[Parts of this sermon, given in two reflections, was delivered spontaneously. Notes are included to cover the areas discussed.]
One of the most influential and uniquely American movements of thought and philosophy, having arisen within the early forming of the United States, is Transcendentalism. It is a trend of thought that influenced social reform, ideals of democracy and individualism, and revolutionary religious sensibility that has influenced great thinkers and reformers to this day.
The wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Walt Whitman, Theodore Parker, Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Peabody, nurtured and inspired a dynamic world view that challenged the individual to examine her or his own knowing and to respond to life as an adventure, a gift, in which your potential could blossom if you chose the path of authenticity and a direct relationship with the immanent divine. (No worries—we'll unpack that.)
The people I have just named were also Unitarians—of varying devotion—for Transcendentalism was birthed by Unitarian Christianity, expanding beyond its borders to include the divinity of nature, experience and intuition, giving a whole new sense of God and of self and of our place in the world. A whole new spirituality was introduced that lived outside of religious doctrine, ritual and tradition. Transcendentalism promoted what has often been coined as "religious free thinking."
But this gifted world view spread beyond Unitarian circles and sensibilities, especially in the field of social reform. In later years, Frederick Douglass, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr embraced the influence of Transcendentalist thought, especially Thoreau, in their life work for social reform, as did countless advocates in the 20th century for gender equality, religious freedom and global citizenry.
Knowledge of the power of the individual and of the divine life energy within burst through the frontier of early American thought to answer the longing for a new philosophy to serve a new nation. Transcendentalism was also spurred on by the Unitarian argument against Calvinism and its theology of a judgemental, punishing God that reigned over inherently sinful humans who had little chance of salvation.
Transcendentalism countered this pessimistic and fatalistic theology with a faith in potential and innate wisdom and sacred energy in the ordinary. Professor Ashton Nichols of Dickinson college, summarized the broad brush of thought that can be found in Transcendentalism:
It endeavors a "search for truth that might be true at all times in all places, the belief that evidence for such a spiritual truth might be found in and through the physical world, and the idea that each individual has the capacity to experience this truth in a personal way." It follows, with this logic, that there is "a divine force in each individual, a force that is also linked to nature and has the power to transform lives, as well as social institutions."
Now this was an extremely radical way of looking at our place in the cosmos and our potential for sacred living. It even proved radical amongst New England Unitarians, many of which chose to distance themselves and even try and discredit colleagues who "went too far" away from traditional views of church, God and Jesus.
But this uniquely American trend of thought came from streams of thought that date back as far as written history. Emerson and Thoreau studied the sacred texts of Buddhism and Hinduism, they perused Confucius and Plato, and gathered the wisdom of English romantic writers, German philosophers and Christian mystics. And although it is rarely spoken of in connection with Transcendentalism, I offer that the sister spirituality of Celtic and pagan traditions were alive in the collective consciousness, in the honoring of the divinity in nature and the vast indescribable essence of life that manifested in many ways.
The term "Transcendentalism" may have come from Immanuel Kant, German philosopher who called ?all knowledge transcendental which is concerned not with objects but with our mode of knowing objects. This "knowledge" dips into what some English Romantic writers referred to as a cosmic understanding, a knowing of life beyond our sensory experience, a unifying spiritual energy that we can tap into, what Emerson would call the "Oversoul."
Ideas of the material as illusion date back as far as Plato and the Hindu concept of maya, both studied by Emerson and Thoreau, which helped the Transcendentalists both marvel at the natural beauty in things yet not feel estranged from them, knowing that there is something essential shared by all.
The search and dialogue was for a truth that had been true for all time, thus longer than the truth of Christianity or any other historicized religion, which had its limits in this ever changing, ever emerging world.
This movement began in the 1830's in a very small geographic area: Boston, encompassing the homes and workplaces of Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, the Alcotts, the Parkers and the Peabody sisters. For the next 50 years this swirling of revolutionary thought sparked a way of being and believing that eventually captured the hearts and minds of peoples throughout the Western and some of the Eastern hemispheres, and inspired the fears of those who stood by established, old time religion.
A member of a religious cult approached Ralph Waldo Emerson one day and proclaimed that the world was going to end in ten days. Emerson calmly replied: "Well no doubt we will get on very well without it."
This interchange is revealing:
At the same time it is about not taking oneself too seriously—what has come before can take us to a place of opening that we then must choose to embrace.
Although it is important for us to be original, what is original about us is beyond our own invention.
Words from Emerson's essay, Nature (1836), believed to be the launching essay of the Transcendentalist movement:
In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.
So the original nature, what we might call authenticity, arrives out of the tension of the courage to be who we are and reverence for the ground of All Being.
It is the land that inspired this, the open space, and faith in the stirrings within intuition, experience, awe and beauty.
If we are to be an original nation we must dare to honor our original selves within a world and universe that has a living logic about it and a resonance of eternity.
What is ironic about the claims that the founders envisioned a Christian nation, is that the Christianity that the drafter of the Declaration of Independence most admired was Unitarianism: Thomas Jefferson believed that all citizens would be Unitarian by the time he died—wrong—but that was his understanding of a faith that could accompany the journey of a new nation conceived in liberty.
Many of the founders claimed themselves as deists: not impose on another.
Ways to go—liberty first conceived was for white land owning men. Claim to authenticity by the 1830's in the small group of Unitarians was heard and abolition movement, women?s rights and educational reform began stirring.
If innate ability to intuit goodness and worth, then must create ways for that inner knowing to flourish. May seem obvious to many of us now, but then it was radical. Meant no intercession needed which got into the question of authority. Authentic people much harder to control, truths much harder to contain.
Must be remembered that they were on the cutting edge ? many in established religion, including Unitarianism, found the Trans too radical (more on the impact to our religion next week).
Missing link: Native Americans (denial of their lives unfortunate—not only in building of the nation, but in religious sensibilitiy as well—while Transcendentalists admired writers from India—Baghavad Gita, Vedas, Native American wisdom contained a spirituality that could have informed their reverence, born of the land they were in).
(Note: when Henry David Thoreau was near death, he was urged to make peace with God. "I didn't know that we had ever quarreled," he replied.)