
and he became focused on obtaining the doctorate needed for an academic career.
THE PATH TAKEN
In the fall of 1921 Thomas Kelly returned to Hartford
Theological Seminary to begin work on a Ph.D. in philosophy. At the same time he served as pastor of an
interdenominational church in order to support his wife and himself. His dissertation concerned the work of a
German physician turned philosopher and was titled The Place of Value Judgments in the Philosophy of Hermann Lotze.
After receiving his doctoral degree, he and Lael went to
Germany for over a year to close the American Friends Service Committee’s Child
Feeding Program at the end of its physical relief effort following World War
I. During that time he was also involved
in peace work and in the founding of an independent German Yearly Meeting. As he later wrote:
I found there in Germany a new Quaker movement. Men in
it were squarely facing essentials in a way I never had. They were inquiring regarding the essence of
religion and coming to conclusions far more daring than I had ever dreamed for
myself. . . . I had little to give, but much to learn. . . .
But it was after leaving Germany and getting a perspective
upon it that I found within myself that Quakerism is essentially a mystical
fellowship, which transcends the ordinary barriers of religious organizations. The
[continued]
(31)
meaning of the universal presence of the Inner
Light, the Logos, in every man, the essential Christ in all people, glowed out
suddenly. I saw that something of the
God-life and God-character . . . was planted in every man, not artificially,
but at the very core of his being, his ideal potential self. . . . I suddenly
felt a great nearness to people of all
religions who ‘lifted hands in prayer.’21
When they returned in 1925, Kelly began teaching at Earlham
College, a Quaker institution in Richmond, Indiana. Initially, he was happy with life there; they
built a house; and he enjoyed the teaching as well as the students. However, as time continued, his views related
to his deep experience with German Friends, his understanding of the Inner
Light, and his love of scholarship in search of truth caused him to feel
estranged and frustrated with the Quakerism of the Midwest.22
Dissatisfied, he eventually began thinking of other options while during that
same period also experiencing the joy of the birth of their daughter Lois in
1928.
In 1930 Kelly took a leave of absence to work on a Ph.D. at
Harvard. He would later write to the
chairman of its philosophy department: “My desire above all else is to be a
genuine scholar in philosophy, not merely in intention, but achievement, and I
have looked upon the Harvard Ph.D. as indicating the close of a satisfactory
apprenticeship.”23
After two gratifying years studying at Harvard and teaching
at nearby Wellesley College, Thomas Kelly returned to Earlham to teach while
working on his dissertation. He maintained an exhausting schedule, returning
from classes to work on the dissertation and spending his summers in
libraries. As a consequence, existing
health problems were exacerbated: he
suffered from headaches; fatigue; extreme, incapacitating hay fever; and a
serious attack of kidney stones. He also
experienced a return of “ ‘woozy
spells,’ as Lael Kelly termed them.
These were times when his mind would nearly blank, and he would lose his
coordination and strength.”24 The “spells” had resulted in an
initial failure of oral examinations for the Ph.D. from Hartford Seminary
before he received the doctoral degree.
(32)
After Kelly suffered a severe nervous breakdown in late
1934, he managed to miss only a few classes and to complete and submit his
Harvard dissertation. It was accepted
and approved and was titled Explanation
and Reality in the Philosophy of Emile
Meyerson. The dissertation examined
whether reality can be wholly explained and identified. Kelly found that because reality is ever expanding through time while explanation
is ever contracting–aimed at
elimination of time and difference–there
can be no convergence; and he concluded,
“Reality is that which cannot be, yet is.”25 Later “Reality” would be prominent in his
devotional writing and particularly in the essay The Eternal Now and the pamphlet Reality of the Spiritual World.
In 1935 Kelly accepted a position at the University of
Hawaii where he was able to pursue his longtime interest in Chinese and Indian
thought. As later described by professor
T. Canby Jones, “he was strongly attracted to the oriental tradition where
philosophy is always engaged in seeking enlightenment, in finding the
lifegiving connection between our finite souls and the soul of the universe and
putting it into practice.”26
Along with teaching, that year also included the birth of
son Richard, involvement in the revival of a Friends Meeting, persistent sinus
problems that resulted in surgery, and an unexpected but long-desired offer of
a position at the prestigious Haverford College. The family of four left Hawaii
in 1936.
EXPERIENCE OF PRESENCE AND THE LAST YEARS
At last Thomas Kelly saw his life working out as he had
hoped. He enjoyed living in Haverford
and teaching courses such as traditional ones in philosophy and Quaker history
and thought, as well as one in Eastern philosophy that he introduced. At the same time he prepared to take the
final step toward the highly valued doctorate.
In the fall of 1937 he returned to Harvard for the oral examinations. During that questioning, however, he suffered
another “woozy” spell, and his mind blanked.
He was told “[h]is performance was so entirely unsatisfactory . . . that
he would never be permitted to come up for the degree again.”27
(33)
It was devastating, and he sank into such dark despair that
his wife “feared he might take his own life. . . .”28 He had failed to attain the authentication he
sought as a “genuine scholar” and at the cost of enormous debt, deteriorated
health, years of work and struggle, and continuous strain on his family.
There is no exact explanation of what happened in the last
months of 1937, but according to his colleague Douglas Steere, others heard in
his messages new authenticity–that of personal experience, beyond knowledge.29 T. Canby Jones, then a student of Thomas Kelly, remembered: “The ‘fire’ of the
Holy Spirit illuminated his life.
Friends could see it in his eyes, we could hear it in his gales of
laughter, we witnessed that ‘joy of the Lord’ had become ‘his strength.’ ”30 While in Germany during the summer of 1938,
Kelly wrote of it to his wife:
This summer has opened
up what was already opening up before, a new sense of unreserved dedication
of oneself to a life of childlike dedication to God. . . . What I want to say . . . seems to grow out of
an internal influence, which is so overwhelming that I can only recognize it as
God working within me. Last winter you
know I was much shaken by the experience of Presence–something that I did not
seek, but that sought me. It was that which underlay the lecture on the
Eternal Now. . . . this is the real root.
And the work here [with German Friends] this summer, or, in the midst of the work here this
summer, has come an increased sense of being
laid hold on by a Power, a gentle, loving, but awful Power. And it makes one know the reality of God at work in the world. And it takes away the old self-seeking,
self-centered self, from which selfishness I have laid heavy burdens on you,
dear one.31
During that summer of 1938, Thomas Kelly had gone on behalf
of American
Friends to visit the German Yearly Meeting, learn of the
horrifying situation in Nazi Germany, and share love and fellowship. He wrote of many people in letters to his
wife as in one from Nürnberg, August 31:
I have met some giant
souls, . . . and one can’t be the
same again. One thing I have learned, or
feel, so overwhelmingly keenly, is the real pain
of suffering with
people. Sometimes it is suffering of a physical,
[continued]
(34)
financial kind; sometimes of a spiritual kind, . . .
baffled, no outlet, no hope, no point to life . . . no chance to help others bear the burdens of
life . . . . 32
It was a difficult transition from the suffering and the
deep inner fellowship he knew in Germany back to the comfort of Haverford. Still feeling the impact of that intense
experience, he returned to teaching, writing, giving lectures, conducting
workshops, working with the American Friends Service Committee, and greatly
enjoying increased time with family.
This was the period during which most of his devotional
writing was done. Describing his
father’s work, Richard Kelly wrote: “When he speaks, for example, of the
‘Eternal breaking into time,’ he is referring to his own experience. . . . A Testament of Devotion is implicitly
autobiographical.”33 Thomas
Kelly himself had written: “God experienced is a vast surprise. . . . a vast,
soul-shaking surprise. God’s peace,
God’s power–the old words flame with meaning, or are discarded as trite, and
one gropes for new, more glorious ways of communicating the reality.”34
On January 17, 1941, less than three years after returning
from Germany, he began the day exclaiming to his wife, “Today will be the
greatest day of my life.”35
Later that day he wrote the religious books editor of Harper Publishers
to tell him how glad he was for the possibility of making several of his
lectures into a small devotional book.
He concluded, yes, in the next two weeks he could come to New York and
discuss it at any time available. That
evening while drying dishes, Thomas Kelly died suddenly after a massive heart
attack.
THROUGH HIM INTO THE WORLD
The message that came through Thomas Kelly was expressed in
the words of his experience. He shared
them in essays, speaking presentations, articles for Quaker publications, and
other writings. Some were published
separately, but originally they had not been intended to be books. Only after his death were they put together
by family and friends as A Testament of
Devotion and The Eternal Promise.
Except for two articles that totaled four pages, all the works were written in
the period after his spiritual renewal near the end of 1937.
(35)
A Testament of
Devotion (100 pages by Thomas Kelly) includes five essays and “A
Biographical Memoir” of Kelly by
Haverford professor Douglas Steere.36 It was published just a few months after his
death in 1941 and, according to Steere, without the cutting or revision Kelly
likely would have done.37 TD
is the book by which Thomas Kelly is best known and has repeatedly been
recognized as a spiritual classic, a message that is core, whole, and powerful.38
The Eternal Promise (97
pages by Thomas Kelly) was edited by Richard M. Kelly and published in
1966. The essential companion to A Testament of Devotion, it both
completes the message expressed by Thomas Kelly and expands our understanding
of his thinking and of the person he was.
Constituting nearly all his remaining devotional writing, The Eternal Promise includes fifteen
varied essays, articles and reflections.
Reality of the
Spiritual World (39 pages) originated as a series of four addresses Kelly
made during the winter of 1940-41 at Pendle Hill, a Quaker center for study and
contemplation. After he died, Lael Kelly
gave those manuscripts to Pendle Hill where they were put into pamphlet form
and published in 1942.
Writing out of both his faith and extensive academic
experience, Kelly began:
“How can we be sure that God is real, and not just a
creation of our wishes? . . . We are such creatures as demand to build upon the
Truth.”39 After examining
various pragmatic arguments for the reality of God as well as their fallacies,
Kelly wrote:
And this is the ground of religion. It
rests upon a trust and a faith that for the religious [person] have
become his [or her] deepest certainty, the certainty of faith, not the
certainty of logic. The certainties of faith call out our whole
selves
in wholehearted and unreserved dedication. The
certainties of logic
leave our wills untouched and [unsurrendered].40 Be not
disturbed by the intellectual criticism of subjectivity and of mystic
experience
which
I have given.41
[continued]
(36)
I am persuaded that God is greater than
logic, although
not contrary to logic, and our mere inability to catch Him in the
little net of our human reason is no proof of His non-existence, but
only of our need
that
our little reason shall be supplemented
by His
tender visitations,
and that He may lead and guide us to the
end of the road in ways superior to any that our intellects can plan. This is
the blindness of trust,
which walks with Him, unafraid,
into the dark.42
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Richard Macy Kelly, Thomas Kelly’s son, is very gratefully
recognized both as the editor of The
Eternal Promise and as the primary source of the biographical information
provided here. His work is critical to
our understanding: the message needs the
life story, and the story needs the message.
Thomas Kelly, A
Biography was written by Richard M.
Kelly who was not quite five years old when his father died. As a young adult he began reading old letters
and papers his mother had saved and, as he described, “became seriously
interested in constructing a complete picture of Thomas
Kelly in my own mind.”43 The
resulting biography was published in 1966 and includes both important
background information and excerpts from many letters written by Thomas Kelly.
“New Lights and Inner Light” is a major paper he presented
in 1993 at
Wilmington College upon the one-hundredth anniversary of
his father’s birth. There he discussed
the Kelly family’s revivalist New Light and holiness Quaker heritage, important
information that was discovered only after A
Biography was written. Following more research, he wrote the
pamphlet Three Ravens and Two Widows: A Perspective on Controversy Among Friends. It addresses another subject but also
provides more family history and stories from the lives of his mother Lael Macy
Kelly and grandmother Madora Kersey Kelly Linton; empathetic perspective on
different strands of Quakerism; and additional insight into Thomas Kelly’s
background and life experience.44
(37)
ENDNOTES
1Ira G. Zepp, Jr.,
Prayer as Ballast, Rudder, and
Sail (New Windsor, Maryland: One
Tree Productions, 2003), p. 86.
2
Guy Aiken, “Then and the Eternal Now: Thomas Kelly In
and Beyond Historical Context,” Canadian
Quaker History Journal Vol.74 (2009).
Aiken wrote: “History and biography mold
Kelly’s devotional writing. Yet Kelly’s
smoldering experience of Presence evinces from him remarkable literary
expressions that, like poetry, may burn through the mold of time and place and
seep into the soul of anyone with ears to hear.” (p. 43)
3
Thomas Kelly, The
Eternal Promise: A Sequel to A Testament of Devotion. Edited by
Richard
Kelly (New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
Richmond, Indiana: Second Friends United Press edition, 1988), p.
65. Subsequent references will be cited with EP and the page number(s).
This 1988
Second Friends United Press edition includes two important selections that were
not in earlier editions.
4 “Quakers”
is a commonly used name for Friends, members of the Religious Society of Friends. It is a faith community that emerged in
England with leadership from George Fox during the 1600s, a time of exceptional
religious upheaval and ferment.
5 Often but
not always, Kelly used “man,” “men,” or “he” to represent all persons, as was
done in his time. Today he would have
written it differently. In this document
inclusive language is used with brackets except where “men” or “man” is used as
expressed in the Bible to represent all mortal humans in contrast to God.
6
Thomas R. Kelly, A
Testament of Devotion (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1941), 1996
edition, p. 3. Subsequent references
will be cited with TD and the page number(s).
A
Testament
of Devotion (124 pages) was originally published in 1941 in hardcover
and with a biography of Kelly at the beginning of the book. However, the paperback 1996 TD edition (126
pages), referenced throughout Life from the Center, has the biography
at the end of the book. Therefore, the
pagination differs in the two books although the text is exactly the same.
Please be aware there is also a second
hardcover edition (1992) of TD (only 86 pages) from which 50% of the
words were removed, including 40% of the TD selections used here. However, it
is not indicated on the book’s
title page that it is abridged. Although
no longer in print, it is still sold on the internet. NOTE: When purchasing TD
on line, it is advisable to buy it in paperback to ensure it is complete. Many hardback copies sold on the internet are
the abridged version but are often presented in ways that seem to
indicate–incorrectly–they are the original, complete 1941 edition. When buying a hard cover edition on line, examine
the provided description carefully.
7
Richard M. Kelly, Thomas
Kelly: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1966), p.
125. Later these words were also
published in The Eternal Promise,
Second Friends United Press edition, page 97.
Thomas Kelly: A Biography includes
numerous quotes from many of Kelly’s letters, now archived in the Quaker &
Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania. They are part of the Thomas R. Kelly Papers,
a collection that includes correspondence (1915-1941), studies, sermons,
photographs, materials for The Eternal
Promise and A Testament of Devotion,
etc.
8 Richard M.
Kelly, “New Lights and Inner Light,” Quaker
Religious Thought Vol. 85 (1995), p. 49.
9 Richard M.
Kelly, “New Lights and Inner Light,” pp. 43 and 50.
10 Three Ravens and Two Widows: A Perspective on
Controversy Among Friends (Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill Pamphlet
#40l, 2009), p.19.
11 “New Lights
and Inner Light,” p. 51.
12 “New Lights
and Inner Light,” pp. 44-45.
13 “New Lights
and Inner Light,” p. 53.
14 “New Lights
and Inner Light,” p. 44.
15 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 23.
16 “New Lights
and Inner Light,” p. 52.
17 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 25.
18 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p.
34. From a letter to Lael Macy just
before sailing to Europe in June 1917.
19 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p.
28. From a letter dated Nov. 24, 1916.
20 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 39.
21 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, pp.
54-55. From a letter written in 1928 to
Harold H. Peterson, a Quaker and American Y.M.C.A. Secretary in Lahore, India.
22 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, pp. 57-60.
23 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p.
68. From a letter to Professor Woods,
Nov. 30,1932.
24 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 69.
25 Thomas R.
Kelly, Explanation and Reality in the
Philosophy of Emile Meyerson (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1937), pp.1-2 and 123.
26 T. Canby
Jones, Thomas R. Kelly As I Remember Him
(Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #284, 1988), pp. 27-28.
27 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 90.
28 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 91.
29 A Testament of Devotion, pp.
118-119.
30 Thomas R. Kelly As I Remember Him, p.
31.
Canby Jones was a member of the student
worship-sharing group that had met at Kelly’s Haverford home for over two
years, and he remembered Thomas Kelly in
that pamphlet as his “beloved teacher and spiritual guide.” (p. 4) He would go on to become professor emeritus
of religion and philosophy at Wilmington College, author, Quaker theologian,
and peacemaker.
A
note by K. B. Wilson:
Although I did not know him in November 2012, I sent
Canby a draft of “The Message” portion of Life from the Center. He quickly responded: “I am just thrilled
with the selections you have made and beg
you to keep it up. Any additional help I
can be, I joyfully offer! Your choices
of selections are all just right on!! With Love and Encouragement . . . .” Before he became sick, we shared for six
months, what he called, “our TRK type correspondence,” and I was blessed to
meet him shortly before he died in February 2014 at age 92. He was a radiant
soul who still called Thomas Kelly his “dear mentor and spiritual guide.”
31 Thomas Kelly: A Biography,
p.102. From a letter dated Aug. 16,
1938.
32 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 105.
33 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p. 93.
34 Thomas R.
Kelly, Reality of the Spiritual World (Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill
Pamphlet # 21, 1942), p. 21.
35 Thomas Kelly: A Biography: p.
122. Words recounted by Lael Kelly and
quoted by her son Richard Kelly.
36 Richard
Kelly noted in The Eternal Promise on
page xvi that it was Douglas Steere who had compiled A Testament of Devotion.
37 A Testament of Devotion, p. 126.
38 In
mid-January 1941 Kelly wrote a letter to his brother-in-law Robert C.
Whitehead, close friend and Congregationalist minister, telling him of Harpers’
interest in publishing a small book of his essays. Continuing, he shared that he had just spent
a week writing what came to be sections of
“The Light Within,” the first chapter of A Testament of Devotion. He
explained that he wanted it to be a devotional book of practice, not theory–
or, as he wrote, that was his intention.
See Thomas Kelly: A Biography,
p. 122 or the entire letter to Bob
Whitehead, dated Jan. 16, 1941, in the Thomas R. Kelly Papers, Quaker &
Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania.
39 Reality of the Spiritual World, pp. 3-4.
40
“Unsurrendered” replaces the word “unenslaved.” Coming from the Greek Biblical text, the word
“doulos” translates in English as “slave” but also as “servant.” Some versions of the Bible use one
translation and some the other; “servant” is used in the King James Version and
“slave” in the Revised Standard. Here
and a few other places in
Kelly’s
devotional writing, he saw “enslavement to God” in the same way as did Paul in
Romans
6:15-23, “a slave of God” being the supreme opposite of “a slave of sin.” Today, however, using the word “slave,”
as in “slave of God,” is jarring and inconsistent with the modern understanding
of its meaning. We understand a person
who is enslaved to be the property of and dominated by another wholly against his or her will. That meaning
diverts the reader from Kelly’s message of wholly, freely, and willingly yielding oneself to God.
“Surrender” is a word Kelly used often in
reference to utter submission of one’s will and oneself to God. “Unenslaved” is replaced here by
“unsurrendered” in deference to Kelly who himself wrote that words are symbols
and that over time symbols are no longer useful in representing reality. See The
Eternal Promise, pp. 38-39.
41 In Reality of the Spiritual World Thomas Kelly’s analytical thinking is clearly
evident. In that pamphlet he wrote:
When a good Catholic like Joan of
Arc has a mystical opening, she reports that St. Catherine is speaking to her.
. . . It is well-nigh impossible to get experience in the raw. Whatever it is in the raw, it is instantly
caught up into a scheme of interpretation already in the mind of the
experiencer. . . . The vast cultural
background in which each of us is immersed sets a broad pattern of expectation
and furnishes the material for interpretation, . . . A Quaker immersed in Quaker literature,
Quaker silence, Quaker service, will reflect these things in his reports of his
inner experience. (pp. 19-20)
Especially
in Reality of the Spiritual World but
also in his two devotional books, Kelly recognizes a place for logic and writes
of the religious mind embracing the whole of a person. The upper level of the mind manages daily
affairs, thinking, communicating, seeing, and computing, while at the deepest
levels those affairs are brought into the Light so that they may be seen and
responded to in love and faith. See TD,
pp. 9-11.
42 Reality of the Spiritual World, p.15.
43 Thomas Kelly: A Biography, p.10.
44
In Three Ravens
and Two Widows: A Perspective on Controversy among Friends Richard Kelly adds particulars and personal
stories regarding the different sides of his family.
Madora’s Kersey side was a longtime
Orthodox Quaker family that came from
Pennsylvania,
went south, and moved on to the farmland of Ohio and away from slavery. The
history of her husband Carlton Kelly’s Scotch Irish family includes R. Kelly’s great, great, great, great
grandfather’s disownment from a West Jersey Friends meeting after he had
attended a public meeting regarding the approaching War of Independence. Later, it was the descendants of one of his
daughters who would be drawn to the New Lights and then holiness Quakers.
On his mother’s Congregationalist Macy
side of the family, R. Kelly discovered deep Quaker roots on Nantucket Island
that went back to the early 1700s. Three
generations before Lael’s birth, however, the Macys lost formal connection with
Quakers, due to the self-destruction of the Nantucket Friends Meeting that
resulted from the discord of the 1827-1828 Separation. They became members of the Congregationalist
church while continuing serious commitment to peace and social concern: Lael’s
grandfather worked in New York City immigrant tenements and in the early
settlement house movement; her brother and brother-in-law were World War I
conscientious objectors; and her father and brother-in-law, both ordained
ministers, took conscientious stands on fair treatment of immigrants and on the
violence of World War II, respectively, actions that contributed to losses of
their pastorates. See pp.12, 16-17, and 22-23.
