A lucky break, because in a tense week of historic developments, I have been laboring under a handicap. Again and again, my attention was diverted from Emerson to watching the hearings of the House Judiciary Committee. While preparing for this morning, it was as if a magnet were pulling me to the television set. I could not resist watching the twists and turns of rhetorical fireworks, participating at least vicariously in what was going on in the nation's capital. I shifted back and forth between Emerson and being outraged by a deeply flawed, eminently partisan, dangerously politicized impeachment process that is tearing this nation apart.
My only connection between sermon preparation and the events unfolding on the television screen, is that I kept wondering: How would Emerson react were he alive today? Would the sage of Concord have watched this spectacle from the sidelines, or would he have entered the fray? What would his inner wisdom suggest to him and communicate to us? Would he be totally turned off by the President's missteps or would compassion prevail? Would he join the historians and constitutional experts who feel that regrettably our President strayed from the straight and narrow path, but that his foolish love affair should not lead to an impeachment, the remedy being worse than Clinton's lapse in judgment?
The revolutionary in Emerson is his faith in self-reliance and inner guidance. On the subject of the Bible, he would say, "write your own Bible". I followed his advice. Do not go by what a member of the clergy, a fashion or a Kenneth Starr dictates. Be your own inner light. Do this with a pure and open mind, unencumbered by biases programmed by training and conventions. Listen to your own inner revelation, not to the revelation of others. Be not overly impressed by authority, except the authority of your own heart and mind. Each one of us ought to be a clear channel for the divine; in non-theological language, a channel for the sublime. Let Oversoul enter your soul. Let your Higher Self be your guide. As Emerson put it (slightly adapted):
In the days of Emerson, in the first half of the 19th century, Unitarianism was only just emerging out of the womb of the Congregational Church. Unitarian Christians disagreed with the prevailing trinitarian orthodoxy via a rather narrow theological squabble over mathematical semantics: was God one or three in one. Emerson could not get excited over number games. He had bigger fish to fry. He was not interested in theological abstractions. What mattered to him were personal experiences of encounter with the transcendent, hence "Transcendentalism." He was interested in ongoing revelation not only for himself, but for all people.
He started out his career as a Unitarian minister, but in those days found it too constricting. He traded the pulpit for the public lectern, the parish for America and the world. Transcendentalism was a reform movement in our faith that did not quite make it. It was too genteel for the masses. The denomination remained too tied to its Bostonian and New England roots. Our message did not play well, when transplanted into the soil of the South, the Midwest or the West.
That is changing now. Our Southwest, along with the West Coast, are experiencing the most dynamic Unitarian Universalist growth. But there is a cautionary tale here. It took over a century for our faith to expand in strength beyond our New England origins. The New Frontier is not the Pacific Ocean anymore, from San Diego to Seattle, or south of the Mason-Dixon line. It is the whole wide world, all the continents, the oekumene. The name of the game is affirming and embracing diversity in a pluralistic neighborhood and world. Self-reliance and inner revelation are some of the living cells of the interdependent web of all existence. May our rich Emersonian heritage be part of our personal growth, our Unitarian contribution to the human adventure here on earth.
The test of a true faith, certainly, should be its power to charm and command the soul, as the laws of nature control the activity of the hands, -- so commanding that we find pleasure and honor in obeying.The faith should blend with the light of rising and of setting suns, with the flying cloud, the singing bird and the breath of flowers. But now, the priest's Sabbath has lost the splendor of nature; it is unlovely; we are glad when it is done.
from Emerson's Divinity School Address
"The personal and the planetary are connected, and only through a change in consciousness will the world be changed."
As one of Michael Toms' guests, Emerson would talk about his belief that there is one mind or soul of the universe, and that it is present in all creation. He would have spoken out on how we are dominated by big-money interests, advertising, media; about the failure of moral leadership.
The eleven words below are not from Emerson (at least not in this form):
God is
I am
Truth exists
In me is divine creation
However they could have been said by Emerson: compare his
"We learn that God is, that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of him" --from "Circles."
They help to put the huge body of his writings into a proverbial nutshell.
As far as how Emerson has affected my life, perhaps the most dramatic instance is the fact that I'm standing here doing this. Raised as an Episcopalian, I became interested in Unitarianism largely as a result of my research on 19th century American religious culture, particularly the movement known as "Transcendentalism." Leaving the Anglican church, the church of my family, was an act of "self-reliance" or non-conformity in Emerson's terms; an act of trusting myself, that what I felt about the nature of my own spiritual quest was right for me and that all I had to do was listen and follow that inner voice.
In fact, so was my turning to Emerson and Thoreau in my Ph.D. work another act of self-reliance: I had gone to graduate school assuming that I would be a medievalist, but something else kept tugging at me. So Emersonian self-reliance is central to my personal code. The term is often confused with extreme individualism or selfishness. But Emerson makes clear this is not what he means. "I am" in relationship to the universe, to "God is." Emerson believed that each entity (rocks, trees, pigs, humans, etc.) is part of the whole, the All, the universe, the Soul, God, Nature, just different words for the same thing, human ways of expressing in language the mystery that everything is connected.
This connection to the universe makes us, as Emerson
put it, "wiser than we know ...if we will not interfere with
our thought." What is important is to listen to the voice
inside, since "In me is a divine creation." Self-trust
ultimately means recognizing and respecting this fact, allowing
myself to serve as a channel for the deep heart of the universe
that yearns to express itself.
This brings me to another of Emerson's teachings,
his firm belief that "truth exists," that the universe
and everything that is in it operate for ultimate goodness according
to natural and spiritual laws that ultimately, are one and the
same, and that moral law is the application of these same laws
to human life. He constantly reminds us to take the high road,
marked by character and principle, to take the long view. "Transcendentalism"
is one way to express this. A higher law exists above our individual
wills and we do wrong when we obstruct its passage. We allow
it to operate when we take time to be alone, slow down, and listen
to the "wise silence." In this way, our actions will
lead to what is best for the whole -- whether family, department,
university, community, nation.
Emerson also preached the dangers of not recognizing
these "truths." He frequently used a text from the Hebrew
Scriptures: "Where there is no vision, the people perish"
(Proverbs 29:18). Living in the bustling nineteenth century, enjoying
the products of modernity -- railroads, telegraph, cheap printing,
warm and comfortable homes, improved health -- Emerson was troubled
by its loss of spirit, its "dis-ease." People were spiritually
"perishing" in the midst of material plenty, and like
Hebrew prophets and Puritan preachers, Emerson reminds us of how
far we have fallen from our true and ideal selves. He accuses
his audiences of being "puny," diminished, unhealthy,
timid, cowardly, blind, passive, dwarfs of what they could be,
reduced to cogs in a machine.
Unlike most preachers of doom and gloom, Emerson
spent most of his time demonstrating the alternative to this
sorry state of man -- shaping the "vision" necessary
to spiritual health. His optimistic and revolutionary vision is
conveyed through the poetic images that continue to speak to us
today: "Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being
is descending into us from we know not whence." He goes on
to describe "that great nature in which we rest, as the earth
lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul,
within which everyone's particular being is contained and made
one with all other. ...Within man is the soul of the whole; the
wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle
is equally related; the eternal One." Vision requires us
to acknowledge there is a "higher origin for events than
the will I call mine."
This is the essence of Emersonian "religion"
-- the word understood in its root sense (to bind back or connect)
and in an expanded sense that I can accept. Religion is not a
series of "thou shalt nots" and worries about theological
qwuestions or a fixed liturgy or even gathering in a meeting house
on Sunday morning, but life lived in present awareness of the
core vision he constantly preached: "In me is a divine creation."
In 1840 Emerson noted that religion was his real subject. "In
all my lectures," he wrote in his Journal, "I have
preached one doctrine, the infinitude of the private man."
People accepted this as long as he called the lecture "Art,
or Politics, or Literature, or the Household" -- but they
were shocked if he called it "Religion." As his other
lecture titles suggest, Emerson could find religion in everything.
Emerson appeals because he is so eminently quotable:
he was a master of expression, what he called a poet, one whose
special talent was to translate his intuitions of connections
into language. His writings are full of rich nuggets of thought:
condensed poetic images, maxims, proverbs. I have
quoted some of these, and you all will recognize others:
"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.""Hitch your wagon to a star."
"The shot heard around the world."
"I become a transparent eye-ball."
"Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
Each of these can be unpacked to reveal its connections
to the whole of Emerson's many-faceted thought.
The characteristic Emersonian move is finding God
within rather than outside the self and being present to the law
of one's own being. Following this inner law, Emerson forged his
revolutionary career, challenging the establishment view of society,
education, religion, nature, and relationships. Through his life
and work, he practiced what he preached and showed people a new
way of being in the world.
God is
I am
Truth exists
In me is divine creation
Copyright 1998, Reverend Rudolf C. Gelsey; Commercial Duplication Prohibited
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