we thank thee for this universe, our great home;
for its vastness and its riches,
and for the manifoldness of the life which teems upon it
and of which we are a part.
We praise thee for the arching sky and the blessed winds,
for the driving clouds and the constellations on high.
We praise thee for the salt sea and the running water,
for the everlasting hills, for the trees,
and for the grass under our feet.
We thank thee for our senses
by which we can see the splendor of the morning,
and hear the jubilant songs of love,
and smell the breath of the springtime.
Grant us, we pray thee,
a heart wide open to all this joy and beauty,
and save our souls
from being so steeped in care or so darkened by passion
that we pass heedless and unseeing
when even the thornbush by the wayside
is aflame with the glory of God.AMEN
Given
the great differences between the times of Emerson’s youth and today, it
is all the more remarkable that our contemporary experience of Unitarian
Universalism is so shaped by his thinking.He
served the Second Church of Boston as a Unitarian minister for only three
years. Emerson’s reading of the Gospels led him to believe Jesus hadn’t
intended the celebration of the Lord’s Supper to be a perpetual rite.His
liberal ideas moved him outside the Unitarian orthodoxy of his time. Couldn’t
he have just gone along with the program?Couldn’t
he put aside his interpretation for the good of the whole?Not
Emerson: “It is my desire,” he preached before resigning, “to do nothing
which I cannot do with my whole heart.”How
many of us could stand our lives up to this test?
So
Emerson, following his heart, began to chart his own religious path following
his inner sense of guidance.Just
as Emerson sought the guidance of his whole heart, so do we follow our
hearts on our contemporary search for truth and meaning.As
Emerson resisted the authority of the church, so we relish questioning
authorities of every stripe save the commandment of our own conscience.
The
more we begin to recognize Emerson at work in our hearts, the more we recognize
how much Unitarianism and now Unitarian Universalism has changed from the
belief and practice the day Emerson resigned in 1832.We
no longer celebrate the Lord’s Supper.If
we do celebrate communion in a Unitarian Universalist context, it will
likely be more in line with what Emerson envisioned, celebrating the living
community.We no longer bind ourselves
to creeds that narrow the mind.We
have expanded beyond the Bible as our sourcebook for inspired teaching,
drawing from the revelation of nature as well as inspired world scripture
and literature.Emerson lives and
breathes in our words without our even knowing it.
In
order to discover Emerson’s continuing presence in our midst, I invite
you to remember the fine service offered last week while I was away at
a UU Minister Association’s meeting in California.Emily
Gallagher, John Sherman, and Bob Franklin made short presentations describing
what they believed.This is a wonderful
service format we like to repeat yearly that highlights the variety of
beliefs reflected in our diverse congregation.From
all the reports I’ve heard, the service was very well received.
To
test the connections they made with you, I’d like to do a quick survey.I’m
going to ask those of you who were here last week, if you are so willing,
to raise your hands to signify that you identified with something you heard.You
can vote more than once.Ready?How
many identified with Emily?John?Bob?All
three?None of them?Thank
you!
I’ll
have you know that all of them had Emerson in their mouth as they spoke.As
a way to identify Emerson’s relevance today, I got a copy of the three
talks and analyzed them for traces of Emerson’s thoughts and concerns.Sure
enough, even though no one quoted Emerson directly, he was there between
the lines waiting to be found.
Emily’s
statement reflected Emerson’s focus on personal experience as a religious
guide.Emily shared three important
experiences that had shaped her spiritual growth.In
prefacing these experiences she said:
I’ve
had many experiences which seem to defy logic, though I am basically a
serious, logical person.
So,
when Logic seems to provide no easy answer, I might label the experience,
“spiritual.” I believe my spirituality is consistent with rationalism.I
believe that my “spiritual” experiences have logical explanations--they
meet a need.They meet a need not
met by the five senses or by rational thought.
Such
experiences feel like I’m stretching into a realm of instinct and intuition.
Emerson
too was respectful of the science of his day and preferred a reasonable
approach to religion.That, however,
didn’t limit his enthusiasm for the intuitive.The
Transcendentalists agreed that within each one of us was a sense that extended
far beyond us, the inner religious faculty that touched the divine.Hear
Emerson’s words:
The
magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire
the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self,
on which a universal reliance may be grounded?…The inquiry leads us to
that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which
we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition,
whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact
behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin…Here
is the fountain of action and of thought....We lie in the lap of immense
intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity.
When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves,
but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek
to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence
or its absence is all we can affirm.
Now
do you hear Emerson in Emily’s words?Yes,
he is there.
John,
like Emerson, believes in God.Both
John and Emerson have revisionist approaches to God.But
what caught my attention was John’s youthful struggle with the unfairness
of God’s creation.In John’s words:
“Given all of the disease, death and poverty in the world, I felt that
if God did exist, He had a lot to answer for.”
This
got me thinking about the hardships in Emerson’s life.He
married Ellen Louisa Tucker in September of 1829.She
was ill with tuberculosis when they married.She
died a year and a half later in February of 1831.Emerson
was deeply heartbroken over her death.He
could not accept that she had died and it is said had to open her sealed
coffin to accept the painful reality.He
married again in 1835 this time to Lydia Jackson.In
1836 she gave birth to his first son, Waldo.He
was a delightful child and Emerson loved him very much.And
again Emerson’s heart was broken when Waldo died in 1842 at the age of
five.He knew some of the hardest
grief for a mortal to endure.In
his agony he wrote these famous lines from his poem Threnody:
The
eager Fate which carried thee
Took the largest part of me.
For this losing is true dying,
This is lordly man's down-lying,
This is slow but sure reclining,
Star by star his world resigning.
In
his presentation, John tells us he overcame his youthful atheistic tendencies
marveling at the improbability of our life filled planet set in the vastness
of lifeless space.Yet he does not
forget the grief-of-the-world problem.He
feels, “God has given us and continues to give us what we need to cope
and comfort” and, ironically, we are the happier for it.Emerson
also takes a Job like slant on dealing with suffering:
Wilt
thou not ope this heart to know
What rainbows teach and sunsets show,
Verdict which accumulates
From lengthened scroll of human fates,
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of heart that inly burned;
Saying, what is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent
Hearts
are dust, hearts' loves remain,
Heart's love will meet thee again.
Bob’s
thinking is a little harder to cross-reference with Emerson at first.He
doesn’t believe in a God or Goddess, Higher Power, Great Spirit, theism
or deism.He does affirm a presence
of whatever-its-all-about in the here-and-now.He
affirms that he discovers in that here-and-now, a sense of soul, a life
force, an inner being.Bob is a
man of action.Are you hearing Emerson
yet?Hear this quote from “The American
Scholar:”
The
one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This everyone is
entitled to; this everyone contains within, although, in almost all, obstructed,
and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth,
or creates. In this action, it is genius; not the privilege of here and
there a favorite, but the sound estate of everyone. In its essence, it
is progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution
of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they,
— letus
hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But
genius looks forward: the eyes are set in the forehead, not in the hindhead:
man hopes: genius creates. Whatever
talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is
not his; — cinders
and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are creative manners,
there are creative actions, and creative words; manners, actions, words,
that is, indicative of no custom or authority, but springing spontaneous
from the mind's own sense of good and fair.
So,
yes, there are Emerson echoes to be heard in our Unitarian Universalist
congregation today, but this approach to Emerson can be dangerous.I
had the privilege to meet with Dr.
Ronald Bosco, world renownedEmerson
Scholar and English professor at the State University of New York at Albany
on Monday.He warned me that you
can justify just about any thesis with something Emerson said.To
really understand the legacy of Emerson, we must not cherry pick his words
but look to the approach to religion he recommends and Bob (as well as
Emily and John) exemplifies.
Another
well-known Emerson scholar, Lawrence Buell, pointed out in the spring issue
of the UU World Emerson believed religion was a “process and practice”
rather than dogma.The process in
the here-and-now was being attentive to the intuitive faculty.The
practice was taking what was discovered within and bringing out into the
world.This is the same process and
practice that forms the underpinnings of our liberally religious approach
to religion and spirituality today.Key
to the process and the practice is the individual mind:
In
all my lectures, Emerson writes, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the
infinitude of the private man.This,
the people accept readily enough, and even with loud commendation, as long
as I call the lecture Art; or Politics; or Literature; or the Household;
but the moment I call it religion, -- they are shocked, though it be only
the application of the same truth…to a new class of facts. (Journal 7:342
Belknap 1969)
There
are many more wonderful illustrations, stories and insights to be gleaned
from Emerson.In the short time I
have this morning, I’ve only touched on the vast corpus of his work.Emerson
remains one of the most famous Americans to have lived because of the engaging
character of his writing and lecturing.It
continues to engage us even over these many years because of its source,
drawn from a wellspring within him that also springs forth within us.Emerson
would caution us about spending too much time drinking at his well, directing
us to the rich source already bubbling up from within each one of us.The
genius of our lives is being open to the unique stream of truth that flows
into us and manifesting it creatively in this world.
I
close with his words from his essay Immortality:
Don’t
waste life in doubts and fears: spend yourself on the work before you,
well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the
best preparation for the hours or ages that will follow it.
Copyright
© 2003 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore.All
rights reserved.