Endnotes for Two Roads: 1
1. Robert Frost. “The Road Not Taken.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken. Last accessed 28 January 2019.
2. Associations of the Light Morning. Wax Statues, Cotton Candy, and the Second Coming: An Inner Exploration of the Essenes, the Birth of Christianity and Its Impending Renewal. (Copper Hill: ALM Publications, 1983), 3.
3. Ben Pink Dandelion, Douglas Gwyn, Timothy Peat. Heaven on Earth: Quakers and the Second Coming. The 20th Anniversary Edition (Scotts Valley: Create Space, 2018). Excellent and provocative. I ordered this book because of the correlation between its title and the full title of Wax Statues, and also because I had been moved by Ben Pink Dandelion’s 2014 Swarthmore lecture, later published as Open for Transformation: Being Quaker.
4. Associations of the Light Morning, 6.
5. Associations of the Light Morning, 4-5.
Endnotes for Two Roads: 2
6. There are scores if not hundreds of books about the Religious Society of Friends. Below are the ones that formed the nucleus of my nascent Quaker library after I returned from my November 2014 Vipassana course. Some of them would later be included in the curriculum for the School of the Spirit’s Spiritual Nurturer program. The Quakers: A Very Short Introduction, by Ben Pink Dandelion; Listening to the Light, by Jim Pym; A Sermon Preached in London in 1694, by William Penn; Encounter with Silence, by John Punshon; The Quaker Way: A Rediscovery, by Rex Ambler; Open for transformation: Being Quaker, by Ben Pink Dandelion; The Journal of John Woolman, Quaker, by John Woolman; The Quaker Doctrine of Inner Peace, by Howard H. Brinton; A Zen Buddhist Encounters Quakerism, by Teruyasu Tamura; Quaker Reader, by Jessamyn West; Holy Silence: A Gift of Quaker Spirituality, by Bill J. Brent; The Mindful Quaker: A Brief Introduction to Buddhist Wisdom for Friends, by Valerie Brown; The Underground Railroad, by Charles L. Blockson.
7. David Orr, The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong (London: Penguin Books, 2016). The original title of Frost’s well-known poem was “Two Roads.” He later changed it to “The Road Not Taken.” David Orr is the poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review. His book is a fascinating exploration of the subtleties and complexities of the poet, this poem, and what it reveals about our American character.
8. The source of his teachings – “The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.” (John 14:10 NIV) / The autonomy of his actions – “By myself I can do nothing.” (John 5:30 NIV) / The nature of his goodness – “Why do you call me good? No one is good – except God alone.” (Luke 18:19 NIV)
9. “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14 NIV)
Light Morning 