Bubbling Springs
The Life & Writings of Margaret Fell in Modern Language and Neutral Gender (Coming in 2027)
In 2023, Shulamith was granted a ten-week Minnie Jane artist residency at Pendle Hill in Wallingford, PA, to complete the first two chapters of Bubbling Springs.
From the Introduction:
People wrote to Margaret from all over the world to share their suffering and ask for her help and support. In one letter, she advises and encourages the young William Penn.
Margaret’s letters cover a wide range of types, including prophetic, admonishing, inspiring, comforting, pastoral, inciting, domestic, doctrinal, and networking. They range from the mystical to how to deal with your wayward child. We have copies of letters from just short of half a century.
Besides Margaret’s pastoral writings, this book includes stories from her life, passages from a few of her political writings, excerpts from her autobiography, excerpts from two of her trial transcripts (she was imprisoned three times), and the words she spoke on her deathbed.
I have updated Margaret’s words into modern English and neutral gender, including in references to God. Her original words will be included in the book. I adapted the writings for non-Christian readers by substituting generally-understood concepts for specifically Christian concepts.
Margaret Fell’s life-giving writings water my soul. I have no doubt that the bubbling springs of the Divine that came into and through her can nourish us all.
Friendly Reader, I’ll let Margaret explain this to you herself, as she did in her introduction to a collection of her letters:
Friendly Reader,
The following epistles were written at the first appearance of truth among us, when we were young in it. The light of the Divine was our foremost goal; our minds were always turned towards it. We let it be our teacher, leader, and guide because we saw perfectly that there was no safety or preservation out of wrongdoing but as we obeyed that light, following it in our hearts and consciences.
As we lived in this way, we came to experience a transformation. It felt like our past selves were being washed clean and we were now light and new. Each of us felt this and we could see it in each other.
Then we became ardent about God and for the truth of life. Our hearts became tender. We had compassion for the souls of all the people who remained out of the light. The Lord moved us to help each other. We wrote often to Friends, and our words were very much about the light of the divine in the conscience, because we saw that that was the way to the kind of life we wanted, and there was no other.
So here are a few letters preserved, but many more are lacking, the copies being lost, along with many other papers and letters that might have been helpful. But in love to all people, we bring these that we have to open view, thinking that if the Lord gives a blessing to them, they may be serviceable now as they have been to many people in the past. The truth is one and the same always; and though ages and generations pass away, and one generation goes and another comes, yet the word and power and spirit of the living God endure forever, and remain the same, and never change.
And so, reader, cleave to the blessed light and truth of the living God that has been placed in your heart, and believe in this light, and listen closely to it, and follow it, and it will lead you in the path we have blazed. Then you will see and feel and understand what we have gone through, and you will come to witness the truth of the living God, which will be peace and comfort to your soul. I pray that the Lord God Almighty will open your heart and enlighten the eye of your understanding, that you may know and feel what the saints knew and felt, and know yourself to be living in the Blessed Community
M. Fell.
If you would like to be notified when this book is published, contact Shulamith.
Shulamith was interviewed about this book and Margaret Fell for a QuakerSpeak video: “Margaret Fell: The Mother of Quakerism’s Powerful Ministry”. Watch the video at quakerspeak.com or in the player below.
