The Examined Life

by Carol R. Murphy

Overview

I frequently consult a friend, whom I call the Critic on the Hearth, for stimulation when I feel dull. He does not live far off: as near, perhaps, as my alter ego. Today I found him bursting with a new idea.

�I�m going to invent a religion without conscience,� he announced to me with enthusiasm.

�If you think that�s a new invention, you�re mistaken,� I told him, trying to provoke him to argument. �Your religion would be turning back the clock to a time before the Hebrews� ethical monotheism.�

�Good,� he retorted. �I�m mad at the Hebrews, or rather, all moralists.�

�What brought this on?� I asked.

�Mingling with moralists, I think, and seeing what they have done to religion. I�m willing to agree with Christianity that love � the agape kind of love � is the supreme value. But corruption enters in as soon as we call it a �morality.� We then feel we must love, so we disguise our lack of love, since we can�t manufacture the real thing at command.�

Product Details

BN ID:	2940149179756
Publisher:	Pendle Hill Publications
Publication date:	05/13/2014
Series:	Pendle Hill Pamphlets , #85
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	30
File size:	65 KB

About the Author

Carol Rozier Murphy (1916-1994) was a Quaker writer and longtime editor and contributor to publications produced at Pendle Hill Quaker Study Center in Wallingford, Pennsylvania.

Her father, Charles Rozier Murphy, was a Harvard graduate and poet and her mother, Mildred Johnston Knight, an amateur artist and musician; according to her autobiography, they had married contrary to the wishes of their families who were well-to-do Philadelphians. After a childhood of home schooling and little contact with children and outsiders in rural Massachusetts, the family moved to the Philadelphia area so that Carol might attend Quaker schools. Her father had become interested in the tenets of Quakerism and began a compilation of Quaker poetry, working at Friends Historical Library. In 1928 the family became convinced Friends, joining the Swarthmore Monthly Meeting. The little family was tight-knit, reading aloud together nightly until Mildred's death in 1974.

Carol Murphy attended Westtown School 1929-33, and the family moved to Swarthmore when she began her studies at Swarthmore College. She graduated Swarthmore Class of 1937 and earned an M.A. in International Affairs at American University in 1941. In 1947, she began her long association with Pendle Hill, where she found her true vocation in writing, editing, and contemplation. She wrote more than seventeen pamphlets for Pendle Hill as well as for other Quaker publications on topics such as pastoral care, comparative religion, religious psychology, and meditation. In 1951, she took a course on pastoral counseling at the Garrett Biblical Institute, and in 1952 she joined the Pendle Hill Publications Committee. In her later years, Carol Murphy also was active on various Quaker library boards and in the Swarthmore Monthly Meeting.
[Adapted from the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College]