Quaker Theology #6 -Spring 2002

                                                        Herrymon Maurer and the Tao of Quakerism

persons of ready humor, but also of deep seriousness. Not one of them has that steady serenity of mind that makes the mystic or the saint. (The prophetic and the serene, I suspect, are not altogether compatible.) These friends may have times of joy, but they have recurrent times of anguish, tension, distaste, and sorrow. There is always the eternal conflict between the inalterably true and the world as it is; the prophetic function is always to bear conflict and anguish and turn them to use (What Can I Know?: 66)

Those who knew Herrymon will recognize this as a self-portrait, for he was a "man of sorrows" who had a wonderful sense of humor and irony, and an abiding passion for honesty and Truth.

After Herrymon’s powerfully prophetic statements, it may seem strange that he wrote no more about religion for nearly three decades. During the ‘50s and ‘60s, he worked sporadically for Fortune magazine as editor and writer. He summed up his detailed knowledge of business in Great Enterprise: Growth and Behavior of the Big Corporation (MacMillan, 1955) –a work that dispassionately treats the rise of corporatism as a fact of life, or as a force of nature, without passing judgment or offering any critique. His professional writings of this period display lucidity, but no trace of inspiration or prophesy.

What caused the prophetic fires to die out, or at least become dormant, in Herrymon?

One answer is that he suffered from chronic alcoholism as well as bouts of depression that sapped his strength and undermined his confidence, particularly in his mid-life. From the 1940s on, he tried every cure imaginable, from psychotherapy to shock therapy. Nothing seemed able to exorcize his inner demons for very long.

Because of his alcoholism and mood swings, Herrymon’s relations with his family were often strained. His wife Helen, a woman of extraordinary faith, love, and common sense, helped to keep Herrymon and the family together during these difficult times. It was Helen who saw the Dr. Jekyll in Herrymon when alcohol turned him into Mr. Hyde.

A psychiatric social worker, Helen was an associate professor at Rutgers University for many years. Her specialty was depression and schizophrenia. She worked at Carrier Clinic in Princeton as a coordinator of social services until her retirement at age 74.

"We managed to get through it," she says, recalling Herrymon’s drinking and the dark times in her marriage, and laughing. "It was never dull."

When drinking heavily, Herrymon could at times become belligerent and very un-Quakerly. One Saturday night he got into a fist fight at a bar and showed up the next day at Quaker Meeting wearing sunglasses to cover up his black eye. He was in his forties and the clerk of Meeting when this incident occurred.

One of the worst episodes took place when Herrymon was in his early 50s. One night, when Helen and his family were away, he drank too much and set fire to his bed, probably as a result of smoking. Severely burned, he called a family doctor, who rushed to his house at 4:00 AM and drove him to the nearest emergency ward, thereby saving his life. Herrymon was in the hospital for over six weeks with major burns, and the DTs. Helen was his constant companion from the crack of dawn until midnight. When he came to his senses, Herrymon asked Helen where she had been all those weeks.

A couple of years later, in 1965, Herrymon joined Alcoholics Anonymous. He was fifty-six years old. According to his daughter Mei-Mei, "AA was the greatest thing in his life." Herrymon sometimes told his friends: "AA saved my life."

In one of his last articles for Fortune, "The Beginning of Wisdom about Alcoholism" (May 1968), Herrymon writes of alcoholism as "an illness of the magnitude of heart trouble, cancer, and severe mental disorder" and lauds AA as one of the best programs for dealing with this insidious disease.

Thanks to AA, Herrymon finally stopped drinking and found a support group that helped him to regain some stability in his life. Gradually his old passion for Truth (as he liked to call it) revived. He still suffered from depression and mood swings and needed medication (and psychiatric counseling) to cope, but he no longer felt possessed by the craving for alcohol.

With a new lease on life, he started the Surrender Group, became more actively involved in his Friends Meeting, and went back to his "old loves"–the Tao The Ching, John Woolman, and Gandhi. In the mid-1970s he began working on a series of four interconnected books he called The Way of the Ways. These books reflect the major influences of Herrymon’s spiritual life: Taoism, "prophetic" scriptures (including the writings of George Fox and Martin Buber), John Woolman, and Mohandas Gandhi.

In the 1970s, Herrymon also joined the Board of Fellowship in Prayer (FIP), an organization started by Carl Evans, a retired businessman and former Presbyterian missionary in China, in 1949. Deeply disturbed by the Cold War and the threat of nuclear holocaust, Evans placed an ad in the NY Times calling for an interfaith "fellowship in prayer" to promote peace and received an enthusiastic response from Roman Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, and others. The organization eventually received a Lilly Foundation grant, which enabled it to distribute its publications for free. Herrymon learned of FIP through his friend Paul Griffith, a novelist who became editor of FIP in 1966 and continued till his death in 1983.

The following year a young Quaker named Ed Miller became managing editor of FIP, largely through Herrymon’s efforts. Ed Miller was a bright young seeker in his late 30s, looking for a direction in his life, when he encountered Herrymon’s Tao The Ching, which was published by FIP in 1982. Reading it, Ed was astounded.

"This was the Reagan era," recalls Ed, "and I wondered, ‘How could this guy have published this and not be in jail?’"

Ed bought up five copies to give to friends and then discovered that the author lived in Princeton. He called Herrymon, and they met at Princeton Meeting. There Ed found the spiritual community he was seeking, and a mentor.

"I became Herrymon’s surrogate son," says Ed. "Herrymon and I had a lot of personality characteristics, and faults, in common. He helped me turn my life around."

Herrymon’s son Tom had died tragically in 1972, at age 27.

Ed and Mary Beth became members of Princeton Meeting, participants in the Surrender Group, and frequent attenders of the Maurers’ Friday evening gatherings, which sometimes drew as many as 20-30 people–many of them young seekers like the Millers. Working for Fellowship in Prayer, Ed had the opportunity to broaden his spiritual horizons.

When I came to Princeton in 1984 after a stint as a college professor, Ed introduced me to Quakerism and eventually hired me as his editorial assistant at Fellowship in Prayer