Listen:
OPENING READING: #531 "The Oversoul"
Let us learn the revelation of all nature and thought; that the Highest dwells within us, that the sources of nature are in our own minds.
As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so there is no bar or wall in the soul where we, the effect, cease, and God, the cause, begins.
I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.
There is deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is accessible to us.
Every moment when the individual feels invaded by it is memorable.
It comes to the lowly and simple; it comes to whosoever will put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; it comes as serenity and grandeur.
The soul's health consists in the fullness of its reception.
Forever and ever the influx of this better and more universal self is new and unsearchable.
Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.
When it breaks through our intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through our will, it is virtue; when it flows through our affections, it is love.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
MEDITATION: "I Must Be Myself" from Self-Reliance
O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, - but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way.
I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inwardly rejoices me and the heart appoints.
If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth.
Does this sound harsh today? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at last.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
SERMON: "The Legacy of Ralph Waldo Emerson"
The significance of Ralph Waldo Emerson as a philosopher of liberating thought cannot be overstated. His importance to American values and history and to Unitarian Universalism is paramount.
Even if one has never heard of him - and it would be a rare person who could finish high school in our country without reading Emerson, the man's effect would still be there.
As one critic states: "In no other author can we get so close to the whole of the American spirit."
This morning, however, I would like to concentrate on this great philosopher-poet's legacy to our religious movement, rather than to the broader effect he had on our country.
THE FIRST LEGACY: INDIVIDUALISM
Indeed, a point-by-point case can be made that the Unitarian Universalist "Principles" which are so very inclusive of individual beliefs and practices, and which tout the respect and dignity of every person, are pure Emersonian.
The concept of INDIVIDUALTIY is a keystone to understanding his philosophy.
Not that he invented this philosophy, but that he articulated it so very well.
And not just by the words he wrote and spoke, but by the example of his actions.
But let me be clear, Emerson was not perfect; still, he struggled to do the best he could. He set up personal ideals and sought, sometimes unsuccessfully, to live by them. Still, he did try!
Certainly, the man had his faults. Not everyone who met him liked him or his philosophies. After all, he was a liberator for the rest of us - and such rebels are not always appreciated.
Still, more revered him rather than disliked him, although he would be the first to eschew such adoration.
A compelling little story about Mr. Emerson (referred to as "Mr. Emerson" by his second wife Lidian), illustrates his ability to appeal to most everyone:
Emerson regularly lectured at Faneuil Hall in Boston. One day a newspaperman spoke to a washerwoman who regularly attended his lectures. He asked her if she understood them. "Not a word," she replied, "but I love to see him standing up there thinking everybody else is as good as he is."
And, there were those who might very well understand him, but quite disagree with him. His response to such detractors, however, was outwardly noble. For instance:
Upon the completion of his address to a literary society in Middlebury, Vt., a clergyman concluded the event with a prayer that went:
We beseech Thee, O Lord, to deliver us from ever hearing any more such transcendental nonsense...
After this benediction Mr. Emerson asked the man next to him who the preacher was, and when informed said:
He seemed a very conscientious, plain-spoken man.
And with that, Emerson went his way.
Here is pure Emerson, suffering internally, perhaps, the critique of another human being.
Undoubtedly, though, he was his own harshest critic. His journals reveal the constant struggle he waged within himself. Despite his coming to an understanding that an affirmative, forward-looking, progressive view of himself and the world was the best way to view life, there still was his Calvinistic, puritanical, self-abnegating aspect which showed through on occasion.
Consider his feeling of inadequacy concerning his call to the Unitarian ministry (he served the Second Church in Boston for three years and eight months). Early on in his ministry, he had doubts about his abilities, writing:
Finney can preach, and so his prayers are short. Parkman can pray, and so his prayers are long. Lowell can visit, and so his church service is less. But what shall poor I do, who can neither visit, nor pray, nor preach, to my mind?
The truth of the matter is that although he very much disliked having to produce a sermon every Sunday, he was (of course!) a grand writer and a grand preacher! And probably could pray well, too - that is if he wrote the prayer down beforehand (he was not known as a good extemporaneous preacher - or later, lecturer).
But he was correct about not being very good at visiting the flock. He just was not very good in social situations - unless he could control them, i.e. pick the people he wanted to be with. (Which is not what we ministers can always do!)
Consider the story about his visiting one of his dying parishioners, a Revolutionary War veteran. Mr. Emerson came to call upon the man, but really did not know what to say (Emerson was never known for small talk). So, when the usual consolations were not forthcoming from the young minister, the grizzled, old soldier scolded him with:
Young man, if you don't know your business, you had better go home.
In addition to his lack in this aspect of his divine calling, Emerson had other less-than-developed ministerial skills. As one critic says of him:
He was hounded by a terrible sense of inadequacy...He was not a good leader, feared offending people, and had several other defects, such as a propensity to laugh too much, being too critical of others, not a good debater. (Emerson and the Ministry by J. Frank Schulman)
Well, these were merely manifestations of an uneasy spirit within Emerson. It is often said by historians that he resigned from the Unitarian ministry because he did not agree with what he perceived to be the outmoded custom of serving the Lord's Supper (or Communion). This was a rallying call around which he could give a clear answer to those who wondered why he left the ministry - indeed, his congregation did not want him to resign, despite what he perceived to be his faults.
The broader reason for his resignation from Second Church was that he felt generally constrained intellectually. He could not be the philosopher he wanted to be. He had to abide by the customs and beliefs of the church, no matter how "liberal" the church might think of itself.
The meditational reading this morning has Emerson speaking boldly about his need to be himself, no matter how difficult that might be for others to understand:
I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier, If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions.
Yes, this is the concept of "Self-Reliance" - where each of us looks into our own soul and attempts to understand and then to practice our cherished beliefs and hopes.
THE SECOND LEAGACY: RECEPTIVITY
For Emerson, this meant a second aspect of his philosophy that we Unitarian Universalists have inculcated into our basic modus operandi: an open attitude toward receiving ever-new truth. We believe that we are all works in progress. We are people who ask questions. We run from dogmatists who tell us we must think the way they do.
Truly, a dogmatist might have his or her own individual belief - and this would be Emersonian in a way - but not fully Emersonian, because such a solipsistic view will not allow other evidence to be presented. A closed-system is a dead system, to paraphrase the thinking of Mr. Emerson.
Naturally, the rebel Emerson living in the Victorian world was sometimes reviled by others because of his plea for us to unbind the fetters of limited thinking, for us to practice RECEPTIVITY.
Which brings us to his historic lecture known as the "Divinity School Address" delivered to the graduating students of Harvard Divinity School in 1838. Such a talk was supposed to be:
The customary discourse, on occasion of their entering upon the active Christian ministry...
But it turned out to be a demolition of 18 centuries' attempt to build and maintain the authority of the Christian faith based on the miracles of Jesus.
Emerson's point was that Jesus was not needed by humanity in order to experience God - but that God could be experienced directly by the individual.
In addition, Emerson had an unorthodox view of the "miracles" that Christ was said to perform as told in the New Testament stories.
Said Emerson, interpreting what he thought Jesus believed on the subject and how the Church (including the 1838 version of Unitarianism) misunderstood it:
He (Jesus) saw that God incarnates himself in man...(and) he spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain...
So Emerson tells us that every moment we live is a miracle. And that God is in us, too, as he was in Jesus.
This concept is reflective of the philosophy of "Transcendentalism" which flourished in New England from 1836 to 1860, and stemmed largely from the reaction against Puritanism and confirmed especially in English and German philosophy and literature (Kant, Wordsworth, and Coleridge). The New England application of this concept as applied by Emerson and others (Thoreau, Fuller, Parker, Alcott, etc.) applied the belief of the immanence of God in nature and a mystical belief therefore in individualism and self-reliance. It is a philosophy which holds that there are ways of being and principles of existence beyond the reach of everyday experience and control.
Emerson did not at first like the term "Transcendentalism" preferring the term "Idealism" but later accepted it.
For Emerson, God is the eternal power of creation that sustains the universe. We have free will to obey this force. Our responsibility is to attempt to know the divine will - through the use of reason and the law of morality within our heart. As Emerson said:
The thought of God appears in (the mind) as inevitably as a music box plays the tune for which it was constructed.
The bard of Concord believed that Jesus provides us with a code of ethics, and is therefore an exemplar, a prophet. The Nazarene's significance is not for Emerson that Jesus was the Messiah or a worker of miracles, but rather that his actions spoke of divine truth - of morality
Emerson was in effect, Christian in a humanitarian sense and Christian via his cultural background, given his New England roots. But he was not a Christian in any exclusive sense. He admired the teachings of the Stoics, Hindus, Zoroastrians - and a multitude of idealistic philosophies.
The Divinity School Address created a tempest and brought Emerson condemnation from the Unitarian community. After the sermon - which he was invited to give by the students, he became persona non grata at Harvard for 30 years! Emerson's response to his brother concerning this was simply:
They say the world is somewhat vexed with us on account of our wicked writings. I trust it will recover its composure.
Indeed, Emerson was not about to recant his thinking. And he wrote to Professor Henry Ware, Jr. of Harvard (formerly his senior minister at Second Church):
These things look so to me; to you otherwise: let us say out our uttermost word, and let the all prevailing Truth, as it surely will, judge between us.
Here is the prime example of Ralph Waldo Emerson being receptive to ever-new truth - no matter what it might be. His willingness to be passionate in his pursuit of knowledge - a process for him of blending both reason and revelation (the latter meaning turning inward to listen to what his heart has to tell him) - illustrates his openness.
Said he in that famous Divinity School Address:
That is always best which gives me to myself. The sublime is excited in my by the great stoical doctrine Obey thyself...It is a low benefit to give me something; it is a high benefit to enable me to do somewhat of myself.
And elsewhere in that historic sermon, he urges the new graduates to be the following kind of preacher:
The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life - life passed through the fire of thought.
I believe no better advice has ever been given to me and countless other preachers since 1838!
Of course, Emerson was not just a teacher of receptivity for us clerics! His influence on the great American and European writers and thinkers of his time - his urging them to be themselves and not shackled by outworn creeds - is a major legacy.
Still, he did not always agree with or get along with these now-famous people: Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman. Then again, Emerson did his best to apply the Christian ethic of love when he criticized his contemporaries.
Whitman was really a special case for Emerson (to say the least) as is stated in Carlos Baker's fabulous biography of Emerson titled Emerson Among the Eccentrics.
Although Emerson supported Whitman's early poetic efforts - a case could be made that had he not, Whitman would have had less popularity - still, the Concord sage had great difficulty accepting Walt's explicit sexual imagery, feeling that he should expurgate anything which smacked of such an open attitude.
Whitman, some twenty years after this debate between the two as to what was appropriate for the reading public, commented on their discussion:
More precious than gold to me that dissertation...Each point of Emerson's statement unanswerable, no judge's charge ever more complete and convincing...and then I felt down in my soul the clear...conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way...
Obviously, Emerson's philosophy of our being receptive of new truth had an influence on Whitman - however so ironically!
Which says to me and to all of us that we better be careful what we philosophize, because someone might take us up on it!
THE THIRD LEGACY: COMMUNITY
In considering the legacies of INDIVIDULAISM and RECEPTIVITY, which were hallmarks of Emerson's liberating philosophy, we would be remiss if we did not include a short addendum: that of COMMUNITY.
For Emerson, there must be a balance between the individual and society, recognizing that one's individual being is paramount.
Said he:
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
In accepting and living this principle, each of us should, nevertheless, strive to live within the regulation of laws that are just. (He did not find the support of slavery just and spoke out against it with measured beat, refusing the passionate actions of a Henry David Thoreau and others).
In doing this, he was true to what his own conscience told him.
He was not one to support public opinion simply because it was public opinion - no matter which segment of public opinion it might be, liberal or conservative, Unitarian or otherwise. Indeed, he took on any group that he felt squelched the individual's opportunity to become his or her own person. I believe Emerson instructs us as Unitarian Universalists to practice our own cherished beliefs - and not to be any form of knee-jerk practitioner - liberal or conservative!
Said he in his Journals (1828):
It is said public opinion will not bear it. Really? Public opinion, I am sorry to say, will bear (a) great deal of nonsense. There is scarcely any absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science or manners, which it will not bear.
I would interpret "Public Opinion" here as any form of the larger community - perhaps "party line" would be a better term.
Still, Emerson is not telling us to be iconoclasts, removing ourselves from the democratic practices of our nation, or local community. Involvement, to a certain extent, is good. Each of us needs to balance the needs of self and community. Emerson's is, most assuredly, the quest for the rights of the individual within society, but admittedly, he felt at times most desirous of being alone in his study, rather than before the public's eye.
CONCLUSION: EMERSON THE OPTIMIST
Finally, what can we say about Ralph Waldo Emerson? Simply, that despite the sorrows of his own life - the early loss of his first wife, Ellen, of his first son, Waldo, of his brothers, and of his friends and students: Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne; despite his second wife Lidian's life-long emotional and physical frailty; despite the condemnation from his ministerial colleagues and others for his so-called "unorthodox" beliefs; despite the inequities of his day and age: slavery, the negation of women's equality, the Civil War, Lincoln's assassination, poverty, illness and ignorance, and despite his own failing mind for the last decade of his life, - despite it all, the man was the eternal optimist.
He believed in the progressive nature of humanity. He believed that there is a common connection between us all - what he called the "Oversoul."
Despite the sorrows of life, human existence for Mr. Emerson was still good and each moment was to be cherished as a miracle.
Said he in his poem The World Soul:
Spring still makes spring in the mind
When sixty years are told;
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,
And we are never old;
Over the winter glaciers
I see the summer glow.
And through the wild-piled snow-drift
The warm rosebuds below.
CLOSING WORDS: "Solitude"
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson