I must admit I’m a suck­er for a cer­tain kind of Quak­er sto­ry in which a Friend faith­ful­ly fol­lows mys­te­ri­ous prompt­ings that turn out to be life-changing. It might have been an old Bill Taber book where I read about the Quak­er min­is­ter who one day shout­ed to stop the car­riage while pass­ing a ran­dom house because she knew—knew!— that its inhab­i­tants need­ed spir­i­tu­al help (read­er, they did!). I guess it’s not unlike the uncan­ny expe­ri­ence of being about to rise to give min­istry when the per­son next to you stands and gives the same mes­sage you were about to deliv­er—whoa! The hair on the back of my neck always stands up to these stories.

This week I was read­ing the sto­ries of Paul S. Lip­pen­cott, Jr., a record­ed min­is­ter of my own Crop­well Meet­ing who lived from 1882 to 1968. I’m try­ing to under­stand the char­ac­ter of the meet­ing, and our out­go­ing clerk has told sto­ries of being a kid and lis­ten­ing to Paul’s ser­mons back in the 1960s. Some­one had got­ten an ear­ly tape recorder to col­lect Paul’s tales and pub­lished the some­what ram­bling account as Answered Prayers, a book I found at Vin­tage Quak­er Books.

The best sto­ry is the lead one. As a young man of around 30, Paul was retired in bed read­ing reli­gious books when he felt a prompt (queue ethe­r­i­al music). “After a short peri­od of prayer it became very clear to me that I should go out and gear up the horse.” Prompts came to him one after anoth­er: dri­ve west down the road a cou­ple of miles to the next town, and then: buy non-perishable gro­ceries at the store that was still open. All this was done in faith: “Until that time I had no idea where I was going to take this food,” he writes. Then a final prompt as he remem­bered “an old col­ored lady named Mar­garet Wor­thing­ton” who “lived in a cab­in by her­self” a half-mile away. He had nev­er met her but felt led to vis­it on that dark night. “I pulled up at the lit­tle one room cab­in where there was a light through the win­dow, and as I went to the door, I heard her voice pray­ing for help and food. I was there under unusu­al cir­cum­stances to answer the fer­vent prayers of a believ­ing soul.”

Yowsa!

If you want the whole sto­ry of the mys­te­ri­ous food run, it’s on the Crop­well web­site accom­pa­ny­ing a talk on the long and entwined rela­tion­ships between the meet­ing and local Black fam­i­lies. “Aunt Mar­garet” had a spe­cial tal­ent for hav­ing her prayers answered and Paul’s book has more sto­ries about her.

Paul tells oth­er sto­ries about fol­low­ing mys­te­ri­ous prompts. In one, he feels led to take a longer route back to his office after lunch. It’s the Depres­sion and on this dif­fer­ent path he runs into an old acquain­tance, now out of work and “in very try­ing con­di­tion.” He’s feel­ing bro­ken and final­ly admits to Paul that he’s con­sid­er­ing tak­ing his own life. They pray togeth­er and hope is restored. As Paul writes “There was some rea­son for me to make that short detour, even on a morn­ing when I was pressed for time. I am thank­ful that the Lord helped me to be able and alert to lis­ten to that Still, Small Voice.”

This is of course an echo of the para­ble of the Good Sama­ratan. Peo­ple of high stand­ing walked by the injured trav­el­er but it was the low­ly Sama­ratan who lis­tened and heard the prompt and the prayer, stopped their busy life, and aid­ed the trav­el­er. Jesus told the sto­ry to illus­trate the query “who is my neigh­bor.” I’m not sure I have the best ear for these kinds of prayers hang­ing out there but I’d like to try to lis­ten more.

If you’re in South Jer­sey or Philly and want to hear more Crop­well sto­ries, you’re invit­ed to vis­it this Sun­day to hon­or our out­go­ing clerk, Earl Evens. A few years ago Crop­well was down to two attend­ing mem­bers and close to being laid down when a small group led by Earl felt a prompt to try to rebuild the com­mu­ni­ty. Ear­l’s sto­ries of old Crop­well, the way he’s played host to the rebirthed com­mu­ni­ty, and his gen­tle opin­ions on Quak­er wor­ship have helped set the spir­i­tu­al DNA of our expand­ing group (five new mem­bers last year and anoth­er applied this week). I’m the incom­ing clerk and omg, these are quite the shoes to fill.