The Transcendentalist Vision:
Emerson Revisited

A lucky break, because in a tense week of historicdevelopments, I have been laboring under a handicap. Again andagain, my attention was diverted from Emerson to watching thehearings of the House Judiciary Committee. While preparing forthis morning, it was as if a magnet were pulling me to the televisionset. I could not resist watching the twists and turns of rhetoricalfireworks, participating at least vicariously in what was goingon in the nation's capital. I shifted back and forth between Emersonand being outraged by a deeply flawed, eminently partisan, dangerouslypoliticized impeachment process that is tearing this nation apart.

My only connection between sermon preparation andthe events unfolding on the television screen, is that I keptwondering: How would Emerson react were he alive today? Wouldthe sage of Concord have watched this spectacle from the sidelines,or would he have entered the fray? What would his inner wisdomsuggest to him and communicate to us? Would he be totally turnedoff by the President's missteps or would compassion prevail? Wouldhe join the historians and constitutional experts who feel thatregrettably our President strayed from the straight and narrowpath, 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-relianceand inner guidance. On the subject of the Bible, he wouldsay, "write your own Bible". I followed his advice.Do not go by what a member of the clergy, a fashion or a KennethStarr dictates. Be your own inner light. Do this with a pure andopen mind, unencumbered by biases programmed by training and conventions.Listen to your own inner revelation, not to the revelation ofothers. Be not overly impressed by authority, except the authorityof your own heart and mind. Each one of us ought to be a clearchannel for the divine; in non-theological language, a channelfor the sublime. Let Oversoul enter your soul. Let your HigherSelf be your guide. As Emerson put it (slightly adapted):

In the days of Emerson, in the first half of the19th century, Unitarianism was only just emerging out of the wombof the Congregational Church. Unitarian Christians disagreed withthe prevailing trinitarian orthodoxy via a rather narrow theologicalsquabble over mathematical semantics: was God one or three inone. Emerson could not get excited over number games. He had biggerfish to fry. He was not interested in theological abstractions.What mattered to him were personal experiences of encounter withthe transcendent, hence "Transcendentalism." He wasinterested in ongoing revelation not only for himself, but forall people.

He started out his career as a Unitarian minister,but in those days found it too constricting. He traded the pulpitfor the public lectern, the parish for America and the world.Transcendentalism was a reform movement in our faith that didnot quite make it. It was too genteel for the masses. The denominationremained too tied to its Bostonian and New England roots. Ourmessage did not play well, when transplanted into the soil ofthe South, the Midwest or the West.

That is changing now. Our Southwest, along with theWest Coast, are experiencing the most dynamic Unitarian Universalistgrowth. But there is a cautionary tale here. It took over acentury for our faith to expand in strength beyond our New Englandorigins. The New Frontier is not the Pacific Ocean anymore, fromSan Diego to Seattle, or south of the Mason-Dixon line. It isthe whole wide world, all the continents, the oekumene. The nameof the game is affirming and embracing diversity in a pluralisticneighborhood and world. Self-reliance and inner revelation aresome 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 itspower to charm and command the soul, as the laws of nature controlthe activity of the hands, -- so commanding that we find pleasureand honor in obeying.

The faith should blend with the light of rising andof setting suns, with the flying cloud, the singing bird and thebreath of flowers. But now, the priest's Sabbath has lost thesplendor of nature; it is unlovely; we are glad when it is done.

from Emerson's Divinity SchoolAddress

"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 talkabout his belief that there is one mind or soul of the universe, and that it is present in all creation. He would have spokenout 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 leastnot 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; andthat all things are shadows of him" --from "Circles."

They help to put the huge body of his writings into a proverbialnutshell.

As far as how Emerson has affected my life, perhapsthe most dramatic instance is the fact that I'm standing heredoing this. Raised as an Episcopalian, I became interested inUnitarianism largely as a result of my research on 19th centuryAmerican religious culture, particularly the movement known as"Transcendentalism." Leaving the Anglican church, thechurch of my family, was an act of "self-reliance" ornon-conformity in Emerson's terms; an act of trusting myself,that what I felt about the nature of my own spiritual quest wasright for me and that all I had to do was listen and follow thatinner voice.

In fact, so was my turning to Emerson and Thoreauin my Ph.D. work another act of self-reliance: I had gone to graduateschool assuming that I would be a medievalist, but something elsekept tugging at me. So Emersonian self-reliance is central tomy personal code. The term is often confused with extreme individualismor selfishness. But Emerson makes clear this is not what he means."I am" in relationship to the universe, to "Godis." Emerson believed that each entity (rocks, trees, pigs,humans, etc.) is part of the whole, the All, the universe, theSoul, God, Nature, just different words for the same thing, humanways of expressing in language the mystery that everything isconnected.

This connection to the universe makes us, as Emersonput it, "wiser than we know ...if we will not interfere withour thought." What is important is to listen to the voiceinside, since "In me is a divine creation." Self-trustultimately means recognizing and respecting this fact, allowingmyself to serve as a channel for the deep heart of the universethat yearns to express itself.

This brings me to another of Emerson's teachings,his firm belief that "truth exists," that the universeand everything that is in it operate for ultimate goodness accordingto natural and spiritual laws that ultimately, are one and thesame, and that moral law is the application of these same lawsto 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 individualwills and we do wrong when we obstruct its passage. We allowit to operate when we take time to be alone, slow down, and listento the "wise silence." In this way, our actions willlead to what is best for the whole -- whether family, department,university, community, nation.

Emerson also preached the dangers of not recognizingthese "truths." He frequently used a text from the HebrewScriptures: "Where there is no vision, the people perish"(Proverbs 29:18). Living in the bustling nineteenth century, enjoyingthe products of modernity -- railroads, telegraph, cheap printing,warm and comfortable homes, improved health -- Emerson was troubledby its loss of spirit, its "dis-ease." People were spiritually"perishing" in the midst of material plenty, and likeHebrew prophets and Puritan preachers, Emerson reminds us of howfar we have fallen from our true and ideal selves. He accuseshis 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, Emersonspent most of his time demonstrating the alternative to thissorry state of man -- shaping the "vision" necessaryto spiritual health. His optimistic and revolutionary vision isconveyed through the poetic images that continue to speak to ustoday: "Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our beingis descending into us from we know not whence." He goes onto describe "that great nature in which we rest, as the earthlies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul,within which everyone's particular being is contained and madeone with all other. ...Within man is the soul of the whole; thewise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particleis equally related; the eternal One." Vision requires usto acknowledge there is a "higher origin for events thanthe 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 aseries of "thou shalt nots" and worries about theologicalqwuestions or a fixed liturgy or even gathering in a meeting houseon Sunday morning, but life lived in present awareness of thecore vision he constantly preached: "In me is a divine creation."In 1840 Emerson noted that religion was his real subject. "Inall my lectures," he wrote in his Journal, "I havepreached 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 theywere shocked if he called it "Religion." As his otherlecture 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 whosespecial talent was to translate his intuitions of connectionsinto language. His writings are full of rich nuggets of thought:condensed poetic images, maxims, proverbs. I havequoted 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 littleminds."

Each of these can be unpacked to reveal its connectionsto the whole of Emerson's many-faceted thought.

The characteristic Emersonian move is finding Godwithin rather than outside the self and being present to the lawof one's own being. Following this inner law, Emerson forged hisrevolutionary career, challenging the establishment view of society,education, religion, nature, and relationships. Through his lifeand work, he practiced what he preached and showed people a newway 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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